They reached camp as the sun scraped the far horizon’s jagged edge, its dying rays birthing long shadows from the moss-covered boulders and wavering, knee-high clumps of sedge. Wind curled through the brush at Anji’s feet, whistled and clawed at her ears. Along the trail and into the flatland, Anji had thought over what questions she would ask the pair, if any. But now as they approached their destination, she wanted only to drop to the ground and sleep.

A patched gray tent much like the Hawk’s sat near a long, flat boulder at the bottom of a shallow bowl in the hills. Beside the tent, tied by their reins to anchored stakes, stood a pair of horses—one nut brown, the other speckled white. Two buckets sat on the bank of a tiny stream trickling near the boulder. The stream foamed over smooth stone and moss, the fading sun’s light flickering as it flowed. Two slender poles of wood stuck out of the ground, a line between them festooned with the carcasses of small animals hanging upside down. They swayed like drying socks in the brittle breeze.

“Wait,” said the Goat, and Anji stopped, her limbs begging for rest with a camp so close. She’d have laid down in the stream if it meant she could ease the pain in her thighs.

The Goat held out his hand and walked until the air around his palm rippled like a sheet of yellow-gold light. The light expanded, revealing a shimmering dome that covered the camp’s perimeter.

“Allantetea loranateanorathania,” said the Goat, his voice low and precise, and the dome disintegrated.

“I’ll fetch water,” said the Ox lightly, ignoring Anji’s gaping mouth. She patted the Goat’s back and strode into the camp toward the buckets near the stream’s edge.

The Goat tilted his mask toward Anji. “Well, look at you all astonished. Never seen real maxia, have you?” He gripped the bandolier of glowing vials around his waist, as though hopeful she would ask him about it. True, she was indeed curious, but Anji didn’t want to give the man more satisfaction than was necessary. She had seen “real” maxia, her mother being who she was, but Anji was practiced in looking shocked when she saw it performed. Admittance to Exorcia, and by extension the use of maxia, was reserved for the upper classes, the well-connected, and outlawed for everyone else. Anji shook her head, hoping her widening eyes portrayed a girl beset by wonders unceasing.

“Trapped a fish!” came the Ox’s voice from the stream. Anji and the Goat turned together to see the woman standing with one foot in the water, the other perched on the bank. She held a flapping silver fish by the tail.