Scenes from The Radore

The lithos stone hummed beneath Myntra’s feet, its power settling into her bones like a second heartbeat. She stood on Mydya Moc’s highest watch, a ledge cut into the calcified skin of the great sky-structure that had fallen eons ago.

Days like this were rare—clear enough to see the edge of the world, the horizon stretching impossibly far beyond the restless sea.

Wind cut through her weathered seal skins, sharp and cold. The eel oil protecting her face was still sticky on her temples, but the headache building behind her eyes demanded more attention. Her dark hair, pulled tight in its knot, was a weight. The headaches came often now, stealing her sleep and turning night into something to endure.

She’d been on watch since dawn through driving rain that had finally broken. Now the sun, Maz, hung low and red on the horizon, setting the world ablaze—the last light of First Eve, their new year. Far below, dark figures moved across the tidal fields, harvesting even on this holy day. Tonight families would gather around their hearths, telling old stories and praying for better times.

She should wish to be celebrating with them. But she was a Reader, a protector. The Pantan people needed her gift to survive at Mydya Moc. What had been a powerful Pantan fortress was now their prison.

Myn closed her eyes and let the veiling take her. Pressure built behind her lids like small bubbles bursting. Then the world transformed—the blue sea vanishing into liquid fire. Reds and golds spread across her vision. Everything else became silver and shadow.

Except the patterns the benava made as they swam on the edge of sky and sea. Her vision tracked them glowing green. The massive, ancient creatures foretold many things: poison tides, sometimes violent surges that followed no moon, and warned of monster waves. Now, their rapid weaving and staccato song said a storm would come tonight, a strong one. The Pantan of Mydya would have to seal the Moc and celebrate First Eve inside. Without the benava and ancient shields built into the cliff, the Moc would have fallen to the sea long ago.

This was what she lived for. What she’d die for. Reading the patterns that kept her people alive.

“Myn.”

She turned. Renka approached, a ghost in her veiled sight—all black and white, wind lifting her hair like smoke. Myn shut her eyes and unveiled them. Color returned. Renka stood before her in new Reader skins, a hood covering her pale hair.

“You’re early.”

Renka had just passed her change—barely fourteen and already showing signs of the sight that would save or destroy her.

“I’ll take over. You can rest.”

Myn almost smiled. “No need. Storm’s coming. We’ll have to set the shields.”

“Direl told me to come up.”

The ivory bands on Myn’s wrists seemed to burn. She rubbed them, wishing she could forget what they meant, that this was her last day of freedom. Renka’s eyes followed, color rising in her cheeks.

“Why did he send you?”

“He said he didn’t trust you on watch.”

“So he sent you to spy.”

Renka shrugged, uncomfortable.

Direl. Renka’s brother was Myn’s betrothed. Tomorrow, she would be bound to him. Direl had the blood but not the sight. He’d use up her gift to see what he never could, and she’d spend her life translating visions he could not understand. But that was the way of Mydya. The Reader bloodline must survive.

“May the Casters take him.”

“I’m sorry, Myn.” She turned to go.

“It’s all right, Ren, you can stay. Come, stand beside me.”

Renka stepped close, warmth against the cutting wind. The girl’s face was bright with excitement. For a moment Myn remembered the beginning, before the headaches and the fear, when the living stone first called to her.

Myn put her arm around Renka’s shoulders, as much for herself as the girl.

“Look out to the edge.” Her voice steadied. “If the patterns are there, the events are uncertain. They’ll take time to reach us, and their form will change. Be careful—learning to focus this far when the sun is strong can blind you. Push too hard and you’ll never see again.”

Renka straightened, gazing out with youth’s intensity.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Veil your eyes.”

Myn watched the film spread across Renka’s eyes from inner corner to outer edge. Now they would absorb light rather than reflect it. To anyone but a Reader, she’d look dazed. The girl’s eyes glowed like coals in second sight.

“What do you see?”

“Benava but they’re bright as sun,” Renka gasped, hands to her temples. “It hurts.”

“Take a rest. It gets easier, you grow used to the pain. Let it pass before you try again.”

Renka shook her head. “I don’t have your talent, Myn. I’m afraid I’ll never do it right.”

“You’ve barely started. I was no better at your age.”

It was true. When Myn was fourteen she could barely read to the first boundary. The gift everyone praised had come to her late and come hard—Aren’s gift, they meant, her mother’s, the greatest Reader of all, passed down like the ivory bands to a daughter who had no memory of her at all. Green eyes flecked with gold and the reading itself: that was all Myn had of Aren, who had died as she was born, murdered by Takers from Sendya. A name too large to fill, and no face behind it.

“Your mother taught me,” Myn said. “I’ll teach you the same.”

Renka brightened, though Myn’s chest tightened at the thought of Laset. The woman could barely read anymore, struck blind more often than not, her eyes pools of shadow, her face webbed with spidery veins. Soon Myn would take her place as master Reader—an honor that felt like a sentence. How long before she wore that same ruined face?

“My father used to say that by reading, we alter the patterns. Alter fate itself,” said Myn.

“Your father has many stories.”

