“Hundreds of years ago,” Tan said, speaking as though they were all seated around a table back in the Ashk’lan refectory, as though his spear wasn’t leveled at Triste’s neck, as though she wasn’t bleeding, the delicate red stream staining the collar of her tunic. She watched him with wary, animal eyes, body tensed to flee. “During the final years of Atmani rule, when the leach-lords and their massive armies clashed, turning farmland to mud, blood, and ash, obliterating entire cities, two Ghannans from the hills north of Chubolo risked their lives to save the local children.”

It wasn’t like Tan to linger over stories, but as long as the monk was talking, he wasn’t killing Triste, which meant Kaden could pause, could try to order his thoughts.

“The Ghannans,” Tan continued, “a man and woman, went from city to city, town to town, sometimes arriving even as the dust kicked up by the encroaching armies darkened the sky behind them. From their own fortune, they were able to supply wagons and food. They were able to promise ships waiting in Sarai Pol, ships that would take the children to Basc, where the fighting had not yet reached. Parents thrust infants into their arms, lifted sobbing toddlers into the beds of wagons, instructed the older children to care for the younger, then watched as the caravan departed, pushing east just ahead of the coming violence.

“As promised, the ships were waiting. And as promised, the children were whisked away before Roshin’s armies swept across eastern Ghan. As promised, they arrived in Ganaboa. They were saved. Then they disappeared.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Triste asked, eyes wide. “With anything?”

Kaden glanced at her, then turned back to the older monk. “Where did they go?”

“For a long time,” Tan replied, “no one knew. The wars of the Atmani threw the world into chaos for decades. Uncounted thousands died, first in battle, then of famine, of disease. People weren’t able to protect their own homes, to harvest their crops. Basc might have been on the far side of the world. Parents prayed for their children, a few scraped together the coin to go looking, but none found them.

“That took the Ishien. More than thirty years after the two strangers led the children away, fifteen Ishien finally managed to follow the trail to the southern coast of Basc. It is all jungle. Almost no one lives there, but tucked away in the hills they found a small cabin, and beneath the cabin, a warren of limestone caves, and in the caves, a prison, a vast prison.”

“The children?” Kaden asked.

Tan shrugged. “Were adults. Or dead. Or crippled. The Ghannans, on the other hand, the man and woman who had saved them all—those two had not aged a day.”

“Csestriim.”

Tan nodded.

Triste stared, aghast. “What did they want with the children?”