Concealing a smile, Agna raised a hand and burned off some healing energy as green light, then let it thump onto the table. “Nope. No other heads.”
“I knew you should’ve specialized in caudal regrowth instead of Kaveran language.”
Agna propped her cheek on one hand. “Cranial. Or cephalic. Caudal is tails.”
“Then you could’ve learned to grow tails. Either way, it’d be your decision.”
“Suppose so.” Agna sat up and aimlessly traced the grain in the tabletop as Lina watered a few more of her plants, then washed her hands in a washstand near the foot of the bed.
“When do you have to meet with Papa?”
“I was hoping to stall till tomorrow.”
“I thought I’d be at work all day, so I don’t have anything planned. Want to see what Letta’s up to?”
Agna shrugged. “Sure. I’d love to see that studio of hers.”
“Oooh, maybe she and Marco are free for dinner! Marco’s at the agency all day, but we could meet up afterward.”
A strange uneasiness settled in Agna’s middle at the idea. “That sounds fun.”
Lina bounced on her toes. “Let me get changed. Or Letta’ll make me wear one of her studio costumes again. Just a minute.” She pulled an armful of clothes from a wardrobe draped with trailing vines, and dashed to the only interior door in the apartment.
Agna got up and ambled through the maze, reading book spines and studying leaves. In the intervening years, Lina had only honed her taste for novels with titles like The Pirate’s Secret Paramour. Now that she’d gotten used to the — not clutter, but density — Agna noticed the other touches that Lina had added, like a jar full of cut flowers on the bedside table and an open box of neatly filed letters on the desk. A small painting of Letta’s hung over the writing desk in a simple frame: Lina draped in white silk and wearing polished gold bracers and greaves, her unbound hair veiling her face, slumped against a sword plunged upright into barren earth. The scene was from Daranite mythology — scripture, Agna revised, remembering Keifon’s protests over that term. It was one of the half-mortal battle maidens mourning at Darano’s grave. But Agna knew that sword, particularly. Letta had captured it expertly despite, one could only assume, never having seen it in person. It was being carried half a world away in Achusa, and Esirel, its bearer, would not come home for six more years.
Agna turned from the painting, feeling as though she’d stumbled across an open diary. She could hear her sister bumping into the walls in the other room. Looking down at her own outfit, she decided that it had to be good enough to pass Letta’s sartorial scrutiny. She wasn’t so sure about the rest of her.
Living in another country, it had hardly occurred to her that she had never met Marco. Between his own letters and the occasional outside perspective from Lina, he seemed a part of her life already, like a friend she had known at the Academy or one of her cousins. Of course, she had never been to Lina’s apartment before today, either, and she had been able to picture it as clearly as a scene in a book. But Marco wasn’t a character from a novel; he was a real person, the rising star of the Nocta Agency and Letta’s beloved. His ghost had hung over their discussions about the agency. Naire had her brilliant successor; what about Raniero’s successor?
What had she accomplished, really? A satchel full of sketches and an empty building. Marco knew the full arc of her career, and facing him brought her unfitness as the Despana heir into focus. He’d make a better heir than she would. It was a shame, and by the time she was done arguing with her father, everyone would know it.
Lina opened the door. “The first time I showed up to go out for coffee in my work clothes, Letta made me put on this absurd velvet gown she had in her studio. She was doing a historical painting at the time. I nearly sweated to death.”
Agna blinked. Lina had emerged from the bathroom with her drab dress bundled under one arm. She had changed into moss-green pants, a fitted linen shirt with embroidery along the front and around the cuffs, and soft leather ankle boots. She’d braided some of her hair to keep it out of her face, and the rest fell down her back in waves. “What?”
“Have I ever seen you wear pants before? Ever?”
Lina blushed as she balled up her dress and tossed it into a basket. “Probably? I don’t know. It’s in style now. Especially for, you know. Ladies’ ladies. There’s a new supposed signal every six months, I can’t keep up with these things.”
Agna kept her eyes from flicking to the Daranite painting. “Why would it matter anyway? It’s not like you’re looking for anyone.”