Myn nodded. “The farther away the patterns, the greater the chaos. If I see something today, when the edge is so far, it might change before it reaches us. But if I miss a pattern because of fog or night—when the edge is close—it will reach us exactly as I see it. Too late to stop.” She rubbed her temples. “That’s why we must always watch.”

“Do you really believe we can remake what we see?”

The question hung between them. Myn considered it, feeling the cost of years spent on watch.

“Yes, because we act upon it. If we miss a wave sign and don’t take shelter, yet survive—does that mean there was no threat? We can never know. We can never risk it.” She paused. “Perhaps that’s our real power—not changing fate, but choosing how to face it.”

But then both went silent watching the sunset sky where a star had suddenly appeared, pulsing brilliant white and streaking north.

“What is it?” said Renka.

Before Myn could answer, the shielding came unbidden—her eyes veiling, her gift seizing control. The world transformed. The light became a tear in the sky itself, bleeding foreign energy. The patterns writhed.

Then the vision hit.

A broken tower reaching toward an alien sky. Faces she didn’t know but would—she was certain of it, certain as death. A young man with war in his eyes the color of rain-washed flint, standing between her and a darkness with no edge to it. The taste of ash and salt and change on her tongue.

“Myn? Are you all right?”

Myn held her breath as the vision faded. Her heart pounded and her legs went weak as she gripped the stone railing. Blood trickled from her nose—the gift’s price for seeing unbidden. She wiped it away.

“Remember the rhyme, Renka?” Her voice shook.

“Yes,” said Renka as the star faded to nothing.

“I’ve seen that star before,” said Myn. “I didn’t want to tell you.”

“The Tenth Land?” Renka’s voice was small. “Is it the beginning or the end, Myn Tas?”

“Both.”

The word entered her bones before she could call it back.

“I think it’s both.”

The star vanished and a mournful wail sounded from the cliff above the keep.

“A bluefisher?” Renka asked, hopeful.

They looked toward the gate, and Myn was already shaking her head.

“No. Takers.”

“Damn them all to the nine hells.”

Nesander spat the curse as he rode through the city gates. The gods of the Arci weren’t listening, but the pounding of his heart was. Behind his eyes, the temple ceremony played on a sickening loop: the scarlet flagon raised high, the bitter hodah forced down a child’s throat until she choked, and his mother—Dumina Esmi—watching from her balcony with a mask of indifference.

He drove his heels into Darb’s flanks. The stallion surged beneath him, carrying him from the upper city and the stench of barduhl—the Shaimin narcotic that hung over Sendya like a sweet, heavy rot.

Sendya is rotting. We are lost to invaders who never raised a sword.

They had promised his father the finest army in the north. All he had to do was trade with them, honor them, let them into his city. Then came the gifts: rare metals for weapons, fake gems for his Gomen crown, a splendid yacht, countless women, and enough flattery to make his greed limitless, his appetites legendary.

Nesander glanced back once. The city of Sendya sparkled like a jewel, but below it, the New Town spread like a wound—a ring of hovels and filth.

The ground rose as he hit the foothills. The spicy scent of round-grass began to clear the barduhl from his lungs. Darb’s muscles bunched beneath him, the horse’s raw living strength a comfort, even if his reins were trimmed in Shaimin gold.

Another gift. Even his mount bore their mark.

“Nesander!” A shout carried on the wind.

He looked back to see Peder riding hard on his old plodah mare. The older man’s face was flushed with exertion and panic, his mouth grim, his eyes narrowed with disapproval.

“You’ll be the death of me.” He was still catching his breath. “Let’s ride while we talk. She needs to walk it out.”

“Why don’t you give her the rest she’s earned?” Nesander gestured at Dunorka, who was breathing hard beneath her rider. “And take those Shaimin horn caps off her.”

Peder’s face hardened. Everything about him was sharp-edged: the grey-shot hair cropped short in southern style, the angular features, the wiry frame held stiff inside formal leather.

“She may be short-legged and grey around the muzzle,” Peder said, “but she’s got twice the brains of that brute you favor.”

Darb snorted.

Peder unfastened his tunic at the neck. “I hate these things.”

Nesander tried to hide a smile.

“What are you looking at? You look like a damn Goloni,” Peder grumbled.

The smile died.

True. Nesander wore leathers, cut tight to the body with a single opening from neck to groin. The Golonis believed clothes should celebrate a man’s beauty and hide a woman’s shame.

“In Golone they wear the Shaimin silk now, not leather.”

“Close enough. At least you’re not wearing braids.”

Nesander pulled up hard, dust settling around them.

“You’re funny, old man, you really are. But stop trying to distract me. I won’t go back, Peder. Not until the city quiets. I want to ride the streets of old Anranam. I need to think.”

Peder drew alongside, squinting with disapproval. “You can’t just run like this. Your mother is frantic.”

“I had to escape that depravity,” Nesander snapped.

“The Dumin’s will is Sendya’s law,” Peder said softly, still working at the fastening of his formal tunic. “It will be yours one day. We can change it—but only if you are patient.”

“Patient?” Nesander turned Darb toward the northern plain. “My father won’t move without consulting a Shaimin agent or an Arci priest. Farmers are being evicted to make room for slave-labor plantations. People are starving in the shadow of the Keep.”

Peder remained silent, his face darkening.

