“Brio’s father had a keen eye for loyalty. He chose well in you. I am only sorry it’s taken having Brio pulled from us for me to see it.”

Taru has no answer for that, or perhaps the feelings Lexi’s words stir make it too much to speak.

Taru swallows hard, changing the subject. “What will Te-Gen do next?”

Lexi draws in a deep, thoughtful breath. “I’m not sure what else can be done by us here. We have to trust our friend will send word somehow and soon, and that her word will carry news of progress.”

“I am not one for waiting,” Taru says.

“I used to be quite good at it. It was expected of me. I find my taste for it souring now, however.”

“That was before, Te-Gen.”

Lexi halts briefly, looking up at her retainer. “Before what?”

There’s no hint of irony when Taru explains, “Before you became the pleader of Gen Stalbraid.”

Lexi says nothing to that, slowly taking back up her stride. A moment later as they near the Spectrum lobby, she looks back at Taru with a strange smile on her face.

Pleader.

Her mother would approve.

Lexi allows herself the briefest moment to enjoy the thought before she returns her gaze to what lies ahead.

“Come along,” she bids Taru. “We have food to pick up, and people waiting for us in the Bottoms.”

“Yes, Te-Gen,” her retainer affirms without even attempting to hide their enthusiasm.

BURIED ON THE BATTLEFIELD

FOR THE FIRST AND ONLY time as a Savage, Evie feels herself pulled from a deep, restful sleep by the blaring of half a dozen rousing horns.

It’s before dawn, and the cold of the morning is the kind that bites through flesh until it finds the bone beneath. Evie has never been the kind who wakes easily, and the earlier the worse. This morning, however, she finds the world comes into focus quickly and sharply. The reality of what’s to come in the next few hours is palpable, like blood on the tongue.

She may be more than the drunken bar brawler she presented to the Aegins who arrested her, to Laython and the taskers and the rest of the Savages, but Evie has never fought in a war before.

War. She turns the word over and over in her newly conscious mind. Back in the Capitol, in any of Crache’s shining cities, none of the people with their well-fed lives would even be able to reconcile what is going on here, what the Savages are being prepared to do. Evie has never been as naive as the oblivious, content masses, but even she couldn’t have conceived of how vast the machinery of this silent conflict seems to be.