“I’m stopping now,” he said. “If you go on without me, and if I find you collapsed by the roadside—”

“Yes, yes. You’ll leave me to die of thirst and let the buzzards and corpse dragons pick my bones.”

“There’s no such thing as corpse dragons.”

“Or shadow stalkers. Don’t worry. I’ll stay and protect you. I’ll let you rest, too. If you need that, you have only to say so, Kitsune.”

He stalked off. She smiled and set about finding a place to camp. She knew he wasn’t truly angry or even annoyed. It was a long walk, with little amusement to be had beyond needling each other, and the barbs had lost their poisonous tips after Edgewood.

As the sun began to drop, she found another amusement—practicing her dagger throws. They’d stopped at a spot that might be an oasis after one of the rare rainfalls in the Wastes. For now, it was only a patch of sandy soil big enough for two houses. No grasses or flowers. Just moss-covered rocks and a few stunted, gnarled trees. One of those trees was already dead, having been almost entirely debranched for firewood. So she felt no guilt using it as a target.

She practiced with Orbec’s blade to get used to it. There was far more variety in warrior daggers than swords. Some were almost as small as kitchen knives. Few warriors used those. Most preferred a blade nearly two hand spans long, similar to the short swords warriors had once paired with their long blades. Moria’s and Ashyn’s daggers were somewhere between the two, a model more suited to small hands—with a longer handle for throwing. Orbec’s dagger blade was slightly longer than hers, but not much, and the handle was perfectly weighted. It was, in short, a superior throwing weapon, suited to both the short distance technique—with rotation—and the more difficult non-rotational long-distance technique. Moria practiced both.

When Gavril returned, she saw him watching a rodent scamper past. They’d seen many of them—brown ratlike creatures with powerful back legs that sent them hopping over the lava plains.

“If you were better with those”—he pointed at her blades—“you’d get us some dinner.”

The challenge could not go unanswered, and she set off with Daigo toward an outcropping of rock that appeared to be a likely home for the rodents. It seemed Gavril did not expect her to actually return with a meal. Or so she presumed from his expression when she came back with two of the rodents, tails tied, slung over her arm.

“I’m hoping you know how to dress these,” she said as she dropped them in front of him.