They were on the lowest terrace of Sen, the cliff mountain riddled with ancient passages. Above them, the pale stone of Anra’s shrine caught the fading light. Sen had been built by the Pantan before the Fall; it was the heart of their history, now a beautiful ruin.

Then the wind shifted.

Clang. Thud. Clang.

A metallic pounding echoed from the temple.

Nesander stopped his horse. “Someone is in the old city.”

“No,” Peder whispered, his face turning white. “We should go back. Your father will rage—”

“I don’t care.”

Nesander urged Darb toward the ruin. They passed beneath Anra’s Arch. Her gaze was serene, her arms extended in a three-thousand-year-old welcome. Her worship as a goddess was banned, her name forbidden speech, yet Nesander felt her presence like a warm hand on his heart.

As they entered the Street of Casters, the pounding grew deafening. They rounded the corner into the vast square facing Anra’s Temple, and Nesander pulled Darb up so hard he reared.

“No,” Nesander breathed.

Slaves from the mocs, Mydya and Dromense, swarmed over the square in purple cloth, the color of the Casters. Masons hammered at the temple facade, the sacred stone falling away in jagged scars. At the center of the square, the See Pool—Nesander’s private place of meditation—had been hollowed out into a gaping, muddy pit.

Nesander charged.

The workers froze in terror as the Heir of Sendya bore down on them.

The foreman, a squat outerlander named Abdur, scurried forward. “Master Nesander! We didn’t expect you today!”

“What is this?” Nesander’s voice was a whip-crack. “Why are you destroying the pool? This holy place? On First Eve?”

“A gift for Ton Naiden,” Abdur cried, pointing into the pit. “The lord of the Shaimin ordered the extraction. He means to make his own temple here. The Lady Anra is to be sent to his office in Ivern.”

“Naiden.” Nesander dismounted and strode to the edge, his vision blurred with rage.

His stomach lurched at the smell of mold and water rot. The pool had been shattered, the water drained. At the bottom, chipped from the bedrock, lay a smaller, life-size statue of Anra. Exposed to the air for the first time in centuries, she looked terrified, bound in rope.

“My father gave him Anra’s shrine?”

“Indeed, his Magnificence has granted all of Anranam to the Shaimin,” Abdur stammered. “The Arci high priest, the gran Tropo, said to start the work on First Eve. To mark the new era.”

Nesander went straight for him, pushing him back to the edge of the pool and glanced at the broken goddess. “Do you want to join her?”

He pulled the man up by his collar. “Do you?”

“No, master,” Abdur choked.

Nesander tightened his grip until the man’s face darkened. Then he let him go.

“Get out,” Nesander said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “Take your men and leave. Now.”

“But the Dumin’s orders—”

Nesander’s hand moved to the hilt of his blade. “I will answer to my father. Leave, or I will bury you in this ruin.”

The foreman turned and fled, screaming orders to his men.

Nesander stood at the edge of the destruction, his heart hammering against his ribs. Peder walked up beside him, his gaze fixed on the fleeing slaves. A hundred men from Mydya stared back at them with cavernous, eerie eyes—Pantan who still carried the blood of the old world.

“They look to you, Nesander,” Peder said quietly. “Talen Feir. They see what you see.”

“I told you never to call me that. I am no one, heir to a city that has sold its own soul.” Nesander swung back into Darb’s saddle, his knuckles white on the reins. “My father is celebrating in the Keep. It’s time the party ended.”

He spurred Darb into a gallop, charging back toward Sendya as the chill north wind carried the bitter scent of Shaimin vice.

Vadred Side Orbital hung in the void like a half moon—a steel glint at the edge of Shaimin reach, proof the Empire could extend this far and chose not to care once it had. Inside, the walls were seamless and white and cold in the way of places built for processing, not living. The air tasted of recycled oxygen and sterilizer. The scent of nowhere. The scent of between.

Dras Eng stood in the processing line and watched the security aperture pass silent judgment on the woman ahead of him as she entered the scanner. She was powerfully built, perhaps from the Inner paths by the way she moved—practiced, unhurried, her gravity-assisted bags drifting beside her like obedient spirits.

“Welcome, Lady Rosina Naiden,” said a soulless voice, smooth as temple bells. The scan panel opened, and she stepped in. So this was the boss’s wife. She moved through with the anxious dignity of someone performing calm. Haughty at the surface, frightened underneath—out of her depth at the edge of the Rim and too proud to show it. A woman who had never had to fight anything to get where she was going. The scanner gave three happy beeps, the outer door opened, and she floated through with privilege.

His turn now.

He held his modest carryall with both hands. One bag. One slate. His entire life compressed into what he’d lost. Far across the paths, in a storage hub, sat his holos, his studies, and four years of research at Budin University—the record of who he used to be.

He stepped in when his turn came, and the aperture hummed like a thing that knew him.

“Deep Scan required,” the aperture intoned.

He didn’t resist. Resistance belonged to a version of himself that still had standing but kept it hidden. He shut his eyes as the invasive pulse of the scan spidered his every cell. The read burrowed through him the way old grief does—reaching the places he’d thought he’d sealed.

“You may pass, Executive Engineer Dras Eng,” said the scanner.

