Philip

Immigrants typically came in by drips and drabs. Caravans were rare, usually no more than three or four over the course of the year. They crossed the wilderness with traveling lanterns, carrying whatever trade goods were valuable enough to justify the dangers and expenses. A caravan needed an engineer to tend the lantern and a glimwarden to keep it fueled, but beyond that there were typically a dozen other people who came along, merchants to sell their goods, laborers to help with the carts, and finally, those looking to make a new life in a new town.

Most of those who came to Light’s Hollow by caravan were poor; if you were rich, there was little reason to leave the comfort of your home and endure hard travel. Some who came were criminals, forced from a hometown whose laws didn’t favor as harsh an exile as was used in Light’s Hollow. As a consequence, immigrants were looked down upon, though perhaps that would have been the case even if they didn’t arrive with implicit stains on their records. Immigrants were, naturally, outsiders to Light’s Hollow, unfamiliar with its customs, with vernaculars and dialects that marked them as foreign. Assimilation happened slowly, but the process was inevitable, and eventually no one would remember that the immigrant hadn’t been there all along.

The refugees from Langust were going to be a different matter entirely. Firstly, there were more than two hundred of them — two hundred and eighty-three, as Philip had taken pains to get an exact count. That was a large enough group that they would be able to sequester themselves from the rest of the town and form a community of their own which would resist assimilation. Worse, it was apparent that they still had a leader, a strong figure who would offer them guidance and solidarity. It might have been one thing if their leader was a kind and gentle man, but it was clear that Diplomat Farrell was neither of those things. He spoke harshly and decisively, with no kind words spared for anyone who he hadn’t come in with. If the refugees were a rotten fruit of a problem, Farrell was the hardened pit at the center.

All in all, Philip was quite pleased. He had been the first to speak with the refugees, and no other authorities besides the deputy glimwarden had shown up for a few hours afterward, which allowed him to take nearly complete ownership of the issue. By the time his father arrived on the scene, Philip had already memorized the names of dozens of people and gotten the lay of their internal organization of power, as well as putting temporary plans in place to provide housing. Temporary plans often became permanent ones, which allowed Philip to impose his will without overstepping his bounds.

“Normally there are families that take in immigrants,” Philip had explained, “There’s a small amount paid by the city to cover any additional expenses of a house guest, just so it won’t be a hardship on the host family. The immigrants are encouraged to find work and move out in their own due time. Unfortunately, that scheme isn’t going to be workable, given how many of you there are.” The immigrants from Langust were a small fraction of what had been there when their lantern failed, but it was the largest single influx of new blood to Light’s Hollow in the last fifty years. “We’ll put as many of you as possible in with those who have room, with priorities given to families, but the rest will have to take shelter in the empty beds at the hospital for now, with the overflow going into city hall.”

Farrell had been clearly displeased about that, but there was really no other option. It was an erosion of Farrell’s power; he had been some kind of leader in his town, taken his people on a long, arduous journey to get here, and now there would be a diaspora, separating the people of Langust from their leader if only for a time. Philip would have planned that out, if he had needed to. Fortunately, Light’s Hollow simply didn’t have the capacity to deal with the refugees, not after the destruction that had happened at Healer’s Lantern only a short while before.

Philip recruited from the townspeople that gathered around, directing runework carts where he could in order to get the message across town as quickly as possible. He had borrowed pen and paper even before the Langustians had come into view, and he filled a number of sheets with a basic census, a list of what the people most needed, and notes about the organization of the people themselves, not just their obvious leader but both the people in Farrell’s orbit and those among them who could be deputized. By the time Philip’s father came, everything important was already in motion.

“You’ve overstepped your bounds,” the mayor whispered with a frown after Philip gave his report. It was a rebuke, but a private one.

“It makes us both look better,” said Philip. “Delegation is an important skill in a leader, you told me that.”

The mayor pursed his lips at that. It wasn’t the first time that Philip had quoted something back at his father, and certainly wouldn’t be the last. Of course, if his father were more cunning, he would have immediately come back with a counterattack, but they had been through enough of this song and dance together to know that Philip would end up winning. Just in case, Philip had laid out his arguments ahead of time; if his father said that it wasn’t actually delegation because it came without any orders or even direct knowledge on the part of his superior, Philip would reply that any hired position implied delegation when unforeseen events arose. That had been one of the strongest arguments his father made for why people were right to not pay attention to policy. In the mayor’s view, the people weren’t electing someone for matters of policy, but instead voting for someone who would engage with policy on their behalf without them having to understand it.