“Uh-huh, yeah.” Lina grabbed a money pouch from a drawer and fumbled its clasp onto her belt. “Ready to go?”
“Sure.”
Keifon: The Feather Army
Keifon turned toward the mountains once more. Under the rattling passage of carts, he could hear the deep thud of the earthbreakers’ art as they methodically split off chunks of the mountain. Another cart passed him in the street, pulled by four stout draft horses and laden with soil and rocks. The driver wore the sigil of the Benevolent Union on her jacket, and though Keifon did not recognize her, he offered a wave.
The beginnings of the new road rolled along the edge of the workers’ camp and disappeared behind a screen of trees. It was fully three times the width of the old road Keifon remembered from his trip to Ceien. It was cobbled now, replacing the packed dirt, and was wide enough for two carriages to pass one another without swerving. The pass had remained open through construction, and so no one questioned his presence as he entered the workers’ camp.
Unlike the bustling caravan camp, the construction camp was thinly populated. The sounds of wagon wheels and hoof beats and pickaxes came from up ahead, behind the trees. Smoke rose from several tended cooking fires, and a figure in a familiar buff-colored uniform pulled a handcart along the paths, stopping to replace the torches. She grumbled as she detoured around a tent. She looked up, and Keifon’s breath caught. He knew her. Zan, from his old unit.
“H-hey. Um.”
She gasped. “Keifon the Medic? What are you doing here?”
“I, uh, I live here. In Wildern. Now.” At a conversational distance, he could read the pins on her collar. She still wore Unit 279’s pin, which meant his dream-worry-nightmare had come true. “So, I… guess two seventy-nine is the unit that’s helping with this project.”
“Yep. Logistics and support.” Zan waved a burnt-out torch. “Didn’t you see the groundbreaking? Whole town came out, I heard.”
“Hmn. I missed it.”
Agna had attended the groundbreaking, and she hadn’t told him that his unit was there. He wondered whether she knew. No way of telling now. “Actually, I came to find a friend of mine. Nothing urgent, just to pass along a message.”
“Hn, all right, that’s the kind of thing we’re here to do.” Zan’s tone conveyed the rest: she wasn’t particularly impressed with the assignment, but she didn’t blame him.
“Thanks. She’s one of the day laborers, a Kaveran named Bargi. She’s been staying here, I hear. About this much taller than me, short hair, uh… kind of loud, usually.”
“Hmm, the labor crews are still at the dig and the bridge. They knock off at dusk. We’ll check with the foremen. But that description makes me think I’ve seen her around.” She tossed the burnt-out torch into her handcart and dusted her hands on her pant legs. “Ready?”
Keifon unbuckled his satchel. “I think I have some paper for a note, hang on.”
“Oh, you can just walk up yourself. It’s not closed, as long as you’re chaperoned. Which is another of our crucial services. Follow me.” Zan set off along the road.
“This isn’t going to get her in trouble, is it? It’s not that important.”
“Ennh, nah. We have mail delivery and supplies and messages all the time. So… no. I’m only here to keep you from falling over an embankment or planting explosives or something.”
“Hmm.” He followed Zan along the new roa
d as the camp unfolded around them.
Lacking the assigned grid of the Golden Caravan’s tent city, the pass workers’ camp sprawled in all directions on the blanket of pine needles under the trees. A section of Yanweian National Army tents stood in lines on one side of a clearing, and a circle of canopies without side walls marked what was almost certainly the Eytran priests’ encampment. The rest of the camp was a mishmash of civilian tents, tarp and branch lean-tos, and temporary plank-walled buildings. Paths had been swept between the tents. Along the road, the line of torches gave way to glassed-in lanterns mounted on poles. As they walked, Keifon spotted a few small buildings made of the seamless stone that indicated earthbreaker handiwork — a couple of outhouses and a small building with the medical symbol over its door. He had to smile to himself. This camp’s medics didn’t have to operate out of a tent.
