Brother Qown looked back and forth between the two. “Janel, may I take over reading? You can eat.”

Janel pulled a bowl to her. “Yes. Please do.”

Qown’s Turn. The town of Mereina, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.

Turning in the bandits for their reward required traveling to Mereina, Barsine Banner’s local seat. It wasn’t a happy trip. The guards joked and bantered the whole way, bragging as if they’d done anything more than arrive. In contrast, the outlaws were a dour bunch.

Brother Qown couldn’t help but compare them with the previous criminals they had captured, who had treated their situation like a game.

He’d been surprised. The rest of the Quuros Empire punished banditry with mandatory slavery. Here in Jorat, the men and women they arrested hadn’t taken the matter with any solemnity at all. They had been criminals and happy to take metal by force, but they had treated their arrest as a grand lark. They had lost; the count had won. Well played.

Ninavis and her gang behaved differently.

The silence from both the bandits and Count Janel herself was thick and sullen. She gazed around her with narrowed eyes as if she expected an attack at any moment. The whole group’s tension pulled tighter with each step toward their destination.

As they left the tree line, Mereina Castle came into view. Qown didn’t recognize it at first. He only realized the building wasn’t a watchtower or storage depot when the guards headed in that direction.

To be fair, it wasn’t much of a castle.

The squat, square structure dated from antiquity, when all these lands dwelt outside the Quuros Empire. The border fortress had been repurposed into the local government seat. Gracing it with the label castle was like comparing his native Eamithon’s gently rolling hills with the Dragonspires.

The “town” resting in a valley below the castle plateau differed from the clay brick, wood, and stone structures used in western Quur. Instead of houses, private patios and arbors covered the valley. Flags and banners flew from the posts. In a high wind—or even a low wind—the town became a sea of waving cloth. Pretty, but useless for protecting anyone from the storms for which Jorat was so infamous.

Horses and elephants wandered through the streets. Dholes—a dog breed with fox-like features—roamed streets or stayed close to family patios.

But where were the houses?

The only structures resembling buildings nestled on the same plateau as the castle: hundreds of Joratese tents called azhock. Formed from fabric and hides stretched over a wooden frame, the azhock were large enough to house men and horses both. These temporary homes sheltered the tournament travelers: merchants, traders, farmers, and those who represented their interests in the event itself.