His bones fizzed with cold, making it hard to walk to the shuttle access. But he could not sit. He could not pause. He was Executive Engineer Dras Eng. The words still fit his tongue. Nothing else about him did anymore.

The docking bay held a hopper that looked as though it had survived one too many descents. Its pilot, a massive man named Obedai, stood against the scarred hull drawing on a hand-rolled cigarette, exhaling sweet, thick clouds of smoke. He smelled of chili oil, garlic, and combustion—like something real, dropped into a place that had forgotten what real was.

“You Exec Eng?” he asked.

Dras nodded.

The pilot stamped out his cigarette.

“We go.”

More disrespect.

Inside the hatch, Dras hesitated.

A girl was there—the young woman he’d noticed at the orbital bar, the one whose face he’d catalogued without meaning to. Her expression was delicate, coppery hair gathered over one shoulder. She looked up as he entered, her gaze level and unreadable, offering nothing, withholding nothing. He had seen her at the bar, thinking she was trade, perhaps a liaison, but she wore no ring on her right finger. There were three empty seats, but he took the one beside her, telling himself it was casual. Convenience.

He almost believed it.

Obedai sat in the pilot’s chair, plugged a neural lead into his mastoid port with the ease of long ritual, and gestured at the mechanical levers on his console with affection.

“No voice command. Old bird runs on hands.” He looked back at them both. “And what did you two do to deserve the Vadred system?”

They looked at each other. Silence answered for them.

“Fine. Lock in. Descent is brutal.”

The airlock closed behind them while Obedai worked his switches and thrust the lever all the way forward, accelerating down the rail at sickening speed as the outer door opened to spit them into space. At last, they settled into high orbit over the swirling clouds of Vadred.

Once his heart stopped pounding, Dras settled back in his chair and subtly checked his companion. She was looking out the window, intent on the stormy world below them.

“We now begin spiral descent.” Obedai grinned back at them.

Suddenly, the ship shuddered violently, and the hull groaned with the continuous, low argument of metal under pressure. Sweat gathered at Dras’s temple. He focused on the rivets and tried not to think about what they were holding together.

“When does it stop?” cried the woman against the din.

“It doesn’t,” cried Obedai. “Not for two hours, when we hit lower atmosphere.”

She sighed, looking like a woman who had had enough.

“I am Executive Dras Eng,” Dras said to her.

She nodded, annoyed. “I am Specialist Kitiq Far, Exec. Well then, do you think it is time to pray?”

She pressed a sedative spray to her neck without ceremony, then held it toward him.

“Or sleep? Perhaps the ride is best enjoyed unconscious. Want some?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking the drug might be contraband, wondering why she was so disrespectful and helpful at the same time.

He took the spray anyway. The mist settled into his pores—cool and chemical, tasting of manufactured peace that had been made somewhere far away by people who brokered control.

Dras awoke two hours later as Obedai brought them down through atmosphere like a stone that had decided at the last possible moment to reconsider its fall. For a few blissful minutes, the ship’s punishment started to fade.

“Clear shot! A rare sight,” Obedai shouted over the sound. “Look—look!”

Maz filled the viewport. The Red Giant burned deep orange at the horizon, ancient and enormous, radiating a warmth Dras felt through the hull like a hand pressed briefly against his chest. It was something older, something burning long before the paths.

Obedai gave a sudden laugh, and the cabin roared with gut-wrenching bass—Kalandri peasant music, raw and polyrhythmic, built on a frantic, layered cadence. Every drumbeat seemed to answer the turbulence hammering the hull. Then the cloud cover broke, and the world opened beneath them.

“Best with sound,” Obedai said, lighting up again and turning the music louder as the cabin filled with smoke.

“The sea covers most of the world. They say the old gods hide in the deep. The natives call them Casters.”

“Superstition.” The word left Dras tight and reflexive. “The dying song of failed civilization.”

“Sure, Exec. Whatever you say.”

He watched Far instead of answering. The music and the shifting colors of atmosphere had done something to her face—opened it. Her lips were parted, her eyes moving across the view with a hunger that had nothing to perform and no audience to perform for. He looked away before she caught him staring and fixed his attention on his mission. That was what he had left: his work. Watch the Vadredi, learn their secrets, cultivate goodwill. Make them ready for the Shaimin Way. Convert presence into trust and trust into submission. He was still good at patience. Everything else had burned, but patience remained.

“This is Naiden’s world,” Obedai said, shattering his thoughts. “Alternet’s already established. Blind ships leaving orbit every week—cargo that isn’t on the manifest. You can hide the contraband, Exec, but you can’t hide the gravity signature.”

“Vadred is a level-zero designation,” Dras said. “No culling is authorized.”

Obedai looked at him the way elders look at children who have said something earnest and wrong. Pure, unhurried pity.

“Look!” Far pointed.

Dras was thankful for the diversion.

The shuttle dove through the last of the clouds and skimmed low over the Violet Sea—an endless bruise of coastline with water that glowed at the edge, light rising from the deep like a rumor of something sacred. Dras had seen countless oceans. But he had never felt one before.

This one had a pull directly into his blood. It felt like a tide inside of him, intimate and nauseating.

“I feel it too,” said Far. “Breathe slowly. It will pass.”

