“By my count, Tomoe there is well rich enough to retire in luxury and comfort,” Laython tells them. “But she keeps hunting, for the love. Namrok, well, I’m not sure he knows where he is right now, but with a face like that he just needs to be pointed in the right direction.”

Namrok laughs raucously at that, though Tomoe only grins thinly and much more, it seems to Evie, at something in her own head.

“Why don’t you show ’em the catch of the day, my friends,” Laython bids the blood coin hunters.

Tomoe reaches behind her and unties a large bundle concealed in dark cloth atop her mount. It takes some tussling with the bundle, but she quickly unfurls and muscles the bundle from its perch, spilling its contents onto the hot grass.

The eviscerated corpse once belonged to a middle-aged woman. Runes that were once bluish-green have now turned gray, but they still stained the cold flesh of her face and hands.

From her saddle, Tomoe reaches inside her armor and removes a blood coin, flicking it to Laython, who catches it expertly.

He holds this one up to the sun as he did with its newly minted fellow.

This coin, unlike that fresh-forged one, is stained brown and red with the eviscerated woman’s blood.

“So you know it’s not just a clever name,” Laython informs them, tucking the coin inside his belt.

“Why bother digging it out of her?” Evie asks Tomoe directly, sounding very tired all of a sudden.

“I believe in being certain,” the blood coin hunter answers her in a voice far softer and more feminine than Tomoe’s visage.

“Was she still alive?” Evie presses.

“Not for as long as I’d hoped,” Namrok answers for them, and laughs again, a disturbing cackle.

“Any more questions, my presumptuous girl?” Laython asks Evie.

She only hangs her head in silence.

Laython points directly at Evie. “You’re next in the chair.”

She looks inside the smithy’s lean-to, where the other taskers are removing the newly anointed Savage’s portly frame from the recliner.

“Well,” she says, “at least you’re feeding us.”

FALLING STARS

THE ANCIENT COIN FLIPS END over end through the air, its green and gray patina swallowing the rays of the afternoon sun before it can touch the metal beneath. The coin descends and its face lands atop the flat of Daian’s blade. He drops his wrist just enough to cradle the coin and slow its momentum, keeping it poised on the hardened steel of his Aegin’s dagger. Daian briefly examines the five stars crudely stamped on the other side of the coin, at least those visible through its aged scars. He quickly flicks his wrist, the dagger’s blade propelling the coin up once more so he can repeat the process.