She dripped water into his mouth, shaded his eyes, touched his forehead and cheek and the underside of his nose as she tried to calm him down. With each utterance she would gently stroke the skin of his face. She knew the method, not the language, and for all she knew she could be abusing the memory of his ancestors while trying to soothe him. But eventually it seemed to work, and the suffering man did not object when she draped one of her spare dresses across his face to shield it from the sun.

“The sun’s very high, it’s midday,” she said. “I know your eyes will be sensitive. Keep that there. I need to clean your wounds. I’ll keep talking as I move around so you know where I am. You’re safe, though, fledger. Whatever you were fleeing, it’s gone now.”

“They’ll never be gone,” he said, but Alishia did not reply. Serious discussion would be for later. Right now she simply needed to keep him awake.

While she worked, pulling back his shirt and bathing the cuts and scrapes across his skin, trying to ease the sunburn where his flesh lay exposed and reddened, she talked about things she knew. She started with fledge mining and how it had changed through history. Sometimes he snorted, other times he seemed entranced. She moved onto other things, random facts hauled from her memory, until the legend of the Violet Dogs seemed to grab his interest. There were songs, she said, although she could not sing. Ro Sargossa had written poems about the myth, but she could never do them justice.

“Where were they from?” the fledger asked.

“Beyond Noreela.”

“What’s beyond Noreela?”

“Sea. More sea. Whirlpools. Ice. Islands, some say, even big islands, with wild people and savage animals living on them. We’re the center of things, and beyond Noreela is the rough edge. That’s where the two Mages and their army fled to after the Cataclysmic War.”

“Something’s happening up here,” the miner said, wincing as Alishia caught a flap of loose skin over one deep cut.

“What do you mean?”

“Something bad, something threatening. The Nax know it. They’re awake! They killed Sonda, they took the whole cavern. They’re awake and angry!”

“You’re safe now,” she said, distracted. She glanced at his bloodied sword again. “Is that what you killed with your weapon?”

The fledger laughed and it was a sickly sound, like someone gargling with vomit. “The Nax! With a disc-sword? You have no idea, topsider.”

They remained silent for a while, Alishia tending his wounds and the miner letting out the occasional grunt or grateful sigh.

“I’m Trey,” he said at last. “Trey Barossa. This is my first time topside. My mother died in there. So did everyone else.”

“I’m Alishia. I’m sorry about your mother.”

“I have to tell someone, have to reach someone who can help.”