Dras nodded and obeyed.

“The Horn!” Obedai cried. “Clear day—we are in luck.”

Amethyst cliffs rose a kilometer from the spray, absolute and enormous, catching Maz’s light and throwing it back changed. Dras leaned toward the viewport as they crested the summits, and his engineer’s eye caught what Obedai’s hadn’t—what no survey had thought to flag. The ruins at the cliff-top didn’t follow the rock. The angles were too deliberate, too recursive, carrying the signature of intention rather than erosion.

This wasn’t a city that had been built on the stone. It had been absorbed into it, the way old wounds become part of the body—a structure embedded in the cliff face over millennia, slowly calcifying into something indistinguishable from the world around it. The fossilized spine of a leviathan ship, if you knew how to read the shape.

“Those ruins,” Dras said quietly. “They look engineered.”

Obedai ground out his cigarette. “That is Mydya Moc.”

“And what is a moc?” Far asked.

Obedai laughed. “Primi prison, heritage site, or a tomb. Depends who you ask.”

Dras glanced at him. Primi. The Shaimin slur for native Vadredi sounded uglier here, with the sea below them and the moc rising from the stone.

Obedai left them at the boundary lock of Iseron Base—a grey dome anchored to the ice fields, faceless and utilitarian, built by people who expected nothing from the place and received what they’d expected. Dras tipped him more than the rate and was surprised to find he meant it. The man’s rough, unsentimental honesty had been more nourishing than anything the orbital had offered.

They waited in silence for their assignments.

“I am not ashamed to be here,” she said. The way people speak when they’ve decided honesty costs less than the alternative. “I am fortunate to receive any posting. I come from Atoll. You may know it as the Salvage World.”

The name landed in Dras’s chest. Atoll. The exile moon, where the Shaimin stored those the registries deemed unfit, installing them in labor camps until they could be sold as contract workers.

By Shaimin protocol, there should be nothing between them but distance. He turned away. His own failure was burning in his throat, and he didn’t trust what it might say if he gave it air.

“Exec.” Her voice was level. “Why have you come here?”

He turned on her with the performance of authority—cold, deliberate, the only tool he had that still had an edge.

“You will show respect,” he said.

She turned away. Her shoulders moved once. When she looked back, her eyes were hard and asking nothing from him at all.

“Some of us do not see Vadred as punishment,” she said quietly. “It is a chance to find what’s true. May the Shining Path light your way, Exec.”

She left with a supervisor and didn’t look back.

Dras stood alone, holding his shame. There was nowhere left to set it down. He looked over the endless ice and the red weight of Maz burning low on the horizon as the icy wind swirled the snow into spirits.

Beneath the humiliation, something moved. He didn’t have a word for it yet. He left it unnamed and watched the world.

In the distance, he saw a man approaching.

The figure resolved through the swirling snow, moving with a grace that ignored the uneven ice. He was a Tabban—Dras knew the profile from his studies—the only native lineage the Shaimin permitted within their perimeters. He was tall, his skin the color of deep river silt, and he wore a heavy, hooded mantle.

He stopped three paces from Dras. He didn’t offer a Shaimin salute. Instead, he simply stood, his eyes—pale as the Violet Sea—resting on Dras with a stillness that made the Executive Engineer feel like a fleeting shadow.

“You are the one who measures,” the Tabban said. His voice didn’t come from his throat; it felt like a low pulse rising through the soles of Dras’s boots.

“I am Executive Engineer Dras Eng,” Dras replied, his breath a plume of white.

The Tabban gave a slow, singular nod. The sun was gone now. There were no landmarks here aside from the complex. There was only the white scream of the north and the grey belly of the clouds.

“The stone remembers your kind, Engineer. It is waiting to see if you have learned any new songs.”

Without waiting for a response, the man turned and gestured toward the heavy blast doors of the Iseron boundary lock. He walked with a heavy gait, each step sounding like a muffled drumbeat against the permafrost.

Dras followed, feeling even smaller than he had on the orbital. He watched the Tabban’s back as the mantle shifted colors in tiny moving plates, reacting to no weather Dras could feel but the snow seemed to shear away from the man’s path. He had a sudden, irrational urge to check his scanner, to see if it registered.

They reached the door, and as the Shaimin hydraulics hissed open, the Tabban stepped into the shadows of the complex, vanishing into the utilitarian grey before the light touched his face.

The Widow of Kade stared at her reflection with the cold assessment of a merchant cataloging her remaining assets. Twenty-five years she had endured in this world—ugly for the first seven, beautiful for the rest. But how much longer before the men of Azur looked at her with the same disdain as the patrons at Lankor Wa? When would age make her worthless again, just as childhood plainness once had?

She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, then reached for a silver-capped jar of cover cream to hide the faint, tiny scar on her left cheek. She had had it all her life but no memory of how it got there. Her dressing table gleamed with the finest cosmetics, perfumes, and a gold-handled brush that had been a gift from Kade the Younger. These were the trappings of a wealth that was nearly evaporated, each item now a glittering reminder of her spectacular failure.

The trip to Ak Ropia had been a humiliation. They wouldn’t even let her inside the school and temple—she was female, they said with a sneer. Send a male agent like a proper widow. How could she afford an agent when even the lowliest street scribes wouldn’t buy her pacus sheets for writing?

