Six of Sirach’s outriders survived the battle, although two of them are badly wounded. Evie’s side lost six Savages, including the former mine worker who told Evie his name didn’t matter. More than anything else at this moment she wishes now she’d insisted on hearing it. None of the B’ors warriors suffered so much as a scratch in the battle.

Sirach and her remaining Special Selection soldiers sit upon the ground in a tight grouping. They’ve been disarmed, but Evie insisted they not be bound or restrained in any way; that was part of the bargain she struck with Sirach back in the outcropping of rocks before Brio and the Elder Company came back for Evie. They had no notion of what to think when they found their Savage sister and the Sicclunan agent sitting casually among the boulders, chatting over the maimed corpses of the two most feared blood coin hunters in Crache.

Lariat spits on the ground in front of the Sicclunans. “Not sayin’ I know all that many numbers, but she’s killed more’n I can count of our kind.”

“And how many times that number of her kind have we killed?” Evie asks. “It’s a war none of us here started or chose. She understands that.”

“You claim a lot on ’er part,” Lariat says. “Were you back in those rocks longer’n we think somehow.”

“She saved my life and I saved hers. We understand each other.”

“All I understand of Sicclunans is cuttin’ ’em down before they do the same to me an’ mine.”

Evie places a gentle hand against the leathery skin of his chest. When she speaks it’s as if to a child or a much older parent or grandparent.

“You are a marvelous bear of a man who genuinely cares for his compatriots, and I admire you greatly. But you’re also an old grouch who solves all his problems by punching them. Where we are now requires thinking and compromise, and I submit to you, respectfully, this is not a place your leadership is best tested.”

“She’s right, old man,” Mother Manai says. “She has a better head on those tiny shoulders of hers than any Savage I’ve ever met. Just listen to her.”

Lariat blows air through his mustache in exasperation, looking helplessly between the two of them.

“Fine!” he declares, and then, to Manai, “Old woman.”

Evie pats him on the chest gratefully and turns away, bowing briefly to Manai, who returns the gesture with a smile.

All the while, Brio has sat silently apart from the debate, his injured leg stretched out across the ground. It seems to be occupying most of his attention.