Chapter Text

but that was in another country —

and besides, the wench is dead.

prologue i

Ersa does not wish to wake, the pain is so great. Closes her eyes to it, the sharp pounding worse than any anvil, steel cracking bone, each intake of her breath a new wound, each beat of her own heart a new pain. Her mouth is gritty with bone, and the straw she lays upon is wet with blood. Her skin tight with dried and crusting gore. Burning with infection.

She closes her eyes to it. She sleeps.

Some time later wakes again. There is no draft or wind or sunlight where she is, but the straw crackles when she shifts, dryer now. She tries not to groan at her own movement, tries to suppress the sound it draws from deep in her. Crusty eyes blinking open, struggling to focus, eyelashes bloody. A blue machine lamp. Crates. Tables. Bars.

She attempts to move her arms under her, to hoist herself upright — her right arm jerks and the pain overwhelms her, unable to hold even itself up; her head cracks backward as she loses her balance, wanting to hold her arm to herself and unable to bear the pain. She sucks on her teeth and something comes loose in her mouth, dull and painful, and she spits it out to her side with a dribble of blood. Briefly afraid of prodding at the rest of her teeth, not knowing what might be missing.

She bends her legs. They move. The right bears the weight of her bent knee: the left less so, her ankle refusing to bear her, something throbbing and burning in her thigh. Her gut hurts, something throbbing deep inside of her where there are no bones. Left hand moves, fingers bending. Each breath seems to catch and push against a cage of spikes where her ribs used to be. Broken arm, broken ribs. Sprained ankle. She’s still alive, so her insides can’t be too badly ruptured. Carefully she touches her face: swollen cheeks, surprisingly intact nose, the sharp pain of her cheekbone, the thick crust of blood and the burning, throbbing wound covering the left side of her forehead.

She remembers a sneer. A gauntlet, a foot raised to stomp.

Ersa closes her eyes and tries to find a way to breathe that does not hurt.

“You’ll notice I didn’t tie you up.”

She does not have the strength to go stiff, to jump to her feet to attack. She didn’t hear Derhval come in: he must have been here all along. Watching.

It demands a retort she’s too fuzzy to give, to put together with any grace or bluster. But maybe her silence is a retort, because she hears his heavy bootsteps.

“When you feel up to it, go ahead and try to get out,” he says. There’s a clatter as he leans one muscled forearm against the bars of her cell, bracing his weight against it to peer down at her, limp in the stinking straw. “I want you to understand how hopeless it is.”

The anger does wash through her, but it’s a faint and slow moving thing. She takes as large a breath as she can and pushes herself into a sitting position, bracing her weight on her left arm, not bothering to hide the exertion. Dull aches bloom into stabbing hurt. “You acting tough over winning with tricks?” she asks, her mouth clammy and tongue thick and voice harsh.

Dervhal laughs and she imagines she can feel the spittle from his open mouth. “I’ve told you before, bitch. No one you kill is going to remember how skillfully you handled your hammer. All that matters is your numbers.”

He watches her for a moment more, then abruptly pulls away from the bars and returns to his work table. “Settle in. Use the piss bucket if you need to. Your death is a while away yet, so you may as well get comfortable.”

She doesn’t laugh. She’s in too much pain. “That’s supposed to be a threat? You had me knocked out and broken and dragged me all the way here alive.”

“That was always your problem, girl,” Dervhal says quietly. “Impatient. No foresight, no planning.”

Girl. That was what he used to call her, back when she was fourteen and half starved and the other Freebooters were calling her bitch or worse. It sends a hot anger through her — no, the heat is something else, a sudden blooming of sweat under her arms and pinpricks in her vision. She’s been sitting half-up for thirty seconds and already her body’s giving out on her?

She clenches her eyes shut, willing the fog to recede. “So what’s your genius plan?” she asks, her voice too loud in her ringing ears. “Watch me die of boredom?” The world spins and twists away. She tries to open her eyes but instead the —

Tries to sit up and open her eyes —

Twists —

She wakes up to a man over her, his hands on her — Ersa twists but cannot move her arms; kicks up instead, jabbing her knee into the man’s side —

“Fuck!” The Oseram slaps her, and her vision goes white and she loses her breath as he strikes her open wound, the pain and concussion —

“Boss! Knock her out!” she hears, trying to push through the burning and the haze, she kicks and feels heavy hands upon her knees, holding her down — scrambles with her right arm — no — left — finding nothing but moldy straw to grasp and settling for trying to tear out the Oseram’s eyes, tear off his spectacles and —

“Boss!”

Pain — pain pain pain something she doesn’t know, something inside her, loud and tearing with needles and knives, tearing tearing peeling her apart, she pulls at her ears, trying to stuff them with her fingers, trying to tear out her ear drums before they can burst, unable to hear anything, the men, her self, her cries of pain —

Something pulls at her arm and she fights it: she needs to cover her ears, cover, cover —

Yanks it down to her side, yanks her broken arm, draws them together, she tries to kick, tries to drive the side of her head into the stone, away, anywhere away, as she is moved and manipulated and other lesser pains —

The noise stops.

She is gasping, drenched in sweat and worse. The man is sitting back on her knees and her head is split in two, but it’s better, the pain in her leg and ribs and arm and forehead are nothing, almost pleasant, a relief —

Her cell door is open: the second man stands up, muttering under his breath — curses — wipes his filthy hands on his legs and gathers up some — cloth, a tincture, a bottle. Dervhal watches from just outside the cage. “There,” he says, his voice muffled and too loud at once. “Thank the healer, Ersa.”

The words have no meaning to her. Her eyes are wet and vision is blurry. She tries to move and finds it is still possible. Finds a new sting on her throbbing leg, a bandage. Finds the tightness of her forehead is another bandage. Tilts back her head against the floor, panting.

“That fucking bitch,” the healer is saying as Ersa tries to gather any dregs of strength remaining to her. “Waste of time.”

“I won’t have her dying yet,” Dervhal says.

“You said we were gonna take out the damn Carja, not squat up north and bandage up traitors.”

“It’ll take as long as it takes. We’re still waiting on the last of the shipment…”

The cell door is dragged closed, creaking, and the sound it it causes a new wave of pain. Ersa has her eyes shut. She feels the edge of unconsciousness lapping at her. Pulling at her with gentle hands. Someone…

Sighs, nuzzles her cheek into the pillow. She’s bone tired but the promise of sleep is comforting. The hand caresses her cheek, thumb along the line of of it. Breaking the rules, she thinks about saying. But she’ll let it slide, just the once. Her breath is hot in her mouth, but she’s very cold.

Next time she wakes, she has a fever. The pain is thudding all through her, duller but more consistent, and she finds a bucket of water just outside the bars of her cell, in reaching distance. Drags herself over and cups her hand in water so cold it bites, wets her lips and takes a single, meager swallow.

The workshop is empty. Lit by a handful of blue machine lights, casting odd, flickering shadows that send immediate spikes of pain behind her eyes. She presses her forehead against the cool bars of the cell, taking care not to let the steel touch her bandaged wound.

Takes another couple of sips of water.

How long’s it been? Long enough that she should want food, more than just a handful of water, but Ersa feels sick enough already. She’s dressed in some man’s overshirt and leggings that’d fall around her ankles if she tried to walk in them, and tries to search herself for bruises, careful not to move her right arm if she can avoid it. Her torso is mottled and patchy with wounds, but the blue light makes it hard to judge how purple or yellow or old they are. Desperate, she feels at the nape of her neck, but her hair doesn’t grow fast enough that she can feel any difference.

There’s a loud creak of a door opening. Above her. To the right.

No windows in here, either: she’s in a cellar, an old root cellar maybe, an ice house, underground. The door will lead directly outside. Maybe someone guarding it? Some one, not many, and it’s early autumn but the healer had said north so there may already be snow, not more than one, and whoever it is will be edging towards the fire, the main hall, not vigilant, not —

Footsteps down the stairs. Heavy boots. Metal. Dervhal enters the basement still in the process of turning. The footsteps falter as he sees Ersa, sitting up against the bars.

“How you feeling, bitch?”

He flicks on blaze-powered lanterns, the room brightening, colors stabilizing. She looks for mud or snow on his boots.

“Hungry,” she says, although she isn’t.

“Ain’t that a shame?” Humming a drinking song, Dervhal drags a stool up to a worktable in the far corner and sits, getting back to work tinkering on some sort of device.

She closes her eyes.

He wants her alive enough that he had his man stop her bleeding or burning to death. Called her all the way out to the Ridge just to… drag her north, somewhere north. Squatting up north, the healer said. Up north. North of what? Her mind feels muzzy, slow. North of Mainspring? That’s weeks of travel. Why would Dervhal… Meridian.

Squatting up north of Meridian. Impatient. Antsy. Wanting to… attack. She’d laugh if she could. They hadn’t picked up on him, but they’d notice a damn army, and he thinks that just because Ersa’s out of the picture, the King’s not…

But Ersa’s not out of the picture. He wants her alive. Enough that he had his man…

Her mind is going in circles. It’s hard to hold a thought down, follow it down its trail, and the song Dervhal is humming is spiking right into her head, little needles, hot and sharp.

“Won’t keep me alive for long if you don’t feed me,” she says, her voice rough.

If he doesn’t feed her at all, that means he’s going south in days. A week. Two?

He laughs. “Feeling better today?”

“Fuckin’ peachy.”

The sound of his humming, the clinking of machine parts and metal.

One.

Remembers standing at the lip of his tent, waiting for him to finish so she could make her report. There you are! Get a look at this. She’d expected some kind of new weapon, a cannon, a shield. Instead he’d handed her a box the size of her fist when she came up to him. She presses an inset button on the lid and it had spun slowly, twisting itself open, unfurling into a metal bowl, the inside polished chrome-metal.

He laughs at her expression. Tanda’s always losing her damn earrings. Thought I’d make her something nice to keep ‘em in. What do you think?

It was beautiful, and yet she felt a pang of bitterness. Sadness. All the same. She hasn’t got any earrings, let alone a nice box for them. Why would she? Seventeen and still looks more boy than woman, and she’s Bladewife now and that makes her even less of one. What does she need with pretty things? Nice, for a girl, she says, handing it back: he twists something and it folds up again, smooth as water.

Fancies, they were called. Little machines whose only purpose was to make people smile. Erend fancies a girl apprenticed out in the Funnels, some smart girl with big tits, and Ersa thinks it’s the latter more than the former that’s got him wound up, but he’s fifteen now and that’s how it goes. Least he should be able to have that, fancies and courting and…

No, he’s not fifteen. He’s…

Two.

Next time she wakes, there’s a bowl of congealed food just outside the bars of her cell. Potato mash threaded with greens and specks of meat. They’re feeding her what they’re eating already, which is good, but it’s too heavy: she takes a single bite and feels it crawl like paste down her throat and into her stomach. Only manages a second bite, scooped up with her filthy fingers, a good while later. Her forehead is hot to even her touch and the wound on her leg seems to be glowing in the dark like embers, but she keeps shivered anyway, wishing all this warmth would penetrate and actually do something.

Meridian gets surprisingly cold at night, high as it is, catching all the eastern winds. Houses are built with gilt blaze braziers to keep them warm and wooden shutters to block out the winds. Carja are warm-blooded people, but Avad is apparently the only exception to this: even with his rooms at the very top of the Palace’s tower and exposed to the air on all sides, he’s never ever cold. But I’m cold, she tells him, giving in: it’s too late and she’s too tired for a pissing contest over who can tolerate it better. I’m going back to my damn room if you don’t latch the windows. Are you listening? Hey, I’m cold. I’m —

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven —

“How’s it going?” she asks Dervhal the next time he comes downstairs, next time she’s awake for it.

“How’s what going?” he grunts, sitting down at his workbench. He almost seems to enjoy it when she talks to him, but he’s always liked talking about himself.

“Figure people know I’m missing by now. Hoping the patrols make you sweat a little.” She doesn’t doubt he could avoid them, he’s always been the smartest man she’s ever met. But she tries for flippant, uncaring. She wants to know if he has. North. They’re up north. Right? Where did she get that idea exactly?

He laughs. “No one’s looking for you, bitch. You’re dead.”

“Bullshit.”

“Killed some woman and put her in your clothes, then burned her face off with acid cells. Guess that idiot brother of yours bought it. Whole Sundom’s been up in arms for weeks about your murder, but you always were a tribe traitor, weren’t you?”

She feels plodding, confused. Erend wouldn’t believe something like that. And she’s not dead, she’s… Wait. They’re near the Sundom. Right. They’re north. North of…

Weeks.

She shivers, some wind blowing through the room and cutting her to the bone. He wants her alive bad enough that… that…

One. Two. Three.

“At least close the window,” she murmurs. “Can’t keep me alive if I freeze to death.” It’d be alright if she had more blankets, if he came back to bed, but…

Are you staying, then? he asks, and has the nerve to sound surprised. Like she’s so cold, like she’s… she is cold. She’s shivering. You’re the one who isn’t looking for me, she snaps. When I left I thought I’d come back. I’m not…

Five —

The pain comes so suddenly, so sharp, that it is her entire world: hurts and hurts and she’s thrown, rolls across the stone floor, her side on fire, her ribs crackling and burst, and the cell door is open and Dervhal is crouching down over her in his heavy steel boots.

She tries to hit him but her right arm won’t move. She kicks at him and he presses down on her calf and her other leg won’t move and how did he get so strong? She lifts her head and drops it, gasping, the pain pulsing and lapping at every inch of her, burning from the point in her side where he’d just kicked her.

Kicked her. The door is open —

She pulls at all the strength she has left, not her useless arms or weak legs but wrenching herself upward; he is crouching to pin her and she twists and pulls and hits her head against him, so hard that her vision goes black and the pain almost sinks her — he smashes his fist into her face and she bites on whatever she can reach, and they roll and she kicks, hits, scratches and pulls: his eyes, mouth, throat, ears. She never grew tall like her brother, nor as broad, and men have always, always thought her weak for it —

He grunts in pain and the weight is off her and Ersa rolls to her knees, to her feet, her vision twisting and browning and sharp, sharp. No time for pain, no time for her leg not to bear her weight, her arm to not make a fist, she squirms free of Dervhal and doesn’t look back. Underground. Around the corner and up the stairs to the right. Crashes into a table — loses her breath at the wood hitting her stomach, keeps going. No one will be watching the door, not closely, not with Dervhal inside, not with the mud and the snow. Any town, any settlement, any icy river — she isn’t cold, she’s burning with heat, her leg is bearing her weight and she pushes off from the table and keeps moving, hearing heavy steel footsteps —

Around the corner! Up the stairs now, each footfall sending a spear up her leg and into her belly — Door at the top is closed and she’s almost there, almost —

Pain! The sound, the sound, there was nothing and now all there is is sound, the pain, screaming and twisting and driving nails into her ears and nose and eyes and open mouth, reaching and clawing and twisting and in her skin, her bones, her organs, her teeth, her hair, her —

She doesn’t even feel the pain of falling down the stairs. She doesn’t even feel the blood on her face, in her palms, filling her mouth and nose.

Six. Six. Six. Six. Six!

The letter had been mixed in with a handful of invoices. New armor for Alin, leather straps and laces, a perpetual need for the Vanguard, ten kegs of ale, commission from the fletchers, general supplies including two spools chain, four spools wire, a dozen blaze canisters, arrowheads, tubing, rivets, boots. Ragan’s warhammer needed a new shaft, all cost shards, all needed accounting. Dervhal’s letter had been the fifth or sixth or seventh item in the pile, and when she had been marching with Bergrand to the Red Ridge she’d been thinking with grim satisfaction: I bet it kills him that he sent the damn letter two weeks ago.

She tries to keep on top of her paperwork better, really she does. But —

No. No, no…

Bergrand wasn’t a Vanguard, he was —

Count of six. Count of six.

Hear Dervhal’s up to his usual shit, Bergrand says.

She frowns. Erend. She’d left him and Avad an hour ago and already word was spreading? A moment of irritation at her brother’s lack of secrecy — but Berg had been with them from the beginning.

He’s always up to shit, she’d said. That’s why she’d gone to find Berg. That’s right. He’d left after —

Right, she’d left camp to find Berg’s crew. Erend hadn’t told them after all. If you decide to take that bastard out, give me a shout, Berg says.

Funny you should mention it.

She and Dervhal walk up the crest of the hill together. The sun is starting to set and already a chill is settling over the plateau. Just you and me, like it’s always been, she says to him, and pitches them over the edge together —

No?

They’re walking up the crest of the hill. We’ve only got a third of the blaze we need and twice as many excuses! They say it’ll be weeks before they can get the rest delivered to the city!

Add it to the invoices, she says. The crown will cover the cost of supplies.

Blaze —

They’re looking at the sunset, together.

They’re looking —

He’s a pain in the ass. But he’s brilliant. Smartest man I’ve ever met.

It’s simply that… he does not seem the sort of man I would have imagined you following.

I don’t follow him, she says. And he’s no worse than most Oseram men. He and his wife were kind to me when I was starting out.

His wife?

All good Oseram men have wives.

And you? Do you have a husband waiting for you back in the Claim?

She laughs. You flirting with me, Your Luminance?

Leather laces. New armor. Arrowheads. Blaze. Blaze…

Berg hadn’t gone far: the way he’d stormed out of the camp with his men after the debacle, no way he had had time to pack, and Ersa finds them only an hour or two up the road. He greets her warily but pours her an ale in his tent. Why’re you darkening my doorstep, Bladewife?

I need a favor.

Count of six. Only six. One two three four five —

“He’s dead,” Dervhal says, bracing his arms on the steel of the cage, looking at her like a pig in its pen, a goose for slaughter. “Used liquid blaze. Raw, poured over him bit by bit. Took him three days to die.”

She can’t move when she tries. She licks her lips — that she can still do. “You need me alive more than three days, you’d better get your healer back here,” she says, or she thinks she says. Six days? He leans harder against the bars. She’s burning hot.

“You telling me you don’t want to see your brother again?”

Erend.

Take me with you! Wait, take me with you!, but she can’t, doesn’t he — she tries to sit up. Can’t.

“But that’s not the name you’ve been whimpering, is it?”

You’re back? he’d said, seeing her at the gate, trying not to look scared, trying not to look uncomfortable. He’d grown while she was away and when he walks hesitantly closer they’re the same height and she feels small. Timid.

“You have a point. I was gonna give you his head, but maybe I’ll toss your stinking corpse at your precious Sun-King’s feet instead.”

But then how will I tell Erend I’m sorry? How will I tell—

She should never have left him in that house. In that house with their father. Never should have left him. But the letter had come, the letter had been mixed up in her invoices, shards and boots and leather and blaze.

You’re just handing me Dervhal? Berg asks, an incredulous laugh bubbling out from his clenched jaw. Bladewife, you hand him to me and you’re not getting him back.

I don’t want him dead, she cautions. Remembers sitting on a low stool in a warm room, Tanda trimming her badly-shorn hair behind her, Dervhal humming drinking songs as he built some new fancy for his wife and daughter. But if we just kick him out he’ll be back in a week with some new bomb and a grudge. We need someone to keep en eye on him.

Berg’s eyes lit up. Oh, I’ll keep an eye on him, Bladewife.

She knew what she was doing.

Four. Five. Six.

The cell door opens and Dervhal crouches before her, but this time when she wills herself to move, to bite or to kick, her body flatly disobeys. She watches him through crusty eyes as he observes her and finally smiles. “Never thought I’d see you broken,” he says approvingly.

He takes her jaw in one hand and pulls her mouth open, spooning some water past her lips almost gently. The water is ice cold and slides down her mouth and throat like the spark of life itself, bright and energizing. She swallows and he patiently helps her drink more. Her vision seems brighter, her heartbeat more steady, reaching her belly, her fingers, her lungs.

“Good,” he says.

He hums to himself as he takes the bucket and dish outside the cell door, then returns to squat before her.

“I’m heading to Royal Meridian,” he says, his eyes bright with dark amusement. “Anything you want me to tell your brother and King? No? I’ll bring their heads back for you, once I’ve burned the whole fucking city to the ground. I’ll make you beg me to kill you, and they can watch. Won’t that be nice?”

“I won’t,” she murmurs, as strong as she’s able.

“Thinking of dying while I’m gone, just to spite me?” He chuckles, almost gentle now that she’s too weak to move. “No, girl. We both know you couldn’t stand to give up like that. You’re hurt bad but you’re not dying. Yet.”

She closes her eyes. She won’t beg.

He takes her right hand into his, and she tries not to moan as her arm is moved, splinters of broken bone digging anew into her flesh. The pain increases, white hot and boiling and sharp and pulsing and —

And —

Six.

“No bleeding out,” she hears someone say.

Blaze, something about…

If she causes trouble, use the machine on her. No more than six second bursts, got it? I want her alive when I get back.

Even in sleep the pain burns through her, scratching at all her bones, crackling beneath the skin. Her heart beats and — pain. It is not blood but pain in her now, and she grasps and hides and searches for any corner, any tiny portion of her body that is not burning, boiling, freezing cold.

Look what I got, she says, pulling her brother into the shed where they store the potatoes. It’s a honeycomb the size of both her fists together, waxy and sticky and dripping with honey. It’s just for us. No one else. A fancy, it’s called. An object that does nothing but make you happy. A fancy. A…

One. Two. Three.

I don’t think she’s bleeding anymore but it’s really bad. That’s good, right? That’s — Don’t move her!

She and her brother are in the shed. Cross-legged in the dirt, passing the honey between them. She lets him take the bigger part, feeling magnanimous, generous, forgiving him for whatever it was she had been mad at him for. Sticky, dirty hands and honeycomb in her mouth, on her tongue. It is the first she’s eaten in two days and she lets him have the larger half.

Ersa? Hey! Hey, Ersa!

Six second bursts, someone had said. But it had kept going and going and she’d counted to six and lost count and counted to three and lost and counted —

A man is crouched before her, but he is not Dervhal.

“Hey,” she says, her mouth dry and throat sticky with comb.

“Don’t move her!” someone says. A woman’s voice.

Erend moves her.

Lifts her up a little. Her shoulders resting on his lap like she’s some sort of invalid. Weak and dying.

“You killed him, huh?”

“Where is he?” the person asks. “He’s not here. Where’s he going?”

The woman’s voice sounds strange. Foggy, colored by some foreign accent.

“Erend?” What’s her brother doing —

He’s — this isn’t the shed, they are not children. She tries to sit up and he must be holding her down because she can’t move. Her right hand is covered in brown bandages and he is looking down at her with big, wet eyes and alcohol on his breath.

“It’s okay, we got you,” he says. As he keeps talking, his voice is also distorted. Foggy. Smokey. Blaze —

She moves, she moves, her arms cooperating, her legs cooperating, breath in her lungs — “What are you doing here? Dervhal’s on his way to Meridian! He has blaze, he’s going after—“ She almost gets up this time but Erend does push her back down. “You can’t be here, you need to protect the King, you need to step up —”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“It’s not —“ she moves her head and her vision goes black.

Stop wasting your time on me. Stop wasting your time with ale. Your king needs you and I do —

Aloy! Hey, Aloy, she’s —

I don’t know what to do, I’m not a healer, she needs —

Honeycomb. Filling her mouth and her throat and her lungs. Her heart is beating, but wax doesn’t flow. But it’s sweet.

He closes the damn window. Finally, she says. Come back to bed, won’t you?

Six seconds.

One,

two,

three…

Chapter Text

prologue ii

The Sun shines bright over Meridian, and Sun-Hawk Ahsis is sputtering with anger. “The Hunter’s Lodge is not an arm of the crown! You may not decide our bylaws on our behalf!”

Avad has been putting off this meeting for weeks now. Were his schedule up to him, he might have managed a month or two more. “It is the law of the Sundom that none may be prevented from joining any occupation or organization due to family, tribe, or sex.”

“That is untrue and we both know it,” Ahsis hisses, sitting back down at the luncheon across from Avad. “Women are not shoved into the military! Foreigners do not become priests! I will not allow Talanah to take a foreign Thrush, and as Sun Hawk such is my right!”

Avad attempts a smile, his jaw tight. “the Hunter’s Lodge has always been a beacon of light, shining upon Holy Meridian in example for us all. It is true that not all are as progressive as you…” In his experience, flattery often works on Ahsis, but this lie is too thick for them both.

The Hunter’s Lodge has always been a problem for the Crown. The Lodge has no official power or authority, but has always been made up of the Sundom’s most powerful noble families, each of whom holds considerable wealth and influence. Most of the time they’re happy to simply hunt machines, but were the Lodge to ever turn political, they could cause serious problems, in turn making it delicate when the Sun-King does need to enforce some law or another.

Ironically, Avad himself had leaned on just that influence only a few years before, back when he and his brother were struggling to reduce their father’s power. He likes it much less now that he’s the one on the other side of the table.

Also, Ahsis is a pain in the ass.

“I will not allow it. Bad enough that Talanah was made Hawk…”

“Family Khane Padish has been part of the Lodge since its founding,” Avad reminds him. He reaches for his wine. Ungraciously, he wishes Ahsis would take his complaints to Talanah instead of himself. Avad can’t step in the middle of Lodge disputes. And he isn’t about to rescind the order that the Lodge open its doors to all.

“The men of the family. She’s not even a good hunter. Half her trophies are dented. She choose that Nora girl to spite me, but I’ll have them both out, just you watch —“

“Nora girl?” Avad asks, piqued. Surely not…

Movement in the corner of his eye. One of the Vanguard who he doesn’t quite recognize on sight is being hurried towards the throne by Bashaid, one of his attendants. “I apologize,” Avad says, trying not to sound too grateful for the interruption. “Unfortunately I cannot grant your request at this time—“ Never mind that Ahsis had not requestedanything— “but as ever I thank you for your candor and friendship.”

He leaves Ahsis at the table, leading the Vanguard and Bashaid into another of the terrace’s alcoves. “You have news?”

The Oseram looks grim, and he braces himself for —

You have already accepted her death, to hear it a second time will not…

“Erend sent me on ahead,” the Vanguard says. “He wanted to get the Captain safely to Pitchcliff, he’s a couple hours behind. Dervhal’s in Meridian, has some kind of plot. I’m supposed to make sure you’re aware and kept safe, sir; he’s out to kill you, sir. Er — your Grace.”

“Fetch Marad,” Avad says to Bashaid, who bows, already departing.

But Dervhal can’t be in Meridian. Until just a few days ago, Avad had been certain he was dead. Ersa had killed him years ago. That the man is alive, that he is both in Meridian and a threat — he finds himself looking out over the canyon, towards the city.

“Ersa,” he says, suddenly. “Is she…?”

You know she is dead, idiot.

“Alive,” the Vanguard says.

Alive. After six weeks, after a body bearing her name and clothing, after visiting her crypt himself, alone, trying once again to beseech the Sun to say anything, reply with even a word, to his prayers —

She is alive, and yet he still finds himself full of doubt. It is too — he mourned her, as he had his brother and even his father, he saw her in the crypt and —

Alive.

Marad hurries to them before he can begin to process or ask further questions. Behind them, attendants are already hurrying the Sun-Hawk away and clearing the luncheon. Avad had had a meeting with one of the displaced noble families set for early this afternoon, he recalls. That will need rescheduling, although he’s sure Darvaid, the head steward, is already doing just that…

Ersa is alive?

Aloy had said there was a chance. Erend had gone to his sister’s crypt and come back shouting about a scar. And yet he had not seen how it could be, even so. She had died away from him, but so had so many others, and unlike his brother and his father Avad had knelt at her tomb in mourning, touched her cold hands and the ruin of her face and —

The Vanguard is recounting his information to Marad, adding a few details that Avad finds difficult to focus his mind upon. Erend, with Aloy’s assistance, had discovered Dervhal’s camp north of Pitchcliff. It was no temporary gathering of tents but fortified and secured. Invoices and contracts had been seized: they had been making shards legitimately, as salvagers. Marad’s agent in Pitchcliff is dead. Dervhal was not present and Ersa had warned of blaze and Meridian and a plot against Avad himself.

He feels no fear at this last, although perhaps he should. It is taking much of his effort to simply remain standing and keep his expression schooled. Ersa had told Erend herself. She is alive. Ersa is alive.

Marad sends the Oseram off with orders for the city watch and frowns at Avad. “Take yourself in hand,” he says, not entirely unkindly.

Avad sits heavily on one of the nearby chairs instead.

But I have already said goodbye.

Contrary to some of the rumors he has heard, Avad and Ersa were not instant friends, when they first met, almost five years ago. Well. He had liked her, if only for doing the impossible and surviving his father, but she had hated and mistrusted him and for fair reason. It had taken months to convince her of his good intent, and no sooner had they reached an accord than she was gone and he had assumed that he would never see her again.

How many more times will she prove him wrong?

“We will need to close off the palace,” Marad says, sounding tired: in addition to housing Avad and the court, Meridian’s palace is also its seat of government and place of work for dozens of ministers, judges, ambassadors, and workers, none of whom will be happy to have their tasks disrupted and offices evacuated.

“It is an attempt on my life,” Avad says. “Surely all we must do is keep myself safe.”

“And if you are murdered because Dervhal disguised himself as a rug merchant to gain access to your quarters?” Marad asks.

“The Oseram labor strike over Ersa’s murder has only just been resolved. I’d really rather not give the Carja an opportunity to take up the example.” Avad wishes he could say that his people would fear the threat to his life enough to respect a lockdown. Marad’s lips thin, taking his point and outlook. “We will do a thorough sweep of the palace,” Avad says. “and then I will wait in my room like a good boy until Dervhal is located. Is there any chance that he has not yet reached Meridian?”

“There is always a chance,” Marad says. He waves for a pair of the guards to approach. “You are to keep his Luminance in spear-reach until otherwise informed. And remove your helmets.”

When neither man has revealed himself to be Oseram under his head-dress, Marad hurries off to make contact with his men. Avad stays put, pressing his hands together and his forehead against the steeple of his fingers. This is not the first attempt on his life since taking the throne, and he knows his task until the coast is clear: stay where he is and do not try to help. Be an object or jewel worth protecting.

He taps his foot restlessly and catches himself, orders his body still.

Dervhal.

The depths of the man’s hatred is shocking. To kill an innocent woman, to kill a dozen Vanguard and Ersa, all to — overthrow Avad’s rule? No, he would not have needed to go through such lengths were that the case. He could have simply marched into Sunfall and offered his services to Helis — a sickening thought — were deposing Avad his only goal.

He did not kill Ersa.

All at once it clicks in his mind.

She was the target, not him. He had not killed her to make Avad’s murder easier, he had captured her, and she was still alive…

His conflicting hope and disbelief coalesces into dread.

Hours creep past. Avad sends for a book to better pass the time, but cannot focus on the glyphs contained within. He is given a few updates as to the search for Dervhal, but there is little news to speak of. The sweep of the palace is completed, but he declines to move inside, wanting even the illusion of knowledge his view of Meridian from the terrace allows.

As the Sun begins to descend into evening, there is a commotion from the gate. His guards snap to attention and Avad rises, but rather than assassins it is Marad — with Aloy close behind.

He is not sure if he feels relief or terror at the sight of them. “Where is Erend?” he asks, trying to mask his feelings with practical matters. Aloy looks grim and damp from sweat, her red hair even more wild than when they first met, braids and beads and flyaway strands, the earring at her temple catching the light and drawing attention to her freckles, her green eyes.

“With his sister,” she says.

“Aloy has discovered valuable information. Excuse me,” Marad says, bowing and hurrying towards a passage that leads into the palace.

“Information?”

Aloy nods and makes a strange gesture with her hand. “Some contracts in Dervhal’s workshop. ‘Twenty out of thirty-seven barrels of blaze delivered. The remaining shall be delivered by month’s end for the agreed upon price.’ This one was signed by a hunting lodge called the ’Spiked Ends.’ I have another for another dozen boxes delivered by a Roldan Tradesman. Dervhal was stockpiling blaze. A lot of it.”

She is clearly reading some scroll she had memorized, and Avad despite himself is impressed by her mental faculties: not everyone could read, let alone accurately memorize Oseram trading ledgers.

“Marad said he would check delivery logs,” she continues, waving her hand for a second time.

“Dervhal likely used a false name, but that quantity of Blaze, even split into several purchases, would be noticed.” This Roldan is obviously an Oseram. The hunting lodge is one he is unfamiliar with, but there are dozens.

Aloy nods, looking out towards the city, her eyes scanning the rooftops impatiently. “Marad said the same thing. I’m going to head out. There might be a trail —“

“Wait,” he says. He almost reaches for his arm, and stops himself only barely. “Ersa. Is she…”

Aloy’s expression, always stiff and sharp, seems to soften. “Erend’s with her.”

“Please, Aloy,” he says, sinking down again into his chair. “How many times am I to mourn her? To pray for her life?”

“Mourn her when she’s dead,” Aloy says calmly. “She’s still fighting.” She meets his eyes, her own a startling green — startling, yes, but only for how rare it is that someone wouldmeet his eyes, causing his stomach to swoop —

“Of course,” he says. Lamely.

Marad returns to them with the name of an Oseram merchant who had rented storage space in a warehouse on the other end of the city, a house near the edge of the mesa. Aloy rushes off without another word, and Avad pinches the bridge of his nose, hating sitting around, watching as others act. If only assassins would make appointments, that he could smile and speak platitudes at them!

“I will discover who rented the warehouse to Dervhal and what checks were made before the purchase,” Marad says, pacing, waving his fingers as though running down some invisible list.