Perhaps because it was meant to stay there for months, the camp seemed more lived-in than the caravan camp usually did. A target had been nailed to a tree in the distance, and a low, makeshift fence marked the firing line for archery practice. A real stone well stood in one of the clearings, surrounded by empty buckets and another staked board covered in fliers. This one had feather sigils nailed to all four corners. Looking around the camp again, Keifon noticed feathers pinned near the doorways of several of the tents. He turned, walking sideways behind Zan, to focus on the Army’s section. They each flew a small Yanweian flag from their roof lines, following standard procedure, but each of the flagpoles was crowned with three white feathers.
Another cart rumbled past, laden with more rocks and soil. Dodging to the other side of the road, Keifon forgot to ask about the feather sigils. The road rolled over another low hill and then flattened out. Zan and Keifon passed the camp’s border, marked only by a row of wooden bins full of compost.
Ahead of them was the first sign of excavation. The edges of two hills had been shaved down and fused into backward-sloping walls to make room for the widened road to pass between them. The road turned along the side of the hill as the other side dropped into a valley. Keifon thought he recognized this section of the old road. The outer third had been built up along the edge of the slope to support the weight of the road. It had no doubt been built out of the same rock they’d carved off the hills elsewhere. Eytrans made much of the fact that they did not create matter, only shifted it. It fit with several of their beliefs about the natural world. They worked with the materials at hand, believing that the energy of a place would be disrupted if its physical mass were moved too far out of line.
The sounds of pickaxes and rumbling stone increased as Zan and Keifon rounded another bend. Shouts in Kaveran and Yanweian broke free of the noise: Steady on! and Whoa, back! A line of cloaked earthbreakers called to one another, adjusting their positions along the top of another hill. At their foreman’s chopping gesture, they knelt, and another pulse thudded through the ground. The hill’s face cascaded in a controlled avalanche to pile up behind a rough board wall at the foot of the hill. Dust billowed into the air. Zan pulled a kerchief over her face. “Sorry, should’ve warned you. It’s been so dry lately, it’s a dust storm up here when they fire off. The trees filter it out in camp.”
“’S all right.” Keifon dug in his satchel for a handkerchief and pressed it to his face to filter the dust.
As the cloud settled, a team of workers with pickaxes and shovels tackled the mound of debris behind the wall, breaking it up and shoveling it into the wagons standing at the ready. Keifon tried to identify Bargi among the group, but their were backs turned and covered in dust, and none of them looked familiar.
Waving Keifon closer, Zan strode up to a Kaveran man on the sidelines. “Tell him, Kei.”
“Uh — excuse me. I just wanted to deliver a message to Bargi. She’s a day laborer on this project. A Kaveran from Wildern.”
“Not my team,” the foreman said, flipping his notebook closed. “Try the next one, at the overpass.”
“Thanks,” Zan said, and set off past the retaining wall. The road under them now was the packed-dirt track Keifon remembered. He stuck close to the wall.
Beyond the first work site, a narrow wooden bridge crossed a ravine and met the rest of the road as it wound deeper into the mountains. The next team of workers shoveled rocks from another wagon off the edge of the road into the ravine, near the end of the bridge. Zan led Keifon to the edge. On the slope into the ravine, a wooden frame had been built around each of the supports for the bridge. Another crew of workers packed the debris into the frames like a mold, and the earthbreakers fused it into solid stone, layer by layer. Eventually they would replace the whole bridge, it seemed.
Zan waved to another Kaveran at the edge, who relayed a series of hand signals to the earthbreakers before stepping away. At Zan’s sweeping gesture, Keifon repeated his request about Bargi, but before he had finished, someone thumped him in the arm. Clasping the spot, he turned to find Bargi’s bright smile. With her kerchief pulled down around her neck, the lower half of her face was the only part of her body not coated in dust. It outlined every crease in her sleeveless work shirt.
“Hey! You do house calls now?”
“Hi, Bargi — uh, thanks, Zan. Do I need an escort out, too?”
“Yep. I’ll just mind my own business right over here till you’re ready.” She took the foreman aside, looking out over the ravine.
“So is everything all right?” Bargi folded her arms, her smile disappearing.
