Kit held up a hand and waggled it so-so. “I ran off when I was ten. Spent the next five years fighting with her by letter. I thought we were through it, and I was planning to visit her, when I found out about …” She tapped her chest. “Since then I haven’t been able to figure out what to say.”

There was a pause that stretched into an awkward silence. Kit yawned.

“Well,” she said. “I’m for bed. Long way to walk tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Gyre muttered. But he stared into the campfire for a long time after she’d crawled away, seeing the blinding light of a flaming sword.

*

They saw their first plaguespawn the following day.

When you lived within the well-guarded borders of the Republic, Gyre reflected, or in a protected city like Deepfire, you thought of plaguespawn as occasional disasters. Like storms or earthquakes, they could never be banished entirely, but for most people they weren’t a pressing risk. And when they did turn up, everyone knew what to do. Gyre had participated in a few plaguespawn hunts as a boy, sticking close to his father and a crowd of other farmers as they cornered some dog-sized monstrosity and beat it to death with clubs and farm tools. And once they’d found it, the threat was over, and everyone went home and congratulated themselves on a job well done.

It was easy to forget that most of the world wasn’t like that. The Splinter Kingdoms didn’t have the manpower of the Republic, or the weapons the Order maintained for the Legions, blaster rifles and unmetal armor. Every city and town had its wall and its watchtowers. Villagers fortified their houses and went armed in the fields. Travelers and traders moved in well-armed groups. And that was in the lowlands—no nation claimed the mazy valleys and narrow passes of the Shattered Peaks, and no army swept the wilds.

The Twilight Order liked to take credit, but Gyre thought the only thing that had saved humanity, after the fall of the Chosen, was the sheer mindless stupidity of the abominations. Plaguespawn wanted only one thing—to find living animals, humans above all, and incorporate their freshly slaughtered flesh into their own twisted bodies. They had no strategy, no sense of caution, not even the simple instincts of an animal. They didn’t set ambushes, or try to hide when they were overmatched.

Consequently, Gyre heard the thing coming long before he saw it, a rattling sound of bone on rock. He glanced at Kit, who drew her saber at once. Gyre pulled out his long blade and took a long step away from her, giving her room to fight.