“We need to evacuate the area around the warehouse,” Avad says. “That quantity of blaze could set much of the city alight.” Meridian is carved of stone, not wood, thank the Sun — fire is less of a risk here than in the city below the mesa. But ten barrels could create a cave out of sheer granite, and Dervhal had bought thrice that. He summons one of the guards to pass the order along. The address Marad had given was near the Hunter’s Lodge, which was fortunate: it was not a part of the city with many shops or communal housing, mostly just old manors and the occasional merchant. “Could he have moved the Blaze to the home he’d rented?”

“In small quantities, over time, yes,” Marad says, harried. “Although I think it unlikely. The house is no more conveniently—“ by which Marad means near larger targets “—located than the storage space. Were I him, I would smuggle it elsewhere. Which of course begs the question of what he desired the blaze to accomplish.”

Avad pinches his nose. “Could he have gotten it into the palace?”

Dozens of men came and went from the palace each day. Petitioners. Guests like Ahsis. Merchants and tradesmen and men seeking judges or treasurers or civil servants. The guards kept an eye on things of course, tracked the business of all who entered, but…

“Yes,” Marad says.

Then where ought I go? He remains seated. There’s nowhere he can go. The palace is the safest place in Meridian. Perhaps Dervhal is even trying to drive him out, to stab him in the streets like a common thug. “Ersa was Dervhal’s target, not myself.”

“That does not protect you, your Luminance,” Marad says.

“No, but it means he’ll have very little satisfaction bragging about my murder if my corpse has been blown to bits.”

“I would rather you not be cavalier about this while you have no heir to replace you,” Marad says sharply, and because it is just the two of them Avad does allow himself to wince. “Were you to die, Itamen is the rightful King, and these last few years will have been for nothing.”

“I am not being cavalier. I just think that if Dervhal is truly after me, he’ll—“

Avad’s words are cut off by an explosion.

The boom echoes across Meridian, a plume of black smoke rising from the neighborhood the warehouse was in. The tremor does not reach the palace, but the city seems to fall utterly still for a moment, before the fire bells begin to ring out.

“It seems Aloy found the blaze,” says Marad.

Avad has rushed to the railing lining the terrace, clutching it with both hands and staring into Meridian as though perhaps he might see something through all the buildings and people. “Was she caught in it? Could anyone have survived that?”

“What matters is that it was not here. Get inside, your Grace. I will see to your city.” Marad hurries off again, barking at the guards for attention: already other guards will be rushing to the scene, creating bucket lines to douse the fire, to stabilize any buildings and evacuate the area.

Avad takes a deep breath, imagining he can smell and taste the smoke, even though the wind is blowing westward. The bells continue to ring, and he can hear shouts, see guards and soldiers cross the Great Bridge into the city, the smoke rising in a steady plume…

The palace is eerily silent around him, even if the city before him is a rush of bells and noise and sound. The smoke is black and thick but the column seems no wider than before, so perhaps —

“Disappointing,” a familiar voice says behind him.

Avad turns, just in time to see Dervhal lifting a small item in his palm and for the entire world to dissolve into pain —

— He is laying on his side, his back, his fingers are wet, tile hot against his skin, and the pain is all over, shrinking, throbbing, he tries to get his legs under him, to crawl — the pain is ebbing and his body responds and he does not —

“—gone to waste—“

“—ink I don’t have — up pla —?”

He rolls onto his front, onto his knees, bracing his hands against the floor for balance. The ringing in his ears is so loud that he can hardly follow what Aloy and Dervhal are saying, nor where she came from — how long it has been…

Aloy rushes at Dervhal with her spear as he brandishes one of his devices; Avad watches his finger push the trigger and braces himself — but there is no pain, no noise.

“Shit!” Aloy swears, striking at Dervhal, who raises his arm to block her slash —

An arm grabs at Avad roughly, yanking him to his feet: it is one of the guards.“With me!”, the guard shouts, his voice much too loud, as the cries of Glinthawks fill the air, and the flashing of metal in sunlight his vision.

“–Not going anywhere!”

Avad sees movement out of the corner of his eye and acts on reflex, yanking himself and the guard to the side just as Dervhal crashes towards them with his hammer. Fire shoots past him towards a Glinthawk, and Avad shoves the guard away from himself to spare the man from being targeted.

“Stop this at once!” he commands, unarmed and dressed too heavily, too uselessly, to move fast — Aloy aims an arrow at Dervhal, fighting a Glinthawk and protecting Avad at once, but the arrow only grazes —

Entirely ignoring the guard, Dervhal lunges towards Avad again, but the guard has drawn his blade and parries and Avad, absurdly, his head and ears still ringing, wants to laugh at his own uselessness —

Dervhal and the guard are now sparring, and Avad looks around for something, anythinghe can do to help — one of the Glinthawks shriek and dive and he only just evades the attack.

“Would you stop trying to help and get to cover!” Aloy shouts, firing her bow at the Glinthawk before it recovers from its lunge.

Dervhal pursues him when he moves. The terrace is only so large and the distance between them is closing fast —

“That’s enough!” Erend roars, rushing up the stairs. Dervhal turns and the guard strikes at him and a Glinthawk goes crashing, dead, to the walkway below the terrace — Avad grips the back of a chair and now he does laugh, humorless and exhausted and aching all over.

“Here to avenge your dear sister?” Dervhal snarls. “Tell me, did you give her a pretty Carja funeral? A —“

“Hah! We found your base, you piece of shit,” Erend says, hefting his hammer: Dervhal’s back is to Avad and yet he sees him falter. Erend does not hesitate, charging forward. “She’s safe and you’re never gonna hurt anyone ever — again!“

A single blow and Dervhal collapses, struck in the head. Erend kicks him on the ground and Avad cannot blame him: Aloy stabs her spear through a device on the ground and turns towards them. “Erend! I thought you were staying in Pitchcliff —“

“Sister’s orders,” Erend says grimly. “Came around just long enough to boss me around. ‘Course she did.”

“Is he dead?” Aloy asks. Guards and Vanguard are swarming the terrace, checking bodies and corners for more traps.

“Not yet…” Erend raises the steel of his hammer and braces his grip.

“Wait, please,” Avad says, still clutching the chair so tightly his knuckles ache.

They look over him, surprised. “You okay?” Aloy asks.

“Yes,” Avad says, although he is sore and more than slightly overwhelmed.

“That was some good dodging,” she says, sounding almost mocking.

He laughs and rubs his hand over his face. “I suppose it was.” The humor and his nerves hit him, and he barely makes it to the sofa before his knees give out. “Do not kill him. But restrain him before he comes to.”

“If you saw the shape Ersa was in—“ Erend says, but he gives in to Avad’s order with a muttered curse. Avad is still smiling and trying not to: there is nothing about this that is funny or humorous, but it appears his nerves have decided to find the situation so.

“You sure you’re okay?” Aloy asks, doubtfully.

“Forgive me.” He takes a deep breath. “I do not wish him dead. He will face justice — and perhaps answer a few questions before that.”

Erend and one of the Vanguard are binding Derval’s hands as the man lies unconscious; Erend then begins to rummage through the Oseram’s pockets and pouches.

Avad sees the Carja guard who had defended him so valiantly, now standing and speaking with another of the guards, his helmet removed and a distinctly dazed expression on his face. He will need to thank him personally later. Find out if he has a family and come up with some sort of gift for service.

“Where is Marad?”

“Here,” Marad says, stepping past one of the dead Glinthawks. He surveys the scene quickly, likely taking in the events of the last few minutes better than Avad would have been able to explain them.

Suddenly, Erend makes a loud noise of anger and disgust. They all turn to see him holding a cloth in his hand, looking green. He drops the bundle and two flesh-colored sticks roll onto the tile —

Erend picks up Dervhal by the collar, the man starting to come to, and hits him in the nose. “You carrying my sister’s fingers around with you, you sick—“

Avad’s stomach turns and he clasps his hand, ungraceful, over his mouth.

“Erend!” Aloy warns as Erend strikes Dervhal again: he lets go of the man’s shirt and allows him to fall, cracking his head on the tile below.

“He had — he’s got —“ Erend points in the direction of the bundle, but neither he nor Avad can bring themselves to look at it.

Marad instead scoops it up, his mouth thin. “Take the prisoner to the cells for later interrogation,” he says to the Carja guards. “And dispose of this in the Temple’s flame.”

Dervhal is dragged away by one guard, Avad’s savior taking the bundle gently in both his hands despite its small size. The bundle. Fingers. Ersa’s — his stomach churns and he breathes through his nose, focusing instead on his shoulder, which aches and must have been bruised when he’d earlier fallen.

“How fares your sister, Captain?” Marad asks as Aloy shifts from foot to foot.

Erend is still green. “Healers in Pitchcliff got her. It’s not — her hand was all bandaged up, shit.”

“But she is alive? And stable?” Marad presses, perhaps trying to force them all to look on the bright side of the situation, as if Avad had not just seen her severed fingers on the floor.

“She’s — if she makes it through the next few days, then yeah. I—“

“She’s strong,” Aloy says. “She made it weeks with Dervhal.”

“The city,” Avad says, still willing his nausea to ebb. Smoke is still pluming above it. “Is it safe?”

“Yeah. There was a — controlled detonation.” Aloy wrinkles her nose. “The fire was an accident.”

“I owe you — Meridian owes you — more than I can express,” Avad says. “Not for my life, but for Ersa’s. For Meridian.”

“I’m just glad everyone is okay,” she says. “But, uh — I need to get going —“

“Of course,” Avad says, feeling a pang of misplaced — surely — disappointment. “But our doors are always open to you.”

“Wait,” says Erend, as Aloy turns to leave: “I’ll walk you out!” He shakes his head, still a bit green, and hurries to follow after the Nora.

By the next sunrise, the attack already seems half a dream.

No lives had been lost in Dervhal’s attack, thank the Sun, but the damage to the city’s southern quarter was great. Dervhal had tunneled to the Grand Aqueduct from the home he had bought under an assumed name, a passage that in turn needed closing — and investigating, to discover who had formerly owned the house, who had sold it to the fugitive, and how they had created the tunnel: investigations immediately begun by Marad.

Dervhal’s head wounds are tended to, and he is imprisoned in the cells below the former Sun-Ring to await further questioning and sentencing.

Erend leads the search of the city for any remaining men of Dervhal’s, the Vanguard increasing their patrols and duties for the time being, despite being short-staffed.

And Avad?

His day starts at dawn with a scheduled blessing ceremony at the Temple, followed by a tour of the damaged southern quarter and meetings with those whose property had been damaged. The rest of his day is filled with private audiences, a lunch with representatives of the mason’s guild, meetings with members of his staff and household, and a formal dinner with several members of important noble families. He speaks platitudes and compliments, places an order for a new set of bracers to be made and given to the guard who had protected him from Dervhal, and waits uselessly for news of any kind.

It is fortunate that he is very good at speaking polite nothings by now, because he is distracted for all of it.

Ersa is alive.

Even after everything, he struggles to believe it. His image of her is of the woman in the crypt.

Her short, almost black hair, unevenly cropped — how many times had he watched, partially fascinated and partially horrified, as Ersa had taken a knife to her own hair? Her body, impossibly still and small. How many times has he seen her asleep in his bed? Been startled by the reminder that for all her strength and stature, the crown of her head reached only to his chin?

And that was not her? By now, shouldn’t he know her body, what Ersa looked like? How could he have not realized? How could she still be living? I have mourned her, I have…

They had last spoken, as Captain and King, the day before her murder. (Her capture.) As friends, their last conversation had been a day or two before. Mundane and uninteresting, although he has struggled to remember exact words, hidden meanings that he might hold close to his heart in remembrance.

When Kadaman had been murdered, he had spent months hoping — there had been no body, surely Jiran would not truly have —

Ersa is alive.

The next morning at dawn, he rises and has an hour or so to himself before breakfast, during which he meets with Marad, who has compiled a list of names of presumed contacts of Dervhal’s in Meridian. He meets with some city architects about repairing the damage to the Grand Aqueduct and restructuring it to defend against intruders. He meets with some of the Sun Priests for a pre-scheduled ceremony of remembrance in the former Sun-Ring, something he had very much been looking forward to only a few days before.

At lunch, he dines with a noble family whose generous donations had recently helped refurbish the second of the Great Elevators. After lunch, he meets with treasurers and the steward in charge of the palace’s expenses and has a fitting for new robes. Late in the afternoon, he summons Erend — a dozen of the Vanguard had died with Ersa, and as unpleasant as the task is, they needed to begin refilling their ranks —

But Erend doesn’t come.

“I, uh, sorry.” When Avad had summoned Erend, another of the Vanguard had appeared instead. Aldur, he thinks the man’s name is. Aldin? “He left me in charge, sir. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Avad feels a sting of irritation that he does his best to ignore. He does not consider himself to be the sort of man who does not trust those he works with, who requires his men ask his permission before acting, but — “Do you know where Erend Vanguardsman is?”

“North, sir,” Aldur says, frowning. “Left yesterday to go take care of his sister. Sir?”

He must look — a fool. He is a fool. He stammers out some sort of clarification or apology, all his effort on keeping his face still and — Ersa is alive.

Yes, of course she is — and of course Erend would —

And he is truly despicable for…

He dismisses Aldin and defers his next appointment for another day, sitting in a stupefied, guilty silence on his father’s throne.

Erend had run off to be with her. Of course he has. But where does that leave Avad? Why had he not — why was Meridian not…

Too soon comes the stamp of spears upon the tile.

It is already time for his next appointment.

Chapter Text

prologue iii

Erend barely sleeps, hikes through the night, runs headlong into one Watcher pack, and is back in Pitchcliff barely two days after leaving Meridian. The outpost is still recovering from a recent Glinthawk attack, the sound of metal being sawn filling the air, way too loud and annoying with Erend currently sober.

Ersa had been brought to Pitchcliff’s Embalmery from Dervhal’s camp, and it’s there he hurries as soon as he’s through the town gate, elbowing past market-goers staring at turnips.

The Embalmery itself is built to take advantage of the smoke and dry heat generated from Pitchcliff’s main forge, and Erend’s sweating from the second he ducks through the door.

It’s crowded today, men lying injured on the cots and a few on the floor beneath blankets. One Embalmer is making her rounds and another woman is leafing through a bundle of contracts and papers — Erend approaches her, trying not to step on anyone as he crosses the room. “Where’s my sister?”

“Your name?” She hardly gives him a glance, and Erend boggles.

“Erend. My sister. Ersa. Of the Vanguard —“ Fear grips his stomach. “She’s okay, isn’t she? She didn’t —“

“Agat!” The woman calls, and her helper approaches them, wiping her forehead. She’s young, and her face is badly pockmarked from all the nitrate used in her profession. “Take him to the Bladewife.”

Erend’s still feeling nauseous, but he winces — Ersa hates that particular surname. “She’s okay?”

“This way,” the younger healer says. Past the main chamber are a series of niches enclosed with curtains for other patients. She leads Erend to one of them, pulling the curtain aside.

Ersa looks even worse than he remembers.

She has been cleaned, her matted hair shorn and the dirty bandages changed for fresh, but without the dried blood and stench of rot to distract him he can see just how frail and shrunken she appears. Unbidden, he looks down at her right arm, her right hand, bandaged so heavily it’s as though she’s wearing a mitten.

Her chest rises and falls as she sleeps, though, and Erend sinks onto a stool by the cot. “How is she?”

“Bad,” says Agat. “But she’s made it this long.”

Erend half expects Ersa to wake up, now that he’s here, but her breath remains steady and slow.

“Call if you need anything,” the healer says. “You can stay here as long as you need.”

The room is quiet, and small enough that Erend’s knees bump up against Ersa’s cot as she sleeps. She’s been changed out of the filthy clothes she had been wearing, into a plain linen tunic. All the whites and grays around her make her look pale, washed out.

He keeps waiting for her to wake up, but Ersa remains unconscious, and — and he hates himself for it — he soon becomes bored. Restless, even. She’s asleep and nothing’s changing, and this room is hot. He doesn’t try to shake her by the shoulder to get her to stir — but he thinks about it, and that’s his sign it’s time to go.

In the main room, the lead healer has him fill out and sign a standard treatment contract. Erend signs it not just with his mark but with the Crown’s, figuring Avad’ll be happy enough to pay the shards for Ersa’s care. He’s on his way to the pub next with time to kill, but one of Ralert’s men ambushes him on the way.

Grumbling, Erend obeys the command to follow, and he’s led to the Hall, where he’s annoyed to see Ralert clearly waiting for him. “Better be important, if you’re pulling me away from my sister’s bedside,” he calls out, never mind that he’d already left.

“Only the good of Pitchcliff,” Ralert says snidely. He waves Erend to follow, leading him up the stairs that spirals around the outside of the hall, up to a sort of meeting place and terrace on the flat roof. “I trust you’ve seen the remains of our Glinthawk attack around town?”

“Hard to miss,” Erend says.

“Machine raids are a fact of life in the frontier, of course,” Ralert says. “But so many Glinthawks? And only Glinthawks?”

“It’s weird, sure, but —“ Erend cuts off whatever bullshit platitude he was about to say. Dervhal had summoned Glinthawks. He looks over his shoulder, like the bastard is gonna be there or something. “Have you guys been guarding Dervhal’s camp?”

“Guarding and clearing it,” Ralert says. “The man was a genius. I ordered every scrap of salvage cataloged and brought here.”

“Yeah, well, one of his toys is a Glinthawk summoning… thingy.” Ralert frowns, and Erend looks around, but of course it isn’t just sitting on a table nearby or anything.

“And you believe another…” Ralert’s jaw goes slack, and then he waves his hand in Erend’s direction. “I charge you to find it, then! Do your duty and protect Pitchcliff!”

Ralert owns the tar kilns and lumber mill and is therefore the boss around here, at least as long as he pay’s Avad’s taxes. But Pitchcliff’s writ also says it’s governed under Oseram law, not the Sundom’s. Since Erend technically works for the King and Carja law, Ralert has no actual authority to conscript him.

Erend rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll protect your town. But I’ll do it for Ersa, not for you.”

“Good enough.” Ralert leads him to the rail lining the rooftop, and points across the valley. “One of our scouts said men were moving equipment up the pass there.”

“‘Course they were, that’s the damn road to the Claim.”

“I’m offering you a lead,” Ralert sniffs.

Erend scoffs. "Fine, I’ll check it out.”

He stops by the Embalmer’s again before he leaves town. Ersa’s still sleeping, exactly as she was before: hadn’t so much as rolled or shifted in her rest. He hates it. It’s like she’s getting smaller by the second. But she’s made it this far, and…

“You can talk to her if you want,” the younger healer, Agat, says, peering into the alcove as she walks past with arms full of linens. “Some people think it helps.”

“Does it?” Erend asks. She shrugs, moving on.

He groans and rubs his face with his hands, before looking at her again. Her right arm is heavily bandaged, her hand mittened by more. Another large patch covers most of the left side of her face, where her forehead had been cut and bleeding. Bruises darken her neck, her shoulders, under her eyes.

Erend’s seen her hurt before. Seen her sick, bleeding, broken-boned, bruised. But Ersa had always kept moving, kept going, even with her ribs broken or shoulder dislocated, even if the Carja had her, even if she was sentenced to death. She was always moving, forging a path, and him just stumbling on behind…

She’s so fucking still. “You’d make fun of me for being a sap and talking to you,” he mutters. Watches her ribs rise and fall in sleep. “So just… wake up soon, okay?”

He sighs, not sure what else to say, or do, and heads out.

The hike across the valley takes a couple of hours, and the border gate is shut tight. “Anyone up there?” Erend shouts at the gatehouse, and a head peeks out. “The hell you got this closed for?”

“The hell wouldn’t we have it closed for?” the gatekeeper calls back.

“To let good Oseram like me through?”

“Like we don’t know the Sun-King’s uniform? Fuck off!”

“Listen!” Erend bellows, “I’m Erend Vanguardsman of Ernas Founder, outta Mainspring, so go fuck yourself! I got some questions!” His mood sours, as it always does when he has to mention his father’s name to get shit done.

The gate starts to creak open.

The gatekeeper scampers down a ladder from his hut and meets him on the other side. Erend crosses the threshold and it’s his first time back in the Claim in — what, a year? Not that this side of the border is any different from the other: Mainspring and most other towns are still days away.

“Dervhal pass by recently?”

“No,” the gatekeeper says.

“What about less recently?” Erend asks, not liking how quick the man said it. “Come on, is that bastard really the forge you wanna hammer on?”

“You think I took this job because I wanna get dragged into politics?”

“Then why the hell are you guarding the main gate outta the Sundom?” Erend yells, throwing up his hands.

The guard scratches his cheek. “Well, y’see, my wife — her mother moved down to Pitchcliff, at her age and everything, and—“

“You seen Dervhal or what?” Erend interrupts.

“Nah. But saw some men carrying crates up and down the trail thataway,” the guard says, pointing back through to the Sundom and up the mountain. “Merchant looking fellow and some Freebooters. Except there’s nothing up there.”

“And you didn’t stop them? Say anything?” Erend backs through the gate, squinting at the mountain, which from here looks sheer and snow covered. Great. If he has to go climbing…

“They weren’t trying to get into the Claim,” the gatekeeper shrugs.

“Thanks for the help,” Erend mutters, even though a screw you seems more in order.

There’s a path up the mountain in the direction the gatekeeper had pointed: narrow, not even cart-wide, and steep as hell. Erend spends a miserable hour trudging and slipping up through the ice and rocks, the path zig-zagging its way ever higher — miserable for sure, but promising: there’s nothing up here but the path is worn in, and who lugs crates up a shitty mountain trail to nothing?

Dervhal, that’s who. Fucking boar-piss slagoff — it had felt good, bashing his face in, good in a way that would almost make Erend feel bad, feel guilty: you were supposed to love a brawl but not a killing, but his nose had broken under Erend’s fist and he’d felt nothing but a burning, triumphant joy —

Except now when he thinks about it, tries to warm himself up on this damn hike, all Erend sees is his sister. Not clean and ghostly and small like she’d been in the Embalmery just now, but filthy and stinking of rot, burning up and dry as bone and delirious. He’s seen her hurt before. Badly hurt, even. But not —

He’s almost glad Avad ordered him to stop. Not because Dervhal doesn’t deserve it, but he keeps thinking of Ersa’s hand, her wounds instead of his, and it’s… fucked.

After forever, the trail opens up onto a little plateau, the remains of a camp. There are boxes and a tent crushed by snow — looks like some kind of avalanche hit this place recently — and Erend swears, kicking at the powder, he’s wasted his time.

He picks through some of the rubble, looking for glyphs or… anything. The crates are empty, or contain scrap, leftovers. Why lug empty crates up a mountain?

The answer is that you don’t. They were unloaded… Erend squints through the fog of his breath, looking around the debris, the churned up snow. He’s starting to get… frustrated. Mad, really. This is a waste of time, hitting the anvil before the forge is hot, who caresabout a dozen Glinthawks…

But shit, Erend knows he’s not the brightest, and even he knows there’s no need to go through all this effort for nothing. What he can’t figure out — as he huffs his way through a ravine, emerging into a little bowl of a valley — is why. Dervhal had a workshop on the other side of the valley, posing as a legitimate salvaging business. So why all this bullshit?

He has his answer when he crosses the final rise.

The mountain comes to a flat plateau, scattered with boulders and swept almost bare of snow in places. It’s cold as a Lancehorn nest, and Erend can feel his armor radiating ice, even though all his layers and quilted padding, but he sees a little hut built against one of those massive exposed rocks and feels a surge of warm triumph anyway: finally.

“Let’s see what you were trying so damn hard to hide up here,” he mutters, slip-sliding his way down a small slope and jogging across the open space. He passes a small metal table looking thing on the way, pays it no mind, so eager to get this field trip over and done with —

— That he almost misses the damn Stormbird.

The sudden blast of wind almost knocks him off his feet, but wind could be anything. That shriek, though?

“Shit!” He scrambles, keeps moving: the Stormbird’s talons rake at him as it flies over but fuck, that’s what his armor is for, and he isn’t going to do shit against it in an open field — Crashes into the open hut, which is more of a lean-to; thunder cracks and the Stormbird screams, Erend catching a glimpse of it as it circles, gaining altitude —

He might be out of reach of its talons in here, but he’s not gonna bet his life on it, nor does he have much room to swing a hammer — Erend looks around for bombs or some Dervhal contraption that can give him an edge, he’ll be okay if he gets an edge, although he’s never fought a fucking Stormbird before, not alone, without a dozen other men and his sister —

He reaches and grasps at random at anything in reach, scattered over a table and some crates: papers, boxes, scrap metal, workbench, blaze? Only one canister, motherfucker, all that blaze he was buying and Dervhal couldn’t keep some here when he was sharing camp with a damn Stormbird?

Why build a camp in a Stormbird nest? Of all the stupid, insane things — tools, wrench, wire, a machine heart Erend can’t identify at a glance — too late! The Stormbird crashes heavily just outside the tent, its wings blotting out the light as it spreads them, paces back and forth, then lunges forward with a beak the side of Erend’s torso —

“Fuck off!” he yells, not unprepared, slamming his hammer into metal even as it lunges at him, and the bellow the machine makes vibrates through his entire body, setting his bones and teeth shaking — It tries to take another bite out of him, it tries to kick at him with a talon, but Erend slams into it again, “You’re not - coming in - to my! House!”, inanely, and this is a bad situation but he’s feeling the rush come up, the battle heat, he laughs as the Stormbird shrieks, eyes red and bright and gleaming, and stumbles clumsily back —

He wants to chase and barely keeps himself back. The Stormbird flaps its wings and the gusts knock him into the workbench, almost off his feet, everything around him scattering and falling and rolling as it takes to the air again — which seems good, is actually bad, the air suddenly crackling with static —

“Fuck, fuck —“ Swearing inanely to himself, now. Erend has to get out of here, fast, but out in the open is worse, but then again —

A little metal table has rolled under the overturned workbench. Like the one outside. Three little metal legs and a rounded top with some kind of mess of wires —

There had been one like it at the palace. Smaller. Aloy had stabbed it with her spear and the Glinthawks —

Glinthawk summoning thingy. Why build a workshop in the middle of fuck-all nowhere? Why, when you don’t want to call a Stormbird to your real camp.

“I should have killed you!” Erend roars, smashing the device with his hammer: it sparks and fizzes. Will the bird lose interest if they’re all broken? Fuck if he knows, but he has no better ideas —

And he needs to move, now.

Erend dives out of the shelter, clumsy, like an ass, scrambling through the snow and awayas the Stormbird’s lightning hurtles down from the sky, one bolt and then two and then three. His mouth tastes like ozone, his whole body is tingling and stinging, but he keeps moving, knowing the bird can see him and will dive after him and —

There! Thingy number two, his damn footsteps trundling along right past it, he smashes at it and rolls as the Stormbird swoops down at him, covers his neck and head with his hands and lets the talons just scrape at his back, thanking the damn Sun that Avad hadn’t skimped when ordering Vanguard armor be made — he still feels it, like being hit by boulders, but the talons don’t puncture and he’s half-deaf from the bird’s screaming but his guts aren’t steaming in the snow and he’ll take it.

The bird flaps away again, needing height or speed for whatever new way it’s gonna try to kill him. Erend scrambles for his dropped hammer, his hands bleeding — he’ll worry about it later — cover, her needs cover — “Just leave me the hell alone already!” Erend yells up at the sky.

He scans the snowfield for anything that isn’t white. Anything that might be cover. Some hole he can wedge himself in — black, something small and black, of course there’s another thingy, when Erend gets back to Meridian he is going to —

He runs, slow and heavy, now cursing the armor that had just saved his life — the bird is flying even higher when he chances a look up, great —

He kicks the device, too much momentum to stop, runs past it and turns and smash, then drops his hammer and runs for it, not even stopping to see if anything is happening, back towards the hut, back towards —

He dives and rolls and there’s a crash that sends the whole mountain shuddering as the Stormbird’s dive lands where he’d been half a second before. Ungraceful and not giving a shit, he wedges himself against the far wall of the hut, the icy stone, scrambling over a stool and box and bundle of blue wire, and hopes like hell that was the last of the devices.

It takes forever, but the Stormbird loses interest in him and flies away. Sore and cranky and a little scared, fine, Erend stays on his ass on the floor for a while longer, until it’s starting to get dark and the idea of trudging down the mountain at night seems worse than a Stormbird.

He shoves all the papers and schematics he can find into his pouch, along with that machine heart, and begins the long hike down the mountain, looking over his shoulder at the sky the entire time.

Erend’s too tired to do anything much when he finally gets back to Pitchcliff: just gets a bed at one of the worker’s lodges, hits the pub and then the town bath and sauna to get the bruises out: his entire midsection is purple, although after a couple of drinks he’s come around to seeing it as a fun story to tell all his new friends at the pub.

He drags himself out of his bed the next morning three times as sore as he was the night before. Has a shot of scrappersap with his breakfast to ease the headache, then trudges back to the Embalmery.

The spotty girl from the day before — Agat — is still at work, and gives him a lookover when he darkens her door. “Coming to visit your sister, or as a patient?” she asks, smiling a little.

“Cute.” He runs his hand over his head, trying to get his hair in better order. “Has — did anything happen? Is Ersa…”

Agat shakes her head. “No change.”

He goes back to Ersa’s niche anyway, sitting awkwardly on the same stool as yesterday, his knees bumping her mattress. She looks like she hasn’t so much as moved, but her chest rises and falls with her breath and that’s… something.

“Hey, Ersa,” he says, awkwardly. “How are you feeling today?” He really doesn’t think she can hear him, and besides that, they’ve never really been the types to have long how do you do conversations.

“I got into a scrap with a Stormbird yesterday.” Calling it a fight would be too generous. He laughs under his breath. “You’d have laughed if you saw me rolling around up there. You’d have pissed yourself.”

He waits, despite himself half thinking she will laugh, make fun of him for being a bumbling oaf — her chest rises and falls as she sleeps. Usually Ersa tosses and turns. They’d shared a bed as kids, they’d usually set up their bedrolls near eachother, and the number of times Erend’s been woken up over the years by her kicking or rolling or picking a fight in her sleep—

He used to make fun of her. Mean jokes, the way you do when you love someone enough. This is why no one wants to marry you, you’d strangle your husband your first night together.

I’d strangle him sooner than that, she’d said.

Except now, instead of laughing, he feels desperately sad.

What if she never wakes at all?

“Dervhal had another hideout,” he tells her after a moment. He takes all the crumpled up papers he’d brought with him, spreads them on his lap. “Better not have climbed that damn mountain for nothing.”

Ersa does not reply.

The papers are a mess of blueprints, notes, contracts, and letters, made worse by a Stormbird attack and Erend having them stuffed crumbled in his bag for a day. He spreads them over his lap one by one, looking for something without a clue as to what. Pages of notations and numbers. Schematics and sketches. A handful of bog-standard contracts that Erend folds up and tucks back in his pouch — he wants to find out who the fuck was hiring Dervhal for delves — but only two things end up standing out to him: a receipt for the purchase of blaze, to be delivered to Dervhal’s fake address in Meridian and signed by a Roldan Tradesman… and a list of Carja holidays.

It’s not just basic shit like the solstices, either. Erend’s worked in Meridian and guarded Avad long enough to be pretty familiar with all the stupid Carja holy holidays, too, the ones involving long visits to the Temple of the Sun and fasts and praying. This note is a damned calendar, and it matches exactly with days Avad would be required to do his Sun-King bullshit at the Temple of the Sun.

Did Dervhal maybe intend on assassinating him at one of those services? That would sure as hell have sent a message to the Carja, even Erend knows that. But then how come he didn’t?

It bugs him. There’s something weird about it, but he doesn’t know what. This is more Marad’s thing, but… he doesn’t know. He’ll pass it along when he gets back to Meridian.

Nothing else seems that interesting, and when he’s done, Erend folds up the two weird papers with the contracts and puts the rest aside.

Ersa is still sleeping.

What if she stays like this forever?

The fear overwhelms him and he immediately tries to push it down again. She can’t. She won’t. He has to go back to Meridian sooner or later, and they can move her there, whether or not she’s awake. (And she will be awake. For sure.) Meridian has good healers, and Avad’s sure to hook her up with a better place to recover than this closet. Some fresh air, some sunshine…

He’d was sure she’d be awake by now.

Battered and bruised, sure, but awake, and they’d go back to Meridian, and none of the last six weeks, the last two months — waking up and she and her crew were gone, okay, fine, and then she hadn’t come back, and hadn’t come back…

The cart brought back to Meridian’s gates, her body shrouded, cloth sticking to and filling in the ruin of her face… It can’t be her, he’d said. He’d known it, hadn’t he? Deep in his fucking soul? It couldn’t be her, Ersa couldn’t die, she’d come marching back through the gate like nothing had ever happened, just like when the Mad King had her, just like when he was a kid and she’d left, just like…

There had been a labor strike over Avad’s refusal to send men to Sunfall to avenge her murder. Erend had drank and drank and everyone had told him she was lying in state until her funeral and he’d known, hadn’t he? It wasn’t her. He’d known.

But how can this —

She’s lost weight, sleeping and unconscious and captive. Her cheekbones show when they never had before, her face all angles and lines and brittle looking, like it’ll break and snap. Fragile like kindling.

“You were supposed to be awake by now,” he tells her, his voice sounding strange in his ears. “We were gonna head back to Meridian together.”

And maybe she’d have a broken bone or two, and they’d argue over her riding the way in a cart, and she’d be cranky because she’d be out of commission for a couple weeks recovering…

It wasn’t her. The body, the blood, the mash of brain and bone.

