“I know you won’t,” he says. “You may return to your quarters now, Slider. There will be a bell for dinner, and I’ll have Quan come to escort you to the commissary. We can talk more about your daily duties then.”

Before Dyeawan can answer, the door behind her clicks open and the tall, gaunt attendant is there, waiting with his kind smile.

She drags her left paddle back and rows the opposite one forward, turning her toward the door.

Dyeawan stops.

“Edger?” she asks. “This isn’t a dream, is it? I’m not… I’m not still in that cell? In the dungeon?”

“No, my dear,” he answers without hesitation. “This place is realer than most.”

Dyeawan can’t be certain what he means by that, but she knows beyond any doubt that he’s telling the truth.

BLOOD COINS AND BLOOD COIN HUNTERS

THE STEADY STRIKE OF THE smith’s hammer is meant to be a siege tactic. Evie knows this. They, the new recruits, have been gathered here beside the thatch lean-to shielding the blacksmith from the midday sun to watch the old woman work. They’re left to stand without instruction for several long moments, the silence narrated solely by the brutal fall of that steel hammer. It’s no different from drums beating outside a besieged fortification, only the target is the invisible parapet guarding their minds.

Evie studies the elderly woman whose flesh has been hardened to near stone by decades of intense heat and labor. She is fashioning coins. They aren’t large coins, only slightly rounder and wider than the tip of a thumb, and they aren’t gold or silver. They look to Evie to be cheap copper, or perhaps tin. After she cools each one, the smithy carefully brushes both sides of the small coins with a mixture from a bowl near her forge.

Evie has no idea what the substance is, but its slicks on top like oil, green and purple and black all at once, and the smell as the old woman lashes each coin with it is awful.

Laython is standing behind a waist-high object covered with an old moth-eaten blanket, watching the smithy. When he seems satisfied she’s minted enough, he gathers the cover of the object in front of him with one giant hand and whips it away, revealing a chair fashioned from both wood and steel. Its back is deeply recessed and a panel has been added to cradle the legs and feet. Its most menacing feature, however, are the many buckled leather straps dangling from its joints.