Both shrugged against Amaris’s question, admitting to not having been raised particularly religious on either side of their border. Malik’s parents had taken him to their village’s church on the solstices of the year, always with donations and offerings to the All Mother. He had supposed it was a practice born out of community solidarity as much as it was any sense of spiritual obligation. His mother had never made a pilgrimage to a proper temple, he’d said.

In the north, Zaccai said, many worshipped the goddess, but his mother had raised him outside of the views of the church. His mother had believed in more tangible magics than the abstract offerings of an unseen goddess. Malik looked at Amaris as if waiting for her to translate, but she did not. Instead, she sat in a long, pensive silence while considering the continent’s faithful.

“It’s a tree,” she finally said.

“What’s a tree?” Zaccai asked.

“The symbol of the All Mother. It’s a tree.”

They considered the iron they’d seen, and it clicked into place just as it had with her. Three minimalistic strokes had been the goddess’s sign, but they’d seemed meaningless in and of themselves. They had been lines and a curve, nothing more. Now they saw the symbol for what it was.

“It seems obvious now,” Malik said quietly, looking into the distance. His eyes peered through the shadows of the distant woods, presumably off to where the enormous plant had grown in the temple’s heart. Of course the iron symbol would be born to represent something sacred and beautiful.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” Zaccai said politely, “but aren’t the reevers a religious organization?”

Amaris had only been a reever for a few years, but this was something she knew the answer to. She didn’t translate, but it was clear from Malik’s expression as he listened that he agreed, nodding along slowly.

“They call us ‘the sword arm of the goddess,’ but not because we’re an extension of faith. We’re just agents of balance. The church shares our goal and supports us. We can’t very well have bishops and priestesses running around with swords.”

Her answer appeared to satisfy Zaccai and Malik alike.

Amaris considered the tangible magics and thought only of Brel. She wondered how many humans she had met with the small magics and never known them for what they were. She then found herself wondering if those with tangible magics were considered human at all. Was sweet, young Brel, with his ability to speak to fire, what the superstitious folk would have called “witch”? What was it that caused magic to bubble up in a human lineage?

Hoping her question wouldn’t be taken with offense, Amaris pressed Zaccai further. “Cai, when you say your mother was more interested in tangible magics… Was she a witch?”

He shook his head, unprovoked by her question.