All she had to show for that journey was a silver Tabban scarf.

She pulled down her silk robe, exposing shoulders that were still lovely—but for how much longer? The sarga burned warm in her chest as she sipped from a crystal glass, bringing a blessed, fuzzy numbness to thoughts she couldn’t bear while sober.

Marriage again was impossible. Once had been a lifetime of torture—a cycle of groping hands and predatory gazes at that Zenmar hell, and then Kade’s house. She’d thought marrying the master’s son would save her from starvation. Instead, it had been a prison of a different sort.

The room spun as she stood, forcing her back into her chair. There was no reason to get up, to dress, to pretend. Tomorrow she would have to sell her remaining slaves at Azur—the beginning of the end of her days at Kade’s Planting. She’d earned this land under Raka’s whip and the elder Kade’s pathetic grunting; she had endured the abuses of his sons.

Three spans of land left, and no money to pay her workers. The pacus she’d planted instead of grain crops rotted unharvested in the fields, its pungent, vegetal smell drifting in through the windows. Her reputation lay in ruins, destroyed by Gadiel’s lies after she’d rejected his advances.

“Mistress.” Folan’s voice carried through the heavy doors—silky, concerned, but sharp. “There’s a man to see you. Shall I send him away?”

Cahrina moaned, a spark of fire shooting through her skull. “A man?”

“I’ll tell him to leave,” Folan said.

“No. Get in here.”

The slender Glion woman slipped through the stone-inlaid panels, hands on her hips as she assessed the scene. “You look terrible.”

“Why, thank you,” Cahrina croaked, pulling dark, tangled hair from her face. Her eyelids felt heavy, stuck together with yesterday’s kohl.

“That intris is evil—the rain-land plague, we call it in Amberon. It rots the mind.”

“Stop.” Cahrina hauled herself from the bed, naked and unashamed. “This body once drove men mad, remember?”

Folan touched her palm to her forehead in frustration. “Cover yourself.”

“Why? Do I offend your Glion virtue?” Cahrina scratched a nagging itch on her hip. “So we have company?”

“A man wanting to sell something. He looks like a swindler.”

“Get to the point, Folan.”

“He’s Tabban, and—”

“Ah. So that’s why he’s a swindler.”

“They’re descended from Pantan killers,” Folan said with conviction.

“You said he came on business.”

“Something in a big, painted box.” Folan’s blue eyes rounded. “Tabban are trouble. I warned you at Ak Ropia.”

Cahrina yawned. She was in no shape to meet anyone, but her curiosity was the only thing the sarga hadn’t killed. “What did he say?”

“That he had an exciting opportunity. Said you’d been chosen by his ‘Tabban mirror’.” Folan giggled nervously. “You see why I should send him away? It’s a bad omen.”

Cahrina laughed. Her life was decaying faster than she’d thought. “Then I don’t need to impress him.” She grabbed her robe from the floor. “Let him see the infamous Widow of Kade in all her ruin.”

“Oh, mistress. Once you go too far down, you can never climb back up.”

“Nothing is beneath me, Folan. I’m already at the bottom.”

She managed to hide the dark circles with more cream, though the redness in her eyes remained. Lian leaves masked the sarga on her breath, and a silvery silken sheath replaced her robe—Folan’s gift to celebrate the elder Kade’s death. She wrapped the silver Tabban scarf over her head to cover her hair.

Not too bad, if she squinted.

She found him in the garden, his back turned to the house. He was sitting quietly on a sozk bench facing the swollen, muddy river. Beside him sat his garish box—he’d dragged the monstrosity through her house without asking.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said without turning, his voice cutting through the humid air, “but I brought my box. I have a gift for you—a bond between gift and giver.”

Cahrina’s spine prickled. She knew that voice. It was melodic, confident, and vaguely dangerous.

He turned, smiling—the same Tabban from the gates of Ak Ropia.

“Your Glion didn’t mention it was me?” He laughed, a warm sound that felt out of place in her dying house. “She doesn’t like me, but she’s loyal. You’re fortunate. What a handsome scarf—you flatter me by wearing it.”

Cahrina remembered Folan’s warnings.

“Your beauty is even more delightful in this paradise,” he continued.

Liar, she thought, but she felt a flush of heat anyway. “You’re welcome in my house,” she returned the dishonesty.

The bells at his ankles jingled as he stood and bowed. She sat across from him, avoiding his gaze, pretending to contemplate her sozk meditation pools—a feature in all the finest gardens of Dorz, now overgrown with algae. Something about him made her uneasy, leaving her strangely wordless.

Folan arrived with a flagon and two glasses, her face a monument to disapproval. “Wine?” she asked icily.

“Thank you. Your kindness has no equal,” said the Tabban.

Folan’s lip curled as she poured the pale blue wine.

“I’ll have some too. Go wait inside, Folan.”

“You may need something more,” Folan muttered.

“We’ll be fine.”

Folan departed in a huff, casting one final, warning glance.

“I’m Kotar,” he said, the bells on his boots chiming as he shifted. “I’ve traveled from the Maz Mountains by way of Azil Ka to find you.”

