“It is a number, Dyeawan, and a completely arbitrary one. It holds no power or influence over anything. I am eager to see what my fresh young minds may achieve unbidden, and today’s meeting did not disappoint.”

Dyeawan rows the paddles of her tender, wheeling herself away from the curve of the snaking slab in front of her. She turns the tender away from the stone hedge maze of a table and begins rolling across the chamber, her back to Edger.

“I look forward to tomorrow,” he calls after her.

The wheels of her tender keep spinning, and Dyeawan does not look back.

A PLOT OF CORPSES

EVIE WRINGS OUT THE CLOTH over a lopsided wooden basin and carefully folds the dampened rag into a rectangle before laying it across Brio’s forehead. His fever has dissipated drastically, but his skin is not yet cool. Brio clung to life tenuously for several nights. At its worst his entire body burned as bright as a red-hot coal in the dark and even his sweat seared to the touch. He was delirious beyond reason, experiencing funerals for people who were not yet dead, mourning Lexi who was murdered in his mind a hundred different ways. He was struck down over and over again by a half-mad giant named Taru whose betrayal he bemoaned more than his own death at their hands.

Brio was still in the throes of it when Evie was forced to leave him in preparation for their assault on the Skrain encampment. She’d forced herself to banish thoughts of him from her mind, certain she’d return to find a corpse if she returned at all. Evie is still uncertain whose survival surprised her more, Brio’s or her own.

The Sicclunan surgeon took his leg just below the knee. She proved to be a skilled cutter and healer. Though the Sicclunans may lack every resource that isn’t funneled into their war efforts, they do seem to possess knowledge in abundance. What’s left of Brio below that kneecap has been burned and sealed with oils and carefully wrapped with clean silk. Every few hours the surgeon returns to unravel the seeping bandages and replace them with clean wraps.

Brio is still incredibly weak, but he’s conscious, staring up at Evie with glassy, weary eyes like a man watching his own dreams. They’ve shaved his filthy, ratted beard and most of his hair. He looks very much like the boy Evie remembers, apart from the blue runes staining his skin and covering his face.

“The Sparrow General?” he asks churlishly in a voice that’s barely a whisper.

“Stow it, will you?” she fires back at him. “It’s hardly a name I chose. And I’m no general. It was agreed among the three parties we’d share tactical command equally, and I’m not even senior among the Savages.”