She can’t be certain what’s occurring inside Yacatek’s head in the silence that follows, but Evie has given it her best.

Finally, the B’ors woman nods her chin, just once, and returns to her carving.

“It will be a good fight” is all she says in the end.

Evie accepts that gratefully, standing with even more agony than it caused when she sat. She carefully trots back down the hill, pausing after a few steps.

“Am I mentioned on that blade?” she asks.

Yacatek again nods her chin a single time.

“What does it say?”

“That you too often say what is there to be seen, but that you are a warrior to be contended with.”

Evie nods. “I can live with that.”

She walks between Yacatek’s sentries and leaves the B’ors to their hillside retreat for the moment, returning to the other Savages and their Sicclunan wards/prisoners.

“What’s it be, Sparrow?” Mother Manai asks her.

“It comes to this. Whether we can reach the Tenth City or not, we can’t go back. We can’t return to the Legion, not now. We’re runaways, plainly and simply. And even if we find a way to remove these coins and the runes fade from our flesh, we can’t go back. There’s no place for any of us in any of the cities. There will always be Aegins and Skrain and blood coin hunters. There’s no life outside the cities, either. The land between isn’t fairing much better than this stripped earth around us.”

“Where do we go, then, if not back to the Legion?” Lariat demands. “Is yer new Sicclunan friend offerin’ us sanctuary with ’er people?”

“There is no sanctuary,” Evie assures them all. “I promised Brio I’d return him home, and I promised you could return to your families. But that can’t happen with Crache as it is.”

“What are you saying, love?” Mother Manai asks. “What do you want us to do?”

“I want to do what we were all going to die doing, no matter which side of the line we find ourselves on, no matter how much we lied to ourselves. I want to fight. I want us to stop being a Skrain weapon and become the worst enemy they’ve ever faced. I want to make Crache a place we can return to and live.”

“I don’t mind cuttin’ down Skrain,” Lariat says. “You’re askin’ us ta kill Savages? For Sicclunans?”

Evie shakes her head. “No. I want to turn the Savages against them. ALL the Savages.”

She expects another spar with Lariat and is already readying her counterargument when he delivers the last response Evie expects.

He bursts out laughing.

“Now that’s a notion!” he bellows gleefully. “Why didn’t ye say so in the first place?”