There, in the very midst of them. She initially thinks that it’s Cleric—his face is all but identical—but Cleric sits several paces beyond, his legs crossed, his head bowed in prayer or exhaustion.

Another Nonman?

He sits the way the others sit, back hunched against the wind, eyes closed, as though taking inventory of inner pains. An archaic headdress falls to his back and shoulders, a crown of silvered thorns chased by a skirt of tiny black rods. His garb is violet and voluminous but wrapped in a manner that reveals segments of his corselet, a kind of mail wrought from innumerable golden figurines. White skin is visible beneath, as smooth as ivory.

For a moment she can neither breathe nor speak. Then at last she says, “So-soma?”

“Mim-Mimara?” he replies, trying to sound mocking. He is always trying to rally her.

“Who,” she asks without looking at the Nilnameshi caste-noble, “is that?” For a moment, she is frightened that he won’t see this as well …

That she has gone mad.

The following pause both reassures and terrifies. “What the—?”

She hears him draw his sword, a sound that, even through scarcely audible in the wind, instantly rouses the others.

Everyone is up and shouting, raising battered shields and notched swords. Soma steps before Mimara, falls into stance, his scimitar raised above his head. On the figure’s far side, Cleric lifts his eyes, blinks with feline curiosity.

Turning his head on a slow swivel, the stranger looks about, but never quite at any of them. He then lowers his face to his sandalled feet once again. Mimara notices that the wind does not touch the lavish cloth about his shoulders, though it whips and pins the clothing of everyone standing about him.

“Sweet Seju!” Galian hisses. “He … he has no shadow!”

“Quiet,” Lord Kosoter grates, invoking an instinct Mimara feels all too keenly. A sense of mortal peril seems to ride the wind, a tingling certainty that the Nonman before them is less flesh or blood than a dread gate, a catastrophic threshold.

He is perfectly motionless. He possesses a predator’s vigilance for sound and motion.

Even still, Cleric warily approaches the figure, his nimil armour shining through the webbing of blood. His expression is astonished, so stunned that he almost seems human. He kneels below the figure and, looking up, gently calls, “Cousin?”

The face rises. The small bars on his headdress swing about his jawline. They shine like obsidian.

No sound comes from the opening lips. Instead, the entire company starts when they hear Pokwas and Achamian rasp, “You-you …” in ragged unison.

Sarl cackles like a drunk who has scared tears from his grandchildren.

“Yes, Cousin … I have returned.”

Again the lips move, and the voices of the two unconscious men rise into the void of sound, the one reeded by age, the other deep and melodious.

“They-they called-called us-us false-false.”