Ersa could survive anything. Do anything. Leave and then come back like nothing had ever happened —

After a while, Agat comes to check on them and change Ersa’s bandages. Erend has to stand in the hall, the room is so small, but he peers over the healer to watch her work.

The pack on Ersa’s forehead is removed, and Erend is relieved to see the cut underneath doesn’t look too bad now that it’s clean: messy and will leave a hell of a scar, so much of the skin has been scraped away, but pink and uninfected.

He can hardly bring himself to watch as Agat changes the bandages on Ersa’s right hand. Dervhal seemed to have made a single chop, severing her last two fingers and badly cutting her middle finger. The wounds are still fresh and raw and black with stitches, and Erend’s stomach turns and flips, remembering the sight of her fingers on the palace —

The rest of Ersa’s arm is tightly bandaged in a cast, which Agat does not touch. It had been badly broken, he knows, shattered and crushed, and then left untended for weeks, so that it had already tried to knit itself back together. It might never…

Ersa has broken ribs and a broken clavicle, and a deep cut on her left calf that had also gone untreated and become infected, the bandages of which Agat also changes, her lips thin at the rot and pus still in the wound.

“But none of it is — too bad,” Erend says, hopefully, when Agat is done and tucking Ersa back into bed. He’s had cuts on his legs. He’s had his head bashed in. He’s broken bones.

Agat doesn’t respond with reassurances, like he’d wanted. “Not on their own,” she says after a moment. “She was slipping in and out of consciousness for a while after you brought her here and we got some water in her, but if she stays like this…”

She gives Erend a smile with very little warmth. “I’m from Mainspring, too, you know.”

He’s looking at Ersa. The rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. How could she ever die of dehydration? She can’t, that’s how. She won’t. She — Agat said something. “Yeah?” he says.

“Sure. The matchmaker once told me, if you keep being so picky, you’ll never get a husband. You’ll be like that Freebooter girl.” His laugh startles him, half a gasp of surprise. Agat smiles up at him. “Even back home I knew your sister was tough. As a healer I shouldn’t say this, but…” she shrugs. “She’ll wake up.”

“I know,” Erend says. She leaves the room and he sags across the hallway wall, still relieved to hear someone else say it. “Of course she will. What are you talking about?”

She skirts by him, on to the next patient, and he ducks back into Ersa’s room.

Nothing has changed but her bandages. She does not wake.

He sits back on his stool, knees hitting Ersa’s mattress. Gives her another minute, but still she doesn’t stir. “Always gotta keep me waiting, don’t you? Pain in the ass,” he gripes, taking the pile of papers out to go through them one more time.

She always comes back.

Chapter Text

one.

It is a month before Ersa is well enough to travel to Meridian, although she remembers very little of it. In fact, she has very little memory of the last months at all.

What she does remember is waking up delirious and in pain in a Pitchcliff Embalmery, her brother at her side, with no immediate memory of how she got there.

What she does know is that she is now a cripple.

She’d wanted to arrive in the city on foot. Fully armored, as though she’d never left, as though none of the last few months have happened. Instead, she’d been bundled into a trade caravan of lumber and pitch heading south to Meridian, wrapped in blankets and under the close supervision of the healer Agat, who insisted that she had been planning on moving to Meridian anyway, that it wasn’t only because of how weak and useless and pathetic Ersa was —

She hadn’t argued. How could she?

Weeks of fever and hurt have left her weak, her strength wasted away. A wound on her leg had become infected. The smoke of Pitchcliff had given her fevers and cold sweats, a bite of food twisted her stomach inside-out as it expels itself again. She spends the week’s journey to Meridian half asleep, half dazed, feverish.

So feverish that when Agat shakes her awake, her first reaction is foggy and confused. It’s dim around her and she feels a quick stab of fear that somehow her eyes have failed, after her legs and arms and gut — no, not blind; it’s simply night — the wagon no longer rumbling under her, spiking dull pain into her arm and leg with every rock —

She tries to sit up. Her right arm jerks when she tries to move it, does not support her weight or bend. It’s awkward and clumsy, and Agat is leaning over the edge of the cart, her face bright with excitement, red-brown curls matching her red cheeks.

“We’re here,” the healer says. “Meridian!”

She blinks dumbly up at the girl for another minute, and then she’s scrambling upright, her joints aching, her head spinning slightly with the rush of movement — Agat comes around to support Ersa as she slides out of the cart. “You should have woken me, I —“

“I did wake you,” Agat says. “We’re not in the city yet, don’t —“

Ersa is already marching forward on shaking legs, Agat trying to cling to her arm, anchor her. The healer is young, younger than Erend even, neither a soldier or with the muscle of a tinkerer, and yet she’s still able to pull Ersa to a stop.

Ersa wants to hit her. Slug her in the face. The anger washes over her and ebbs just as fast. Agat has been nothing but kind, and her legs are trembling as she struggles to bear her own weight.

They’re outside the city gates, up at the Great Bridge, the merchant’s caravan halted and mixed with dozens others in no order Ersa can see, campfires and tents set up in open spaces. “Why is the city closed?”

Agat leads her carefully back to the cart and Ersa sits, hating the relief that she immediately feels. “Is it?”

They close the bridges at night, and most caravans make their market on this side of the mesa or down in the village, but there are too many people, too many camps. “Where’s the caravan head?”

“At the gate, trying to get us in.”

Meridian is out of focus in the distance, a blur of bright lights and shadow. She blinks, trying to clear the smudges out of her vision — it works, but she can feel a headache creeping up on her.

It’s not like they’re loose with city security, but it’s never this tight…

Erend had spent a lot of the last couple of weeks up in Pitchcliff with her, before a summons had called him back to Meridian. Ersa had ordered him to go when he’d been reluctant. She wishes he were here now. If only to explain.

It had been from him she’d heard most of what had happened over the last few months. She remembers it in patches. Him going to the Sacred Lands on that stupid peace mission, although his return is fuzzy. Going to meet Dervhal, although she has no idea how he called her out in the first place, and doesn’t remember much of what came after. His assassination attempt and capture and her brother’s attempts to figure out who he might have been working with, related from her brother at her bedside. Something else must have happened… but what?

Her head is starting to spin, and Ersa closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath, and then another, until the feeling ebbs a little. The pain doesn’t. It never does.

She slides back to her feet, her leg sending a sharp jolt of pain up through her that she ignores.

“Where are you going?” Agat asks, not trying to grab her a second time.

“Where do you think?” The pain she can tolerate. The weakness in her legs will recover. Her arm — but it’s the never-ending dizziness, the nausea that grate on her the most, most of the time. Right now. The way the ground seems to pitch beneath her, her stomach burning and roiling as Ersa makes her way to the gate.

A handful of Carja in guard’s armor are holding the gate against twice as many testy merchants. They merchants look Carja, so the arguing is polite, but the shape of things is obvious at a glance. Ersa slips her way through the crowd, stumbling into one man and playing it off like she herself was jostled, not like her leg is throbbing so hard she’s having trouble balancing on it.

Seeing her trying to push through them, next, a couple of the guards block Ersa with their pikes. “City’s closed for the night. You can make your application tomorrow —“

“Yeah, how much longer are you gonna try and make us buy that?” one of the men in the crowd calls.

“Tomorrow, you may apply for entry —“

Ersa glowers at the guards before her. “You will let me through.”

“Um, Ersa —“ she feels a hand at her left elbow: Agat.

“Meridian. Is. Closed,” the left guard says, openly looking Ersa over, top to bottom, sneering: she will have his job, she will have his fucking head —

“Ersa?” One of the guards, in captain’s stripes, pushes forward. She recognizes him immediately. Thank the forge. Kol had been part of the liberation three years ago and promoted for his trouble. He gapes at the sight of her, then yanks at the guards in front of him, pulling them out of Ersa’s path. “You really are — step aside! Allow the Captain to pass!”

She’d like to stay to gloat, but the ground is spinning dangerously. She elbows past the guards, some of the crowd shouting objections at the exception made. “And me!” Agat chirps, taking her opportunity to also cross into the city.

Had this bridge always been so damn long?

She walks for what feels like hours before her vision starts to fade; shoves her way into one of the niches and slumps against the rail. The night winds are cold and bracing against her face and her ears are ringing.

“Here,” Agat says. Ersa opens her eyes and takes the capsule the healer offers: a medicinal syrup mixed with bitter powder to ease her stomach and dull the pain. She swallows it, wincing at the sharp taste.

“I shouldn’t have woken you,” Agat frets. “I just thought you’d be excited to see…”

“I’m fine,” Ersa says, although even she knows she isn’t.

“How’s your leg?”

“Hurts.” But she’s standing on it, and that’s good enough right now.

“And your arm?”

Ersa pushes back from the rail. “Come on.”

There’s another checkpoint at the other end of the bridge, although they let the women pass, and suddenly Ersa is home again. The streets are quieter than usual, the taverns fuller. From one they pass a voice rings out: “For the Queen!” She sways, has to stop and sit on the edge of a fountain, her heart pounding in her ears and behind her eyes. Keep moving.

The plaza before the bridge to the Palace of the Sun is heavily guarded and empty of anyone else. There are more guards at this checkpoint, but Ersa knows all the palace guards by name and rank and they don’t try to stop her, one running ahead, half-sprinting across the bridge to deliver word to the palace before she arrives.

Realizing she’s no longer being shadowed, Ersa turns to see Agat standing on the other side of the checkpoint, her hands clasped before her. “Come along if you want,” she calls; Agat hesitates, then jogs to catch up with Ersa when she keeps walking.

More guards on the other side of the bridge. “Where is —“

“Captain.” Marad, hurrying down the stairs to intercept her. “Meridian is relieved to see you returned in - good health.” He gives her one of his looks, taking in every inch of her and the healer at her heels. For the first time, Ersa — dully — realizes she’s barefoot, that she’s gone this entire distance without shoes, dressed in a loose tunic and trousers meant more for sleep, thin and bald and bedraggled. Marad doesn’t comment on it. “His Luminance will be most relieved to see you. He is at dinner. Come - both of you.”

The first stair shoots fire through her body, the way she must rely on her leg to bear her weight, to climb, to do more than just stand — Agat goes to take her under the arm and Ersa pushes her away, her vision prickling with white stars. She wants to ask about the security but can’t seem to find the breath. How has she never noticed how many fucking stairs the Palace has?

Agat introduces herself as Agat Healwife when Marad asks her name, Ersa barely hearing over the ringing of her ears: her vision is shrinking into pinpricks, into nothing at all, but she doesn’t need to see, not here, and her arms are wet with cold perspiration —

Her knees bang against one of the steps as she stumbles and she shoves Agat away when the girl tries to help her, Marad not helping, watching as she wheezes, judging, looking at her, barefoot and bald and trying to push herself up with only one arm, her right limp and useless and —

Heavy, steel footsteps. “Shit! Ersa!” her brother says, and when his arm grasps hers she allows it, only until she’s got her feet under her again, all of Meridian spinning around her, a screeching in her ears, she leans against something heavy and solid for balance — shit, it’s Erend.

Pushes away from him weakly, her leg feeling wet and not just painful, her fingers throbbing. “I thought you weren’t arriving for another couple of days!” he scolds, catching her again —

“I don’t have time for this,” she says: she needs to keep moving, keep walking, keep climbing fucking stairs, she needs —

Ersa wakes slowly, her entire body aching and cold. She doesn’t recognize the sleep-chamber, but that it is sandstone and sunlit and her pillows and blankets are silk. She tries to sit up and falls, her right arm — “Shit!” — the shooting of pain, the pinch in her elbow and shoulder and breast and — she falls back, braces herself with her left, tries again.

The door opens. A man in gold healer’s robes peers in before Ersa can swing her legs off the mattress to the floor. “You are not to rise,” he says, looking her over. “Lie down.”

She does not lie down. “Who are you?” she asks, as the healer comes closer to examine her. He’s Carja and rail-thin beneath his robes, gray haired and ruddy skinned. No make-up around his eyes, as is common for many older Carja, but he wears small silver spectacles that he uses to peer down his long nose at her with.

“Healer Darial,” he says. “You are in the Palace of the Sun, and I have been tasked to attend you.” He briskly folds back his sleeves, then goes to press his palm to Ersa’s forehead: his palm is soft and cool against her skin as he moves to next examine the great scabbing mess of the right side of her head.

“I know where I am,” she says, sullen: even if she didn’t know the room it was obvious where she was from the mosaics around the windowsill, and his clucking as he looks her over makes her feel babied and pathetic.

“Then you will surely also know I have been authorized to lock you in if you prove belligerent. Lie down. Your fever has lowered but I fear your constitution has yet to recover.”

She remembers walking up the main stairs, and then nothing. Fire and spit, if she faintedlike some kind of —

Ersa lies back down, glaring at Darial the entire time. He pays her no mind, pushing his spectacles up his nose before continuing his examination of her. “Your arm, if you would.”

She looks out the window. “Where is — my friend? The girl I was with? Medium complexion, curly hair?”

He moves her around. She watches a cloud pass in the sky. “The Oseram healer? Yes, she was mentioned to me…” Not an answer. She breathes in through her nose. Even and slow.

Finally, he is done. “I shall send for broth; you must eat. Behave yourself, Captain.”

“Fuck you,” she murmurs once the door is closed.

She dozes. When Darial returns with broth, she sips at it, relieved when it stays down. From her window, when she gingerly sits up to look, she can see much of Meridian: she is in the west wing of the palace, her room facing south. Out of view of the bridge, which makes her view significantly more boring.

The canyon and winds surrounding the Palace have always made sounds carry oddly. She hears voices one minute, nothing the next. A child crying out, an eagle’s cry, the wind itself. She dozes again. She does not dream.

Healer Darial returns later that evening, obviously flustered, looking over his shoulder at the door between each check of her injuries, fever, and bandages. He prods at her arm again and she pulls away, aware that they are not alone, that few make the Carja so nervous as —

Avad enters as Darial leaves, the healer bowing and staring at the floor demurely, Avad having to almost awkwardly shuffle around him into the doorway, demurring the healer’s formal greeting and apology.

And then he turns to see Ersa, sitting half-upright in her hospital bed, and he does not move.

He looks her over instead, a moment and then another, staring, the rush of relief draining from her like — seepage from her leg — his eyes lingering on her arm, her hand — she pulls it closer to her — he hesitates, standing there, and he must be disgusted, horrified: how thin and wasted she is, the dark fuzz that remains of her hair. She is crippled and she is weak and Avad, the politest person on the planet, looks at her like he can’t even muster —

She sees him gather himself. “I am sorry I could not see you sooner,” he says, his voice smooth and soft and polite.

Ersa had wanted to see him so badly, and now she is coldly uncertain why. “Where’s my brother?” she asks.

Avad glances out the window as he enters the room properly. Turns much of his body to close the door behind him. Her stomach twists and clenches. “En route to Free Heap. He didn’t want to go, but we were concerned you may attempt to over-exert yourself again and thought you might recover better without an… accessory.”

That snippy sense of humor is more like him, but there’s nowhere to sit in the room but the bed and Avad is clearly hesitating to do so. Like he’ll crush her legs, like she’s that fragile. Or worse, that he doesn’t want to — “Sit down,” she says, unable to stand it. “Why Free Heap?”

He sits with great care at the foot of the bed. “Petra,” Avad says, which had been obvious enough. He elaborates at her glare, shifting his gaze to look out the window again. “We have… reason to expect an attack from Sunfall.”

“What?” She tries to shift out of bed, to pull her legs to the floor: without looking, before she moves more than a finger, he presses his hand to her calf to hold her in place.

“Vanasha is back,” he says. It’s all he needs to say. Ersa is not well acquainted with Marad’s protege, but she’s known about her attempt to make contact with Prince Itamen through his mother since its initial conception.

“They’re here?”

Avad nods, releasing her leg and moving his hands to his lap, gazing down upon them with the faintest frown. “A fortnight now.” She starts to laugh, even though it hurts her ribs and lungs and guts immensely, buckling over with giggles, folding her arms over herself. She laughs and laughs and Avad, concerned, reaches over and braces her shoulder with his hand. “Ersa?”

“I leave for a month — and you end the damn war? Without me?”, she wheezes, her eyes wet from lack of breath and pain and laughter at once. After years of pushing at him to do something, anything, the one fight she could never win — Itamen is in Meridian. The fucking Shadow Carja have no excuses left. He’s right to fortify Meridian and send for cannons — Helis will be on his way if he’s not already — but the war is over. One last desperate rush and —

The pain overtakes the humor. She remembers, only belatedly, she’s been gone closer to three months than one. “I should die more often,” she says. Erend had told her about the other woman, dressed in her clothes.

Her eyes close, her head spinning: she’s out of breath. Light-headed, and with Avad now leaning closer, his hand on her shoulder, the scent of the oils he is anointed with each day surrounds her, heady and familiar. She wishes she were weaker. That she could give in, that —

“I mourned you,” he says. He realizes he is touching her and draws away, and her momentary urge to — well, it fades. She closes her eyes. “With your loss I realized how utterly I had come to rely on you. How deeply. I was paralyzed by it, I did what I could to move on…”

“Surprise,” she murmurs, feeling rather like a new wound has opened inside her.

He does not smile; he turns his body away to look at his hands. “It has been — difficult, for me. I tried to move on, to — accept your death, and when Aloy pronounced you alive…” He is too well-trained to shrug, but he seems to imply one with a lifting of one shoulder. “I could hardly believe it, though I wanted to. I have barely slept… these past months have been… difficult.”

For you? Her fingers twitch, wanting to ball into fists; she remembers her right hand and stares dully at the king’s profile, his expression grave and posture perfect.

“I haven’t had a great time either,” she says.

He allows himself to wince. “I know. And I shall do whatever I can do make up for my lapses. You shall be provided for, and in the event you cannot resume your duties —“

“I don’t need your pity.” It snaps out of her, and she reflexively tries to push away from him, leave the bed, but she’s sitting in a bed and he’s at her feet and all the warmth and relief and desperation she’d felt is gone, cold and drained, a sickly, icy anger. “I’m no obligation.I’d sooner go back to the Claim.”

His expression changes; caught by surprise. “You are not…” He finds no purchase in her. “Of course not.”

In the event that you cannot — it opens a chasm in her, wide as the mesa. Of course she was weak now, but she would recover, and she would regain her strength, and she would — would what? Resume her duties? Was that what they were, how he saw her? Just a guard, and she’d thought —

And what if she —

She closes her mind to the thought. “Then don’t act like I’m some courtier seeking your favor. Like I need you.” It is a clean hit and she sees it, takes a bitter satisfaction in it: the anger mixes with the pounding in her head, the tightness in her gut: he pities her. He doesn’t — he’s right to. Her arm dead in her lap —

“I am —“ he starts to say, eyes wide and earnest and she cannot forgive the slight, the terror, no matter how sincere, no matter —

“Go away,” she says, wrenching her gaze to the window, glaring at the cloudless sky. It’s just a fever, it’s just — But he pities her. Thinks of her as some poor sad — girl, slave to his father, laughingstock of a warrior, can’t look at her, why would he? Shriveled limbs and a fever and a pounding head, can’t even climb the fucking steps without passing unconscious — she looks away, she looks away, he is sitting heavy at her feet.

Finally she feels him stir. “Your brother ought to be back tomorrow. I’ll send him to you when he returns.” For half a second he shifts his weight closer, as if — and then he stands, clinking softly, closing the door softly behind him.

Later that evening, Darial returns to check her fever and offer her some extracts for her pounding headache. He arrives with a servant bearing Ersa’s dinner: not the thin broths and flat breads she’s been fed on for the past weeks, but a fully loaded tray.

The healer huffs and glares as the food is placed on the table by Ersa’s bed: spicy peppers roasted in oil, fish glazed with garlic and honey, roasted meat with an apricot sauce, wine and a basket of expensive southern grain bread, white and soft instead of dense like maize.

It’s obvious who overrode Darial’s authority to deliver Ersa her favorite foods, but the rolls are warm from the kitchens and she allows herself to be bribed.

Chapter Text

two.

After successfully going three days without a fever, Healer Darial finally allows Ersa to leave her sickroom. It’s strange to be back in the Palace of the Sun: it has been her home for three years, and she doesn’t quite remember leaving it, but it has changed in her absence.

While Ersa had been recovering from yet another bout of chills and weak stomach, the Nora Aloy had returned to Meridian with dire news: Helis was not just leading the Eclipse to Meridian in an attempt to regain Itamen, but with an army of machines to take the Alight.

Court had since been cancelled, and the Palace seemed deserted without the usual nobles and courtiers and workers scurrying about. The sound of hammers and saws drifted up from the farmlands below the mesa at all hours of the day: the bridge connecting the palace to the mesa stood guarded and empty except for the occasional sprinting scout with news: the Eclipse were ten days away. A week. Less.

She’s standing at the edge of one of the terraces, trying to peer through the morning mists at the construction going on below the mesa, when a Carja in gleaming Eclipse armor approaches her with a stiff formal bow. “Captain.”

He’s middle aged but trim and fit and he has an honest face, even if he’s wearing the wrong armor.

“You must be Defector Uthid,” she says, sour despite herself.

His eyebrows knit. “I can only hope that if I earn an honorific it is one less… shameful.”

“No shame in leaving the Eclipse.” At least he’s wearing armor, and has a blade at his side. She’s stuck in loose trousers and an overshirt that had been delivered to her: Oseram cut and comfortable, but with red embroidery around the hem and silk sewn into the collar that makes her suspect Avad’s tailors had had a hand in it.

Her armor had been ruined by her death, cremated with the rest of the woman disguised as her. Having the misfortune to be a woman and not particularly tall, a replacement set would have to be custom-made: she didn’t fit into Vanguard spares.

“Shame in not leaving it sooner.” Uthid presses his fist to his breast. “His Radiance has advised I seek you out. We are working to defend the city against my former brethren.”

“I’m confined to the Palace,” she says sourly. I’m a cripple and a woman and I don’t even have armor to wear. Worse, she keeps falling ill. Were a servant to sneeze on her, she’d be bedridden for days. Ersa had been bedridden with just such an illness when the famous Nora girl had arrived. She’s annoyed she didn’t get a chance to meet her, if only to ask her questions about the Eclipse’s plans and numbers.

“Perhaps, but you yourself once led a successful invasion of this very city.” Uthid comes to join her at the rail, hands clasped behind his back. “Who better to lead her defense?”

“Avad tell you to say that?” He’s avoided her since their initial reunion, except to have food and clothing and other bribes delivered. She knows his style.

Uthid is quiet for a time, looking where she had been when he arrived: the mists and the fortifications hidden by them. “I fought in the Battle of Meridian as well, if on the wrong side. We believed the city impenetrable.”

“We had cannons. And the desperation of a lot of people who really hated Jiran,” she says lightly, even as the flattery takes hold.

“And they machines, and the desperation of those who know they have already lost.” Uthid steps back from the rail and makes a follow me gesture. Ersa obeys, trying to hide her limp. Her leg has finally sealed over, but the muscle remains taunt and unyielding. “Aloy claims their primary objective will be the Alight and not the city.”

“So you set up a chokehold between the mountain and the river,” she says.

“Indeed. However, I find it unlikely they will not sack Meridian if given an opportunity. If only to reclaim Itamen.” Fighting your way through the city and into the palace, just to seize the prince?

But when Ersa reframes it in her head — it isn’t so different from stealing into the city to kill Jiran, really. And they did that. For that matter, so did Dervhal.

If she were to do it again, how would she? Skipping the city entirely and climbing the face of the mesa. Getting Itamen back down would be an issue, although if one was to instead destroy the bridge and aqueduct, making it nearly impossible for anyone to reach your men while you killed Avad and sacked the city in the meanwhile… Absolute waste of effort, but she also doesn’t worship the Sun.

“How… is Itamen?” she asks, awkwardly. She’s never met the younger prince. When a slave to Jiran, the boy had been a toddler, and by the time the Liberation had come, he had been spirited out with his mother before anyone knew he was missing. She and Avad had occasionally discussed him. He had been nearly twenty-five when his half brother was born, and had little relationship with him either.

“He is… adjusting.” Uthid’s tone makes Ersa look up at his face. “He is a good lad. But his life thus far has been one of a captive… and one who has spent much of his childhood being told of the cruel man who murdered his divine father.”

Ersa snorts at the mental image. “That must kill Avad. What, didn’t Nasadi tell the kid Helis was full of shit?”

She’s never met Jiran’s wife, either, although she had seen her while serving her mad husband. Her information there, too, is third hand gossip. Avad’s step-mother was a year his junior, and they had all largely avoided one another.

“She was concerned with keeping him alive and unharmed. It is a delicate situation, although I have confidence it will resolve.”

They’re at the bridge now. Ersa hesitates for half a footstep, remembering the Healer’s orders that she is to remain in the palace with its smaller population… and then hurries to walk alongside Uthid, who clearly is unaware of this rule of her recovery.

Uthid takes her to below the mesa, which is a rush of activity: fortifications being made to funnel the invaders towards the Alight in a manner that will allow archers and cannon clear shots from across the river; ditches being dug and spikes sharpened. Entire stone walls are being built out of nothing, and they run into Petra — too busy to talk as she gleefully demonstrates some new cannon to a unit of Carja soldiers — as well as Janeva of all people.

“I thought you were dead,” Janeva says upon seeing Ersa, looking her over with clear disapproval.

“I thought you were exiled to Sunstone Rock?” she retorts.

Janeva barks a laugh and comes to clap Ersa on the shoulder. “Me and my prisoners are here to fight.”

“You were supposed to supervise their rehabilitation, not make them into your own personal army,” Ersa says, quite pleased by this news.

Janeva’s arms spread. “I did rehabilitate them. I’ve come to see Avad’s point; convicts canserve a purpose besides target practice.” Uthid looks scandalized as Ersa laughs: Janeva sees them off again with an almost-cheerful: “Glad to see you’re not dead.”

At Uthid’s request, Ersa relays the entire story of the Liberation, all the plans they had made and information they had gathered, so that they can better cover Meridian’s weakness. He in turn tells her some news she’s missed: the attack on the Sacred Lands, the presence of Eclipse to the east and a series of small battles to put them down. The Nora Aloy had apparently arrived back in Meridian with a handful of Nora warriors in tow: Uthid points out their camp, far away on the other side of the river, and the dark-skinned woman who is their general.

Ersa stares in open fascination. A woman general? Hell, a tribe full of women warriors? She knows about the Nora of course. But never really seen one, let alone an entire war band.

Uthid has yet more news as they walk along the river, Ersa panting and fighting an ache in her legs that he is thankfully too polite to draw attention to, even as her limp grows more pronounced.

Sun Hawk Ahsis was recently killed by Red Maw, who in turn was killed by Talanah Khane Padish: there was now a woman Sun Hawk, and she had been quick to rally the Hunter’s Lodge to help defend the Spire.

Brightmarket had of late seen an influx of refugees fleeing Sunfall, and was struggling to take them in: two centuries of Carja soldiers had been sent to garrison the city in event that the city is targeted or that Kestrels are hidden in their ranks.

Envoys have been sent to Ban-Ur and recently a woman has arrived in Meridian to act as diplomat and envoy between the two tribes; however, the Banuk as a whole are uninterested in involving themselves in the battles of other tribes and declined to send warriors to defend Meridian.

The Tenakth, of all people, have recently had relatively peaceful contact with the garrison in the Daunt.

The carcass of a strange, bulky machine called a Deathbringer had recently been brought to Meridian for dissection and study, as according to the Nora Aloy, the Eclipse had several in their ranks. Their joints were strong but slightly exposed their veins, which had been discovered to be highly flammable, but on a whole they are considered far more dangerous than any known machine in the Sundom.

Ersa takes in all the news Uthid can give her, but finds herself growing increasingly tense. Irritated. So much has happened, and where has she been? Why didn’t she know?

Uthid seems to have everything well-handled. Although he politely asks Ersa’s opinion on what she might do in his place, or how she would invade were it up to her, she’s alert for pity in his manner or tone. He’s Carja, after all. When he looks at her, he must see…

When he excuses himself to see to preparations at the Alight, he is not so polite that he invites her along. Probably relieved to be free of her: Avad probably put him up to this. Well, why not? It isn’t like Ersa’s any…

She has no shards, but she can buy anything in Meridian she wants on credit and Ersa considers finding a pub. But the heat and sunshine is making her woozy enough as it is, and she has to admit she doesn’t really want a drink — nor want to chat and answer questions of whoever she ends up drinking with. But nor does she want to go back to the Palace.

Instead, Ersa wanders around the village for a while, sitting at an outdoor table in the market to catch her breath and regain her strength. The market itself is almost abandoned, stalls half-empty, despite it being the middle of the day: the Eclipse are still at a week from Meridian, but already the lower city seems to have evacuated and hidden away. Good, in her opinion. Saves her the trouble of forcing an evacuation later.

Or saves Erend, she supposes.

If her brother ever gets over himself and steps up, he’ll be a fine Captain. He can be a bit careless and something of an oaf, but men have always liked Erend, been willing to follow him because they see him as a peer, someone who will do the same for them in turn. Ersa has never had that.

Her men respect her, sure. But only because she’s always made certain to be better than them. Work harder. Sleep less. Patrol more, fight better, never complain, never falter — do what it takes to make them forget she’s a woman. But they don’t like her. Not like Erend.

Which is good. Because she’s never going to be able to be captain again, and that means…

It is as though a chasm of feeling opens up inside her, swallowing her whole. Ersa can’t face it, can’t look upon it at all. She heads back towards the elevators, back into the city and to the Palace.

“A minor chill,” Healer Darial says, judgement heavy in his voice, when he checks up on Ersa the next day. His hand is pressed to her forehead, and she tries not to shiver. “Have you been eating?”

“Yes,” Ersa lies. She’d vomited up her breakfast, and has little appetite. Her throat hurts when she swallows, and even after rinsing her mouth and chewing some mint she can still taste the bile.

“Hmm. I will have a tincture sent for you. Elderflower and chili oil, to burn the weakness away.”

“If you were any good at healing, shouldn’t I not be getting sick?” Ersa says, sullen at the way he speaks to her like she’s a misbehaving child.

Darial has turned back to his kit to fetch a poultice of honey and medicinal berries, which he places in a cup and pours hot wine over before stirring. “I am an excellent healer.”

“Then why do I keep getting damn fevers?” She takes the cup and winces at the taste: cloyingly sweet with a strange bitterness after she swallows.

“For one, because you are not following my orders for your care.” the Healer sighs and pushes his spectacles prissily up his nose. “It is not wholly uncommon in those on the mend from serious illness or injury as yourself. Your constitution is weakened, leaving you more susceptible to illnesses you would normally not fear. And whenever you exertyourself, against my orders I might add, you weaken yourself further.”

She hides her glower by drinking the rest of the medicine.

The Vanguard are housed in the barracks of the Palace that once held Jiran’s Kestrels, a row of shared barracks opening onto a courtyard and mess hall and baths reserved for them alone. Ersa kept a tiny office there for her ledgers and a small chest of shards, but her actual quarters — out of so-called consideration for her gender — were in the palace itself: a small private room originally intended for a steward or high-ranking servant, with its own fountain pumping in fresh water, and an east-facing window.

Aside from a trunk where she kept spare clothing, Ersa had never bothered to decorate or furnish the room — she hardly spends any time in it normally. But she does have a few possessions. A rack for weapons. A bundle of dried flowers. Letters she keeps tied and bundled at the bottom of her trunk, a few trinkets and pins, a truly hideous necklace Avad had once gifted her as a private joke.

Her throat is sore and she still feels tired and feverish, but Ersa lets herself in, surprised by the rush of pleasure that overtakes her, seeing all her old junk, her lumpy pillow and embroidered blanket, enough that she sits heavily on her bed for a minute, enjoying the familiar scent and trickle of water.

Then she goes to the weapon rack.

Ersa typically prefers to fight with either a long hammer or a spear, depending on the situation: hammers are better for machines but spears are effective against men, and both have long enough shafts to make up for any lack of reach her height gives her. She’d taken her hammer with her to confront Dervhal, judging by its absence on the stand.

She also has a simple bow, a sling, and a Carja sword. The sword had been a gift upon being given her title and rank: the Sun-King traditionally was served by his Kestrels and Champion, where Avad had renamed them Vanguard and Captain. There had been a brief naming ceremony just after the Liberation, and she had placed the blade on her rack and not thought much about it since.

She picks up the spear with her left hand. It feels strange there, her grip backwards and reversed. And when she tries to brace her grip with her right —

No.

She tries a shallow thrust, one handed, and even before she tries she knows it’s useless. The weapon is designed for a two-handed grip. She might swing or thrust, but any blow is weakened; her grip too soft to hold on against any resistance.

The bow and sling will be even worse. Ersa was never an exceptional archer and rarely used it, but while normally she might not mourn the loss she does now. It burns at her, and she drops the spear to the floor with a frustrated clatter.

That just leaves the sword.

She finds Erend in the Vanguard training yard with Aldur and Toruf, two of his particular friends in the guard. Rather than training, they’re sitting around the benches with drinks and chatting, and she feels a sting at the sight — thinking of Alin and Boreer and Janor and the men who’d gone with her, who lay dead and burned, good men, her men, dead because she’d been stupid enough to —

Aldur spots her first, clearing his throat. “Captain!” Erend jumps to his feet, almost overturning the bench and his cup.

“The Eclipse are coming and you’re sitting on your asses?” she asks, flinty. The training yard is narrow and overshadowed by the palace, rarely getting much direct sunlight. It’s midday but she tries not to shiver.

“We’re just taking a breather,” Erend says, raising his hands in supplication.

“Where is everyone else?” she asks, looking at the sheepish men.