“Of course, how could I forget you. And I am Cahrina Myntra, Widow of Kade.”

It was odd, she thought, as the words escaped her lips. She never used her full name. She felt as if he had somehow pulled it out of her with those copper eyes.

“Myntra? That is an old name, a Pantan name.” He stared at her curiously. Pressure built where his gaze touched her skin. She didn’t like it.

“Never mind that, just call me Cahrina. Please, sit.”

He smiled curtly, his movement unnaturally fluid as he settled back onto the bench. “Your garden is lovely. The scent of a thousand flowers and this calming sozk. May I? A Dorzin custom I’ve long admired.”

She nodded, watching, fascinated, as he selected a smooth stone and dropped it into the nearest pool. It was a perfect placement, sending a series of concentric ripples across the green surface.

He was perhaps thirty-five, with sun-browned skin and eyes that held a hundred secrets. She found herself staring, feeling the heat creep up her neck. No men. Ever again, she reminded herself.

“What do you want, Tabban?” Cahrina gave him the cold, devastating look that used to stun the Kade males into silence.

It had no effect. He only smiled wider. Folan was right—he was closed to her.

“This is a mistake. You should go,” she said, standing abruptly.

“No.” The word was heavy. Her chest tightened; her heart began to pound. Invisible hands seemed to press her shoulders, holding her motionless in the chair. “I’ll stay, and you’ll listen, dear Widow.”

She nearly collapsed back into her seat, the breath stolen from her lungs.

“I’ve come to offer release from your ruined fortune. A new life.”

She looked around for help, but Folan was gone. Why had she sent her away? The intris was dulling her wits.

“Don’t call for your woman. She’ll only interfere. Be still, Cahrina. I know you’ve been sorely used by the Kades… and others.”

The blood rose in her cheeks. “Did Gadiel send you? What does he want now? More land? More blood?”

“Your stepson Gadiel didn’t send me. Ak Ropia—that’s my only connection. Yes, I’ve done checking among friends in Azur. We Tabban spread thin, but we spread wide. There are many rumors about the Widow of Kade. I’ve come to change that. The mirror told me you’re the merchant we’ve been seeking. Your… extraordinary appeal will free you from ruin. This planting will become highly profitable again.”

He spoke like someone from the Tales of Unmaking, but she couldn’t find the words to stop him. He wasn’t like other men—he was controlled, intentional.

A small yellow bird whistled in the tree behind him. He followed her glance, held out his arm, and the bird hopped onto his wrist willingly.

She gasped. “A magician.”

“Don’t be impressed—all Tabban have a way with creatures.” He placed the bird carefully atop his box. Something moved within the crate, and the bird took flight in a panic.

“My darlings awaken,” he said softly.

A strange, sharp scent—like musk and lightning—cut through the heavy garden perfume. “What’s in there?”

“Folan!” she screamed.

The Glion appeared instantly from the shadowed archway, a kitchen knife held low at her side.

“Don’t move if you value your lives,” Kotar cried, his voice suddenly commanding. He unlatched the cabinet doors.

Two sleek, flat-headed creatures emerged groggily from the darkness.

“Please be still, or they may attack.”

Cahrina froze. Folan slipped deeper into the shadow of the arch.

The black creature yawned, revealing massive, ivory teeth and an ample pink tongue. It blinked golden eyes at her. It held her gaze with a purple depth that stole her breath, padding forward on huge, soft paws that made no sound on the stone. She fell back against a fan tree, scrambling up its trunk as the beast approached.

But the blow never came. Slowly, she peered over her arm to find it sitting quietly at her feet, watching her with an intelligent, inquisitive intensity.

She lowered her hands. The creature lowered its wedge-shaped head in apparent submission.

A wondering sound escaped her as she extended a trembling hand to the soft, black crown between its small, flat ears. The thick neck arched in pleasure, and then the beast leaned its entire weight against her legs—a sort of warm, muscular embrace.

“And just like that. A bonding!” Kotar cried, clapping his hands.

“What bonding?” she stared at him, her heart racing for a different reason now. “What’s happening?”

“It was meant to be.”

Folan fared worse. She emerged from the shadow to stare at the other animal—buff-colored chest and belly, with blue-grey fur on its head and tail. It remained at Kotar’s side, pacing and watching the Glion with a flicking tail and narrowed, milky-blue eyes.

“Don’t be afraid, Folan.” The creature against Cahrina’s legs was soft and warm, its breathing even. Cahrina was no longer afraid; she was enchanted.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

“Fuzin,” said Kotar.

“Fuzin?” She stared. “But they all died in the Fall. They are legends.”

“Not all. We saved a few. We kept the bloodlines.”

“Akliat adgre!” Folan screamed. “Demon eyes! This house is cursed!”

Folan moved to retreat, but the grey Fuzin lunged, a blur of blue and shadow. “Stay,” Kotar snapped, and the animal slunk back.

Folan froze, her chest heaving. “Mistress, such evil! Look at its eyes!”

“I don’t think this is evil at all.” Cahrina scratched the Fuzin’s ears, and it turned to lean its other side against her with obvious pleasure. “Those are old superstitions, Folan.”

