Djola dropped into his chair. Calm was difficult. Without Kyrie’s mountain herbs, Azizi’s health could fail. Without her groves and goats, Arkhys City might starve. Her missing stool meant Djola would have to get Books and Bones on his side or his map to tomorrow would go down from four to three. They needed everybody working together to turn back the poison desert. Did Kyrie think of that before mouthing off? Who listened to a shrill old woman? Djola glanced around the table. The moody librarian scowled at him. Arms had a stone face, still mad about following orders. Grain looked furtive, ready to bolt. Water and Money sniggered with identical contempt. Perhaps today wasn’t Djola’s day.

He considered gathering his family and following Kyrie and the elephant to the Mountain Gates. No master or witchdoctor in the Empire could breach Kyrie’s conjure and enter the mountain realm without her permission. Nuar had stormed Djola’s secret hideaway and urged him to take his family to Kyrie’s compound. Samina repeated this grand idea, but why run from Council at the height of his power?

“You’re worrying, Djola—I can feel it.” Azizi nibbled a few berries. “What?” Two rats gobbled goat haunch, muttering rat pleasure. “They eat for their whole troupe. See the pouches in their jowls.” Azizi pointed. “They risk angry cooks and wily jackals to carry a feast home to hungry mouths. Rat solidarity.”

The rat nibbled Azizi’s finger and he laughed. Then all the masters except Djola spoke at once. They lied, whined, and argued. They blamed fickle gods and anybody except themselves for poor tax revenue, thief-lord raids, and dwindling tree-oil harvests. They offered nothing new. Council was at the same standstill as last year, last week, ten minutes ago.

“Fatazz! We’re lizards chasing our tails.” Grain tapped a story on a two-headed talking drum with leather strands connecting the heads that he squeezed to change pitch. Ernold frowned at a Kahoe woman’s instrument, but Grain was not afraid to play:

An Anawanama-hero of old was surrounded by the enemy. A veson, neither man nor woman, vie was the last soldier protecting the land. The enemy held the high ground. The hero refused defeat and rigged branches to beat fifty war drums as the wind blew. Vie strung the shields of fallen comrades across a waterfall so that metal surfaces banged and clattered, then sang in many voices, high, low, and in-between. Echoes across the water sounded like a fearsome horde, an army risen from the dead. The enemy retreated in fear. The hero was the first shadow warrior. Vie turned death into victory.