“Alight,” Erend says, slamming his fist against one open palm. “We’re gonna be there waiting if any of those bastards make it through the chokepoints. Steel don’t bend!”

“So what are you three lugnuts doing here?”

“We were on night patrol,” Toruf says, gesturing between himself and Aldur.

“And I’ve been watching over Avad,” Erend says, just as quickly.

“I sure as hell don’t see him here,” Ersa says.

“I was dismissed, he’s having some stupid luncheon with Itamen and his step-mom,” Erend says, his exasperation giving way to a snicker, his buddies also hiding their smirks. It really is hard to take that seriously, especially with Ersa still mad at the Sun-King herself.

“Fine,” she says. She goes to the armory and has to pick through several crates of supplies to find the old rack of wooden swords that had been left from when the training yard housed Carja instead of Oseram. Despite being made of wood, they’re weighted to be something close to realistic. More importantly, swords are designed to be used one-handed, even though the hilt feels awkward and clumsy in hers.

“What are you doing?” Erend asks warily when she emerges; Toruf and Aldur have scampered.

“Training.” She knows how to use a sword, although not very well — and certainly not left handed. “The Eclipse are coming, remember?”

“Ohhhh, no,” Erend says, catching on. “Ersa, there is no way you’re —“

“No way I’m what?” The blade is heavy and it shouldn’t be. She extends her arm towards one of the practice dummies, just trying to get a feel for the weapon. Her arm immediately trembles and burns and she drops the stance. Tries a strike — she lifts the sword briefly over her head and doesn’t so much thrust or slash as drop it, unable to hold it or strike with any force, and how can she be this weak? Her strength has withered after weeks of confinement, muscle melted like snow before the forge —

“You’re not gonna fight!” Erend says, distress clouding his voice.

“Of course I’m going to fucking fight!” she snaps, slashing at the dummy — doing better this time, although the sword feels wrong, although her blow is weak, although her arm is aching already — “That’s our job!”

She won’t be able to dent a damn Watcher like this —

“You kidding me? You’re still — no way,” Erend says, lifting his shoulders. “No, there’s no way anyone’s gonna risk you fighting like you are right now. You can’t. I —“

She turns on him, blade outstretched and shaking. “You what? You forbid it? Does the clan head refuse my request?”

It falls heavy between them, Ersa furious enough that she could — that she would — it’s a low blow, a dirty hit, but she feels it, rushing through her, trembling and sickening and dark: never mind that she’s four years older, never mind that she’s the firstborn, it’s Erend, it’s always been Erend, and she’s an unmarried woman, a spinster, a cripple, bound to his house, to serve his family and forge and do his bidding until she dies —

The tip of the sword, merely trembling in her grasp, is now shaking like a branch in a breeze as she strains to keep her arm outstretched — her arm is burning and the worst thing is that he’s right, she knows he’s right, the Eclipse could send a barracks boy after her and she’d lose, but that just makes the sting of it worse.

“No,” Erend says, his eyes big and wet like when they were kids, when he was still little enough she could lift and carry. “Shit, of course not, Ersa.”

She lowers the sword, her arm aching with relief and pain. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

She turns back to the dummy, furious. Just basic slashes, basic thrusts. First thing she needs to do is get used to holding a weapon in her wrong hand. Make it a part of her, make it comfortable, her grip strong. Fifty slashes. A hundred. As many as it takes, but after a dozen she’s sweating, she’s aching all over, her head starting to pound…

Erend goes and picks up a heavy wooden practice club. “Wanna spar?” he asks, like she won’t notice the pity. “Come on,” he wheedles. “You can beat the shit out of me. You’ll feel better.”

“Fuck you,” she says, turning from the dummy, blinking perspiration out of her eyes, panting.

He grins, spreads his arms. “You know you wanna. Come on, Ersa. Beat the shit outta me.”

Why do all the men she knows think her so easy to bribe?

She barely lasts five minutes, Erend not bothering to do more than broad, slow swipes at her, blows even a child could dodge, blocking her with ease but better than allowing her to land a hit and hear it plink uselessly off his armor — she moves faster, pushes harder, until she staggers, nearly loses her balance, her legs no longer willing to bear her weight and almost weeping from pain and anger —

He catches her when she stumbles, like she weighs nothing at all. She’s too weak to push him away, to do anything but pant and cling to her baby brother, fisting her hand, the sword clattering to the ground, hitting him as weak and uselessly as a baby rabbit —

At last she gives up, trembling, on the verge of passing out from the exertion, her ears ringing and drenched in sweat. Erend helps her over to one of the benches before she falls, and she sits with her head in her hand for a long time while he fetches her water and asks solicitous questions about her health. When she licks her lips she tastes salt.

With half-open eyes, she forces herself to look at her right arm, even as her stomach turns with self-loathing and disgust.

It had healed crooked, with visible lumps at the elbow and forearm, scarred and twisted skin. It could still move, but not far: her elbow permanently locked half-bent, her shoulder unable to raise her hand higher than her ribs. Her hand was mangled and still bandaged as the stumps of her fingers healed, her middle finger tightly wrapped and unable to bend. Even if she was able to regain her strength and mobility, her grip would never recover.

It sickens her, and she closes her eyes again, her head pounding.

“Here,” Erend says, offering her water in a tin cup.

She takes it left handed, takes a meager sip.

“It’s not like this is the last time someone’s gonna try to kill Avad,” Erend says bracingly. “We’ve had two in the past couple of months! People hate the guy. There’ll be other shots at fighting for him.”

“And what if I’m a damn cripple next time, too?” she spits out. Regrets it at once: Erend isn’t supposed to — She doesn’t want to confess these things. Not to him. Especially now that he’s the only one still too dumb to look down on her.

“Come on. You’ll get better.” He sits down heavy next to her, and she scoffs. “And what’s Avad gonna do? You’re the guy’s only friend, he’ll just make you a general or something.”

She doesn’t find that at all comforting: Avad’s decency has never worried her. But she lets Erend have the last word, closing her eyes in an attempt to shut out the pain of her head and aches of her body.

“You’re, uh… you’re not gonna try and sneak into the battle, are you?” Erend asks after a while, cautious of offending her.

“I won’t,” she says, the words like splinters in her mouth. “Unless you idiots fuck things up at the Alight enough that I have to clean up after you.”

Avad could name her to any title he damn well pleased. He could name her Sun-King for all it would matter: people would know and people would whisper. She’s weak, she’s pathetic, she should go home and get married instead of pretending to be a soldier. Until now, Ersa’s always settled for simply being better than anyone who might challenge her.

Not any more.

Three days later, and the smoke and fires from the Eclipse are clearly visible from the Palace of the Sun. No longer are scouts needed to mark Helis’s progress.

They had discussed evacuating Itamen and his mother to keep them out of the enemy’s hands, but ultimately it had been deemed not worth the men such an effort would take: if Meridian were to fall, the Eclipse might as well have their puppet Sun-King back, as no one would be left to resist them.

Many others had fled, and the lower city had been evacuated: the streets of the mesa were crowded with tents and the displaced, and still more had gone east to Lone Light and the Cut Cliffs for shelter. Petra had armed half a century with cannons and arms and taught her men to use them; Janeva and their convict army had set up orderly camp along the riverbank. Even a few of the Nora braves had left their camp to actually speak with the Carja, although getting them to fall into rank and line and cooperate with the main defense of Meridian is still a bridge too far.

Uthid will command the front lines, although the plan is to avoid direct engagement. Hunters of the Lodge have already begun betting on who will take down the first Deathbringer, scattering themselves along the funnel to the Alight. The Vanguard will guard the Alight itself, forming a final chokepoint of metal and steel at the end of the funnel. The Nora Aloy had returned to Meridian as well, apparently, although Ersa misses her visit to the Palace as Darial had been restitching her leg as she’d torn open her wound while training.

As with most battles, there comes a time when there is nothing left to prepare and a silence falls over everything. Despite all the people crammed onto the mesa, Meridian feels deserted and empty. No one comes or goes; the sound of hammers has finally stopped. Those who will be fighting ride the elevators in groups down the mesa, and then the great elevators are drawn back up and disabled. The bridge is barricaded and covered in ballista. Until the Eclipse are defeated, none will enter or leave the mesa.

Ersa watches the final elevator descend with her brother and the remaining Vanguard crowded inside.

Then she returns to the Palace.

She’s been avoiding him, still smarting, but Avad is easy enough to find: he’s always been predictable in his habits, and he’s on the terrace by the Solarium, sitting at one of the low tables surrounded by books and scrolls.

She sits down across from him, her leg stiff; he glances up and then discards a scroll. “Nothing good?” she asks with mock concern.

He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I remain hopeful one of them will distract me,” he says, not sounding hopeful.

The day is cloudless and hot, without much wind, even up on the mesa. The perfect sort of day for lounging and napping, drinking chilled wine and walking through gardens. Visibility will be good, although the heat will slow Meridian’s forces much more than the Machines. Lack of wind always helps arrows…

“I’m glad for your company,” Avad says, glancing up at her again.

“I’d rather be down there,” she says.

“I know. But it’s much harder to wait these things out alone. It’s… nice to be able to do so with a friend.” He has the grace to sound abashed.

She allows her gaze to drift west. Sitting, she can’t make out the smoke and approaching army. Standing at the rail, she would be able to practically count the machines.

They are not alone, of course. Several guards are in Ersa’s eyeline, if discreetly out of hearing range. The Palace’s staff will still be here, as well as the Dowager Queen and Itamen, likely sheltering indoors, and Marad, surely lurking somewhere close by. But the Palace has rarely been this quiet, this deserted.

She runs her hand over her scalp. She’d shaved her head when she’d first left home, of course, but it’s been years since she’s kept it that way. There’s something satisfying about the feel of the stubble under her hand. Avad is watching her. “What?”

“I am sorry for offending you last time we spoke.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she warns, and he nods, but now it’s creeping in her mind anyway, damn him. She rubs at her scalp some more. “Erend says I’m the only friend you have.”

He looks amused rather than offended. “That is more accurate than I would care to admit.”

“So that’s what we are? Friends?” she asks, recklessly. Anxious and angry and wishing she had the strength to fight even one man, to carry medicine or rocks or arrows without her leg seizing and stopping her, to lift anything larger than one of Avad’s scrolls.

“Yes,” he says without any hesitation.

She doesn’t smile. Instead, the restlessness is fizzing in her, the anger, in search of an escape, and she needs to do something or she’ll explode. She leans over the table. “Remember how we killed time last time we were waiting on a big battle?”

Avad’s alarm fades and is replaced by a different kind of concern, his gaze falling on her limp arm, the harbinger of all her ailments.

The Vanguard don’t want her, she can’t fight or lift a weapon, her brother doesn’t need her and if Avad, her friend, doesn’t either — “You don’t want to?”

He leans forward, drops his already quiet voice to half a whisper. “You’re asking me two different things.”

“Fine.” She leans back, the anger sizzling in her, churning acid through her. What did she expect, really? He pities her.

He puts his hand on hers.

The gesture, simple as it is, shocks her out of her anger: they have always been very, very careful to never so much as casually touch in public, and Avad is almost always in public. “There is no one I care about more than you,” he says quietly.

She closes her eyes, overcome with shame at forcing him to say something like this, at wanting so badly to hear it, even if it is pity, even if it is forced, hating herself for the warmth and relief of it despite that, knowing it was coerced.

They leave the terrace together, King and Captain, walking leisurely and discussing a book. They go to his apartments and he dismisses his guards and they have the old struggle over all his useless clothes, hidden ties and careful folds and layer upon layer of silk, and she kicks off her own trousers, catches her damn arm in her over-shirt until he helps tug it off, daring him to comment on new scars and old bandages, to look too long, to hesitate or doubt —

They go to bed.

She’s still damn weak and her body does not respond like she wants it to, but that doesn’t matter, that isn’t the point and whatever minor ache she feels is worth the exertion. What matters is that she knows this: his bed and his body, mussed hair and smudged makeup and carefully trimmed nails, what matters is that he knows her, wants her even crippled and lame and useless, unnecessary.

She sleeps through much of the afternoon, aching in ways both new and familiar, comfortable and relaxed but careful to hide her arm behind a fold of blanket. Friends might sometimes sleep together but they probably do not cuddle after, she thinks about telling him, too warm and lazy and for once relieved to actually bother.

These will be hours she thinks of later, fondly and bitterly at once. This will be their last time.

In the early evening, the war horns ring through Meridian.

Chapter Text

three.

Avad had been a child when his grandfather, the Sun-King Hivas, had passed into shadow. He had not known his grandfather well. His father had been named Governor of Sunstone in order to prepare him for rule, and Avad had spent his early childhood there, away from Holy Meridian, seeing his Radiant Grandfather only once or twice a year and finding him much more kingly than grandfatherly.

He has spent much of the last few years learning all he can of his forebears. A few had kept diaries, locked carefully away for no eyes but his own. Others were written about, by priests and scholars, their laws recorded and studied decades after the fact. He even has a collection of art painted by his great-uncle, the Sun-King Marzid: vivid colors, tumbling wire, the occasional tepid landscape.

They are not useful sources for learning how to govern. By law and by custom, any decision made by the Sun-King is the correct decision, and so negative consequences tend to be left out of records. Jiran is an exception… but only when it comes to his blood sacrifice: his habit of high taxes, stratifcation of classes, and the ceding of power to the priesthood are carefully left out of all the accounts Avad reads.

But he does not study former kings in order to learn how to govern.

He stands helplessly in the Solarium as Meridian burns, as Machines the like he has never seen trample farmlands and orchards, as the western elevators break and reverberate through the mesa as they crash. It is well past nightfall and yet all of Meridian is bright as day from flame and Machine-light, and he half wonders if it is an omen but is too transfixed to reflect.

Eclipse attempt to climb the mesa early in the battle, but Ersa had remembered their own past battles and had the faces patrolled and stocked with loose rocks and bricks and boiling water. Glinthawks had been sent to harry the streets, and a Stormbird had wheeled alarmingly close, but as the Eclipse abandoned the climb they diverted the machines back. Good news and bad.

Helis is spotted early on and Avad catches a glimpse of him: the red plumes of his helmet, his size and bulk — an unfamiliar sick anger sweeps him, but it is only a glimpse: there are rumors he falls soon after; rumors he has killed the entire defense alone. Petra’s cannons ring out and out and out until their individual sounds merge into an endless roar.

And then the Spire bursts with light, twisting and shifting and unfurling above all of Meridian.

Did they believe it? The former Sun-Kings of the Carja, the men anointed and blessed and crowned in the temple in the Sun’s first light, chosen and appointed and true? Did they truly believe they had been chosen by the Sun? Had the Sun ever spoken to them, in dreams or visions or fumes of paint, guiding their hands, guiding their purpose, leading Meridian through their humbled flesh? Or was it a falsehood born of hope and ego, and none of the Kings past had ever been guided by anything but their hearts and their wills?

The Spire pulses light and light again, red and shuddering, and despite the noise and smoke and shouts the entire world falls silent around him.

Was it all true? And was Avad, therefore, the only one who had never heard a thing? A pretender, just as men whispered, invalid by blood and act, under whom the world would surely fall to ruin?

An answer, that’s all he wants. To know if it is him or if it is the world, if he has been forsaken or if he is listening for nothing. Understanding, for once in his life, instead of standing, like always, doing nothing, knowing nothing, watching from afar as everyone dies and leaves and fights far from his helpless stare.

Ersa is gone: she had rushed with him to the solarium and rushed off again almost immediately. Alone, he had instead thought of Aloy, who had foretold this battle, foretold the Spire, foretold even Ersa and her life and rescue. Who alone had saved Itamen and killed Bahavis and saved his life, least of all —

It is not to the Sun he prays, watching over the battle, and if part of him is shamed by it, it is small. She will save him again.

She must.

No one is enjoying the party, and Avad can feel a migraine blooming and pulsing behind his eyes as he smiles at the conclusion of his remarks.

In deference for the Nora, instead of being held in the Royal Plaza or palace itself, Avad had arranged for the banquet to be held in Meridian’s lower city, tired guards and stewards hauling tables and food the long way down the city, musicians and performers and priests dug out from whatever holes they had been sheltered inside.

In deference to the fire, they had set up at the edge of the river at the edge of the Royal Maizelands. Someone had set up exquisitely carved screens to hide the view of the destruction and common folk beyond.

Outside of the barrier of screens and tents, tables and ale had been distributed to any common man or woman who wished to partake: officially, all of Meridian was part of the feast and thanks-giving at Her survival.

Unofficially, Avad felt it was all a massive waste of time.

Extinguishing the fire had taken twice as long as the battle itself, and he had been pulled into planning the victory feast before his city had stopped smoking. It was a necessary show of power, he knew: to show he lived when the Eclipse did not, to prove that Meridian had the wealth and food and ale to prove she was unscathed, that the death and destruction had not meant anything to her. He had spoken just now of the Sun’s light remaining strong, the misguided dead and perished, the need to give thanks now that dawn had finally come, and felt none of it.

The air reeked of burnt wood and metal.

He is trapped on the dais that had been erected for his use, careful to keep his face measured and polite. This area was reserved for those wealthy and important enough to be allowed to gaze upon the Sun-King, as well as the heroes of the hour.

Just as notable were those who did not attend. There were very few Carja. Nasadi had refused to allow Itamen outside the safety of the palace. Several prominent nobles had been unwilling to associate with so many foreigners. Sun-Hawk Talanah was happily chatting with Erend and a few of the Vanguard, but no other Hawks of the Lodge had deigned to appear.

So much for the light of the Sun burning away our divisions. He’s sure Marad is making thorough note of who hadn’t shown up.

He has not seen so much as a shadow of Aloy.

Or, for that matter, Ersa.

He descends the steep stairs of the dais carefully. Sun-Kings are meant to sit above and observe, not participate with those less than them — everyone, in other words — but his head is aching and he has less patience for the formality than usual. As he does, he looks through the crowd, trying to catch Erend’s eye: he’d surely know where the women are. His sister at least.

Marad steps to Avad’s right.

“Have you seen Aloy?” Avad asks, before Marad can remind him to leave the party and greet the common men and lesser soldiers. He will, of course. Just… later.

“Perhaps you can ask the Nora War-Chief when you speak to her,” Marad says.

“I was to speak to her?” he asks, dryly: this is the first he’s heard of it.

“Before she runs back to her Sacred Lands.” Marad is too polite to grab Avad by the elbow, but Avad follows his gaze. The Nora braves are in the cordon and look profoundly miserable for the most part. About half are men, all dressed in leather and furs and machine plates, with the customary elaborately styled hair. Their so-called War-Chief is armored no more elaborately than her men, but even so she is obvious at a glance for the way the Nora arrange themselves around her… and for the fact that her discomfort is greater than any of her warriors.

“I doubt I would be welcome among them,” he points out, his headache getting worse. The embassy had seemed like such a triumph, not a year ago. The idea of a group of Nora Braves leaving their Sacred Lands to fight alongside the Carja, a feat beyond his most optimistic dreams. That was before the tribe had faced two Eclipse massacres.

“All the more reason, my King.”

The crowd, such as it is, parts wherever Avad walks, and when it becomes obvious he is heading towards the huddle of Nora, Erend pulls himself away from his friends.

Avad waits for him to catch up. Most people in attendance are huddled around the tables of food — or more commonly, the alcohol. There is a clear separation not just between the Nora and the rest, but between classes as well. Talanah might be speaking with the Oseram, and Uthid and Petra are surrounded by curious men, but most of the Carja are keeping to themselves.

“Any advice?” he asks Erend quietly, nodding at the Nora.

“I said hey to Sona when they first showed up, and I thought she was gonna murder me right there,” Erend admits, rubbing at his neck.

Avad keeps his smile polite and neutral. The War Chief shoulders to the front of her band as he approaches, Erend at his heel, and Avad nods deeply in greeting — aware that the Nora will likely not understand that in bowing so deeply he is in a real way showing deference, that the gesture is utterly pointless, but also that at least half the Carja will watch and note and gossip about it for weeks. “War Chief Sona. It is my deepest honor to be given this chance to offer you my thanks and friendship.”

He is careful to not say at last or in any way imply that she has been in Meridian for weeks now, ignoring and shunning his invitations.

“We are not here for your friendship,” the woman spits.

“Nevertheless, you have it, for the debt I owe you is great.” Debt, he decides, swapping out for his first impulse of and my regard as well: he very much doubts the Nora care at all what he regards. Debts at least can be paid.

“We are here by the will of the Goddess, not for trinkets or shards. Do not think we have forgotten our dead, their deaths at your hands!”

Avad’s migraine throbs, and he is once again glad he is well-schooled in keeping his expression pleasant and calm. To mention that he had nothing to do with any of it, that no man here did, would be utterly pointless. “I too hold the atrocities of the Eclipse and of the Mad King close to my heart,” he says. “I can only pray that with the favor of your Goddess and our Sun, we have at last put an end to their years of atrocities. That our joining together now, that our defeat of the Eclipse, is the heralding of a new dawn where we may learn to place our wounds aside.”

He’s paraphrasing his earlier speech to the assembled and struggles not to wince at the repetition. The worst part is that he knows the Nora as she glares murder is not putting half as much thought into her own words.

Her jaw twists as if she’s thinking about spitting on him. “Is there something you wanted, or have you just come to speak pretty words at us?”

There are many things Avad wants. To lie down with a cool cloth for his head, just to start. Damage and fatality reports, meetings with construction guilds and Oseram builder’s unions and somehow to have the shards for it all. Peace, nebulous and vague as it is: that he can go even one day without seeing loathing in the eyes of those he must speak and deal with.

“I am afraid I have little to offer for myself but pretty words,” he says, smiling just enough that it will sound wry. Pretty words and a pulse and a father and grandfather and great-grandfather who were Sun-Kings.

I’m the only friend you have, Ersa had said, just before the battle, like an accusation, like a threat. Was it better or worse that she was right? With her at least he could speak honestly, without first calculating his every word. Ersa was nearly as guarded as he, so terrified of her own weaknesses. That honesty had been something they’d shared. Not thrown as a dagger.

“But for the Carja,” he continues with hardly a hesitation, “I can offer much on their behalf, to which end I am forced to beg you for one final favor. Would you consent to carrying a message of friendship with you back to the Sacred Lands?”

“No,” says Sona.

What? He stops himself from saying it, although he sees and hears Erend shift and grumble at his side. Would it be better to argue or accept her dismissal?

“I’ll do it,” one of the Nora says: a man a few years younger than Avad with a dark complexion and the same paint markings as the War-Chief steps forward, half rolling his eyes.

“Varl,” Erend says, relief palpable in his voice.

“What do you want me to tell them?” the man — Varl — asks, pointedly ignoring Sona’s glare.

“Carja promises are meaningless,” Sona spits. “Do not waste your time on their words. We have completed our task for the Goddess and will be done of them.”

“I shall have a scroll prepared,” Avad says awkwardly, as Varl continues to wait and ignore the War-Chief. “When do you depart for your home?”

“Dawn,” says Sona, as Varl frowns.

“A propitious time for a journey.” A scroll is not quite what he had hoped, although he had kept his expectations low and was glad for it. Correspondence with the Matriarchs had worked once before, and if he had wished for a bit less open hostility from the Nora…

“Give it to Teb,” Varl says, indicating the group of Carja and Oseram gathered around Petra. To Avad’s surprise, he notices now a Nora man around them, actually smiling as he says something to one of the Carja. “He’ll make sure it gets to the High Matriarchs safely.”

“I shall. Thank you for your council, and may your journey home be lit by the sun.” He spouts off a few more stock phrases, adding a few more considerations to his pile: the strange Nora man who would leave his fellows to talk with outsiders, the drafting of this missive, the possibility of sending the Nora home with goods and supplies as some sort of bribe…

Peace and friendship might be a pet cause, but the Nora Sacred Lands are embarrassingly large and wealthy with artifacts and materials their Goddess disallows them from harvesting. If he could secure open borders…

He says his goodbyes and returns to his dais in search of chilled wine for his headache. Erend follows. “She’s got a stick so far up her ass that I don’t think she even remembers it’s there,” he grumbles.

Avad does not smile. “Have you seen Aloy?” he asks. He’d sort of meant to ask the Nora, but that conversation had been difficult enough as it was.

“Uh - she’s still at the Alight, I think,” Erend says, twisting his head to look in the direction of the Spire. “Said she had something to take care of.”

“I see,” he says, disquieted. He really should go to the Alight himself, sooner rather than later. To inspect damages and all that. And if she’s there…

He dismisses Erend back to his friends, but before he can ask for his wine, Avad is approached by a noble seeking to congratulate him on the end to the war and the proof of the Sun’s blessing of his reign.

Avad smiles, and says all the right words.

The party drags on and the sun sets. Avad makes certain to speak to and thank every person of importance at the gathering, and sends Marad off to put together some sort of diplomatic proposal to hand to the Nora before they leave. News comes in now and then and Avad wishes he was anywhere but here, a sentiment that seems to be shared by at least half those gathered: talk stutters and fails, the music is half-assed, food is picked at but alcohol is not. Guests begin to leave as the sky darkens, and shortly after sunset the Nora are all the center of attention again, as the Nora Sona and Varl begin arguing.

Avad had been keeping half an eye on the Nora, and had seen Varl leave their band to speak — and drink — with Erend and his gang, but had missed the start of the fight.

It was difficult to miss the rest of it, however.

The two Nora were standing facing one another, their voices booming and overlapping as they shouted. Avad started to raise a hand to summon a guard to disperse the fight, then thought better of it.

Sona appeared to be reprimanding Varl for something he wished to do, while he was arguing in vain that it was necessary; this caused Avad to briefly worry this was about his diplomacy efforts, as it hardly boded well for him if so. “Your sister would obey me!” Sona shouts, her voice ringing over the crowd.

Somehow, that ends the fight. Varl stares silently at the War-Chief, swaying on his feet, and then turns away.

Erend rushes over and puts his arm around Varl’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you some water, sober you up,” he mutters, not as quietly as he probably thinks.

For a moment everyone seems quiet, and then onlookers turn away, Sona, furious, glaring and turning on her own heel to retreat to the Nora camp. Just like that, the party is over, it seems, and Avad gives in to the temptation to rub at his forehead, closing his eyes for just a moment’s relief as his guests mutter and disperse. What a disaster this evening has been.

“I’m going to the Alight,” he says when a pair of Palace guards appear to escort him home. What he wants is to sleep, but this is a close second, and now is his best chance.

Marad catches up to them before they’ve gone far.

They take a long and indirect route, as the village is mostly rubble and the road is a mess of ditches, blockades, and machine carcasses. More guards hurry to assist the journey with lights and by clearing the worst of the rubble, and while sometimes Avad feels badly for the effort he causes men just by existing, tonight is not such a night.

The road across the river reeks of machine blood and oil, aggravating his headache and sending a wave of nausea through him. A Deathbringer corpse, blocky and massive and strangely unreal, lies halfway across the road and the party must carefully skirt around: in the dark it is hard to make out the features of the machine, only the mass of cold metal, and Avad tries to avoid getting closer than he must.

The path up the Alight is littered with boulders, the stairs and paving torn up in places from the battle, and the going is slow in the dark even with torches. Several times Avad needs to wait for the guards to check and clear the road before he is allowed to walk it for himself. Marad waits with him, but does not ask why.

It is nearly an hour before they have at last reached the summit. A mountain of Machine corpses lie scattered around the plaza, buildings in ruin, and a Deathbringer bigger than the one they’d passed below lies dead on its side. Avad has been to the Alight many times at night for ceremonies, but has never seen it so dark and quiet, even crowded with Machines. There had been more guards posted at the gate and human casualties had been removed, but otherwise the Alight is untouched as if the battle had only just concluded, instead of the three days or so it had truly been.

“HADES had been housed in an orb, carried here by that machine,” Marad says, now taking the lead to escort Avad around the corpses to the orb in question. “I have ordered it to remain untouched.”

At the base of the spire, Avad sees a large dark shape surrounded by a cordon of torches. As they approach, a small figure that had been kneeling in observation of the container stands — “Aloy?” he asks hopefully, unthinking, idiotic.

The two women look nothing alike.

Ersa’s expression is impassive. “Try again.”

“No one is to disturb the vessel,” Marad says, aggrieved. “Not even you, Captain.”

“I didn’t touch it,” she says, raising her hand in supplication. Just one.

She’s been careful to wear long sleeves ever since being let out of her sickroom, but he recalls easily enough the twisted shape of her arm, the startling maiming of her hand. Her arm had horrified him much less than the wastage of her body: thin and drawn, so much of her strength and muscle withered away. She had been defiant rather than shy, and Avad was not so foolish he hadn’t recognized it as some sort of test of his character, that if he either faltered or looked too long she would use it as an excuse to leave forever…

Too many tests.

Moving closer, Avad can see a spear still stuck into the orb from when Aloy had slain it, but is more interested in the make of the sphere itself. He has never seen construction of its ilk before, and yet something of its slick metal and ridges reminds him of the Spire itself. The thought turns his stomach.

“You were missed at the victory party,” he says to Ersa, stepping back from the orb.

“Doubt it,” she mutters. Ersa had always had a certain temper and sharpness, but lately…

“Have you been here all this time?” Marad asks.

“More or less,” Ersa answers, coming around the orb to join the men. “A few Eclipse machines broke away from the force into the Jewel,” she says, gesturing to the far side of the Alight. “I had some men cull the larger ones. Sent a couple of scouts to tail an Eclipse Longleg, see if it leads them to a base or camp we don’t know about.”

“In which direction?”

“South.” Ersa starts to rub at her elbow, and seems to catch herself, glancing at Avad and then away.

“In recent weeks we have heard rumors of Eclipse to the south as well as East. Not to mention their raids on the Savage East. I would not be remotely surprised were several camps discovered. I’ll speak with Janeva before they depart, in the event that Sunstone has witnessed sign of them.”

“I’ll see what I can dig up.” Ersa’s thoroughness has always been reassuring to Avad, but he also knows a pretext when he hears one. Even so.

“Speak with Uthid,” he says. “He was hardly held in esteem by his cohort, but he may have some knowledge of Eclipse supply chains.”

Ersa’s expression tightens, and Avad tries not to do the same. He knows they have met, and that Uthid spoke highly of her after. “Right,” she says. “I’ll have Erend work with him.”

Whatever he had hoped to see here, Avad is not certain he has found it.

It is a long walk back to the city.

“You were looking for the Savior of Meridian?” Ersa asks as they leave the Alight. He will hear Aloy’s new title many times in the months to come, but this is the first: sarcastic, almost bitter, perhaps? He wonders if she is jealous of Aloy.

“You as well,” he replies diplomatically.

“I couldn’t find her either,” Ersa says.

The celebration of victory is still going when they return to Meridian, looser and less formal with time and ale. He hears Erend before he sees the Vanguard, and expects Ersa to leave to join her brother. Instead, she follows him and Marad up the mesa.

The upper city is quieter than the lower, with fewer soldiers to drink in the streets, and the Palace quieter still. All he wants is to sleep, but he will rise before dawn in order to make it to the Temple for sunrise; this leaves him four hours of sleep. Quite probably less.

Marad says his goodbyes — he will not return to court until late morning — but Ersa remains Avad’s shadow as he sheds guards and attendants.

Rather than the larger and more opulent Sun-King’s apartments, Avad has used the Queen’s apartments as his own for these past years (with Nasadi back, it is yet another thing he needs to sort out and reconsider). They still take up most of one of the top floors of the Palace: a guardroom and several chambers for wardrobe and storage, followed by close to a dozen rooms for Avad’s private use: not merely a sleep-chamber but also an audience room, a solar, study, reception room, two large balconies — one east and one west — and so on.

It is entirely appropriate, and indeed not at all unusual, for Ersa to join him at the end of the day in one of these more public rooms to discuss some task or another. The pretext that she sometimes then sleeps in one of the unoccupied niches meant for attendants or ladies in waiting is a creakier excuse, but one that has gone politely unquestioned for almost four years.

Although he’s surprised that seems to be her intention now.

Attendants help him to undress, unclasping each of his dozens of ornaments and hidden ties and buckles in turn. His arms ache by the end of the day, and he sometimes forgets how badly until he feels the relief of being undressed. Ersa loiters as if she has something she needs to say, and he’s curious but he’s also… tired.

“Why did you not attend the celebration?” he asks, impatient with waiting for her to explain why she has tailed him here when he just wants sleep.

“The victory party for the saviors of the Sundom, you mean?” she says; she had been pacing, wincing and stretching out her leg, and turns to him. “I spent the entire battle watching on high like some sort of —“ She looks away.

Highborn Carja?

“It is not always easy to be forced to stand by as others fight,” Avad says. “That is why we must express our gratitude for they who do.” He runs his hand over his face, dismissing his attendants for the evening.

“I guess you’d know all about it,” Ersa mutters, leaning against the wall.

It bites at him. “I am not your enemy,” he says, allowing more emotion into his voice as the door to his dressing room closes behind the attendants. “I like feeling helpless no more than you.”

“It’s different,” she says, some of the frustration leaving her voice. “You’ve always —“

He does not want to hear what she is about to accuse him of. “Did you have business with me tonight? I do not mean to seem abrupt, but I really am very tired.”

She flushes, and he’d almost think she was shamed or embarrassed if that made any sense. “Forget it. I…” he waits as she struggles to put some thought to words. It takes her some time and he watches her all the while: her uncomfortably thinness, the thick stubble of her hair, the ragged scar now etched across her forehead. Remembers the body in the tomb that had borne her name, faceless and still and cold. Mourned and then returned, sharp and thin and angry. “I didn’t go to the party because it wouldn’t have been right, but I can’t just keep sitting on my ass being useless, smiling and waving while everyone else does the work!” She pinches the bridge of her nose.

