Then came the war. One day Petrya was at peace, the next the marshals were rallying the soldiers. The teardrop and flame raj hada of Petrya was raised from every tower, and anti-Alturan rhymes were heard on the gleeful children's lips. Some questioned why they were fighting, but High Lord Haptut Alwar ruled his people with strength and terror, and where he led, they would follow.

Prices in Tlaxor immediately began to rise. It was difficult enough to bring goods over Lake Halapusa to the tiered city — the Halapusa Ferry could only carry so much. One silver deen bought only half of what it had days before.

The young men among the Petryans were called up to fight. Any lad over the age of sixteen would be going to war. Only those training to be elementalists were excluded. Sendak, Shani's nephew, would be sixteen in a month. Shani's brother knew he himself would be fighting, but both he and his sister knew they had to get Sendak enrolled swiftly.

Shani had saved plenty of gilden; she had little to spend her money on, and had been putting coins aside from her stipend for ten years. She visited the lender she had her funds with, and shaking his head he'd told her what he was evidently telling all his customers: Shani's money had been confiscated by the High Lord for the war chest.

When Shani told her brother, he had seemed surprisingly calm, given that without gilden, Sendak's dream of becoming an elementalist would be thwarted, and the boy would soon be called up to fight Alturan bladesingers and Halrana constructs.

The truth was, Shani's brother had his own source of income: he was making money selling Alturan-made goods on the grey market. The importation of nightlamps, heatplates, pathfinders and the like was banned by the High Lord, and the man who risked the High Lord's wrath could name his price.

Shani kept this part of the story short. Someone betrayed her brother; she never found out who it was. The High Lord put Shani's brother, his wife, and Shani's nephew in a cage, and they slowly lowered the cage into the boiling water of Lake Halapusa.

They'd nearly taken Shani too, but her brethren elementalists had vouched for her. Instead, along with the other residents of their neighbourhood, she was forced to watch, and endure the screams and cries of her only family as the flesh was taken from their bones.

As she looked on, despair came over Shani and she could take no more. With her jaw clenched tight and her fists held out in front of her, the fireball appeared between her cuffs before she even knew she'd made a sound. With a flick of her wrists, Shani threw the fireball at the cage, ending the cries in an instant.