No more questions came though, and that appeared to be that. With the mayor on the scene, Philip’s role was immediately diminished, back down to being an aide. He was, functionally speaking, like a limb that his father could use. The mayor would take most of the credit, even though Philip had made most of the decisions, but that was more or less the life of an aide, even one that was coming to be seen as a sword-wielding hero. His father cast a wide shadow. Still, people would know to come to Philip, and his father would have to defer to Philip’s judgments.

Philip had known about the fall of Langust for more than a week thanks to his radio conversation with a contact in Gossom. That had given him time to prepare by reading up on the laws regarding those that came to Light’s Hollow from elsewhere. He had expected far fewer, perhaps a dozen, but he was nothing if not adaptable. By staying silent, he would seem even more adaptable than he already was; there was always an advantage in seeming to have information before everyone else.

❧❧❧

Philip woke early in the morning and after eating a quick breakfast of bread and butter, he headed down to the hospital to see if he could get a conversation with Diplomat Farrell. A proper meeting with the man was well and truly beyond Philip’s role as the mayor’s aide, but a bit of friendly inquiry might blossom into a fuller conversation if done carefully, and the mayor couldn’t fault Philip for that. Philip had taken a document from his office, which he intended to offer to Farrell if at all possible; a drop of blood and a signature would, by the sacred alchemy of bureaucracy, turn any man, woman, or child into a citizen of Light’s Hollow. If asked, Philip would say that he had just brought the paper so that Farrell could look it over, since every refugee would be compelled to sign their own mimeographed copy if they intended to stay.

It was a calculated move. Splitting Farrell from his people would be better accomplished by going to them individually and having them become citizens on their own without his advice or consent. What Philip was instead trying to do was to capture their leader in his own orbit, which was best accomplished through direct diplomacy. Besides that, Philip had a plan that he thought might appeal to Farrell.

He found the older man stretching outside the hospital in the cool morning air, surrounded by what Philip had identified the day before as loyal lackeys. There were no women among them, Philip noticed. Farrell had gotten some sleep and obviously taken a shower; he looked much better than he had the day before, free from the grease and dirt of the road. Strangely, he also looked older, since the grime and obvious exhaustion had hidden some of his features.

“Young Phandrum,” said Diplomat Farrell. “You’ve stopped by to check on us.”

Philip shrugged. “I wanted to make sure that you felt welcomed,” he replied. “Transitions can be delicate things, and accommodations are not what I would have preferred. If Gossom had informed us that you were coming, we might have had the opportunity to prepare proper housing for everyone.” The official line from Gossom, as delivered by their warden, was that they were ill-equipped for so many people and had tried via scheduled radio but gotten no response. For his part, Farrell had seemed to imply that it was exile rather than pragmatism.

“The transition thus far has been handled fine,” Farrell replied with a nod. “We were just now getting ready for some matters of religious import. I’ve noticed that you have no place of worship here.” He quirked an eyebrow, but there was hardly any inflection.

“I believe some members of the community have personal shrines,” said Philip. He didn’t know any of them personally; the practice was virtually non-existent. Everything Philip knew about religion and worship had been learned from reading rather dry, academic books about politics, policy, and history, as religion didn’t really exist within Light’s Hollow.

“We will have to make the construction of a church a priority then,” replied Farrell with a nod. “We’ll build that first, then live within it while other housing is furnished.”

“The issue of what we’re doing in the long term will have to be decided by the city council,” Philip replied. Every spare acre of land within the umbra of the lanterns was already spoken for. “We haven’t formally set a meeting, but I believe all of the principals have been informed of your situation.” The folded paper which would allow Farrell citizenship was sitting in Philip’s pocket; he made a snap decision not to reach for it, though this would have been a decent enough time to segue. “If you’re doing well, I need to return to city hall and prepare for our inevitable meeting.”

Farrell frowned. “I do not much like your arrangement of leaders,” he said. There were some nods from the men around him. “They are disordered. There is no chain of command, no governing structure.”

“The structure is as laid out in our founding documents,” said Philip. “It is not simple, but so far it has proven effective.” That was one lie after another. The city charter didn’t perfectly match up with how the city was actually run, and it had been amended a number of times to make broad changes. Philip had his own thoughts about how effective any of it was, but none he was willing to voice out loud.

“Your father was elected to mayor by people who know nothing of governance,” said Farrell. “There is nothing divine in his selection.”

Philip was poorly trained for such naked hostility. He was used to jabs and barbs, but Farrell was behaving like a drunkard at a party, the type typically escorted out well before the evening was over. Clearly something needed to be said, but Philip had no idea what was appropriate as a response, let alone what would actually help his position. He had hoped to find the Langustians in his debt, but that seemed unlikely with Farrell in the way.

“We can discuss the merits of different forms of governance at a later date,” said Philip. “I’m fairly widely read on the subject. For now, would it be possible to interview someone about life in Langust? I fear that there are misunderstandings that we could easily avoid if I could offer some advice to the mayor and the other members of the city council.”

