“Go and take a look,” Marcus said. He blew out a long breath. “If there is something bad going on, it’ll be dangerous.”

Raesinia’s face fell. “I don’t—”

“This is real progress,” he said. “Enough that we need to talk to someone who actually has some authority.” He paused thoughtfully. “I think I need to have a word with an old friend.”

Part Two

Interlude

IGNAHTA SEMPRIA

As best Wren could see, the city wasn’t burning.

They’d been hearing rumors all day, from folk jamming the road to the north, laden with all the possessions they could carry. Poor laborers carried packs strapped down with food, tools, and small children, with their families flocking behind them. Wealthier refugees rode or drove carriages, though Wren had seen more than one man in expensive clothes staggering on foot after he’d driven his horses too hard.

He had a barrel of water, which he refilled periodically from a stream a few minutes’ walk from the road, and offered a wooden cupful to anyone who asked. In return, they gave him information, of a sort. The Vordanai had won at Gaafen. No one was quite sure how, but the Deslandai didn’t seem curious; their city did not have a glorious military tradition, and this defeat was one more in a long-standing pattern.

Instead the rumors focused on what the Vordanai, newly fired by the spirit of their bloody revolution, would do to the city. That they would pillage anything they could get their hands on and rape any women they could catch was taken as a given, and the stories only grew more grotesque from there. Whole blocks had been fired, one woman assured him, the doors of the houses barricaded so the occupants cooked inside. Sworn Priests were being sacrificed to dark powers on their own altars. Several well-dressed refugees swore that the nobility of the city was already being rounded up, and the Vordanai general had brought one of their horrible “Spikes” with them to begin spreading his new, vicious creed. A mother, clutching her young daughters, told him that the Vordanai had a legion of unnatural woman soldiers with unhealthy desires, and that they were gathering all the virginal girls of Desland to induct them into their ranks in a perverted, orgiastic ritual.

Wren just smiled, nodded, and agreed that it was all terrible, while compiling the mad tales to try and extract some nuggets of truth. His demon, pressed into his ears, let him overhear conversations among those passing even when they thought themselves alone, and he added these to the mix as well. As evening fell, the flow of fleeing Deslandai slowed to a trickle, which was in itself a significant data point. He lit a fire beside his water barrel, offered drinks to the few stragglers, and waited.