Like him.

“I don’t know!” she continues, looking away, her weight against the wall. “I know I’m still fucking recovering, but I’m not going to recover, not from this.” She jerks her right arm. “I — what am I supposed to do? Go back to the Claim and get fucking married? I can’t be done, I can’t just be useless, I need…”

She is looking to him for advice, for help, almost pleading, Avad knows this, but still her words strike at him. If she believes them to be so useless… Nor does he disagree, not now, his head aching, days spent watching and smiling and praising the actions of others as he stands and smiles and waits like a valuable jewel. But sometimes that is all there is, and they have talked of just that in the past: change does not come in a single sunrise, in fifty sunrises, and patience and politeness and waiting are all he is good for…

Go back to the Claim and get married? Not that they could ever marry, not that they were courting or in any sort of relationship born of feelings beyond affection, but he’s very tired. “If you think it would be an improvement,” is all he says, after too long a pause.

He rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes, only after remembering he had yet to wash his face and his makeup will now be badly smudged. “Regardless of how useful you are, you have my word you will always have a place in Meridian,” he adds, remembering the assurance she’d sought. “We owe you that and more. But for now, I really must say good-night.”

“Don’t,” she says. She catches his hand in hers and he flinches — sees her amputated fingers on the floor, pale and thin and rotting — it is her left hand, but she yanks it back at his reaction.

He winces.

Her expression grows cold. “Don’t pity me,” she says.

He remembers the body in the tomb. His guilt and his grief and his —

I’m the only friend you have.

For the first time, Avad wonders if it is her pity he should fear. “Of course not,” he says, polite and very tired. “We are friends.”

Chapter Text

four.

“Hang on,” Erend says, walking off the road. He’d seen something off there in the corner of his eye, and stumbling over a rotting log and down towards the bank of the river, he sees it again. A little red sapling, except like no sapling he’s ever seen before…

“What is it?” Joruf calls out warily.

“Blight.” He’s never seen it this small before, newly sprouted, but it’s already starting to flake and spread its pollen. He hears the guys trampling up behind him. “Think we can… dig it up? Before it spreads?”

He’s already scraping at the soil around it. It’s been a couple of months since the shit started popping up all over the Sundom, and once it’s set it’s impossible to get out. When some cropped up in Pitchcliff a while back, they burnt the entire field to ash, only for it to grow back within days.

When they get back to Meridian an hour later, Erend’s got the sprout folded up in his bag and a rash on his hands from touching it — even through his gloves. He drops the sample off at the Temple on his way back to the palace, and the priests give him some oil to soothe the burn.

It makes him smell like flowers.

Today’s one of the rare times Avad is holding open court — a day when anyone can come to the Palace to ask for favors or aid, or just gawk at the Sun-King, and it’s the Palace is packed all the way to the bridge, unlucky Vanguard and resigned Carja guards trying to keep everyone in order. Because of all the people, Avad had chosen to hold court indoors, in the big hall in the East tower. The place always gives Erend a headache: walls and ceiling are covered in elaborate panels and screens that catch and twist all the light, with the biggest and fanciest screen of all used to hide the Sun-King from direct view of the masses, most of whom are sitting on benches or standing against the walls.

Erend gets to skip the line, but Avad’s speaking with some Oseram when he comes in. “You are so quick to run from your obligations?” one of them is half shouting.

“The Carja hold little in higher regard than our friendship with the Oseram,” Avad says. “We simply have no maize to sell.”

“Bullshit.” A murmur from the crowd, who don’t like foreigners speaking to the Sun-King like that. “This whole city is surrounded by fields and orchards! You think we didn’t notice?”

“The Blight has affected our stores as well,” the King says calmly.

The next petitioner is a Carja merchant, complaining about increased maize tax. If there’s such a shortage, why is the Crown demanding more from her people? An additional mark taxed on all crops is a significant increase, especially in the face of this so-called shortage.

Erend hands his messenger satchel off to Marad and goes to leave, but Marad raises a hand to stop him. “Any news?” he asks softly, so as not to interrupt the stream of petitioners.

“Nah,” he says. They’d uncovered a couple of Eclipse camps in the Jewel just as Ersa had suspected: an old cauldron now overrun with Stalkers and worse, as well as a base high up on the cliffs. They’re less useful as information as they are for salvage, and Erend’s been spending a lot of time ferrying men and workers back and forth lately. They were using Sunstone as a base of operations, over Janeva’s loud objections; the messenger pouch had been delivered as a favor on Janeva’s behalf. “It looks like Helis spent some time at Clifftop, but anything useful was crushed in the landslides. The place has been abandoned for a while.”

“And yet it does us little good to assume,” Marad says, dismissing him.

“I found some Blight,” Erend says first, only just remembering. He describes the sprout he’d dug up and brought to the temple for study.

“Good thinking, Captain,” Marad says, sounding a little too surprised for Erend’s taste: he shrugs.

“Have you heard anything? About… you know? Mr. Mystery?”

“Unfortunately not,” Marad says with a glance up at the throne.

Erend does leave this time, offering a little wave in the direction of the dais he isn’t sure Avad actually sees. He’s got the rest of the day off — the guys are probably already at the pub — but his arms still itch and he decides to take a quick bath first.

The Vanguard barracks are crowded. They’ve finally recruited a bunch of new kids to replace the ones killed by Dervhal, but they’re not totally up to snuff when it comes to fighting yet, meaning that the rest of the Vanguard are still pulling extra patrols and escort jobs while the kids get trained. The yard is also crowded with workers and smells of sawdust: Erend had hired a few girls for the Vanguard, thinking Ersa would like it, and so they were working to rebuild the barracks into men’s and women’s quarters.

After a quick wash, he checks to see if Ersa is in the captain’s office: she isn’t. It’s a tiny little room at the end of the barracks, with a desk and locked chest for shards and a stack of ledgers and account books and contracts. He’s tried to get his head around all the bullshit that comes with being Captain: deciding patrol schedules, managing pay and leave and supplies, writing contracts and accepting or revising them from others, coordinating not just with Avad and the Palace guard, but with Uthid and the Carja military and some mercenary guilds…

Just looking at the mess of papers gives him a headache. Mixed with guilt when he recognizes the mess of Ersa’s handwriting on a few of the papers at the top of the stack. She is still learning to write left-handed.

He picks up the paper, for the hundredth time telling himself he needs to do a better job helping out, maybe do some of these contracts for her. It’s a half-filled requisition form for the supplies the Vanguard goes through like water: leather straps, oil for maintaining leather and oil for maintaining steel, ale, bolts, resin, and so on.

Ersa was about as recovered as she was ever going to be, but her constitution was still weak and she has yet to regain much of her strength — or learn to fight left-handed with a blade. Erend has been acting Captain for months now, while she stays in Meridian and handles the paperwork. He knows she hates it. Knows it makes her feel like an invalid, an Oseram home-wife, and for the hundred and first time Erend tells himself he needs to start doing the paperwork. For her sake.

His eyes fall on the bottom of the form: two canisters of blaze.

Erend thinks angrily of Dervhal.

Months ago, when he’d found the guy’s second workshop, he’d also found contracts to buy blaze. By now, they’d tracked his inventory and confirmed it had all been destroyed by Aloy. They’ve figured out most of his contacts, and Marad has interrogated a few to see if they were idiots or active conspirators.

All except one. Roldan Tradesman had sold Dervhal blaze, but all of Erend and Marad’s searching hadn’t turned up anyone by that name. A fake name means the guy had had something to hide, but it wasn’t even a fake name that had been attached to any othersales, at least not in Pitchcliff, Free Heap, or Meridian. Erend had even checked Cut Cliffs a few weeks ago, since they were big importers of the stuff. Roldan Tradesman didn’t exist. But Dervhal had gotten the blaze from someone.

It’s the only loose thread left, and it’s been bugging him.

Erend adds wire and rope to the procurement form before he leaves.

“Hey! Erend! Come warm your ass over here!”

When Erend ducks into one of Meridian’s taverns that caters specifically to Oseram, he’s a little surprised to see Petra holding court of her own at one of the tables. He waves down a server on his way. “What are you doing out of Free Heap?”

“Drinking, what else?” she laughs. There’s half a dozen Oseram men at the table who Erend doesn’t know, but they all exchange greetings and toasts.

In a few minutes, Erend is delivered a tankard and a bowl of stew. It’s the first real meal he’s had today, and for a few minutes all he does is eat and listen to the others complain.

“Half the damn city’s being rebuilt, and the Carja are saying they don’t need to buy our lumber?” one of the men is saying.

Another guy, bald as an egg but with one hell of a mustache, drains his tankard and thuds it onto the table. “What they don’t want is to sell us their precious maize. Couple cousins of mine got hired to guard a caravan, guess where Avad’s sending it? Sunfall!”

“Tin promises,” the first man mutters. “What about you, Petra? Free Heap doing alright?”

“Sure,” she says vaguely, refusing to elaborate.

She doesn’t need to. “Yeah, but you’re fucking chartered, aren’t you? You have it made in that slagheap of yours,” the first guy says.

“I got it easy, do I?” Petra gestures at her breasts, laughing at Baldie’s expression. “I’m not a damn Ealderman, Daruf.”

“Free Heap’s part of the Sundom, just like Meridian. Avad’ll send you trade if you ask.”

“Just like Sunfall?” Petra says, and Baldie and Daruf scowl.

“What’s going on?” Erend asks, putting down his bowl after drinking out the leftover broth.

“These babies came here from the Claim to buy food,” Petra says, gesturing vaguely.

Baldie hits the table with his fist. “Don’t give me that shit. The two of you might be half-Carja, but even you know it’s wrong for Avad to treat us like this. I fought for him and he promised us help and favor, and now that we’re here to collect, they’re sending their food off to Sunfall and the Mad King’s loyalists!”

Erend feels awkward in his Vanguard uniform, and covers it with a sip of ale.

“Half-Carja? Come on,” Petra says, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t be cute. You’ve been here what? Fifteen years? Twenty? When was the last time you even set foot in the Claim?”

“What, setting foot in the Claim is what makes you Oseram? I can out-build and out-delve you any day of the week,” she says, real annoyance in her voice now. “I’ve built cannons and elevators and damn towns, Hilgar, while you were struggling to attach a nail to a piece of scrap!”

Baldie — Hilgar — waves his hand, embarrassed. Stupid to try and out-match Petra. Even if she isn’t an Ealderman, she’s the closest thing to one this side of the Claim and they all know it.

“We used to be fucking builders,” Daruf mutters. “We used to make the world, and now we’re just cogs, begging the Carja for shards and scraps. Years of flooding in the Claim, now this Blight, and we’re crawling to Avad like apprentices to the forge.”

“Dervhal was right,” Hilgar spits.

Erend’s stool goes crashing into the table behind them, he’s up so fast. “Say that again?” Left his damn hammer at the barracks, but his gauntlets are reinforced steel and if this slag —

Hilgar yanks himself to his feet too. “We’re Oseram! Not Carja courtiers! Why are we begging them for help? We should take what we’re owed, not —“

“You say that goat-fucker’s name one more time,” Erend warns.

“Yeah, you’re a good little Carja ass-licker —“ He punches Hilgar square in the face.

The asshole goes flying, and Erend knocks Daruf back with his elbow when the guy tries to pull him back; he’s going around the table to kick the shit out of Hilgar, who is scrambling back into balance — “He’s so great, the hell was he doing killing Oseram, huh? Crippling my sister, you tell me how great he is —“

He almost punches Petra when she yanks him back. “Cool it!” she snaps, stepping between the men, and Erend turns to spit, seething. Looks around to see most of the tavern watching, waiting to see if the fight continues or breaks up. He meets as many eyes as he can, daring them to say anything, to give him any kind of excuse.

“Everyone knows Avad’s fucking your damn sister,” Hilgar mutters, bracing one arm on the table and holding the other over his nose.

Erend surges forward, but Petra gets there first, slamming Hilgar’s jaw with her studded gauntlet. He goes down and she stands her boot on his stomach. “See, you deserved that,” she says calmly. “So now that we’re all square, why don’t you get out before you make shit any worse for yourself?”

She puts her arm on Erend’s as the men stumble to their feet, Hilgar glaring and Daruf trying to help him walk and look apologetic at the same time. Petra orders another round of ales, but it’s some time before Erend can bring himself to sit down, he’s so mad. Shaking with it, wanting to follow them out and really show them what happens when you talk slander about —

“Sit,” Petra says.

He sits. “Those friends of yours?”

“Of course not,” she says. “I got to know ‘em over ales. Wanted to know how things were in the Claim. Drink.”

Once again, he obeys her, but the fire of the alcohol does nothing for the burning in his gut. He wants to punch someone. Preferably Hilgar. He hopes his nose is broken.

The fuzz that quickly follows is welcome, and if he doesn’t exactly relax he feels some of his urge to punch draining away. Petra is looking around the tavern idly, and leans towards him. “There’ll more of that where they came from,” she says.

“Like hell.”

“You can’t punch them all,” she says, sounding a little amused, before sobering. “The Claim’s near famine.”

Erend has a second where he doesn’t give a shit, but home’s a lot more than two assholes. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, for the past few years the Carja have been selling the Oseram all the food they could buy,” Petra says, tracing an invisible line on the table. “And there’s never been an Ealderman who wasn’t useless as wheels on a forge, and so instead of planting potatoes, everyone’s been clearing trees and quarrying to get more of Meridian’s wealth in their pockets.”

Erend groans, remembering. “Except now we got the Blight.”

“Yep.” Petra shrugs and tips back her ale. “Suddenly all those supply wagons have stopped, Avad’s being careful with his maize, and folks are taking that as well as you’d expect.”

“How’s Free Heap?” he asks, wondering for the first time why Petra’s in Meridian in the first place.

“Yeah, that’s why I stopped here,” she confirms. “It’s an Oseram town, but it’s on Carja land and pay Carja taxes, so the king isn’t cutting them off. Besides, the Heap’s Meridian’s best supplier of power cells and batteries. They should be fine.”

Erend frowns. “Them?”

“I’m heading west,” Petra says. “To the Daunt.”

“You’re going to work on Lone Light?” For the past few years, the fort at the edge of the Sundom had gone abandoned: the only real pass west was through Eclipse territory. Now that it was safe to travel, Avad had sent two centuries of Carja and Forge knows how many laborers and workers to fix it up. Erend doesn’t see the point, really. On maps, the Daunt is small: a quarry and a couple of mines. But there are closer quarries, and as far as he’s concerned, if the Tenakth want it, they’re welcome to it.

“Nah,” Petra says. “Apparently some slag founded a proper town in the valley while the Carja weren’t paying attention. Free Heap takes care of itself nowadays, and I’m curious. Besides, the Forbidden West. There’s got to be some interesting salvage out that way.”

Cities of sand, cliffs of ice, and cannibals, more like it. Erend rubs at his knuckles with his other hand. “Seems like a waste of time,” he says.

“Rather waste my time than deal with trade laws,” Petra laughs.

“Yeah, well, if those shitheads make more problems, I’ll put them down,” Erend grumbles. “Thinking that bastard had the right of it…” It’s still bothering him, even with a couple of ales in him and the satisfaction of seeing blood on the bastard’s face. What Petra said, mostly. That there would be more like them. Just once, just one time, can’t people just get along? Work together without making a big production out of it? He’s Oseram and Avad’s Carja and it doesn’t bother him one bit. The hell do other people get so worked up about?

“If you get sick of dealing with politics, come out west and hit me up,” Petra says. “Forge knows I’ll need a good drinking partner.”

Erend toasts her. “Thanks,” he says, shaking his head to try and clear his thoughts, “but I doubt I’ll ever set foot in that shitshow.”

Unlike the Oseram, for whom breakfast is just a chance to eat some food and drown out a hangover, for the Carja, the first meal of the day’s proximity to sunrise means it is yet another reason for excessive formality.

It is hand’s down Erend’s least favorite shift to be stuck on guard duty for.

After all the attendants and less important guards arrive on the terrace and take their places around the table, Nasadi arrives with her kid, both dressed for a party. Erend feels bad for Itamen in particular: his clothes have to weigh as much as he does.

Once they’ve been seated, Avad appears from a different door, dressed even more ornately and looking relatively awake for a guy Erend knows from the schedules has been awake for a few hours already. He stands before the table and offers a formal greeting to his family; Nasadi and Itamen then need to stand back up to greet him.

Nasadi offers thanks to Avad and they exchange kisses on the cheek which, Erend figures, must be incredibly awkward for them both: she might be his step mother, but she’s a year younger than him and being married to the Mad King is nothing too brag about. Avad does not kiss his brother, which is good because by now Itamen is looking antsy. Finally, after all of that, Avad sits at the head of the table, and the Dowager Queen and his half brother sit back down as well. Breakfast is brought out on several platters. Avad is served first, and only once he has tasted and approved of each dish are the others served and allowed to eat.

Sometimes there’s a bit where a priest comes in, but apparently the royal family is feeling casual today.

The entire time, Erend’s just standing there in formal uniform with his thumb up his ass, trying to look attentive. After what feels like a year, Avad waves to allow the dozen guards and attendants to withdraw so that the royals can eat and talk in relative privacy. Erend hides a yawn. The food smells good, and he’s getting hungry.

After breakfast, the whole ritual plays out again in reverse. Nasadi leaves with Itamen and a trail of guards and attendants, Vanasha appearing out of nowhere. Itamen brightens considerably when she does, chatting away — for the first time — as the three of them depart.

Erend notices Avad watching them go, but then Avad waves him over.

“Everything okay, sir?” Erend hazards. The rest of the guards hang back.

Avad is still at the table. “Have a seat.”

“What’s going on?” he asks, trying to figure out how formal he’s supposed to be. When it’s just Avad, or just Avad and Marad, even, it’s one thing. But he’s never been asked to sit at the guy’s breakfast table before.

He sits awkwardly. Carja tables are so low to the ground, he always feels gigantic and clumsy when he has to sit at one. The attendants and other guards are still hanging around, and he feels itchy about it. He’s seen Ersa do this hundreds of times, just sit down and make herself at home, but he’s not liking the experience so far.

Avad almost looks amused at Erend’s discomfort. “Have you spoken to your sister today?” he asks, as though reading Erend’s mind.

“Uh, no,” he says, immediately worried. According to the schedule posted in the barracks her morning was supposed to be spent escorting some Sun-Priests around the farmlands with Joruf and Hilgen. “Is she sick again?” Erend asks. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, you know she doesn’t listen to me.”

Avad does not smile. “I have decided that your role as temporary Captain of the Vanguard will, in fact, be permanent,” he says. “Your sister has been informed. Given her condition, it is unlikely she will be able to resume full duties, and —“

“What?”

“— And she agrees you are the best and most qualified person to serve as her replacement.”

The table almost overturns, he stands up so fast. “What the hell?”

Several of the guards step closer, drawn by his shout.

Avad closes his eyes but shows no other emotion. “Do you object to our decision, Captain?”

“Our decision?” Erend snaps. “Like hell! What, you think just because Ersa got hurt she’s not good enough for you anymore? We’ve spent five years working for your ass, I foughtfor you, and just like that you’re shoving us away like trash?”

Not even a week ago he was fighting some lugs in a tavern for Avad, and this is the thanks he gets?

“I am shoving neither of you aside. Please sit down before someone thinks you are trying to assassinate me?” Avad says testily. Erend looks around to see a lot of the Carja guards have drawn closer, hands on swords and spears, warily waiting to see if they must protect their king.

Erend scowls around at all of them. A few look apologetic.

“Erend,” Avad says. “Please.”

He sits.

“You and Ersa will always have a place in Meridian. But the role of Captain requires more than your sister is capable of at the moment, and there is a task I require the Captain for.”

“Ersa agreed to this?” Erend asks, feeling like he might throw up. There’s no way she ever would have. Not his sister, who had always driven herself to be better, to be on top, a born leader, better than any Ealderman — either Avad is shoving her out, or, worse…

“Yes,” Avad says.

Stymied, Erend just looks at him, but can’t tell what the guy is thinking.

“The Tenakth,” Avad says, confusing Erend in the change of subject, “have agreed to concrete peace talks. We will be sending a Sun Priest to Barren Light in a few weeks time for an embassy. He has… refused unless escorted by my best men. Including the Captain of the Vanguard.”

Barren Light is weeks away. Suddenly it all clicks, and Erend’s relief would knock him off his feet if he wasn’t sitting. Sun Priests are persnickety, and Ersa probably isn’t up to fighting Bellowbacks or Sawtooths right now, let alone camping out without getting another of her fevers. He’s not really going to be Captain — it’s just an excuse for the sake of this job.

“Oh,” he says.

Avad is watching him closely. “Will you accept the position, then?”

“I’ll talk to Ersa about it,” he says, not quite ready to let Avad off the hook.

“Of course,” says Avad. “When you do, please tell her…” He hesitates for a bit too long for it to be one of those polite Carja pauses. “That I am thinking of her, and hope she is well.”

“It was my idea,” Ersa says.

It’s later that same day, and he’s found her not in the Vanguard training yard but one of the ones for the Palace guard, sweating and practicing swordplay with Uthid. Her face is red the day is hot, but she’s wearing a long Carja blouse with sleeves that hang down past her wrists.

When Erend had arrived, Uthid had called off practice and withdrawn, significantly less worn than his student, and Erend had to fight to urge to check his sister’s forehead for a fever.

He’d just asked her if she knew about him being the new Captain of the Vanguard.

“It was?”

“Yes.” Ersa doesn’t elaborate like he wanted her to. Four months after her capture, she was still more frail than Erend would like, thanks to repeated bouts of sickness and wastage. “Will you do it?”

“I guess,” he says. “I can take some stupid Sun-Priest out to Barren Light if Avad wants, but it’ll be a hell of a lot worse than taking Irid to the Sacred Lands, I bet.” Sure, there’d been a massacre, but it was also a lot shorter a hike. And he’d met Aloy — His stomach tightens and he scowls. “But Avad’s full of it if he thinks I’m taking your job any longer than that.”

“That’s not the deal,” she snaps, tucking her practice sword under her arm to rub her forehead. “You’re Captain now. Forever.”

The nausea comes back. “What if I said no?” She’s in charge, not him. He can pretend for a month or two, but —

“Then I guess it’ll be one of the other guys,” Ersa says cooly.

“There’s no way this was your idea,” Erend argues.

“It was,” she says.

“Avad didn’t put you up to it? We can leave, if he’s being an ass —“ Erend remembers the tavern fight, the way the men had said half Carja like it was true. His head is hurting. He hadn’t mentioned the brawl to her — he knew she’d hate to hear he was fighting over her honor like she was some maiden, never mind that it wasn’t her honor but straight slander —

“It was my idea,” she says again. “Time for you to step up, baby brother. I can’t do everything for you anymore.”

Chapter Text

five.

Despite all his power and influence, the office Marad keeps in the palace is small and unstylish. It had belonged to the Minister of Trade during Jiran’s reign. Marad had never replaced the furniture, and the mosaics of hunting scenes and Machines remained on the walls.

He hardly gives Vanasha a glance as he enters. She’s poking around the papers of his desk, curious and bored of waiting. “The Oseram are becoming a problem,” he says.

“In the city, in the Sundom, or in the Claim?” she asks.

“Yes,” Marad says dryly. She cedes the desk to him and takes a seat on one of the low benches, the upholstery coming apart at the seams. Gives him a moment to straighten his desk, but when he doesn’t follow up with a request Vanasha feels her shoulders relaxing.

“Well, I was right about kho Parell,” she says. “I mean, sending your daughter to be Nasadi’s handmaiden and then strangle her in her sleep isn’t exactly the conspiracy of the century, but hey, still a notch in my belt.”

Marad sighs, looking grumpy. “Avad has been informed?”

“Of course,” she says, pretending offense. “He’s pardoned the daughter and is wringing his royal hands over what to do with the father. I suggested he fine their estate, but as usual no one listens to me.”

She’s quite sympathetic. A willingness to kill Jiran’s allies at least implies that Lord kho Parrell actually likes Avad, and that number is smaller than the Crown generally prefers to suggest. On the other hand, much as it breaks up the boredom of the day, you can’t just have assassins running around and getting underfoot.

Marad makes a note. “There are certainly repairs enough that need financing.” As he leans over, Vanasha tries to count his gray hairs, an old game. She’d been twelve when she’d been brought to work in the Palace. His hair had been jet black then.

“I dread asking, but what’s this about the Oseram?” she asks, stretching languidly.

“How well acquainted with our former Captain are you?” Marad asks in reply, at last taking a seat.

“Ersa? Not very.” Enough to know that she is the definition of a loyalist, which makes Marad’s implication intriguing. “Why?”

When the Tenakth had agreed to the embassy, they had sent with their message a scroll, Carja made and marked with the seal of the final commander of Barren Light before its destruction.

The scroll had been bound shut and delivered to the Sun-King as per instruction. Avad had been curious when it had been pressed into his hand, weeks later: he had been under the impression the Tenakth did not write.

Little had he known.

“You asked to see me, your Radiance?”

He puts the scroll aside.

Nasadi bows, her face politely covered and eyes downcast. Rather than the reds and golds of used for royal dress, she has been careful to clothe herself in blues and purples since coming to Meridian. Before Jiran’s death, the royal tailors had usually dressed her to match his robes: white when he wore gold, gold when he wore cinnabar. Today Avad had been dressed in crimson. Nasadi’s dress is the green of the Jewel.

“Yes, thank you,” he says. The Palace of the Sun is ringed with layers of terraces and gardens, some of which are open to visitors and others that are more private and secure. He had asked for Nasadi to meet him at the entrance of a small walled garden reserved for the royal family alone in part for the privacy and in part for the illusion of neutral ground.

They pass under the archway together, leaving Nasadi’s attendants and his guards behind.

The garden is smaller than it is designed to look, with ornamental trees and expansive shrubs carefully placed to disguise the fact that the path through is essentially just a loop. Avad leads them to the right. “I apologize that it has taken me this long to speak privately with you,” he says.

“Not at all,” Nasadi says graciously. She and Itamen have been in Meridian six months, and Avad has done all he can to avoid speaking to his father’s wife any more than is politely necessary.

“How is Itamen?” he asks.

“With his tutors. He is learning his glyphs.” Nasadi twists a bracelet on her right wrist. “He had received instruction… before. However, he is not overly fond of reading or writing. He’d rather play at being a hunter.”

In his first few weeks in Meridian, Avad had tried to reach out to his half brother. He had given the boy a collection of adventure tales he had loved as a child, and wonders if Nasadi means her remarks as pointed. Probably not, but he feels a wash of embarrassment all the same. “Not unusual in a boy his age.”

“Yes.”

Sun and stars this is awkward. They round a bend in the path. There is a small seating area under an ornamental tree with yellow blossoms dangling from willow-like fronds. Avad wonders, absently, where Ersa is this morning.

He gets to the point. “I have decided to name Itamen as my heir.” Itamen had been ceremonially disinherited only a few days after Avad took Jiran’s throne. It had been a formality, so that if Avad had died Itamen wouldn’t have immediately become puppet king of the Sundom as well. An utterly meaningless formality: Avad himself had been disinherited by Jiran.

Nasadi walks in silence beside him. “I see,” she says at last. “My son will be honored to rejoin the Radiant Line and strive to be a worthy heir.”

“You don’t seem pleased by this,” Avad says. He’d thought she would be.

“I am pleased to serve the Sundom in whatever small way I am able,” Nasadi says. Unprompted, she goes to sit under the yellow tree on one of the low wooden benches, her fingers gripping her skirt. “And what shall become of me?”

“For now, I think it would be best if you remained in Meridian,” Avad says. He debates sitting on the opposite bench, and remains standing instead. “There’s room enough in the Palace, although I understand if you and Itamen would prefer to… leave this world behind.”

“Itamen would go with me?” Nasadi asks, looking up with a startled expression.

“I am not planning on exiling you,” he says. “If you and Itamen wish to relocate somewhere quieter when it is safe to do so, I will arrange it.”

Nasadi traces the embroidery on her skirt. “May I speak… speak frankly, your Radiance?”

“Of course,” Avad says, bemused.

For the first time, Nasadi meets his eyes. “You don’t like me, do you?”

Slowly, Avad takes a seat.

He looks at her, considering. She’s his age, in her early thirties, still young and quite beautiful. But all he can see is his father’s wife. Nasadi at Jiran’s side, kneeling at his feet, bearing his son and favored heir. Kadaman had hated her. He had resented Jiran for stripping him of his rights and responsibilities of crown prince, for refusing him postings in Daytower and Barren Light and even Sunfall. He’s not remarrying out of love, he’d said when the engagement was announced. He’s remarrying to get himself a new heir, and she’s only marrying him to be mother of a king.

Avad was the second son. He’d never shared his brother’s ambitions. But he’d taken his words as fact.

Itamen had been born, but Jiran did not remove Kadaman as his heir, even as he made clear which son he favored. Not that Kadaman’s title had stopped him later.

For six months, they have been pretending to be step-mother and son, Avad acting the part as a necessary artifice. Itamen was his only family and Nasadi the wife of the Mad King, a possible conspirator of Helis and Bahavis in Sunfall, and it was necessary to pretend in order to bring her under his general protection. He’d avoided her the rest of the time.

Yes. “I do not know you well,” he says, diplomatically.

“No,” Nasadi says. Her body and expression are tense as she watches him. “We’ve known one another a decade and yet that is true.”

“Our circumstances have been… awkward,” Avad says finally.

“Your brother hated me,” she says.

“And I loved my brother,” he says. Nasadi bites the inside of her cheek. He closes his eyes briefly. “You were our father’s wife. Surely you also have misgivings…”

“Only because the two of you never so much as spoke to me!” Nasadi speaks with such heat that he’s startled, and she immediately draws back, struggling for demure calm. “What made you think I was your enemy?”

He closes his eyes. “I killed your husband,” he says.

“What made you think I ever loved him?”

Her cheeks are flushed and her shoulders are straight, even as her jaw trembles.

“You threw yourself —“

“Of course I did!” Nasadi throws her hands over her face for a moment. “He was the Sun-King and my father told me he wanted me, and I could either be his wife or his whore! At first — he was the Sun, he was the creator made flesh, but then he was my husband and I learned better. Do you believe you’re a god?”

Avad doesn’t answer; he can’t. “I’m sorry,” he says, remembering a thousand awkward breakfasts, years of seeing her at Jiran’s side, smiling and touching his arm. “I have treated you poorly.”

“You can treat me however you want,” she says. “But my son…”

“Itamen’s safety has been my only priority,” he interrupts, feeling he’s at least done this right.

“I just want him to be a normal boy. Not a prince, not your heir, just a child! For once! You can treat me however you’d like, but Itamen needs more than a life in a palace.”

He wonders what a life like that would look like. “You do not want him to be my heir?” Nasadi winces, closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to say it twice. “I need an heir. But I am not planning on dying quite yet. I see no reason why Itamen cannot be educated outside of Meridian, when it is safe.”

“I understand,” she says, stiffly. “But you’ve gone all these years without one.”

“Marad made it very clear yesterday that I was supposed to be married by now,” Avad says flatly. He looks over Nasadi’s shoulder, at the slight swaying of golden flowers in the breeze. “I do not foresee that happening in the near future.”

“That is enough for today,” Uthid says once he has parried Ersa’s latest blow. She swears and refrains from throwing her practice sword at the ground — or him — gasping as she tries to catch her breath.

Uthid is a skilled swordsman, and Ersa knows she’s fortunate he has agreed to teach her. But it seems that no matter how long they practice, how hard she pushes herself…

“Here,” Uthid says, extending Ersa his waterskin. She straightens, taking her hand off her knee, and takes it. She’s surprised by the taste of her first sip: not ale, but… “Lemon and salt,” he says proudly.

“Why?” Ersa says, handing back the flask.

“It prevents thirst and illness, and is restorative after long marches or hard training. A mentor taught me years ago to put citrus peel in my water for health; the salt is my innovation.”

“The first time I hear you say so many words at once,” a woman drawls from behind Ersa, “and it’s something this boring?”

Uthid’s back stiffens as Ersa turns to see Vanasha, resplendent in silks as ever. “A soldier’s health and constitution is as important as his strength and arm,” he says.

“Ersa my dear, I do apologize you are stuck practicing with this bore,” Vanasha says lightly, stepping past Ersa, who can smell her perfume. Vanasha shoves playfully at Uthid’s arm.

Ersa grimaces. She’s caught her breath, but her arm and ribs ache and her leg feels stiff when she shifts her weight. “I should get going.”

“Myself as well,” Uthid says, loudly clearing his throat. “Shall we meet again this time tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Ersa says, feeling a twinge of regret that she is taking up so much of his time with her training, but not enough to stop: if she cannot regain her strength…

“What?” Vanasha says, full of exaggerated offense, “I show up to the training yard and you run like acolytes back to the temple?”

“I must return to His Radiance,” Uthid says gravely, and Ersa tries to hide her scowl.

“And I needn’t return to Nasadi and the prince until after noon,” Vanasha sighs. “Here I was thinking to grant you the favor of my company! Don’t tell me you’re so eager to get rid of me?”

“I should get going,” Ersa says. She nods at Uthid and goes to the armory to put away her practice sword and get away from... is it flirting? It seems a bit like flirting.

“Wait,” Vanasha says, catching up to her as she leaves the training yard.

Ersa, a little surprised, slows, although she really does not need to: she’s tired and her leg is cramping and her pace is slow. Vanasha gives her a winning smile when she’s at Ersa’s right.

