Imagine two young girls who live in that nameless land. They call each other sisters, but there’s no telling who birthed them and who lost them. They don’t know how old they are. They can’t know. There is no record-keeping, not the way there is a regular census in the empire. There are just masters, retainers, outlaws, and atoners.

Masters rule. Retainers work for the masters and, in return, the masters protect and feed them. Outlaws refuse to serve, so they are hunted. What do atoners do? They die so the masters may live.

In the nameless land, the masters and their households and courts are on the move most of the time, traveling from one royal villa to the next. If they stay too long at any one place, there will not be enough provisions to feed the court, so they never stay more than a month at a time in any one place, except for the midwinter layover. In the nameless land there is no holystone, no hallow-wood, no shrive-steel, no surveyors and couriers and wardens on patrol. A Pall may rise anywhere. Spore may sprout anywhere, with no warning. So, atoners walk at the front and back of their master’s cavalcade. If they spot Spore, then they warn the main procession. If they don’t spot it, if drifting Spore hooks into them or they set their foot in a puddle of Pall that has gathered on a dim path in the forest the way water gathers after a rain, then their agonized death warns the main procession.

Imagine the two little girls who have spent all their childhood walking as atoners, from as far back as they can remember. Children make the best atoners. They’re rarely strong or fast enough to run away, and they wouldn’t know where to go if they did. There are things worse than Spore in the world, they are told. There are violent outlaws who take slaves, inhuman raiders who are unspeakably cruel, and ravening monsters who crave human flesh. Also, there is the righteous anger of the white-haired god who will smite them if they do not obey the master.

Somehow the two girls have survived when most atoners die long before they reach adulthood.

Don’t pity the two girls. They are better off than every other atoner. One of the girls has a nose for Spore that is unrivaled. Uncanny and a little disturbing. Witchy, if you will. But it means the household and court of young Lady Eleawona, to which they are attached, is well protected when they travel off the holy road to the royal strongholds and villas.