Farrell snorted. “Do what you will. I’ll fetch one of the girls for you,” he replied.

Philip was mildly surprised by that. Farrell had spoken with some disparagement towards Warden Myles the day before, seemingly entirely on account of the fact that she was a woman. Perhaps it was some as-yet unrevealed cultural slight for Philip to be speaking to a woman, but the men around Farrell gave no indication that was the case. The day of their arrival hadn’t allowed enough time to get a good understanding of what they actually believed, both because of the other organizational problems to be solved, and because everyone had been exhausted from the twenty mile journey.

A small, mousy girl was eventually brought out from the hospital to accompany Philip back to city hall. He had almost expected someone to come with them as a chaperon, but Farrell had begun speaking to some of the men about what sort of church they were going to build and appeared to have lost interest in Philip. Philip walked with the girl, whose name was Breda, making idle conversation. By the time they arrived at his office, she had loosened up slightly, though she tensed when he pulled out pen and paper from his desk.

“Is this a test?” Breda asked.

“Just an interview,” said Philip. “I’d like to know more about the place that you come from — not the town specifically, but some aspects of its society and culture.”

“Oh,” she said.

Philip could see that this was going to be a struggle if he tried to go too quickly. “Did you go to school?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Breda. She watched as he made a note of that.

“Until what age?” asked Philip.

“Sixteen,” she replied.

“And is that typical for women?” he asked.

“For men and women,” she replied, answering the question that he hadn’t asked.

The questioning continued in that vein for some time, until Breda was simply talking to him rather than answering questions by rote. She described a life that was fairly close to what they had in Light’s Hollow. She marveled at the surfeit of glass on display, and expressed the opinion that the people of Light’s Hollow wore far too much color.

“Color is sacred,” she explained. “The wardens each have a special hue, one which only they can see. Color wasn’t meant to adorn people, but that’s a burden that the wardens bear.” She didn’t seem overly concerned that Philip’s shirt was a light blue though.

Eventually, Philip moved toward the questions that he really cared about.

“How long has the Diplomat held that position?” he asked.

“Oh, ages,” Breda replied. “Since before I was born. Forty years, maybe.” She sat and waited for Philip’s next question, until eventually continuing. “With the Chancellor gone, he’s the only one left that can lead us.”

Philip weighed his next words carefully. “Is there anyone ready and able to take up the mantle?” he asked. It was important not to give insult by suggesting the man’s death.

Breda shook her head. “No one.” She sunk slightly. “We’ve lost everything with the fall of the lantern, and Diplomat Farrell is the only one who can keep everything together.”

“Could he train someone for the position?” asked Philip.

Breda shook her head again. “It’s a calling.” She hesitated. “He’s not very nice, but he says it’s okay if we say that, because he knows it’s true. That doesn’t change the matter of calling.”

Philip moved on to other topics, though there were more depths he wanted to plumb. Diplomat Farrell had no successor, which was a form of strength, in that it made him eminently important for the displaced Langustians. On the other hand, it presented Farrell as a single point of failure through which the community could be broken. Talking to Breda wasn’t going to provide anything more on the subject, since she didn’t appear to know all that much. That meant turning to his supposed purpose of this interview, which was helping to smooth the cultural differences.

“Diplomat Farrell spoke with one of our glimwardens, Warden Myles,” he said. “He intimated that it was impossible for her to be in charge, and while he was right that she wasn’t the chief glimwarden, his assertion seemed unfounded. Why would he think that?”

Breda blushed. “We don’t have … women like that,” she said. “He wasn’t kind about it, but he was right. A woman’s place is not as a leader. Nor as a glimwarden.”

Philip sat back in his chair and regarded her. She shifted in place.

“Why?” he asked. “The people of Light’s Hollow believe otherwise, that should be clear to you.” Linda Linwell had shown up the day before while Philip was helping find everyone a place to stay. She was only there for long enough to make an appearance, but the reception had been decidedly chilly.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” said Breda. “It’s just, you know, there are all these stories about what happens when people try it like that. And … if you’re man and wife, and you have a disagreement, someone has got to be right, don’t they? Men fight with each other all the time, it’s practically endless, and women fight with each other too, but in a marriage that just doesn’t work.”

Philip nodded along. It was only half an explanation, but he supposed that was the best that he would get from someone who had no part in politics herself. There might have been something to the idea that personal relationships worked better if one person was dominant and the other submissive, in the same way that every council needed a method of resolving ties among its members, but that didn’t quite explain why women should be barred from being glimwardens or political leaders. In any case, a seeming formalization of discrimination was a political tool to be wielded against the refugees and Farrell in particular. Farrell would immediately be at odds with Councilor Linwell, and there went a quarter of the city council’s vote.