She doesn’t know Vanasha well. That she is Marad’s protege and a supremely skilled fighter, yes. But Vanasha had spent much of the past few years in Sunfall, and their paths have rarely crossed.

“How is the new Captain settling in?” Vanasha asks solicitously as they begin to walk back into the palace, Ersa leading them the long way around to avoid the trail of solicitors.

“Well.” Truthfully, Erend had been doing most of the Captain’s job for months now in her absence, and his training was largely just a matter of getting him to do the paperwork and have some damned confidence about it.

“But I suppose while he’s away you’ll resume your duties?” Vanasha asks, and Ersa makes a noncommittal sound. “I must say, I was shocked to hear of your retirement, my dear. To think Avad would be so callous.”

“It was my idea,” Ersa says. She had written a letter of resignation and renunciation of contract and been too sick with grief to deliver it in person. It had taken nearly a week for the news to reach Erend and she’d been surprised Avad had taken that long.

“He claimed it his own,” Vanasha says. She smiles at Ersa’s glance. “He told Erend in the presence of others.”

“Shouldn’t you hide that you spy on your own king?” Ersa asks. Why would Avad say it was his idea? Unless she merely beat him to it. Unless it was misplaced nobility.

“He said it in public, my dear.” Vanasha hums. The Palace is built around a central hub, with barracks and outbuildings dug into the sandstone of the mesa, a circular maze of gardens and terraces dividing the two. The quickest route from the Carja barracks to the Vanguard was by crossing through a bit of garden and then ducking into the palace itself, using a below-ground stone passage built for servants and attendants to cut across the mesa. Instead, Ersa leads them circuitously through the gardens and terraces, which are closed to the public but largely open to the palace’s staff of civil servants and ministers and attendants, and popular for walks or meetings.

“So what will you do now that you’ve given up the chains of leadership?” Vanasha asks after a moment.

“There’s not much I can do until I’m back at full strength,” Ersa says. “After that? Who knows.” Erend will be off in the Daunt at least six weeks, and more likely slightly longer. Her strength is coming back to her, even if her limp persists and her fighting is pathetic, but in two months? Ersa’s nowhere near ready for long marches or any sort of dangerous fight. She could continue to serve on the Vanguard, of course. Taking her brother’s orders and working the patrols no one likes.

Erend’s been her second for years longer than the Vanguard exists. He knows how to divide up patrols and schedules fairly, how to discipline and encourage the men. Even so, she’s already found herself biting back suggestions or orders of her own. He’d overlooked that the road from Brightmarket was busier than usual and needed more men. He’d not thought to coordinate with the Carja on clearing the Alight, even though he knew they were short-handed. Both times she’d said something and he’d jumped to obey and done it well, but that’s not sustainable and she can’t spend the rest of her life either being subordinate to him or just pretending to be.

But taking care of shit had been her life in Meridian. Finding out what Avad was trying to accomplish and figuring out how to make it work. Taking the Vanguard from glorified bodyguards to men capable of solving any problem the Sundom faced, their best delvers and scouts and diplomats alike. She’d considered Erend replacing her as captain before. But in the past, when she’d imagined it, she had moved on to still bigger things, not…

She shakes her head. “Maybe I’ll go back to the Claim.”

She’d rather have been killed in Dervhal’s cell.

“Following in the footsteps of the Savior of Meridian and planning on running off, are we?” Vanasha laughs, but Ersa catches the appraising look in her eyes before she turns away.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never met her.” It turned out that Aloy had slipped away from Meridian before the last fires had even been put out, although her departure had been missed in the general chaos. Avad hadn’t quite ordered search parties after her, but had probably thought about it.

“I thought she saved you?” Vanasha asks. Some of the oil and honey fades from her voice. Is this an honest question?

Ersa touches the expanse of knitted flesh on her forehead. “I don’t remember much of it. And I wasn’t on my feet for a while after.”

“True, true,” Vanasha clucks. “She’s quite the hero, our Nora huntress. Itamen asks about her nearly every day. Hatchling love. I spent two years working to save him, but Aloy gets all the credit!”

“He’ll need to get in line,” Ersa says, thinking of Erend’s rapid vacillations between talking about how much she’d like Aloy and whining that Aloy had vanished without a word.

“Him and half the Sundom! Even I might consider standing in that queue,” Vanasha says. “Have you seen those freckles? Charming.”

Healer Darial had been asking Ersa to visit Meridian’s Temple of Healing for a few weeks now, a suggestion she had been dutifully ignoring. But with Vanasha fishing for something and looking to follow her clear across the palace, Ersa made her excuses and left in search of the healer, still puzzling over the conversation.

The plaza on the other side of the bridge is crowded with men and women, mostly Carja, protesting the increased cereal tax. They let Ersa through, and she avoids what Oseram she sees in the crowd.

Meridian is as crowded as ever. Despite the Blight and food taxes, the market stalls are full and busy: she passes silk and bauble stands, clothing shops, trinkets and flowers and potted plants and Machine parts, an armorer with his wares displayed on dummies, a bookseller with volumes and rolled parchments. The masons and carpenter shops are empty, most of Meridian’s builders having been pressed into rebuilding. The food stalls are full and busy, but prices have risen.

Just the week before, Ersa had accompanied a group of scholars and priests as they’d toured the Royal Maizelands, the portion of Meridian’s fields that belonged to the Sun-King’s line. The Blight had arrived a few months ago. A seed would sprout and radiate outward, stripping all of life with its noxious roots. Tearing up afflicted fields was ineffective, but the Blight moved more slowly without other plants to corrupt. For the time being, at first sign of sprouting, all the land around Blight was being harvested, burnt, and stripped, leaving the farmlands spotted with strange flat circles of charcoal.

There are more protestors near the former Sun-Ring. As Ersa passes, she hears a Carja giving some sort of speech and turns to listen. The speaker is dark complexioned and hook-nosed, standing on the lip of the fountain and gesturing broadly for the dozen or so Carja gathered below him. “The Blight is a punishment, a sign of the Sun’s ill favor! The Spire spoke with the Light of the Sun, rejecting the false king, the Patricide! We walk not in Sun or in Shadow but seek a path of Twilight, away from Blasphemers, away from the rejection of the Sun!”

Ersa stops short, looking for guards, and spots a few in Carja armor lingering at the edges of the crowd. She marches towards them and they pretend not to notice her until it is impossible, and she’s bitterly glad once again that her new scars make her recognizable even out of Vanguard armor. “Why have you not broken this up?”

“They’re allowed to speak here,” one of them says. Which is true. Avad had decreed the former Sun-Ring to be a place that any could reflect or speak or congregate without fear.

“That’s for memorials, not planning regicide,” Ersa says curtly. “Who is speaking?”

“He calls himself Adveen. He’s been stirring the crowds up for a few days now. We’re keeping an eye on it,” the guard adds defensively, and Ersa is willing to bet that’s true: if she noticed just walking past, there is no way Marad isn’t also aware. She feels a flash of anger. It’s all well and good to bitch and whine about one’s leaders, and no Oseram would say different. But what is Avad doing, just letting them openly plan his murder? Or does he not know?

Adveen is still shouting. What Ersa had taken for a dark complexion was at least partially dirt: he is dressed in dirty linens, barefoot, and his hair is greasy, but his command over the small crowd is undeniable. “If the Sun approved of the father-killer-king, then why does Meridian suffer? Why does he take our food, our shards, burn our fields and leave them to corruption? A true Sun-King cannot be killed and Jiran deserved his fate! And yet a true Sun-King cannot be a Patricide!”

“You need to stop him,” Ersa snaps, turning back to the guards.

“We’re keeping an eye on it,” the guard says defensively, raising his palms.

Next time she sees Marad…

Ersa storms away. Can’t people just be happy for once? Can’t they just not complain? She’s worked too long and too hard for this damn city, and every day there’s something new —

As she walks past the carved seats at the entrance to the Sun-Ring, a man calls out to her. “Disappointing, isn’t it?” He’s a stout, Carja in noble dress, middle-aged verging on elderly. He smiles kindly at her lookover. “Are you going to have him arrested?”

“No,” Ersa says. Not right now, anyway.

He climbs clumsily to his feet, patting the back of his silks to shake free any dust. “You’re Captain of the Vanguard, are you not? Ersa Vanguardswife?”

“Vanguardswoman,” she corrects automatically. She doesn’t bother correcting the Captain.

“Of course, my mistake. I’m Geldav kho Neerem. It is my honor to make your acquaintance. Those — protestors have been shouting all morning.”

“It’s their right to do so,” she says, annoyed by them still. “Should they break holy law, we’ll move to stop them, but they can shout all they want.” It’s that sort of reassurance he’s probably after. Ersa’s a little curious despite herself. Most Carja nobles like to pretend she simply doesn’t exist, and it’s rare for one to single her out by name.

“The King’s taxes are hard on the common man,” Geldav says. “My family owns a trade house, and we’ve had to raise our own prices.”

“The King is preparing for famine,” Ersa points out. “Better fill the granaries now, while there’s still food to buy. No one likes taxes but they like them a hell of a lot better than starvation.”

“Of course, of course,” Geldav says modestly. “His Radiance believes the Blight will worsen, then?”

Ersa hesitates. The answer is probably yes: she hasn’t spoken to Avad about it, but he’s no idiot. But if the Carja are starting to say it’s the newest sign of the Sun’s disapproval, then for Avad to say yes would be to admit he isn’t approved of, right?

Geldav smiles like an indulgent uncle. “Forgive my impertinence, Captain. Don’t let me keep you from your business.”

The Temple of Healing is near the Temple of the Sun. It’s also near where Dervhal’s blaze had been stored and detonated, although that damage had been well overshadowed by the rebuilding of the city below.

It’s not a long walk from the Sun-Ring, and Ersa is glad to have no more interruptions on her way, preoccupied with the Blight and taxes and the discontent running through Meridian. If they could somehow find a way to stop the Blight’s spread, even if they could not fix what had already been lost…

The first healer at the Temple Ersa approaches sniffs down his nose at her when she asks for Healer Darial, and it is only then that she realizes that he was not just a bossy know-it-all but the head of the entire temple, the highest ranked Healer in all of Meridian.

Fuck. And Avad had had him attending her night and day for weeks? It completely distracts her from taxes, and she waits in the courtyard of the temple, pacing and fuming, until Darial has time to see her.

“I prefer when people make an appointment,” he says when she is let into his office. They are airy and elegant, with windows facing south to maximize sunlight.

“You’re the one who wanted to see me,” Ersa says. He waves for her to stand in the center of the room, and she demonstrates her ability to walk with hardly a limp, to bend her arm a full hand’s width, to pick out glyphs from a distance and not squinting.

“When was your last fever?” Darial asks, satisfied with her health.

A few nights ago. “I don’t know,” Ersa lies.

“Hmm,” he says.

She looks around his office. The walls are covered in murals of abundance: flowers and fruits and fields of maize, rabbits and birds, a nest in every branch. “You did a good job,” she says stiffly. “I’m fully recovered, thanks to your care.”

He nearly smirks. “Was that a compliment?”

She flushes and stares at some painted bunnies.

“As it happens, I disagree. The state of your right arm leaves much to be desired, and that is in fact the reason I wished to speak to you. With,” he adds, “an appointment.”

“I’m here now,” Ersa reminds him.

There is a knock on the door, and a ruddy-complexioned girl with curly reddish hair, dressed in gold healer’s robes, peeks in. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Agat?” Ersa cries, startled by the reappearance of the Oseram girl.

“Ersa! Oh, good, you made it!” Agat bounds into the room. “You look so much better! Forge below, I thought you were a goner. How have you been?”

“What are you doing - I looked for you?” Ersa says, confused. She’d lost track of the Oseram Embalmer after her return to Meridian, and for a time had been too sick to think of her. By the time she had recovered, she’d lost track of Agat completely. She’d assumed the girl had returned to Pitchcliff, or found work building and rebuilding the city.

“Yes, yes,” Darial says impatiently. “After you mentioned her to me, I was curious and sought her out. We have few sources of Oseram healing arts in Meridian, and I believed — correctly — we might supplement our expertise with whatever scraps of knowledge they could share.”

Agat rolls her eyes at Ersa, grinning. “It’s a good deal. Did you know Carja still try to bleedinfection, instead of salt burning?” Ersa has been subject to both, and finds the Carja’s method much less excruciating, but she nods.

“But I did not summon you here to chatter with an old friend,” Darial says sternly to Agat, who straightens. “Your Oseram friend,” he says, now addressing Ersa, “has told me of an intriguing method in which badly mended limbs such as yours might be broken and reset. I have my own ideas for how to improve the method.”

“You want to break my arm for a second time?” Ersa repeats, dubious. It doesn’t seem like it could make things worse. Although she also can’t see how it would help.

“Break it, and cut away the reformed bone to fit the pieces properly into place,” Darial says. “It would likely not entirely fix the problem, but it may well improve your mobility. There would be risks involved, naturally. But you may now be healthy enough to bear them.”

“I’ve seen it done before,” Agat says quickly. “Breaking bones to reset them, I mean.”

Breaking her arm for a second time, cutting it open to saw off her bones, and then bandaging it back together again? Ersa isn’t typically squeamish, but her throat tightens at the idea. And at the pain. She looks down at her right arm, her stomach twisting as always when she glimpses her mutilated hand. There’s no fixing that. Her grip strength will never recover. But if she could regain even just the ability to bend her damn arm to scratch her nose…

“Let’s do it,” she says.

Chapter Text

six.

Erend had always wondered why Ersa had chosen to live in a room of her own, rather than the Vanguard barracks. The Carja said it was a propriety thing, but that had never mattered to her before. She said it was convenient, but that was obviously an excuse. The problem was that he’d never figured out for what.

He knocks on the door but lets himself in before Ersa has a chance to respond. Ersa’s lying on her bed and he frowns to see it. “You’re not sick, are you?”

She throws her arm up over face. “No, I’m wasting my day in here ‘cause I feel like it.” She’s dressed in trousers and an embroidered overshirt and no shoes: somewhere between sleep clothes and full dressed.

Erend hooks his foot around a stool in the corner and sits, looking at his sister. It’s been eight months since her capture. Her hair’s mostly grown back, she’s regained a lot of her old weight, but these damn sicknesses… “One of the other guys can handle the trip west,” he says doubtfully. “It doesn’t have to be me.”

“Don’t even start,” she says. “What are you going to do? Look moony-eyed at me until my fever breaks?”

“Sure, to start.”

“Hah.” Ersa drops her arm. “Healer Darial said he can’t treat my arm until I go a fortnight without getting sick.”

She’d told him about her plan to break and reforge her arm. Erend’s not typically squeamish, but it doesn’t seem like a good time. It sounds like it’ll be excruciating, actually, and Ersa’s tough but no one is that tough. And he’s going to run off and escort a Sun Priest to the Daunt in the middle of that? What if it goes wrong? What if he loses her again? There’s no talking Ersa out of shit once she’s made up her mind, no matter how ridiculous it is. Shouldn’t he at least be around for it? Just in case?

“So by the time you arrive in the Daunt…” Ersa lifts her right arm slightly and lets it drop again, disgust crossing her features.

“Your arm really isn't that bad, you know,” he says. Now Erend is the one who gets a look of disgust. “It’s not! Sure, it ain’t the prettiest… but I mean, Uncle Arnuf lost his whole hand, and remember that kid down the street who got his foot crushed in the mill?” Amputations and mangled limbs are something of an occupational hazard in Oseram towns. Ersa acts like she’s got some sort of seeping lesions, and he gets it, but… again, he wonders if he should really be leaving her right now. No matter what she says about it. "It's just… not as bad as you think it is."

“The Daunt? You’ll have to tell me how bad it is when you’re back, then,” she says lightly, very much changing the subject.

“Have you ever met that Vuadis guy?” Erend groans, remembering. “I had to meet up with him so he could ensure his escort was up to snuff. No clue why Avad picked him. Unless he wants the embassy to be a disaster.”

“He probably has some kind of seniority.”

“Probably?”

“What makes you think I know shit about the Sun Priests?” Ersa asks conversationally, and he shrugs.

“I’m just saying, why can’t Irid do it?”

“Because when the Carja and the Tenakth come to their incredible peace agreement, Vuadis wants his name in the books as the man who made it happen.”

“Right, but you haven’t met the slag. Can’t we ask Marad to assassinate him or something?”

Ersa laughs. “Poor Erend!” she drops her arm and goes to sit up, even now still trying to brace her weight on her right arm before remembering. He has to restrain himself from helping her.

“Why am I always the one who has to babysit the Sun-Priests, huh?” Erend complains, once Ersa has repositioned herself like a lounging queen. “The Sacred Lands, now this…”

“You’re right, I should have gone to the first one,” Ersa says. “I could have been the one who moons over Aloy…”

He goes hot under the collar, and then defensive. “The hell you talking about? I don’t moon — we were friends and she ran off, I’m not mooning, I’m sulking.”

She laughs at him.

“You’re lucky you’ve never talked to her,” Erend continues, glad to see her laughing even if it’s at his expense. “Hell, I’m not sure what would have happened if you did. She’d have gone, ‘I’m faster alone, let me handle it,’ and you’ve have been like, ‘no, you sit down and drink some juice, I’ll handle it,’ and… well, either the Eclipse woulda been stopped even faster, or you would have dueled to the death trying to figure out which one of you has the right to call the other one useless.”

Fire in the forge, he’s not even sure who would win that fight. Maybe his sister’s bossiness is less effective against other people? He imagines Ersa ordering Aloy not to run off at the Alight, and his amusement turns quickly back into bitterness. Six months, and not even a by-the-way. If she’d known she was going that far away, she could have said goodbye. Unless she really didn’t give a shit, unless he’d been fooling himself when he thought they were friends. And he might have decided that, except she hadn’t said shit to anyone else, either, and somehow it’s worse since it isn’t personal. Ersa had never pulled shit like that —

Except then he remembers the message, the ambush, and Dervhal. He remembers Ernas. And yes she does.

But Ersa hadn’t come back because she couldn’t. What if Aloy…

“Easy contest,” Ersa says, and he’s so distracted with a sudden burst of anxious worry that he has no clue what she means for a minute: that his sister is still too weak to put up a real fight, let alone against the Savior.

“Well, I’m betting on you,” Erend mutters, his mood now sour and throat dry. He glances around, but Ersa doesn’t keep much in her room, let alone bottles of ale poured and ready. He shoves to his feet and goes to the cistern instead, twisting the spigot in the wall to open the stream into the small basin below and catching some water in a metal cup. After he drains it, he fills it again and offers it to Ersa.

“Thanks,” she says, reaching over herself to take the cup left-handed. She’s looking at him in a way that Erend knows means she’s thinking up some kind of lecture. “You know the real reason you’re always going on these trips?” she says instead after taking a sip.

“‘Cuz you don’t like long hikes?”

“‘Cause you’re good at this shit,” she says, looking at him over the rim of her cup.

“Carrying a ton of supplies long distances?”

“No, idiot. I’m trying to be nice to you here, so shut up and let me.”

He’s embarrassed but he grins at her look, the half-annoyed way she says it.

“You’re a good leader,” she says, looking straight at him. “Men like you, even shithead priests. They follow you because they respect you. ‘Cuz you take care of your people.”

“Sure, but that’s —“ he feels his neck grows hot, and waves his hand. “That’s basic shit. Anyone can do that. It’s nothing special.”

“You think people followed Dervhal because they liked him?” He feels a rush of anger and anxiety at the name, although Ersa is looking at him unflinching, her eyes sharp. “People follow men they fear for a while, but they jumped like fleas outta bathwater the second he lost control. Look at how many Carja joined our side against Jiran. Or all the folks coming in out of Sunfall now.” Ersa breaks eye contact, looking down at her cup.

“Fine,” Erend says, rubbing his neck. “I’m a nice guy.”

“Not everyone can wrangle a dozen heads on a long hike into the middle of nowhere,” Ersa says. “And if a man can handle that, he can lead the Vanguard, too.” She takes a long drink of water. “Besides,” she adds, sighing, her eyes now bright with mischief, “I don’t like long hikes.”

“Knew it,” he says, still embarrassed.

She chuckles and lowers the cup onto the floor before lying back on the bed dramatically. Her quilt is linen, slashed with silk and some colorful, girly embroidery along the top, and she starts to pick absently at it. “I’ll miss you,” she says.

“Will you really be okay?” Erend asks.

“Of course,” she says warningly: don’t treat me like an invalid. “By the time you get back, my arm… guess I might still have a cast, but I’ll be fixed up and ready to beat the shit out of you in the training yard.”

There’s some real hope and optimism in her voice, and Erend shifts his weight. “It’s not that bad, you know,” he says. She starts to give him a look, but she lectured him and so now it’s her turn. “I know you think you’re all broken and crippled, but people don’t see you the way you see you.”

“People don’t see me the way you see me,” she says, a note of warning in her voice.

“Like hell they don’t!” Ersa smiles at his tone and he’s a little mollified. “I know you won’t,” Erend adds, “but I wish you’d wait for the surgery until after I’m back. I’d feel a hell of a lot better about it.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, which is honestly the answer he expected. Still, he feels better having said it. “Besides, it can’t wait. I want to be recovered by the time you’re back.”

“How come?” Beating him up in the training yard can’t be the only reason, although he has to admit he misses it. Not the bruises, but the sparring.

“You’ll resume Captain duties,” she says simply, looking over towards the wall. “And I… I don’t know. I might leave for a bit. It’s fine,” she says, seeing him getting ready to protest. “I haven’t really left Meridian in three years. It might be nice. Maybe I’ll go see Petra in the Heap.”

“She moved out west,” Erend says, his gut tight with anxiety.

“Oh,” Ersa says blandly, but her expression goes briefly tight before she smooths it out again. “Well, I’ll figure something out. It’s good,” she adds, half-angry. “You and Avad don’t need me to babysit anymore. I can finally…”

She looks at the wall, fisting her hand in her blanket.

Maybe it would be good, he tells himself. Ersa’s a workaholic, always training harder and doing more patrols than anyone. Handling things, taking care of him, and maybe she does deserve to take off and take a break for once. But the idea sends something like panic, cold and slimy, through him. She can’t leave. What will he do? He’ll fuck everything up right away, and —

He remembers the slamming of the iron door, the front door of the house, shaking the wall. They never used that door, they always came and went through the kitchen so their father wouldn’t notice. Remembers the sound of bottles and wood breaking against the wall and then the silence. Ernas’s shouting and then nothing.

Don’t you dare step foot in my house again.

She’d left before, for a few hours, for a night. Always back in through the kitchen. And he waited and waited but he’d known, he’d known the second the door had slammed, that she wouldn’t, that she was gone, that she was gone forever and hadn’t taken him…

Ersa can’t leave. Not again.

“Please,” he says desperately. “You love bossing us lugs around.”

“We’ll figure it out when you get back,” she says after too long a silence, her room quiet but for the trickling of the cistern behind him. “You’ll be just fine, baby brother. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe in you.”

“When I get back, huh?” Erend says, rubbing his cheeks to try and clear the fuzzy, nauseous feeling still running through him.

“Yep. So hurry back,” Ersa says, craning her neck to look behind her out the window. “Forge knows I could use that vacation.”

There is a ceremony to mark the departure of Studious Vaudis to Barren Light. Of course there is. Avad blesses the journey and asks Erend to guard the priest with his life; Erend and Vaudis swear to work in the Sun-King’s light. Ersa attends only for Erend’s sake, watching the Sun-Priest flit and complain with no jealousy for the task ahead of her brother.

Nasadi had also shown up, with Itamen, and Ersa watched them curiously: she’d hardly seen either since they’d come to Meridian, Nasadi having kept such a tight watch over her son. She’s veiled and stands stiff and unmoving; Itamen at first sticks to his mother’s side but starts to wander closer and closer to the Vanguard, openly admiring Erend’s bulk and armor and hammer.

The blessing concludes, but the cart is still being packed up. Ersa and Erend have already said their farewells, so she stays where she is, leaning against the terrace rail a bit above the courtyard.

She watches as Vanasha peels herself away from Nasadi and wanders ever so casually over to where Uthid is standing at stiff attention. Ersa’s counting arm touches while Avad sidles up beside her, as subtly as one can when dressed in full regalia.

They’ve hardly spoken in weeks. She isn’t sure if she wants to speak to him, if she’s angry or hurt or licking a wound. If you think that’s best, he’d said. He’d flinched at her touch. Like the last time she’d gotten any sleep hadn’t been in his bed — and so what if it had been? They were friends. Friends who sometimes slept together, but so what? That wasn’t so unusual. And if he’d simply been looking for a way to kill time before the battle, so what?

It was driving her insane, and so she’d simply not let herself think about it. Had avoided him, stayed away. They were friends, and so it didn’t matter if he thought she was disgusting, not really. Meridian was her damn city too, and there was work to do.

He stands beside her and she ignores him, but she doesn’t move away. Watches Uthid and Vanasha instead, suddenly angry at the coy smile on the woman’s face.

Following her gaze, she sees Avad frown out of the corner of her eye. “Are they… flirting?”

“She’s flirting,” Ersa says. “She’s touched his arm three times since I’ve been watching.”

“And Uthid?” He sounds genuinely curious.

She watches more openly. “Pretending not to notice, but he’s not moving away, either.”

“Huh.” She has to fight a grin at Avad’s mystified tone. “How long has this been happening?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” She turns to look at him directly, resting her chin in her left palm and her elbow on the rail.

He ducks his head, hiding his own smile. “They don’t do it in front of me.”

Itamen wanders across the tiles to Vanasha, and her and Uthid’s body language changes obviously enough that they can see it from their vantage. Uthid looser, smiling under his helmet. Vanasha kneeling to the ground, laughing as she speaks to the prince. It’s a strangely domestic moment, and Ersa’s gaze falls on Nasadi, still standing stiffly with her attendants. Nasadi is watching them, too.

“He’s a lot older than she is,” Avad says, clearly still stuck on the flirting.

“Some women are into that,” Ersa says. Uthid is handsome enough, and she’s certainly noticed his lean frame and the muscles in his arms and shoulders, the strength in his legs… She notices Avad looking at her out of the corner of his eye again and decides to tweak him a little. “Experience,” she says.

“I do not think Uthid is the one to pursue in that case,” he replies blandly, and Ersa laughs.

Below them, Erend calls for the men to form up and get their asses moving. He turns and looks for Ersa, and she waves when he spies her. He waves back. “See you in a couple weeks!” he bellows, herding Vuadis to the cart.

In the bustle, Itamen is called back to his mother. Uthid departs with the caravan — he will escort them out of Meridian — and Vanasha returns to Nasadi’s side. Ersa pushes herself away from the rail.

“Are you leaving?” Avad asks, sounding concerned.

She remembers she’s angry with him.

“I promised I’d see Erend off, and I did.” And now she’d better see how much paperwork he left for her to handle. Maybe she can just shunt it all off for when he returns. She has an appointment in the late afternoon to visit Darial and Agat, who are hard at work planning her surgery, and she has half a mind to go into the city and former Sun-Ring while she waits, see if the man who had been riling up the crowds is speaking again today.

“Would you walk me back inside?” he asks carefully, after a moment.

She remembers that they are friends. “Fine.”

They walk together, guards trailing behind them. Avad has a little time to himself before a late breakfast with some nobles. The free time probably accounts for his good mood.

“What’s the family after?” Ersa asks as they walk through an outdoor corridor, ornamental plants on either side. No one ever requests a meal with the Sun-King without wanting a favor, and the Sun-King never invites nobles to dine with him unless he’s looking for one. Shards and taxes are usually safe bets.

“I look forward to finding out,” Avad says dryly. “Family kho Nareem. They’re a minor family who own some trade houses. More merchant than noble, but they retain their titles.”

Ersa frowns. “I met the family head a few days ago. He was resting in the old Sun-Ring.”

“I don’t think so,” Avad says. “The head of the family died a few years ago. His widow requested the meeting.” He looks behind them at the trail of attendants, possibly considering asking for a family tree.

“The one I met was watching a protest,” she warns.

“They’re difficult to avoid.”

“It’s no joke. They said the Blight was caused by your Sun.”

“Ah.” Avad is too well-bred to grimace. “I’ve heard that one.”

“And?” Knowing him, heard is all he’s done.

“Well, I didn’t cause the Blight, if that’s what you’re implying.” He says it seriously, but she’s not amused by his joke. They’ve arrived at an enclosed garden that Ersa is quite familiar with: reserved for just the royal family, a small path running a loop around carefully tended foliage. Guards go ahead to do a quick sweep of the garden.

“The people outside your palace seem to think otherwise,” she says. He gives a pointed look at the attendants and guards in their wake, and she gets the message and shuts her mouth.

When the garden is deemed safe — a quick process; it’s a small garden — Avad dismisses the goslings and he and Ersa pass through the archway alone. “It’s unending,” he says idly, looking up at the leaves of the trees as if the sky is what he’s referring to.

“Yes, your reign has been a real disaster,” she says darkly, not bothering with a pretense. A war from the start, protestors left and right, and now the land itself is failing. Jiran only had Machines to deal with and he’d gone mad from it.

Avad is silent.

She realizes she’s hurt his feelings.

“It’s not you,” she says.

“I know,” he says unconvincingly, but she lets it go.

There is a wider section of the path with benches, beneath the branches of a flowering tree. From here, the outside world is quiet. She can hear the distant sounds of men training — they are close to the Carja barracks — but mostly wind in leaves. Avad sits at one of the benches, his regalia leaving his posture arrow-straight.

“I had a report this morning from the Claim,” he says after a moment. “There was a major flood in Mainspring and they’ve lost a good many crops.”

Mainspring is built around a river whose waterfalls power at least a dozen mills. Flat land, all of it. Ersa waits to feel sorry for the Oseram who live and work there, a few dozen of whom are cousins and aunts and uncles, but feels nothing. “They’re looking to buy food?”

Avad makes a hand gesture. Noncommittal. “They’re looking for aid.“

“How much have we lost to the Blight?” Ersa asks. She doesn’t take a seat opposite him.

“Nearly a quarter. I’ve ordered a large portion of the Jewel cleared and planted. Which means shards for labor and men to work the fields. Assuming we lose a quarter of that, and assuming the Blight does not worsen, we may have enough to feed Meridian for the winter.” Avad rubs his forehead.

“Can you sell the Oseram food?” Ersa asks. “Take in Oseram laborers and lumber for maize? You’ve done it before.” The Sundom has a long and proud tradition of doing so, in fact, before Jiran messed everything up. The Claim has mismanaged their farmland for decades, and the Sundom has been absorbing Oseram leaving home for opportunity and shards just as long. “The granaries must be stocked.”

“I was hoping to keep the surplus for Sunfall,” Avad says. “There are still several hundred who refuse to leave her walls.”

“They’re traitors.”

“Many were forced north to serve the Eclipse, or refugees.”

“And if they weren’t traitors, they’d have come back south when the Eclipse died.”

“They do not trust me,” Avad says plaintively. “They think of me as a murderer.”

Ersa grinds her jaw, wheeling away from him to pace, release some pent up frustration. She remembers when they had first met, when he was just the second prince and she was hauling water and manure around this very garden. She’d hated him on principle and he’d only tried harder to win her friendship and trust. It had been… flattering. He’d been so kind, with no gain for himself. She’d been half in love with him by the time…

“The Shadow Carja already hate you,” she says, turning back to him. “The Oseram are going to hate you if you keep letting them think the treaty has lapsed. Send the maize north.”

He runs his knuckles along the bridge of his nose. “I wish Aloy had not left us,” he murmurs. “It seems as though she was the only one able to lessen any of Meridian’s concerns. I can’t help but wish she could solve these for us as well. I’d like…” he trails off thoughtfully.

Ersa turns and walks a few steps up the path again, and back, feeling her leg try to seize and determined not to let it. Her idea was perfectly good, she thinks. Just not the sort of miracle Aloy apparently produces faster than a hammer to nail.

“Would you please have a seat?” Avad asks. “Your pacing is making me dizzy.”

“I don’t want my leg to cramp up,” she says, but she sits down on the stone bench opposite his. He looks at her trousers, tucked into her boots, like he can see the cramp through them. She shifts her leg. “Not everyone is going to always like you.”

“Clearly not.”

“Don’t be damn pithy,” she says, heat inching into her voice. “I’m sorry some Nora too young for an apprenticeship isn’t around to magically fix all your problems, but you’ve gotten along this long without her.”

“Oh, have I?” He raises an eyebrow at her and she can’t understand his expression. “I thought my reign had been a disaster. All I’ve accomplished has been through the efforts of others, and all I do is sit and smile politely as nobles ask me for favors. No one likes me, but it’s my duty to bear it. Is that about right?”

And what about her? “Fine,” Ersa snaps. “Send for Aloy, then. I’m sure she’ll kiss it and make it all better for you.” She stands, stumbling very slightly when she puts weight on her damn leg.

Reflexively, he reaches out to help steady her. She knocks his hand away. “Ersa.”

She feels cold all over. Angry and sick. He’s feeling sorry for himself, but if that’s how he sees it, where does that leave her? Even stupider, even more pathetic. For actually trying, for actually caring, and all he can do is whine and wish for someone — someone else — to help him.

“Ersa,” he says again.

“I’m angry with you,” she says. “I’m so damn angry. All I do is try to help and all you do is whine —“

“Oh, naturally,” he says, and it’s the anger in his voice rather than the prissiness that stops her from building up steam enough to let him have it. “You’ve been helping. You’ve ignored and avoided me and then call me a whiny child.” He looks up at her coldly, and her guts twist to see — those big, sad eyes of his, narrowed in disgust.

