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“He’ll think we’re here,” Chetiin reminded her.

She smiled briefly, then looked to the guard officer. “We travel southeast.”

He didn’t react. Her smile faded. Tenquis repeated her instructions, and the officer nodded and went away. Stablehands brought their horses over. They mounted up and rode into the sunlight. A Kech Volaar patrol on mist-gray leopards prowled out of the gate behind them.

“I’m sorry, Ekhaas,” Geth said.

“Don’t be.” Ekhaas’s voice was harsh. “It could have been worse.”

“What will happen to Diitesh then?” Tenquis asked her as they made their way up the road and out of the valley. The duur’kala didn’t answer him, but Geth caught Tenquis’s eye, then nodded to a gang of goblin workers assembling a treelike frame beside the road at the valley’s edge.

“Something worse,” he said.

CHAPTER

TEN

They followed the foothills of the Seawall Mountains for several days before descending into the lowlands. Once out of the mountains, it was an easy matter to keep their distance from the scattered farmholds and clanholds of southern Darguun. They traveled through a landscape that was mostly barren, studded here and there with ancient ruins from the age of Dhakaan, but also with the remains of much more recent habitation by the humans of the vanished nation of Cyre. Charred, smashed, and overgrown, the rubble of Cyran farms and villages gave mute testimony to the upheaval the region had seen only thirty years before. This was the land where Haruuc had started his revolution before sweeping north. This was the land where the dream of Darguun had been born.

For the first time in her life, Ekhaas rode past the ruins and felt no pull to investigate them or learn their stories. As much as she tried to conceal the wrenching pain in her spirit, she couldn’t fool herself. She wasn’t entirely successful in fooling the others, either. As she exchanged watch duties one night with Geth, the shifter paused before sliding into his bedroll.

“It can’t be easy leaving your clan and your family,” he said.

She held her head high. “My clan exiled me, Geth,” she said, “and I don’t have a family anymore.” The words came out too harsh. She tried to soften them. “I know what you mean. I wish Ashi was here. She knows what it’s like to lose a clan.”

“She found a place in Deneith. You’ll find your place too.” Geth pulled his blankets up over himself. “You already have a family in us.”

She couldn’t help snorting. He turned to look at her, his eyes reflecting the firelight like an animal’s. “I could tell you a dozen stories where someone says just that,” she said.

“And what happens in them?”

“Usually everybody ends up dead.”

Geth propped himself up on one elbow. “Goblin stories can be bloody depressing. Did you know that?”

“Raat shi anaa. ‘The story continues.’” She sat back against the trunk of a scraggly tree. “Sleep well, Geth.”

“Stay alert, Ekhaas.” He lay down again. Within moments, his breathing had fallen into an easy, regular rhythm. Ekhaas leaned her head back and looked up at the moons, closer to her than Volaar Draal.

4 Vult

Two weeks after leaving the towering gates of the City of the Word behind, they passed into the village of Arthuun. The contrast was … striking to say the least, Ekhaas thought. The gates were formed of massive, rough-cut logs hung from walls that were themselves a mix of dressed stone and improvised patches. Tenquis, staring at the walls as they rode through the gates, simply shuddered.

“I’m no mason,” he said, “but I could do better than that.”

“It stands up and keeps things out,” said Geth. “I think that’s all the people here are interested in.”

Ekhaas was inclined to agree with him. Built on wet ground between the broad Torlaac River and the green wall of the Khraal Jungle, Arthuun was a ramshackle place. Like most of the villages and towns in Darguun, it was cobbled together from the ruins of an earlier Cyran settlement and rough structures thrown up by its new Darguul inhabitants. Arthuun seemed to have a particularly