She bent down trustingly. The beast butted its hard head against hers lovingly, its rough tongue bathing her face.

Folan wailed and sobbed, her hands balled into fists, but Cahrina was lost in wonder. The Fuzin was massive, powerfully muscled with long tearing teeth and hooked claws hidden in deceptively soft toes. Yet it offered her more warmth and affection than she’d felt from any living human in years.

“She’s yours now,” Kotar said.

“Mine?”

“Once a Fuzin chooses, it’s for life. She has chosen you.”

A strange comfort flooded through her—a comfort that intris and sarga couldn’t provide.

“Your soul is doomed!” Folan cried. “This house is cursed!”

Kotar shook his head. “Nonsense, dear Lady Glion. We Tabban have raised these animals since the Fall. They’re loyal, obedient protectors. Everyone knows the old world tales.” He clicked his tongue. “Consider yourself fortunate to witness their reintroduction to the Gomen world.”

Folan’s jaw quivered.

“By the way, you can move now. He was just curious—it’s their way.” He winked at the servant.

Folan shot Cahrina an accusing look and fled back into the house. The grey Fuzin sat obediently, watching her departure with its milky blue eyes.

“You’ve upset her,” Cahrina observed.

“She’s more than a servant to you?”

“She’s my best friend. My only friend.”

“She’ll adjust.” He stroked the grey animal with both hands. “You understand their appeal. I knew you would when I saw you at the gates. Fuzin are unequaled protectors. These two are trained to many words—they’ll kill on command, but never without it. They provide love, security, and far more intelligence than any goggin dog.”

“Why did she bond to me?” Cahrina settled back on the bench, the black Fuzin following her every move.

“Only a Fuzin chooses its master. These two are the right age.”

“Why doesn’t that one bond to you?”

“I’m already taken.” His smile was dazzling, his dark eyes holding hers. “A Fuzin knows when there’s a bond already and never intrudes.”

Against all reason, she liked this dangerous Tabban.

“Now that you’ve charmed me with your gift—and I do thank you—what will make me rich?”

“You have a face card?”

“Of course. Every merchant does.”

“Then you’ll be my agent.”

Her mouth hardened. “I can’t get an agent for myself, as you well know. How can I be yours?”

“Because I already have a buyer.”

She stared incredulously. “What are we selling?”

“Fuzin.”

Speechless, she finally managed, “You want me to deal in beast-flesh?”

“These aren’t ordinary beasts. They are status symbols. They are weapons.”

“But who would buy one? Many would flee from them like Folan. If these are real Fuzin, some might try to hurt them or kill those who trade them. The old lies run deep.”

Cahrina noticed Folan was watching from the shadow of the doorway again.

Kotar looked unruffled. “The Shaimin will buy.”

“Shaimin? None stay in Dorz—the queen won’t allow residence.”

“You’ll go north. To Ivern.”

She laughed. “Why would Shaimin deal with me? I’m a woman, remember? My stepson has made my name filth from the Zo to the Urnis.”

“Then it’s time to put them all in their place.”

Her eyes widened.

“You will send your face card to CVP Ton Naiden in Ivern, requesting an audience. If successful, you will take the Fuzin north to show the Shaimin leader. Send your card, Widow, and your life will change. You’ll be celebrated. And rich. Others will buy after the Shaimin—you’ll see.”

“What if this doesn’t work?”

“It will.” He silenced her with open palms. “Our agreement: you must sell to Shaimin first, then others as you please. I set prices, we share profits half and half. Take it or leave it.”

“How much?”

“As much as you can get over one hundred bezels. Not less, or it comes from your proceeds.”

“I take half.”

“Yes or no?”

“I’m a fool to consider this.”

“These first two are yours to keep as your bond. And I have another for your… friend.”

Cahrina’s eyes went wide. A friend. She had no one but Folan.

“Well?”

“I’ll do it.”

He handed her a scroll. “The message text for the Shaimin. Don’t alter it.”

As he prepared to leave, she asked desperately about care and commands.

“They’ll mind you and eat almost anything but they’re particularly fond of white wine and chickens. Oh, and I have another pair for you. You can pick them up at our camp near Ivern on your way to Shaimin Keep.”

Folan’s scream echoed from the kitchen.

“They know the common tongue, even if they can’t speak it. Stay with them tonight—they need company. It’s a big day for them.”

“How do they breed? Where are the rest?”

“If you succeed at Ivern, I’ll give you the details.” His eyes narrowed. “Enjoy your Fuzin, Cahrina, but never mistreat them. I’ll know.”

She watched him load his empty box and depart as the sunset painted the sky a deep, bruised crimson. His colorful cart disappeared with its tinkling bells down the path skirting her dying, yellowed crops.

She had planted mainly pacus, a cheaper, lighter alternative to parchment. But no one wanted to buy anything from a disgraced widow. She had thought it would be the next big thing.

This was her chance—however desperate, however mysterious.

But Folan’s words still echoed in her heart: Akliat adgre! Eyes of demons!

As the black Fuzin leaned against her legs and the grey one settled beside them both, Cahrina wondered if she’d just made a bargain that would save her… or damn them all.

“I am Cahrina Myntra,” she whispered into the twilight, testing the weight of her real name. “And I am done being afraid.”