“I avoided you because I was angry at you!”

“You’ve been angry since you returned. You’ve been short and cold and avoid speaking to me. I told myself, well, she’s been through a trauma—“ Ersa scoffs and Avad raises his voice, just a hair, “—and needs time. It’s been almost a year.”

“I stayed, didn’t I?” she tries to keep her voice low, lower than it tries to climb: they are alone, but they are never alone, not really, and the guards are always in earshot, ready to rush in and defend their king from his friends. “I’m still fucking here. Meridian isn’t my city, these aren’t my people, but I’m wearing a damn embroidered shirt and thinking about cereal wagons even if I can’t lift a spear! What am I supposed to do?”

“You called us friends,” he says, as if the word is poison, and it eats through her, because you don’t say that in that way if you think it’s still true. Friends. She never wanted his pity or his obligation, the way he looked at everything but her when he saw her in the sickroom, his apologies and vows to make it up to her like her existence was a burden, but now that she’s lost it she feels as though she’s plummeting off the mesa.

No one needs you.

She wishes he hadn’t brought her to this damn garden, to this damn bench and this damn tree — he probably doesn’t remember, because she’d just been his father’s slave back then, spying on Avad and his brother with dirt and manure under her nails. This damn garden was where they first met. She’d been crouched behind this very tree.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asks, “Huh? Go back to the Claim? Beg the Ealdermen —“

“If that is what you want,” he says, stern, like he’s offering some judgement. He pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and taking a sharp breath: when he speaks again his voice is soft more controlled. “Stop trying to bait me into telling you to leave. If you keep pushing people away, it will begin to work.”

People don’t see you like you see you.

Her leg cramps and she’s dizzy and half stumbles back down onto the bench, Avad clinking and jangling as he reaches out to steady her, like she’s about to swoon. She presses her fist against her shut eye, her right arm bending slightly and abandoning the task. Her eyes stay dry. “Of course it’s not what I want.”

“Then stop like you’re the only one unhappy!” The cut of his words are softened by his hand on her arm, and she should shrug him off but doesn’t. “Whatever you decide to do,” Avad says finally, more softly, “I will support it. As your friend. But I won’t be coerced into deciding for you. I know a trap when I see one.”

She rubs the heel of her palm into her forehead. “Why are you so damn nice all the time?”

“I wouldn’t complain about that now,” he says, and she does chuckle, as he’d intended. He moves his hand, rests it on her forearm, less steady and more reassuring. She drops her hand from her forehead to rub at her leg. “Marad,” Avad says, hesitantly. He stops and starts. “Marad might have a use for you.”

“What happened to not telling me what to do?”

“Marad,” he says again, “is looking into sending emissaries north to the Claim, in regards to the current… situation. He asked if you might be inclined. It would be of great use to the Sundom.”

“I go home after however long as a Carja emissary? People would love that.”

Avad is polite enough to not state the obvious: that Ersa by long association with the Crown is generally considered suspiciously Carja already. Tribe traitor, she remembers Dervhal saying, and forces back a shudder. “What happened to not telling me to go home?”

“Well, I’d prefer it if you came back after,” he says waspishly.

She chuckles. Feels wrung out and exhausted and angry, but she’s never been good at holding a grudge and worse when it comes to idiotic men with big, sad eyes. She looks up to meet his for the first time in a long while. “Your reign’s not a disaster. You’re a good — man.”

He hums, looking away briefly. “Perhaps remind me of that again after today’s round of meetings.” It’s a change of subject, but she’s not good at saying shit like this and feels relieved for the chance.

“If you want someone to pat your ass all the time, go make friends with a Carja.”

“Not all the time.” He smiles cautiously.

She lurches back to her feet and helps him to his, and they walk the path back around and out of the garden.

—

Chapter Text

seven.

The story of family kho Naveem was not atypical for the nobles who called Meridian home. Favar kho Naveem had had some holdings and an estate in the Jewel, but only a single daughter. Upon her marriage, Favar had adopted her husband as his son, and soon had grandchildren — including an all-important male heir, Jorin kho Naveem.

In some lucky — or blessed — timing, Favar had chosen to sell his estates and orchards shortly before the start of the Derangement and precipitous drop in property values, investing in a manse in Meridian.

This had been the end of the family’s fortunes. One of Favar’s granddaughters had died in childhood, and a second in the lean times towards the end of Jiran’s reign. Jorin, meanwhile, had enlisted in the army as a Century, and been slain in battle. Favar himself had passed not long before the Liberation, and his widow, daughter, and son-in-law had pledged themselves to Avad before Jiran’s blood had even cooled.

They had requested a meeting with the Sun-King, as was a noble’s right, and it had taken place over lunch a few days prior: Favar’s widow, a sharp, elderly woman; Geldav, a stout middle aged man, and Oshara, his much more slender wife. They had been polite and made no particularly surprising requests. Family kho Naveem owned shares in Cut Cliffs, and therefore were indirectly helping to rebuild Meridian. Avad had offered effusive thanks and a remittance on the next quarter’s taxes; they had agreed to sell the same quantity of stone for a lower price.

The background check had been all Marad, of course. He had likely had someone look into them when they’d first requested the meeting, but once Avad had mentioned Geldav’s presence at a protest and Ersa’s concerns, he had stepped in personally and with great thoroughness.

Avad recounts all this to Ersa as she picks at a maize roll. They’re sitting on the terrace, at the breakfast table, although there was no breakfast today for him: Avad is fasting for the autumn equinox and won’t be allowed more than water until sundown.

“Is it normal for nobles to adopt their in-laws?” Ersa asks thoughtfully.

“It’s not unheard of.” She polishes off her roll as he watches, and helps herself to another. He works very hard not to resent her snacking.

“But when you marry into a family, you already give up your birth family.”

“Not necessarily. Had Favar not adopted his son-in-law, his daughter would have inherited upon the deaths of her parents.”

“What’s the difference?” Ersa asks, frowning.

“Male cousins and distant relatives surely would have appeared out of the mists to contest the inheritance. By adopting Geldav, Favar could pass his title and holdings directly to him and his daughter.”

He’s sure she’s mentally comparing the Carja to the Oseram: Avad is. The Oseram lack nobility and titles in the Carja sense, and inheritance is entirely through the male line. “Is there no Oseram system for passing one’s titles down through the female line?” he asks. “Had Favar’s daughter married Geldav…”

“She’d be kho nothing,” Ersa confirms. “The only thing she’d be is part of Geldav’s family. It’s why I have so many cousins; gotta have as many sons as possible to keep the clan from dying off.” She speaks blandly, but he knows this is a sore subject with her. He’s trying to decide if he should say something in comfort or change the subject when she shrugs. “So who is this Geldav guy? He must not have titles if he joined up with his in-laws’s family.”

“Common born, I think,” Avad says. Ersa’s eyebrows shoot up. “Marad could find nothing about his history, not even a family name. That may have been a second reason for the adoption.”

“I thought nobles couldn’t marry commoners,” she says, half accusing, her gray eyes narrowing and darkening.

Avad waves his hand. “Most are too stuck up to do so, but it isn’t illegal.” He clears his throat: it feels suddenly tight. Goes to pour himself more water from a silver pitcher on the table.

A few weeks ago, Marad had asked for a private meeting in order to lecture Avad. They were both equally sick of the discussion of heirs after four years of back and forth about it. Avad agreed in theory that they should have some sort of plan in place in the event of his death, but…

It wasn’t that he did not wish to marry, as a concept. As an idea. It had an appeal, and he’d always assumed he would marry eventually — when Jiran had been the age Avad now was, he and Kadaman had been seven and four — and there had certainly been times…

He had hoped Itamen’s return to Meridian would be the end of it, but if anything Marad had been even worse lately. The you need an heir conversation had gone from annual to monthly. The trouble was, Marad was very rarely wrong about these things.

He drinks his water.

Ersa’s gaze has fallen off to the right, off the edge of the terrace towards the city. If she’sbeen considering the possibilities of marriage, her expression shows no hint of it. “I don’t trust him,” she says finally.

“Geldav?” he guesses, glad she’s changing the subject. “He seemed utterly normal.”

Ersa looks back at him again, frowning. “He was at a protest against you. His son was one of Jiran’s soldiers. We don’t know shit about his past, he could be a Shadow Carja for all we know…”

“His marriage predates my father’s reign,” Avad points out. “And every soldier who has served more than a few years was once my father’s man. If I exiled them all on suspicion of treason, there would be no one left in Meridian.”

“He knew me by name,” Ersa says.

“Most in Meridian know you by name.”

She narrows her eyes at him in a look of exasperation that he knows very well. More than anything, it feels him with an odd sense of relief. But he still has the need to defend himself. “It’s possible he has ill intent towards me. But he is far from the only one, and far from the highest threat on that list.”

“Not that it matters, I guess,” she says, popping a grape into her mouth. “They have no kids, all that adoption bullshit was pointless.” He watches as she twists another grape from the vine, distracted as she bites into it. “You could just have a snack, you know,” she says. “I won’t tell.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting I am anything less than devout,” he says primly. From the look on her face, she absolutely is. Debates about nobility aside, she has clearly been putting in an effort these past few days to be more her former self. He’s relieved. He’d missed her.

The stamping of spears against the tile interrupts them — Avad glad he did not give into temptation — and he rises at Nasadi and Itamen’s approach.

When greetings have been exchanged, Nasadi orders the table cleared of food and drink. “Good morning,” she says, nodding slightly to Ersa, who looks profoundly uncomfortable.

Avad isn’t sure if they’ve ever spoken. Itamen is eying her with open curiosity, and Avad clears his throat. “Itamen, this is Captain Ersa. One of the Sundom’s finest warriors.”

He’s laying it on a bit thick, but as he’d hoped, Itamen lights up. “Did you get that scar fighting?” he asks Ersa, eyes wide. “Did you get it fighting a Thunderjaw?”

“Itaman is a touch… fascinated by Thunderjaws at the moment,” Nasadi says, smiling slightly.

“I saw the one at the Hunter’s Lodge,” Itamen says. “But the one Aloy and Vanasha killed was way stronger.”

Ersa gives Avad a pleading look and he nearly laughs aloud. He’s never seen her look scared before.

Truthfully, he’s had very little success with his half-brother these past months. Praise the sun, Itamen had gotten past his instilled fear of Avad fairly quickly after arriving in Meridian… only for the boy to decide, far worse, that his brother was boring. Try as he might, Avad has had little luck keeping the boy’s interest. But Itamen is interested in hunting.

She touches the scar on her forehead. “Uh - no. This was…” Avad realizes he isn’t sure where or how she received that wound, and wonders if she knows either. “I helped take down a Stormbird once,” she says.

“Yeah, they’re pretty tough,” Itamen says with the air of a jaded Hawk. “They’re not the strongest, though.”

“Says who?” Ersa asks suspiciously.

“Talanah,” Itamen says. “Also Vanasha. They’re experts.”

“Yeah, well, Stormbirds fly,” Ersa says. “You try shooting at a da- dumb Machine when it’s a tiny speck up in the sky.”

“Please do not get competitive with a nine year old,” Avad says, sotto, delighted.

“Oh? And what’s the biggest Machine you’ve taken down?” she shoots back, her gray eyes bright with the love of bickering.

Avad is no longer embarrassed by his lack of martial prowess. He takes a sip of his water, glancing at Nasadi as he does. Her expression is subdued as ever, but he thinks she’s amused. He feels himself relaxing.

Itamen has started to tell Ersa of the difference between Sawtooths and Ravagers, and her terror has given way to bemusement. She rubs absently at her right arm as she listens, and Avad watches, amused, as the confusion washes over her expression. She’s wearing a loose linen overshirt today, with a cinnabar long-sleeved blouse, and it puckers at the back of her neck. Her hair is starting to get long again, curling at the nape of her neck and over her ears.

Nasadi interrupts to ask if he is planning on going to the noon service at the Temple of the Sun. The Autumn equinox is a time of sunsets and reflection and the growing Shadow, and so the main service will be at sundown. “I have meetings all afternoon,” he says.

“I see,” says Nasadi. “I thought I might attend.”

“Do you not wish to go alone?” Avad asks. Vanasha must surely be available. If not her, any number of guards or Vanguard.

“No,” she says. “But it would send the wrong image were Itamen and I to attend the evening service.”

“Ah.” He tries not to grimace. Nasadi is quite correct, given her association with the Shadow Carja. “I will arrange to attend the noon-time service tomorrow or the day after,” he adds: appearing together gives Nasadi legitimacy, which is important for Itamen’s sake. He had been quietly named Heir to the Radiant Line. In exchange, it had been agreed that he and Nasadi would at some point in the near future be relocated to Brightmarket, to allow Itamen a childhood freer from protocol than one in Meridian.

Strangely, Avad thinks he will miss their company. Itamen’s utter disinterest in him aside, he’s started to enjoy their presence about the palace. He listens to Ersa brag to Itamen about a herd of Behemoths she had once helped cull, as he and Nasadi continue to make polite small talk. If only he had something to eat…

“Look!” Itamen cries suddenly, pointing towards the terrace’s edge. Ersa jumps to her feet with a soldier’s reflexes. Avad turns his head just in time to see the flash of light coming from the direction of the Alight and Spire.

“The Spire is the most recent sign of Avad’s failings!” Aramandis says, gesticulating broadly. “The Blight was our warning, and we heeded it not; the glow of the Spire was the Sun’s call to action!”

“The other Sun-Priests say it was a trick of the light,” Ranis says. He tries to catch Geldav’s eye, but Geldav avoids his gaze for now. His gut is on fire with indigestion. Bellow-burn, the Oseram call it.

Oshara had gone to market as soon as Geldav’s friends had arrived at their door. She had not needed to say anything to her husband, not after thirty-four years: her look of warning was enough. He had instead had one of the servants prepare tea, and adjoined with his friends to his study, a little-used room on the manse’s second floor.

“There is no light that is not created by the Sun,” Aramandis says. “There is no such thing as a trick of the light.” Aramandis is in his sixties, thin and strong despite his age. He was a Sun-Priest himself, although he had never risen far in the Temple. Most Sun-Priests could walk a line of politics and worship, but Aramandis had never mastered the former. He might have been a bag of hot air, but the only thing he cared about was devotion to the Sun: not who you were or where you’d come from. He had refused tea or to sit, instead pacing the room like a nervous Watcher.

“And yet, if the Temple and King say otherwise…” Ranis is closer to Geldav’s age, mid-fifties, a noble by birth and not marriage. He had ambitions if not an aptitude for politics, and had always been something of a weathervane. Their sons had been close as children, and Geldav could not help resenting the man now.

“It does not matter what Avad says,” Geldav says pointedly. He had drank his tea and eaten two honey rolls before he had remembered Aramandis, at least, was fasting, after which he had reluctantly set his own plate aside. This had not stopped Ranis.

“They are not his words but Marad’s,” Aramandis spits. “Turncoats and cowards sit upon Meridian’s holy throne…”

“But if the priests also say it was a trick of the light…” Ranis says, his voice wheedling. Geldav had not seen the red light of the Spire himself; none of the men present had. Truly, it might have been a trick of the light: there were certain times of year where the rays of the setting Sun hit the Spire to bold effect, coinciding with important holy days. This was not such a day, but Geldav was not so quick to read holy signs into light as the two Carja were.

What mattered more was that the crown and priests had been quick to dismiss the rumors of any light, which suggested they were worried about what such an event might imply. As they should be. As if the Sundom needed more proof Avad was little better than his father.

Oh, the boy had put a stop to the blood sacrifice and war. But Jiran had ruled over a decade before his madness had revealed itself, and he had not taken the throne through murder and war.

Geldav did not see a red light coming from the Spire as a sign for all Carja faithful. (Surely, had it been a sign from the Sun, it would have been more obvious.) That did not mean it was nothing.

“What it implies,” he says, “is that the Sun-Priests and Avad are afraid of signs.”

Aramandis nods grimly, his mouth thin. “The Sun can hardly be less obvious in His disapproval.”

“He made no signs when you met?” Ranis asks Geldav.

His Radiance had been a young man with a certain earnestness and a ridiculous attempt at a beard. His physical resemblance to Jiran was notable, if well-known in Meridian: he had his father’s nose and jaw, build and coloring. Only his eyes were different: big and sad like a doe’s, instead of the sharpness of the Mad King’s.

“I did not expect him to,” Geldav says. Avad had been polite and courteous as any well-trained Carja noble. He had been solicitous towards Geldav’s wife and mother-in-law, and respectful towards him. “Still, for this to happen now, during the equinox…”

“We should act,” Aramandis says.

“Can the Priesthood do anything?” Ranis asks. “What about that man, Advin?”

“He is no priest. He is a rabble-rouser, who speaks against not just king but Sun,” Aramandis spits, full of professional indignation. Adveen — Geldav does not bother correcting Ranis — has been making speeches in the Sun-Ring for the past fortnight. He’d come from Sunfall with dozens of other refugees and with new ideas of how to worship, somewhere between Eclipse and Sun. The crown surely knew all about his preaching, but had not stopped him so far. “We will not overthrow the Sun from the sky! And yet it is undeniable that the Sun mislikes Avad’s false reign.”

“Perhaps he can be made to see reason,” Ranis says. “No harm need come to him, of course. Perhaps he could abdicate in favor of his heir! He will see reason. He served the Sun’s will in removing his father, and only misstepped in believing that made him King. Surely he’d understand…”

Geldav turns to his friend, surprised. “That was almost wise.”

“Oh, do you suppose so?” Ranis asks eagerly. He sits forward. “Perhaps, Aramandis, you could say something to your brothers?”

Geldav forgets his fast and lifts his teacup. Aramandis stops his pacing abruptly, wringing his hands. “I — perhaps, yes. Some of the Priests…”

He knows better than to prompt the Priest more than that. He thinks it unlikely that Avad would abdicate, but perhaps.

Forge knew his plans so far had failed.

Erend had taken five of the Vanguard with him to Barren Light: a few of his particular friends and a couple of the new recruits ready for field experience. Six had been killed in the Battle of the Alight, trying to defend the cordon from Deathbringers, and their numbers not yet replaced: this left twenty-six Vanguard in Meridian.

They were usually closer to forty, divided into four squads. Two squads were always assigned guard duty in the Palace, on a rotation so that none of the men were bored to death. The others were available for missions like Erend’s, or for general work around the Sundom. All the squads were equal in rank and standing, and each squad leader answered to the Captain directly, but Ersa like Erend had had a group of men she favored and preferred to work with on jobs: Alin, Ragan, Graftan, Boer — former Freebooters, all of them, who she’d known for years. Alin she’d known since she was sixteen, and had never treated her as less. Boer had once been one of Dervhal’s men years ago, but had proven himself dozens of times over.

They were all dead, now.

The men left were good fighters and good Oseram. The new recruits — including four women — were eager and skilled. And yet when Ersa looked around the barracks and saw strangers, she felt the way she did prodding at her missing tooth: a hole, strange and slick and wrong.

Just before sunset of the Autumn Equinox, Avad departs the Palace of the Sun with a full retinue of guards and attendants for the Temple. Ersa assigns out a full squad to go with him, herself included. Dress armor and weapons ready. She’s had new armor made for herself, lighter than her old set: a sturdy padded shirt and leather breastplate, the sleeves dyed Vanguard cinnabar. It’s easier on her than her old set, and the heavy padded sleeves do much to hide her arm. She takes position in the procession a chain’s length back from Avad and his banners, eyes everywhere at once.

As usual when Avad walks in the upper city, he attracts a crowd. Past Sun-Kings would often travel behind screens or in liters to prevent themselves from being gazed upon, but he rarely bothers, even if his dress is supremely uncomfortable to walk far in. After four years, some of the novelty of gazing upon the Sun-King has worn off for the people of Meridian — but there are still crowds.

Ersa keeps a particular eye for foreigners who might blame Avad for his father’s wars. Some in the crowd call greetings or praise the Sun for the King, but a few braver men call out “Lower the taxes!” or “When will the Blight end?” One in ten or so are Oseram, and they’re bolder: “Going to pray to the Sun?” Ersa hears at one point. A couple even shout out to her by name, and she braces herself. But nothing comes of it. She’s left the palace plenty of times in the past months, but this is the first she’s joined a procession, in armor. She supposes she’s just being recognized.

Avad’s procession is stopped before the Temple’s doors. The High Priest comes out, flanked by red priests with their hoods pulled low. A formal bit of theater ensues: Avad asks to enter the temple, and the High Priest tells him the Temple is his to enter for he is the Radiant Sun. Avad thanks the High Priest for maintaining this most holy place, and the High Priest bows low and welcomes him home.

She’s asked Avad before. If he really believes this shit. She knows he doesn’t think he’s the actual Sun, that some holy spirit possessed him the moment he put on his crown, but from what she remembers he’d been otherwise ambivalent.

She’d asked him in bed, come to think of it. A few years ago, after his coronation. They used to do most of their talking like that, at night, alone, neither of them yet sure if they could trust the Carja guards. She can’t remember how the topic came up, just that it had tickled her — still does, a little — the idea that she’d just fucked the Carja’s god. She’d been teasing him about it. How he shouldn’t take it as a sign of any extraordinary prowess. Trying to get a rise out of him; she’s always enjoyed doing that.

In front of her, the High Priest steps aside and invites Avad into the temple, and Ersa reflects idly that this isn’t really the time or place to be reminiscing about these things.

The Vanguard are all familiar with the Temple: the great balcony overlooking the Spire and all the towers and passages and chambers surrounding it. They split to cover entrances and vantage points along with Carja guard. Ersa has the main entrance along with Doran, one of the more senior Vanguard. He’s one of their better warriors, but he’d always looked to Erend for orders before Ersa. He nods at her as they take position.

Carja nobles enter the Temple in twos and threes for the evening service. Ersa eyes them all for weapons or nerves, but she’s not really expecting anything. Hawk Ligan nods at her as he enters and she nods back; she recognizes one of Avad’s off-duty guards and his wife as they enter, as well as Geldav kho Naveem as he escorts his wife and mother-in-law.

The service lasts well into the night. The singing is pretty enough, but the droning goes on forever: The High Priest speaking, Avad speaking, a ritualized bit of theater where Avad takes the role of the Sun and gives a prophecy of renewal and reflection for the coming winter — the same prophecy he’s given every year. The High Priest asks the Sun questions that Avad answers: will the Sundom be safe and protected in the coming months? (Yes.) Will the Sun bless all with His life and warmth? (Yes.) Shall the Sun’s will be done? (Yes.)

And then the High Priest sticks the iron straight onto the coals. “And shall the Blight be ended by your Grace and Benevolence?”

The sun has set, but the altar has been cleverly illuminated so that it appears that Avad is still basked in the glow of sunset. His expression is frozen for a second too long.

Ersa does not breathe. Probably no one in the crowd does.

“There shall be no famine for the Carja or for her allies,” Avad says. “And it will not darken the Sun’s Light. We are a land of plenty and so the Sundom shall remain. The Blight is insignificant and not to be feared.”

The High Priest thanks the Sun for His blessing and wisdom.

Some of the tension in the air seems to fade. Avad looks pale, even in the warm light surrounding him.

Ersa’s heart drops.

Chapter Text

eight.

“And this is truly so? The Sun shall lift the Blight and protect His people, in your name?”

Avad couldn’t stand there and walk it back even if he wanted to, but Ersa’s heart is in her throat watching him. There is a low murmuring. A release of tension. The Sun very rarely makes concrete prophecy, and the relief of the faithful is palpable.

Avad looks briefly at the assembled, his expression under his control once more. His shoulders raise, and Ersa clenches her nails into the palm of her left hand. “Yes,” he says, seeing the answer the Carja want clear as day. “It shall be done.”

Bad news spreads faster than fire.

Marad is waiting for the royal procession as it crosses the bridge, and Ersa grimaces at the stony look on his face. The Vanguard she’s with are off-duty the moment the next group comes in to cover night watch, and that includes her. A drink, or a dozen, sounds verygood right now, but Marad raises his hand as she tries to slip by.

Fuck.

Ersa heads off to the barracks for the shift change, peeling off the outer layers of her armor and taking a moment to wash her face and neck: Avad will be with his attendants, changing out of his formal vestments, and she has the time. “Korhl!” she shouts, seeing the man crossing the training yard.

“Captain?”

“Please tell me you have something to drink on you.”

He smirks and tosses Ersa his flask, and she has to unscrew the cap with her teeth to get at it, spitting the metal out onto the sand over the man’s protest. The flask is filled with some sort of vile liquor and she downs it all before throwing it back at him.

“Sun Priests get to you?” Korhl asks, tipping the flask upside down and shaking it for signs of remaining drops.

The fire creeps down her throat and into her belly, rushes back up to her head. Ersa waits to feel better, and as always the alcohol doesn’t obey her wishes. But she feels muzzier and that’s something, shaking her head and feeling the world continue to move even once she’s stopped. “You have no idea. How much was that swill?”

“Two shard.”

“Mark it as an expense,” she says.

There’s always ale in the mess, and Ersa feels the softness come on at long last, filling her stomach and chest and blurring the edges of her anger. That fool. That idiot.

It’s none of her concern. She’s a — a guard, she’s a crippled guard, and if he wants to make her job harder that’s her problem, not…

As usual, as soon as Ersa is properly drunk, she regrets it. The fuzziness is quickly stripped away, leaving her mulish and dizzy. Maybe more ale will help?

Marad wants her to join the war council, but it’s not like it’s her job to babysit Avad, not like it’s her problem. She’s just a soldier. She’s just —

Ersa finds her way into the Palace and through the checkpoints up to the Queen’s Suite, Avad’s rooms. Past the Carja and Vanguard hanging out in the anteroom, then the empty reception room, into the old dressing room Avad had turned into a study, murals of flowers still all over the walls.

“Thank you for joining us, Captain,” Marad says stiffly. He stands behind Avad’s desk, Avad dressed in lighter clothes — hair still covered, not yet for sleep — and sitting on the low divan against the wall.

That’s Ersa’s usual spot, so she leans against the wall by the door instead. “What’d I miss?”

“We were just discussing his Luminance’s propensity for wild optimism,” Marad says.

“So what am I supposed to do about it? I didn’t do anything,” she argues, feeling the wall sway behind her and wishing she had more liquor. It hasn’t helped yet, but she hasn’t had much…

“I realize I misspoke,” Avad says tersely, “but surely offering optimism to my people isn’t a bad thing. The Sundom fears famine and worsening fortunes. Little has gone well for them in years, I just wanted to offer a little hope.”

“You wanted people to smile and like you.”

Ersa hardly realizes she’s said it until she hears the words and the anger in her own voice.

It just kind of sits there, and so maybe she didn’t say it after all?

“That’s your problem,” she says, more loudly.

“Indeed, Captain,” Marad says, his tone curt. “We are now at the part where we attempt to find a solution, if you are sober enough?”

Avad rubs his hand over his face. “We will find a way to supplement our food stores. Once Erend and Vuadis have returned from the Embassy, perhaps trade with the Utaru…? They hold vast fields.”

“Perhaps,” Marad allows, “but they have refused our embassies thus far.”

“I thought they were just farmers?” Ersa asks.

“They have a peace with the Tenakth,” Avad says.

“Then we can make the Tenakth negotiate with them,” she says.

“The Oseram?” Avad asks, looking down at his lap.

“Right, they’re out in the streets yelling for maize because they have such huge stockpiles back north,” Ersa snaps. “And the Banuk don’t farm shit. What about the Nora?”

“They have had no interest in trading food with us, even before Jiran’s reign, so I suppose they have a stable enough supply,” Marad says. “But despite the size of their territory, they are perhaps a tenth of our population. Any surplus would not be nearly enough.”

Ersa watches Avad tap his lip. He’s going through his list of distracted nervous gestures. Next will be picking at his cuticles, then off will come his cap so he can better press his hands into his skull.

He just had to. Stood up there and saw disappointment in people’s eyes and decided to throw himself into the fire to make them like him again. Nothing’s ever good enough for Avad, that’s his fucking problem, that’s what made him so hard to —

He’d been so kind when they’d met, and it had been so damn flattering. Like she was someone special, like it wasn’t just that her disinterest made him desperate to win her over. It wasn’t like he’d flipped a lever and turned cruel, of course not. But she’s seen the way he looks when he talks about Aloy, and she knows the damn signs…

“You thinking about saying ‘what if the Blight does go away?’” she spits, the alcohol bitter and sour in her now, pulsing in her heart.

He does not answer.

“I’m also concerned about the High Priest,” Marad says, rubbing his temple. “That question should not have been asked.”

“Everyone’s thinking it,” she says.

“Yes, but there are rituals for these things. The Priests do not wish for the Sun to answer publicly in a way that might cause unrest, no more than we. Had the Sun-King had a poor answer, it would have caused a panic in front of hundreds.”

“I would not have done that,” Avad says peevishly.

“No, of course not,” Marad says. “Instead, you were coerced into making a foolish promise you have no way of enforcing. I will need to look into the High Priest and anyone whispering in his ear. As if we haven’t a shortage of them already…”

Forge take the Carja religion. Either they end the Blight, find food and farmland and wealth to work it, or Avad looks like he’s illegitimate, which people are already whispering.

“Could have the military put to work clearing farmland,” she says.

“We’re stretched thin as it is trying to get the north back under control and keeping the roads patrolled,” Avad says.

“I’ll set up a meeting including Uthid in the morning,” Marad says. Ersa wonders idly why she’s here and not the head of the Carja military. He probably wouldn’t be half-drunk and mad about it.

“The Sun Priests have as much of an interest in making my ill advised prophecy come to pass as we do,” Avad says, unable to keep a hint of exasperation out of his voice. “They have been studying the Blight in the Archives.”

“That is a task for myself, I think,” Marad says, looking over Avad — who normally quite enjoys trips to the Archives — and Ersa — who does not.

“So where’s that leave me?” she asks.

“Keep an eye on your king,” Marad says icily.

“I am not a child,” Avad says, finally reaching the limit of how long he will be lectured and talked down to. “I concede my error, but so far as those outside this room believe, I only offered a slight relief to the uncertain.”

“And what will we do if you cannot meet your promises?” Marad snaps. Ersa blinks sluggishly. Marad is very good at sounding put-upon and exasperated, but she’s rarely heard him angry. “To what lengths are we to go? Perhaps we can conscript more men to work the fields and orchards in the name of the Sun? Perhaps if other tribes cannot give, we can take?”

Avad recoils as if slapped, and Ersa pushes back from the wall. “This isn’t a thing like Jiran!”

“With all due respect, Jiran did not start with murder,” Marad says, his voice brittle with ice.

“With all due respect, as the one person here Jiran tried to murder?” Ersa snaps, getting between the two men, pressing her hand on the desk between her and Marad. “Avad’s a damn idiot but he’s not Jiran. Maybe you served a madman for so long you can’t tell the difference.”

Marad gives her a look of pity and scorn and Ersa matches it with a dizzy rage. She doesn’t need her right arm for this. Just try it. Just go.

But he breaks first, closing his eyes and bowing his head in deference. “You are correct, of course. I apologize for my lapse in temper.”

Ersa doesn’t move. He looks over her shoulder at Avad. “I hope you will forgive my foolishness in time, your Radiance. I knew your father too well, and you are not like him. We will speak again in the morning.”

Avad murmurs some sort of yes please thank you, and Marad bows to them both and eases out of the study. Ersa listens to his footsteps clicking across the next room, and then a door opening and shutting.

“I’ll throw him in the damn Sun-Ring,” she mutters, half wanting to chase after Marad and throw him off a balcony. She turns from the doorway to Avad, braced for the worst — but he’s still sitting on the Divan, his expression neutral.

She’s good at spotting his tells, but she sees nothing. Maybe she’s drunk. “You’re not…”

“I know,” Avad says.

She frowns.

He groans and pulls off his cap, his hair flattened and mussed after a long day of confinement and crowns. Runs his hands over his scalp like she’d predicted, drops his elbows to his knees.

“I know I’m not,” he says like that, hands bracing the back of his head, back bent and face tipped forward. “Every day I wake and fear — if I lose my patience, I wonder if it will be anger. If I have an unkind thought, I wonder if I am becoming cruel. Even if I were like him…”

She puts her hand over his. She’s not sure when she crossed the room, but she can’t stand him like this, can’t at all. Idiot, she thinks; she’s still angry, but hadn’t he warned her not to be? And how can she be? He presses his head softly into her shirt. Wanting to be petted. To be liked.

“You have unkind thoughts all the time,” she tells him. “You’re petty as hell.”

He laughs weakly, and she feels it in her belly and it twists there and creeps through her. His hands drop to his lap but she keeps patting his hair, trying to unflatten it a little, make it less pathetic.

“My reign is a disaster,” he says.

“Not because of anything you’ve done.” Except for his general idiocy. Except for tonight.

He’s quiet for quite a long time, leaning against her ribs and heart. She touches the shell of his ear, runs her thumb along the ridge, and he shivers, ticklish. “What if it is?” he asks finally, voice vibrating against her. “What if the reason nothing has gone right is because of me. Not because I’ve done anything — wrong, but because I was never meant to rule? That in all my failings…”

The Blight is a punishment, a sign of the Sun’s ill favor…

“You know what the Oseram think?” she asks, because she can’t say bullshit, the Sun isn’t a god. “That once upon a time, a great tinkerer created a Machine called the world. And ever since it’s been ticking away. Bits break sometimes, and of course there’s men who spend their whole lives trying to figure out its workings and what it was built to do. But it’s all part of the same thing. You’re meant to rule because you’re right here doing it, because we’re just parts in a bigger working.”

