Taigan wondered if their lives would be any different here during the coming darkness. Perhaps they could escape it, this plucky little family with the bright eyes and soft mouths. Taigan had often thought about running away to some icy, mountainous island and waiting out the next twenty years of madness. But going too far down that line of thinking caused the ward on her back to burn. It incited the headaches. She was a bound thing, tied by Maralah’s string, the same way these people would be if she sold them off into someone’s household.

After the singing, the family banked the fire and bedded down. Taigan listened to two or more of the adults making love in the tall grass near the camp. She heard soft laughter and the low sounds of desire and need and release. How strange to be Dhai, she thought. How strange to have a family that eats and sings and laughs and makes love as if it were nothing.

Their desire provoked hers, and she moved her hand between her thighs. But the fullness of her bladder and the promise of the pain she would experience on emptying it dampened her spirits. Instead, she folded her hands across her belly and closed her eyes.

Taigan found herself running through the details of the last great campaign the Saiduan fought against the Dhai. It was a battle every Saiduan military member learned, from line soldier to war minister. It was the last great battle of the long war. Two forces met outside the great city of Aaraduan, then known as Roasandara.

The Saiduan bear cavalry had been outside Roasandara since dawn, just northwest of the city, waiting for the Dhai. They numbered ten thousand. Forty thousand Dhai – a mix of infantry and tirajista companies – came down and met them on open tundra. They fought for less than an hour before the Saiduan cavalry gave ground, withdrawing to positions closer to the city. Two more divisions of Saiduan infantry – including a command of tirajistas – were coming up from the south and were within hearing distance of the fighting. Two Dhai generals, their names blotted from history, rode toward the battle at the head of their units. Seeing the small Saiduan infantry, they attacked their right flank.

Taigan had not shared this battle with the scullery girl. It was one she wanted to put before her, to see how she’d solve it. Before Maralah sent the letter. Before she learned the scullery girl could not fly. Perhaps it didn’t matter anymore. They were fighting Dhai again. A fitter, smarter Dhai. They would not act like their ancestors, so in truth, it shouldn’t matter now how some old conflict was resolved.