“Yeah, yes, everything’s fine as far as I know. I stopped by this morning with the usual. Passed some medicine to Keiva for Aunt Wizie’s cough. Taya got a job as a mail runner.”
“No kidding! Good kid.”
“Yeah. But look, I came to say something else.” He’d gotten sidetracked onto camp matters, things that were easier to say. “I’m having a friend from the fall caravan over for dinner tonight, and to play some cards or something. Would you like to join us?”
Bargi studied him, and Keifon nearly stumbled ahead with some qualification or excuse, but she raised a dusty hand to scratch her head. “I mean… really?”
“Well… yeah. I thought you and my friend might get along well. She’s the herbalist from the fall caravan. About our age. Good friend of Agna’s.”
“…Huh.” She scrubbed her neck with her kerchief, wiping off dust in streaks. “Yeah, if you’re sure, I’d — sure. Though I have to start tomorrow morning. Early. And I gotta finish work and clean up first.”
“Of course, that’s fine. Any time. I’ll have dinner ready, so come by whenever you can.” He was grinning foolishly, amplifying the suppressed smile that played around Bargi’s mouth. He could pull this off; he could invite some friends over just to enjoy their company, and they were willing to come. It felt like a festival.
“All right. Uh… thanks.” As she turned toward her crew, Bargi pulled the kerchief up over her face again, but Keifon saw the light in her eyes.
“See you.” He gave an awkward half-wave when Bargi saluted.
His knees felt weak as he stepped up behind Zan at the edge of the ravine. She and the foreman stood watching the earthbreakers as they built up the new pylons. Keifon felt their energy buzzing through the soles of his feet, a liquid current rather than an explosive pulse. Zan turned, hands on her hips. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Keifon’s mind wandered, piecing together a menu that would be presentable for his friends. Bargi and Nelle would appreciate something homemade and hearty. He would have to stop in a few stores to see what he could find. They could use some more butter. And he should make something sweet for afterward. He’d left the cookie-baking and fruit-pie-making to Agna. Maybe he could bake some of the jam she’d made into a pastry.
“So what happened to you, anyway?” Zan strolled along with her hands behind her back, and grinned at his stunned expression. “Kazi just said you’d accepted that position in the Benevolents that they had all those posters up for. Have you been here ever since?�
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“Nnn… no, just since this spring. Uh…” His thoughts of his new life and his cozy kitchen had splintered. All he could picture now was the barracks and the unit’s eyes on him, waiting for him to speak. “The assignment was traveling around Kavera in the Golden Caravan. That group of merchants who just came to town. I had a clinic set up with them. Treating people out in the country, and such.”
“Huh.”
In the space before her next comment, Keifon spent years burrowing through what she’d said. Kazi just said you’d accepted that position. Kazi knew damned well where he’d gone. It had been his idea in the first place. He hadn’t even told the rest of the unit where Keifon was going? Even if Kazi didn’t care, the rest of them would. Keifon had been one of them. He’d mattered. Keifon felt his jaw clenching. Kazi had let them think that he’d just run away. That it wasn’t all Kazi’s own fault.
The truth was what mattered. No matter what lies by omission Kazi thought were advantageous.
“So you settled down here after that?”
He breathed out hard, not quite a sigh. It wasn’t her fault. None of this was her fault. “Yeah, this past spring. My daughter lives in Ceien with my ex-wife, so this was a good compromise. I got a position in the Benevolents’ hospital here. That’s why I finally broke my contract, had it transferred.”
“Sounds serious. Got someone new, then? Kaveran?”
“Oh — no, not — not yet. Um.” He realized that her question was as light as the rest, as though she didn’t think ill of cavorting with a foreigner. They came up to the work site where the earthbreakers were excavating the hillside, and Keifon remembered to breathe through his handkerchief. He wasn’t going to dissect Zan’s views on miscegenation in front of a dozen strangers. He’d have to file it away. Keifon cleared his throat and refocused his babbling. “Someday I hope to. Not yet, though. I’m living with a friend I met while I was traveling, from the Benevolent Union. She’s visiting family in Nessiny now.”
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