It is what it is. There’s no worshipping, no praying. Definitely no kings sitting in flowery studies, head pressed against her, his hands holding onto her hips like she’s some kind of post or anchor.

“If all is the will of the Sun, then nothing can be in defiance of the Sun,” he murmurs. “Not even me.”

“Sure,” she says. She’s trying to remember when the last time she took a bath was. Yesterday morning? After training? “And who the hell knows? Maybe the Blight will wither up and die tomorrow.” She doesn’t believe that in the slightest.

He hums and it vibrates through her. “When the Spire shone with that red light, Marad sent messengers through the Sundom to locate Aloy.” He sighs, his hold on her tightening as she leans away. “If anyone can help fix what my foolishness wrought…”

She’s cold and very sober.

He’d been so kind when they’d met. It had been so flattering, and she’d been half in love by the time…

He wants to be liked. That’s all. He doesn’t care by who.

It’s not you.

“Then I guess we’ll wait for her to turn up,” she says, pulling away. She feels nauseous and angry and when she looks back she sees him nod, like he agrees and she’s right.

They’re friends. They care about one another. And they used to sleep together sometimes, and that’s all.

“Get some sleep,” she tells him. “Marad’s gonna have more lectures ready in the morning, if you don’t want me to knock him off the mesa for you.” She won’t. Probably. But the embers of anger come back thinking about him, all the same.

There’s some sort of unreadable expression on his face, for just a second. And then Avad nods again. Runs his hand over his mouth and jaw. “Yes,” he says. “No, don’t throw him off the mesa. He’s the only thing holding the Sundom together.”

“If you insist,” she says darkly.

“Ersa,” he says when she’s at the doorway, and damn her for stopping at the tone of his voice. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Just keeping an eye on you,” she says.

An additional portion of the Jewel is cleared and planted. The Crown borrows sums from several noble families and the Temple to hire laborers for the clearing and farming, and food taxes are lowered. The Crown uses its extra funds to purchase as much maize as is feasible, and Carja scholars are put to work making thorough inventories of what each major town in the Sundom has stored and has lost.

Uthid is sent north to Sunfall to politely urge as many as possible to leave her walls: the citadel has never had the means to feed itself, and even Avad now agrees that the food shipments must be tapered to a halt. If the residents of Sunfall can be persuaded to move to Brightmarket, Meridian, or even the Arch, they can be put to work farming or fishing. Janeva in Sunstone has long put prisoners to work farming and providing the settlement food; Sunstone’s lands will also be cleared further for planting.

Each new acre of farmland requires soldiers to patrol and hunters to cull Machines until they change their routes. Rivers must be diverted and irrigation ditches built and reinforced, terraces constructed and roads paved. Two new outposts will be built at the edge of the new farmland. They will need to be manned and constructed. Avad sends word to the Claim: shards and food and land for labor. It’s worked many times before.

The Vanguard are kept busy with patrolling the new edges of the Maizelands and clearing several nests of Snapmaws and, worse, Stalkers. Sun-Hawk Talanah is happy to dispatch the Hunter’s Lodge to help, but men are thin on the ground.

Fall creeps towards winter, and the dry season begins. River levels fall, and in Brightmarket, the sluices are opened to send additional water through the aqueducts to Meridian. Unusually high winds whip through the canyons and mesa, causing roof tiles and the occasional potted plant to fall dangerously into the streets and off the edges of the mesa.

It is storming in Meridian, rain pouring in sheets so thick they can hardly be seen through.

Avad dislikes holding court in the Palace’s interior throne room, but in weather like this it can’t be avoided. In his later years, Jiran had suffered an inflammation of the joints that had been worsened by the night air and eastern winds, and had had a banquet hall refitted into a throne room befitting a Sun King. The floor was inlaid with a mosaic of chrome and polished stone to mimic the heavens and Path of the Sun, while the walls and ceiling were covered in ornate, curling screens of metal and greenshine, with lanterns and mirrored metal cunningly hidden behind the screens to mimic any form of Sunlight needed.

The effect was as overwhelming as Jiran had intended. It, without fail, gave Avad a pounding headache. The throne was hidden behind yet another screen, allowing him to be seen but not clearly, and as Hawk Ligan speaks, Avad chances rubbing his temples in hopes of easing the pain.

“— Fireclaws, they are called. The Banuk report they first appeared in their lands two years prior, but they are not native to the Sundom.”

“And yet they have been spotted within our borders?” Avad asks.

“In the past month, the Lodge has claimed two for our annuls. The first was slain by Hawk Bashad and the second by his Thrush. They were hunting to the north, near the Cauldron north of the canyons.”

This catches his attention. “Do you suspect that they were borne from the Cauldron?” Avad does not wait for an answer. Oseram lands lie between Ban-Ur and the Sundom. “Marad. Have we reports of these Machines from the Claim or Pitchcliff?”

“I shall soon find out,” Marad says from the right of the throne.

Avad is admittedly no expert, but while Cauldrons will birth Machines and occasionally new species of Machine, he’s never heard of a non-native species suddenly birthing itself in new lands. The Sundom is host to three Cauldrons — until recently, the third, in the Jewel, had been unknown. “Have the other Cauldrons begun birthing unusual Machines?” he asks warily.

“The Hunter’s Lodge will gladly take the task of investigating this matter on your behalf,” Ligan says almost dryly.

“And I should like to know if the Claim’s Cauldrons have experienced this as well,” Avad says thoughtfully. “Do the Nora have any?”

“One, north of Hunter’s Gathering,” Marad says at once.

It is quickly decided that the Hunter’s Lodge and Vanguard will work together to scout and ascertain the Machine populations at each of the Sundom’s cauldrons. Marad, meanwhile, will send messengers north and east, and the remains of one of the Lodge’s slain Fireclaws will be sent for study at the Temple. The appearance of these ‘Fireclaws’ is not in itself an emergency — but Avad can remember when Thunderjaws first appeared in the Sundom, shortly before his brother’s death, and is not at all eager to be caught surprised by something new and worse.

Ersa had spent the day guarding the builders of new levees at the edge of a Jewel, but was told of the Vanguard’s new mission on her return to the Palace that evening. “You realize we’re short handed without Erend’s crew?” she says, helping herself to one of the rolls on Avad’s dinner table.

He’d chosen to dine alone this evening in his apartments and was trying to catch up on his reading. He had letters and reports from all over the Sundom: tax ledgers, written requests, political news, crop yields… there were magistrates and ministers and nobles to take care of all these things, but the final reports still came to him. His dinner was fighting for space on the table with all the books and scrolls.

With her mouth full, Ersa continues. “Three squads, three cauldrons. That leaves no one in Meridian to guard you.”

He refills his wine glass and moves it closer to her, but Ersa acts like she doesn’t notice the gesture. Fine. “I am not currently expecting an assassination attempt.”

“Oh, really?” It’s a little snide, and Avad supposes he deserves it. His… proclamation at the Temple had been received well by Meridian, outside from his advisors, and the Blight had at least not worsened. But the storms had not let up in a week, and should anythinggo wrong…

Ersa sits on the edge of the table, her legs swinging, finishing off the roll. “What does Marad say?”

“He agrees I am no more likely to be murdered than usual. And I do have Carja guards.”

He leans back in his chair, watching Ersa in profile. Her eyes are a grayish-blue that appear darker or less saturated depending on the light source, and in the relatively dim lanterns of the dining room they appear nearly black.

“Fine,” she says, coming to her decision. “I’ve kind of wanted to check out the southern Cauldron, the one the Eclipse were using as a base. Have the Priests named it yet?”

“Shadow’s Folly,” he says reflexively. “You’re going?”

“The Vanguard will assist the Hunter’s Lodge, remember?” Ersa picks at a second maize roll, rapidly transforming it into a mountain of crumbs in her lap.

“I had assumed you would remain.” He had always found her emotions and moods easy to read — Ersa was hardly subtle, and even less so by the standards of the Carja court — but lately he can hardly guess at what goes on in her mind. They are friends again and that ought to be enough. “What of your surgery?”

“They’re still working out how to cut down my bone,” Ersa says, the last of her roll dust in her hands. “It’s not enough to just break it again, they need to make sure the pieces fit properly. Like cutting and sanding a log.”

Avad’s stomach turns at the image that presents. What little appetite remains to him is gone. “Surely they would prefer you in the city for this process.”

Her eyes are dark and sharp. “And you?”

“I would prefer you stay as well.”

She sweeps the crumbs from her lap into her cupped hand as best she can, before dropping the mess onto a cloth napkin. “Then I’ll stay.” He watches her swallow, but her tone is brisk. “I’ll speak to Talanah in the morning and work out who will go to which Cauldron. It’ll be good field practice for the new kids.”

“Talanah has gone west on Lodge business,” Avad says. “Ligan is running things in her absence. You truly —“

“If you need me, I’ll stay,” Ersa says, looking away.

As King and Captain, or…

He has never found her difficult to read… until recently. Whatever ease they had once had around each-other has gone, and he does not know why. Just the other night, for example…

“Thank you,” he says.

The rain continues the next two days. The Vanguard and Lodge divide themselves into three groups to scout the three Carja cauldrons, and Marad’s scouts head north and east. Avad receives a missive from the Daunt that must have passed Erend on the road: Commander Nozar confirming the arrival of one of the Tenakth clans to No Man’s Land, their small camp, and the first sighting of Fashav.

Although I have not before met the Sun King’s cousin, I feel it could only have been he. He is dressed and marked in the way of the Tenakth, but his bearing and regal manner show him to be instead Carja. He raised a hand towards the walls but did not approach or cross the Threshold and when I ordered the gates opened that the Tenakth might approach and speak of arrangements he did not join his captors. The woman I spoke to, a Tenakth warrior by the name of Marshal, confirmed that Sky and Desert clans would be arriving within the week…

Yet another Avad had thought dead and mourned long ago. He and Fashav had never been close… or in fact gotten along well as children… but Fashav and Kadaman had been good friends. His cousin’s death had saddened him as any would, but he had not spent much time in the following years thinking of the man. He finds he is pleased his cousin will soon be home… but wary, as well. After all this time, they might as well be strangers.

Still, it is good to have word of him. Nozar also includes figures and information about Barren Light, the Oseram settlement of Chainscrape, and an updated manifesto of a trade caravan en route to Meridian by way of Sunfall: mainly copper, but also a quantity of Greenshine and some “interesting goods of the far West.”

The rain and winds let up on the third day, but instead of Sun Meridian is given fog and the occasional drizzle. Avad would like the opportunity to go outside for a change, but his day is packed with meetings: the family that owns Cut Cliffs, who have been supplying most of the stone to rebuild Meridian, as well as a family who own a smaller quarry to the north-west and hope to do the same. Other nobles whose land has been seized for planting, seeking recompense or to work out their share of the profits. A fitting for new robes in the afternoon, and his weekly meeting with the Majordomo in regards to Palace supplies, staff, and budget. Dinner will be with the High Priest, which Avad is dreading.

Marad and Ersa come and go: Marad’s network isn’t so fast-moving that he has news of other tribes yet, but he has been busy enough keeping astride of the events in Meridian. Ersa and Uthid are working together to supervise the protection of the men clearing farmland, and so while she is present for breakfast, she vanishes soon after.

For his lunch, Avad dines on the covered terrace with Nasadi, Itamen, and Vanasha, who keeps Itamen entertained while his mother and Avad speak. To his mild surprise, he has come to rather enjoy Nasadi’s company. They very carefully do not talk politics or mention Jiran, of course. Nasadi is not very literate, but greatly enjoys the performance of plays and reading of poetry, and that alone gives them much to discuss. They are having an informal meal, and when Uthid and Ersa appear, he invites them to join. Uthid bows and thanks him formally: Ersa helps herself to a bowl of iced berries and nuts at Avad’s arm, but has to leave soon after for an appointment with Healer Darial.

Most of the conversation is maintained by Vanasha, who carries herself like she is the royal and the rest her attendants. Of course, with Itamen hanging on to her every word, Nasadi’s quiet, and Avad content to listen, she might as well be. Uthid is also solicitous, and while Avad watches with interest, he is slightly disappointed that they do not flirt.

It is a thoroughly pleasant lunch, and Avad is already regretting that it must soon end when an attendant rushes onto the terrace, speaking even as he bows. “I was sent by Marad to inform you — the Savior of Meridian, Herself, that is, Aloy, has at last returned to Meridian! She is en route to the Alight.”

Chapter Text

nine.

Aloy looks profoundly uncomfortable as she is presented with the spear and diadem, her eyebrows raised so high into her forehead that her expression appears nearly surprised. Avad is amused to see it, and tries to comfort her obvious nerves with a joke. The spear had been prepared for her as a gift even before the Battle of the Alight; the headpiece somewhat later, both awaiting the first glimpse of her in Meridian again.

She accepts both, at least, although her eyebrows remain up. The contrast between her feats and bravery and her skittishness is really quite charming. And, Avad has to admit, a little bit amusing, too.

The drizzles of the morning have given way to Sun, and it feels like some sort of omen. As soon as Aloy thanks him and retreats to the other side of the Alight, his attendant Bashaid already tries to lure Avad back into Meridian. He frankly doesn’t want to. He’s been coped up in the Palace since the Autumn Equinox weeks ago, and indoors from the week’s poor weather. It feels wonderful to stretch his legs: his spirit feels lighter just being out-of-doors.

Avad had briefly visited the Alight twice since the battle, not counting his half-hearted journey the night of the victory party: once as part of a ceremony of remembrance, and the other on a day of mourning. The Alight’s temple complex had been deemed a lower priority in Meridian’s rebuilding, and the plaza was still a mess of construction. He hasn’t had a chance to look at the statue since the plans were first approved, and finds it is coming along remarkably well. True, the woman depicted does not look like Aloy if you knew her, but the sculptor had captured something of her determination and decisiveness in the pose.

He finds Aloy on the other side of the plaza, talking to Vanasha and Uthid. Her back is to Avad, but the light catches brilliantly in her hair.

He can hardly believe she’s here.

After months of hoping, imagining her arrival… truthfully, he’s not surprised it happened as suddenly as this. Had her comings and goings not always been this way? Aloy arriving unheralded only to without exaggeration upend and save him, the entire Sundom… Modest and, yes, skittish, but formidable and without peer…

True, the last six months have been one headache after another. But looking at her from afar, he thinks only of the end of war, the death of the Corrupted, sun after rain.

Bashaid tries again to remind Avad of his responsibilities, and Avad uses his prerogative as king to pretend he does not hear.

Aloy will likely not stay long: he knows her well enough for that. She will perhaps need rest, and supplies. Food and shards can be provided. Perhaps tents? Other supplies? For her companion as well, of course. Varl. He’s standing and chatting with Marad, looking far more at ease in Carja territory than when the Nora warband had last been visitors. Avad wonders if Aloy sought him out as a companion, even as she’d spurned all others. Are they, perhaps…

Aloy, smiling, departs from Vanasha and Uthid. She’s heading in Avad’s direction and he straightens his shoulders — they already ache from his regalia and he must constantly remind himself of his posture — but before she gets close Itamen darts in out of nowhere and intercepts her. Avad hears the word Thunderjaw and smiles.

Finally, finally, Aloy returns to his side, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Nervously, perhaps? “Sorry,” she says. “I was on my way over, but Itamen…”

“It’s quite alright,” he says, nodding over at Marad. “I was tempted to intercept you myself, of course, but I fear I’d be lectured for impropriety.”

Her eyebrows raise, and she looks back over at Itamen and Nasadi. “He seems like he’s doing well,” she says.

“I hope so. He’s come out of his shell in the months since you returned him home. He’s really quite… energetic.”

Aloy smiles, and he clears his throat. “Yeah, Vanasha mentioned.”

“He does worship her,” Avad says lightly. “I’m afraid he finds me quite boring. I’m unable to compete with feats of strength or the draw of frightening Machines.”

“You’ve done some stuff,” she says kindly, which warms him to his gut.

“I don’t blame him,” he jokes, in case she thinks he’s actually upset. “I also tend to find dashing heroism like yours more compelling than sitting and listening to the complaints of nobles all day.”

Her smile flickers. He takes the opportunity to study Aloy more closely — as they’re speaking casually, and all. She has more freckles and her complexion is more blemished from sun and travel than he had remembered, but he finds it endearing. She is not so flawless as her statue, but a living woman. One worn from travel and duty.

Her clothes are worn and bear obvious signs of patches and mending here and there — elbows, knees, shoulders — as well as dust and staining from the road. Perhaps we can arrange for new armor. Only her hair is as elaborate — and impressive — as he’d remembered it, a mess of braids and knots and beads. The Nora put much stock in their hair, he knows, but he has never seen one like Aloy…

“He’s a good kid,” she says, perhaps shyly turning the subject back to Itamen.

“I agree. With luck, he might be a good King someday, too.” He looks past Aloy. Itamen is chatting with his mother, a branch he’d found on the walk over clutched in his hand like a sword. He should probably begin training soon in arms; Avad had been his age when he’d first learned swordplay. It was tradition that the Radiant Line should as well be competent swordsmen and duelists, and for younger sons to join the army as generals and commanders. Kadaman had been an excellent duelist, and would have joined the army had Jiran allowed it.

Even Jiran had been a famed fighter in his youth. The Carja believed in strong kings, and would be pleased if Itamen followed in that example. Avad had been trained as a child, and the Sun knew how often Kadaman had dragged him out to spar, but he’d never enjoyed hunting or battle, or the bruises of a training yard. Itamen really would be better off not taking after Avad in this regard…

“Isn’t the next king supposed to be your son?” Aloy asks, frankly curious.

“Ah, well,” Avad is flustered and hides it. He’d mostly been thinking aloud. “I’d need to marry and have a son in order for that to happen, and that is… not something I anticipate happening in the near future.”

“How come?” There’s a line between her eyebrows, and Avad’s neck feels hot from the frank expression on her face, as though it’s perfectly normal to ask such things.

He’s normally very good at speaking polite niceties, but for a moment he comes up blank. “Marad has asked me the same question,” he says. “Suffice to say that while he has mentioned several very lovely noble women by name — all unmarried, and with prestigious pedigree, of course — none of them are…”

Are what, exactly? While most of Meridian’s noble families would probably love for Avad to favor their maiden daughters, they wouldn’t dare be so bold as to directly suggest the Sun-King marry or notice them. With the onus on Avad to show an interest and intent to court, it’s been very easy for him to not, especially as he’s still frustrated with Marad for his reaction after Avad’s announcement in the Temple — an announcement that as of yet had done no harm to Meridian at all.

He’s sure the women are lovely. Educated, beautiful, polite, demure, with skills befitting a noble lady raised for such a marriage. “…Interesting,” he concludes, a bit lamely. Thinking of how frankly Aloy speaks to and looks at him. Of dark eyes and sharp expressions.

“It just seems like a lot of pressure to put on a kid,” Aloy muses.

“It is,” he admits. “But it would be a pressure placed on a child of mine, as well. In any case, why do you ask?”

Aloy frowns. “I thought you and Ersa were, you know…” she gestures meaninglessly.

It’s a chunk of ice down his throat. “Ah. No. She is — she is a dear friend, of course.” He looks for her, reflexively — but Ersa had left for the Temple of Healing earlier, and had yet to return.

Aloy nods, her disinterest strangely — well. In any case, he finds himself no longer interested in discussing such matters. “I need to go west,” she says. “Into Tenakth lands.”

“That is no easy task.” Aloy’s look is cold and unimpressed, and he does realize the irony in telling her of the impossible. And yet he finds himself unamused, folding his hands politely to have something to do with them. “The peace between the Carja and Tenakth is… more of a cease fire. To step foot in their lands is to break that truce.”

“Good thing I’m not a Carja,” Aloy says.

“I very much doubt they would appreciate the distinction.” He raises his hand to forestall Aloy’s next objection. “There may be a way. In just a few day’s time, we are having an Embassy with the Tenakth. One of the matters for negotiation is the opening of borders between our people.”

The Carja fear the idea of Tenakth entering the Sundom, even under a banner of peace, but luckily, the Daunt is far from any large Carja settlement. Open borders would mean the Carja entering Tenakth territory rather than the other way around; Carja in the West meant excavation, trade, and shards for Meridian’s empty vaults.

“Are there any tribes that don’t hate the Carja?” Aloy asks, blunt as ever.

He feels a cold sliminess in his gut and tries to smile politely. “My father did much to ensure not.”

Aloy frowns, looking over at one of the guards in formal uniform that flank Avad. The man straightens his posture and lifts his chin, less embarrassed than his king.

“After my father failed to break the east, he turned west,” Avad explains reluctantly. The Nora had proven difficult to invade in their mountains, and their population too small and resources too low to be worth the cost. “The Utaru have fields and farms that put the Maizelands to shame, and put up little resistance. They had some sort of alliance with the Tenakth, and pushed my father’s men back to the Sundom after a few terrible battles. One of those battles — the Battle of the Cinnabar Sands — was commanded by my own cousin, who was taken prisoner by the Tenakth in the aftermath. Until recently, I had assumed him executed as a prisoner of war.”

Aloy had been scanning the Alight curiously, but he regains her attention towards the end. “I’ve heard of that battle.”

“Oh?” It’s quite well-known in the Sundom. A small army of five thousand, overwhelmed by twice that many Tenakth, far outside of Tenakth territory. It had been a rout.

But Aloy doesn’t elaborate. She shrugs. “So how’d you get them to hear you out?”

“Bribes,” he says with grim humor. “Much as with your tribe.” She seems less amused than he would have liked, and Avad doesn’t like to talk about old battles anyway. “The cousin I mentioned survived, in fact. Fashav pushed the Tenakth’s leader into proper peace talks, and will be returning to Meridian after for the negotiations. It’s unwise to be hopeful, but… I am indeed hopeful. And should all go well, you may be able to enter Tenakth lands safely. Perhaps in a matter of months —“

“I don’t have time for that,” Aloy says. She paces, biting her lip, and then turns back to Avad. “If your cousin is friends with the Tenakth leader, he could put in a good word for me with him.”

“Perhaps so,” he allows. “He should arrive home within a month —“

Aloy looks over at Marad and her companion. “No. I’ll go to the embassy myself.”

“It’s much farther away than Nora lands,” Avad says gently. “Our delegation left a fortnight ago and may not have arrived yet.”

“I can get there faster,” Aloy says, her smile small and dangerous.

His fondness returns, looking at her — but it’s tempered with worry, the slight anxiety the thought of the embassy always gives him. “Who am I to tell you otherwise?” he says dryly. “And after?”

“After?”

“Will you return to Meridian when your task is done? I understand there is no distracting you from your mission, but I would very much like the chance to… see you again. Without you needing to leave immediately after.”

Aloy’s eyes go wide and she looks away. “Uh, well — I mean, I don’t have time to…”

He’s embarrassed her, and he feels a wave of it himself. An urge to defend himself: I didn’t mean it like that, and yet… “Of course,” he says smoothly. “Perhaps in the future.”

“Right…” She swallows, hard, and forces herself to meet his eyes. “Anyway. Though. I should probably get going.” She points haphazardly behind her, towards Marad and her companion.

“Of course,” he says.

Ersa misses the dinner held in Aloy’s honor.

It isn’t intentional. She does not normally eat with the royal household, and she’d spent most of her afternoon getting her shoulder carefully broken and set by Darial and Agat in preparation for her surgery. Her arm ached, and she was still feeling foggy from the medicine Darial had prepared for the breaking.

She’d heard the Savior of Meridian (still such a ridiculously grand title) was in Meridian, but as much as Ersa did want to meet and thank Aloy… she was tired. It could wait until tomorrow, she figures.

The Vanguard had been given leave to attend the banquet — it was a shame Erend wasn’t around — but Ersa heads to her room after sorting out the changes in duty to account for it. Without even stopping to remove her boots, she collapses into bed…

…And wakes up even more sore, her head pounding, a few hours later.

Her room is black and cold. Ersa sits up groggily, wincing at the pain in her shoulder. Glancing up and out the window behind her bed, she sees no sign of the moon: it must be a few hours before dawn.

She feels rung out, wide awake, and her head hurts.

Darial had offered her more pain medicine when she’d left, and she’d refused, telling him he’d be fine. Stupid. Why is she always so…

She hates sleeping in her clothes. Does it all the time, but it’s disorienting, lying in bed wearing boots and her waistband still buckled. Motherfucker.

Even in the middle of the night, the Palace still has guards and servants and the occasional priest awake and working. The kitchens never truly close, and Ersa’s stomach feels hollow: she climbs out of bed and throws on a padded coat in the dark, figuring she’ll have an early breakfast.

The palace kitchens take up the entirety of one of the sublevels of the mesa, connected by passages and elevators to the dining rooms and mess halls above it. Ersa could have gone there directly and asked the cooks directly for a meal… but she didn’t like to. She had briefly worked in the kitchens, years ago.

Instead of taking the fastest route to the soldier’s mess, Ersa decides to take a longer route through the gardens: the cold night air is bracing. The night is partially cloudy, and there’s a dampness in the air. More rain soon enough. So much for the dry season.

She leans against the balustrade of a terrace overlooking the Bridge, looking out towards Meridian. The Carja don’t just worship the Sun but every single variation on daylight and moonlight, and there’s a cult and temple for every hour: most of the city is dark, but here and there are still lights and fires burning. Avad and the High Priests had banned the Eclipse cult early on, but when she’d asked why he didn’t also ban worshipping the Shadow, he’d explained it as impossible. Dark is part of light. Night is a time of reflection, mourning, and change.

She pokes carefully at her shoulder, which is swollen and sore and burns a little with pain. Next week they’ll snap the rest of her arm and shave it down. And then… and then…

The chasm threatens to open up in her, and so Ersa starts moving again. And then nothing.Another couple of weeks in a cast and sling, and then she’ll be right back to her old duties.

Marad has been asking after her lately, Vanasha too. She knows why: pity. If she can’t fight, he can turn her into a nice little Oseram spy. She’s been ignoring the overtures. She doesn’t even know why he’d want to recruit her.

There’s a cult of Sun worship for every hour of the day. So which hour is for useless…

Movement, on her right. Not on the paths, which are dark but Ersa knows like the back of her hand: a lone figure cutting across the garden. “Who goes?” she calls. Of course she hadn’t brought a weapon with her.

The movement stops — but she also can’t see anyone standing, or hiding. Ersa’s immediately on high alert for an attacker or assassin. Wouldn’t be the first…

The garden is a strip of path lined by thick shrubs and low flowering trees that, for its beauty, serves mostly as an alleyway connecting the backside of the West Tower to the main path that encircles this tier of the mesa. The path is empty, and Ersa heard nothing to indicate the person (assassin?) had leapt into the bushes.

She is in full view, silhouetted by the sky and Meridian behind her. Ersa moves purposefully to the left, past the intersection connecting her path to the alleyway. She hears no movement, but she knows what she saw. She continues walking, glad for her heavy boots, and once she’s a chain past she steps into the soft soil of the gardens and doubles back, glad as well she’s not wearing armor. Ersa is no master of stealth, but she knows the palace grounds.

She stops just before the intersection, and leans back against the red stone wall of the West Tower. Sure enough: she hears movement. No more than a squirrel… but the Palace has none.

A figure stalks carefully into the edge of Ersa’s vision, and it’s only after Ersa has pushed herself quickly forward and after the other woman has hit her full in the chest with the butt of a spear that Ersa realizes this was an incredibly stupid thing to do unarmed, with her own arm in a sling.

She staggers back and immediately pushes forward again: “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I could ask you the same question!” the other woman snaps — she still brandishes her spear, but defensively, and the light glints off the metal of her headband...

Oh. “Aloy?” Ersa asks, now noticing her long hair, near black in the dim light, her braids, the layers and machine plating of her clothing, all of which together scream Nora. “Ash of the bellows! I thought you were an assassin! The hell are you doing, sneaking around the palace this time of night?”

Aloy doesn’t respond for a moment. “You’re... you’re Erend’s sister,” she says, as if it’s just dawned on her. Well, probably.

“Sure. Last we met I wasn’t exactly...”

“Upright?”

“I was going to say alive,” Ersa grins. Aloy lowers her spear and then tucks it behind her back. Ersa rubs at her sore ribs with her left hand. “So what did you say you were doing?”

“Nothing,” Aloy says. Ersa waits; she doesn’t elaborate.

“Okay...” There was more than enough room in the palace to host the Savior of Meridian for a night if needed, and Forge knew it was easy to get turned around in the maze of paths and retaining walls that made up the palace grounds, even if you knew them well and it wasn’t the middle of the night. “Did Avad put you up in the East Tower?”

“Yeah,” Aloy says, doubt in her voice.

“It’s where all the fancy rooms are. This one is offices and meeting rooms,” Ersa says, gesturing behind Aloy. “It’s easy to get lost in the gardens. I’ll walk you back.”

“I wasn’t lost,” Aloy says.

Ersa turns and looks behind her, in the direction Aloy seems to have been headed. “There’s just a wall in that direction.”

Suddenly it hits her, and she almost laughs aloud. On the other side of that wall was a drop, and then a small maintainence passage that connected to the aqueduct under the bridge that connected the palace to the rest of Meridian.

Aloy isn’t lost. She might have gotten turned around in the gardens while sneaking about... but she was headed exactly where she had intended all along.

Why? Sneaking out of the palace in the middle of the night like a prisoner or slave... Aloy hadn’t attended any of the victory parties six months ago, either; Ersa remembers Erend complaining about the fact.

“Come on,” Ersa says. “I’ll walk you.”

“I’m okay,” Aloy says, glancing once more towards the wall and proving Ersa’s theory.

“And the next guard that spots you?”

“No one will spot me.”

“I did.”

“You were lucky,” Aloy insists stubbornly. “I was turned around and not paying attention —“

“So you were lost.”

Aloy makes a disgruntled sound, and Ersa laughs. After months of Erend and Avad talking about her... Erend alternating between praise and resentment, Avad touting Aloy’s name like a charm against misfortune... Ersa isn’t sure what she expected.

When she walks, Aloy follows. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for... saving me,” Ersa says, clearing her throat.

“I didn’t do much.”

“I would have died if I’d been in there a day or two longer,” Ersa says.

“You should thank Erend,” Aloy says. “He pushed me into looking for you. He never gave up.”

“Guess not,” she says fondly. He had hardly moved from her bedside after she’d come to in Pitchcliff, even though Ersa hated being babied. I mourned you. I moved on. The words come to her unbidden and she shudders. “Go easy on Erend next time you see him, okay?” she says instead, thinking of his swings into resentment over being left behind.

“Okay,” Aloy says, sounding bemused.

They pass under a lamp lit door and Ersa takes a better look at Aloy. The red hair, the worn, light armor. The freckles. Aloy is a few fingers taller than Ersa, sharp eyed and awake. She’s wearing an ornament like the one Olin used to, before he got himself killed or banished as a traitor...

Aloy looks Ersa over, too. Probably seeing the sling, her mangled arm, her scarred face and mussed clothes and visible collarbone.

“Sorry we didn’t find you sooner,” she says.

Ersa grimaces when she tries to smile. “Most of this happened when I got caught, not while I was sitting on my ass in Dervhal’s workshop,” she says. “It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Why did you go, anyway?” Aloy asks. “You knew it was a trap.”

“I didn’t think I’d get captured like that,” Ersa says defensively, her stomach tightening. She doesn’t remember. She remembers the ridge. Fragments of what happened in the weeks after. But whatever conviction or conversations she’d had about it with her men — her men, her squad, she’d brought her closest companions but not her brother. Boer, who had once been part of Dervhal’s crew. “He sent me a letter,” she says vaguely.

He wasn’t supposed to be alive. If he’d challenged her or called her out, she would have taken more men. No, he’d wanted to talk. And she hadn’t trusted it, not after everything, but... She touches her arm; her elbow.

“I should have killed him years ago,” she says. “I screwed up, not making sure of it. I... I wanted to keep everyone from finding out. Guess that failed,” she says, bitterly. Not only does everyone know she’s a screw up, but she’s a cripple now to boot.

“Why didn’t you?” Aloy asks: she’s blunt, but her tone is curious more than judgemental.

“Because...” because he’d been kind to her, once. Because she’d admired him. Because she’d been jealous of him and his wife and daughter, not because she wanted to take their place but because she’d wanted such things for herself. “He wasn’t always like that,” she says. She swallows. “So what are you doing, sneaking around in the middle of the night?”

Aloy is silent and Ersa decides she isn’t going to answer, just before Aloy does. “I have something I need to do. I can’t... sit around here and wait. I’ve wasted enough time here already.”

“Avad will be sad to see you go,” Ersa says, feeling a pang of bitterness as she remembers his desperation to be saved.

“That’s too bad,” Aloy says, sounding as though she doesn’t think so.

She feels a rush of — things. Amusement. Anger. Relief. She’d thought she disliked Aloy, but now that they’ve met she doesn’t at all. They walk on for a moment longer and round the corner — to the palace gates, the bridge into Meridian, brightly lit by machine lanterns.

The guards snap to attention and immediately relax again at Ersa’s gesture. “No problems here.”

“I thought —“ Aloy blinks, briefly confounded.

“You said you had something to do,” Ersa says, although truthfully she’d been leading them to the gates from the moment they’d begun walking. “I know it’s serious... but you’re lucky. To have a purpose like that.” She glances towards the East Tower.

Aloy looks, perhaps, like she wants to say something. She worries her lower lip. “Thanks,” she says, finally, instead of whatever she’d been weighing. She nods, and without another word heads down the bridge, picking up speed until she’s half-jogging, fading into the darkened city beyond.

Ersa watches her go, and then sets about getting her breakfast.