But since the snow began to retreat into the wood lines, and then to melt away altogether—since Nita Qwan’s departure east, and then, ten days later, the sudden breakup of the ice—all the Dulwar and all the other Outwallers who lived around N’gara began to train their warriors, and Bill Redmede’s people joined in with a will. And they learned from the Outwallers, too—how to throw the small axes the Dulwars all carried, men and women, too, and how to make lighter arrows of the cane that grew around the inner sea and at this time of the year was standing, dried and ready to be harvested.

But Bill had agreed to the alliance. He knew what was coming, and what was expected.

Most of his men were going to war, and a few women, too. Bess was heavily pregnant, but grimly determined until the whole body of the Jacks voted together that no pregnant woman should come to the war.

“If’n we’re all killed,” Jamie Cartwright said, “you gels will keep our memory alive.”

Bess cursed and didn’t speak to anyone for a day.

Tapio—the Faery Knight—came and sat with her. She was always delighted to see him, as if he was an angel or a god.

He took one of her hands. “Besss,” he said. “If we triumph you will have misssed nothing but violenssse.” He shrugged. “But if we fail, I promissse you that our enemy will come here all too sssoon, and you and Tamsssin will have your belliesss full of fighting.”

But even to the Faery Knight, she frowned. “I didn’t become a Jack to get left behind because my body was full of a man’s seed,” she spat.

“I’m sssure there will be more war, asss sssure asss the sssun will ssshine,” he said with a twisted smile. “All the creaturesss of thisss world make war. It isss what we have in common.” He rose with an elegance no human frame could match, like a sinewy serpent.

So Bess straightened arrows and made the pine pitch resin that they used to help bind the heads to the shafts, and while the Outwallers did their war dances and Mogon’s wardens came in from the north and Exrech’s people swarmed in from the far west with tales of war and flood behind them, the Jacks completed their preparations, loaded their bags with food, and contemplated their allies.

Fitzalan had a new beard and a new, more mature manner. He didn’t attack everything he saw anymore. He had an almond-eyed Outwaller woman named Liri from far to the west, where they said there was a river as broad as a lake. Her people were called Renerds, and their skin was a golden red, their eyes and hair much the same.

Or perhaps she had him. She seemed the more imperious of the two.