❧❧❧

Not too much of the morning had passed when Philip returned to the hospital. There he was greeted by the sight of a crowd gathered around Farrell, who was standing on a box and giving what appeared to be an impromptu speech. The displaced people of Langust had gathered around to listen, but there were others as well, the citizens of Light’s Hollow stopping by for a listen. Farrell’s speaking voice was stronger than Philip might have imagined from speaking with the man, and he seemed stronger during the speech than he had in person.

“We have been beaten,” Farrell declared. “We will be stronger for our scars. We have been broken. We will be stronger for having mended. We have been exiled. We will be stronger for our journey.”

It was a speech of martyrdom. Farrell was casting himself and the others as survivors, but more than that, as righteous victims of a cold and uncaring world. Yet the message was not quite one of hope; there were various barbs directed towards Light’s Hollow, some hidden and others nakedly hostile if couched in faint praise or calls to tolerance.

It was in the best interests of the people of Langust to integrate smoothly with the people of Light’s Hollow, since, after all, they were outnumbered thirty to one. Yet they had a community which was large enough that they could potentially keep separate, and that seemed to be Farrell’s intent. His insults against Light’s Hollow served a dual purpose of division; he was marking lines to divide the two sides and driving a wedge between them. Philip made note of those wedges, as they would either be a problem or an opportunity.

First, there was some intimation that the people of Light’s Hollow were soft or decadent in some way. Given how the Langustians dressed, in plain, colorless clothing, Philip could see how that might be a powerful distinction to draw. After all, the Langustians would be hit with it every time they spoke to someone from outside their circle of refugees, and it was an easy way to mark allies. Likewise, some of the more ornate features of Light’s Hollow might attract scorn from men and women who had lost their friends and family to leave their homes behind. Philip himself had often looked at the statues that topped the outer lanterns and thought about what a waste of time and money they had been. He’d walked through Cooper’s Park and Lyman Row and thought about the cost of the land that was used for little more than civic beauty. Cooper’s Park in particular might be cause for controversy once more; every few years someone talked about clearing the trees there and building something practical, but no one ever took that too seriously. The refugees would need houses though, and Diplomat Farrell might use that evergreen issue as a hammer, once he found out about it.

Second, there was an accusation that Light’s Hollow was governed by nothing more than mob rule. Philip had often felt the same, though he had always been alone in that. The people who elected the city council knew nothing of public policy, and in any case didn’t tend to vote in a way that Philip found reasonable. It was far from mob rule though, as elections were infrequent enough that the pressure on the elected officials was less strong than it might have been. And the council was more complex than that, because it split the vote in different ways, and the chief glimwarden was decided by seniority. The process by which Langust had a Diplomat was unclear, but the position appeared to be a religious one, given all of Farrell’s talk of three gods and their divine sanction. Philip found it hard to imagine that the argument would sway anyone, but the intent was clear enough; he was attempting to erode the legitimacy of the leaders of Light’s Hollow.

The third argument was religious, and one which was largely inapt. Farrell spoke more than once about fractured gods, a seeming reference to the nine archetypes which gave the lanterns their names. Yet while Farrell called the people of Light’s Hollow heretics, the truth was simply that no one treated those figures as gods. They were part of the culture, certainly, but they were figures of mythology and the subjects of stories rather than deities for a person to pray to. The nine archetypes had their holidays and ceremonies, but these were more a matter of tradition than anything else. There were no religious leaders like Farrell appeared to be; the closest the town had was the mayor, whose duties at Moon Rise and the Feast of Empty Winter were entirely ceremonial. There were no heretics, merely unbelievers, which Philip was certain was a heresy all its own.

All in all, it was a mixed bag of criticism. The people of Light’s Hollow might take offense, but they didn’t appear to be the primary audience. Farrell was setting the narrative that his own people would be following. Following that speech, his words would hang in their minds whenever they had interactions with the larger community, and while Philip was certain that most of them wouldn’t be infected with the same zeal Farrell had, a strong friction had been introduced between the peoples. No doubt Farrell would be working to inflame the unease in the coming days.

If Philip had been playing from a position of strength, perhaps he might have made an impromptu speech of his own. The proper strategy wouldn’t be to counter Farrell’s specific points, but to highlight unity. Their cultures were not vastly different from one another, and from his conversation with Breda Philip imagined that he knew the right place to strike at them. He could give a speech about how all men are born with equality of opportunity, how both societies had rejected castes, slavery, royalty, and other such truly foreign things. They would be citizens, free to make what they wanted of themselves in this new town, barred nothing by virtue of the fact that they were foreign. Of course Philip would choose his words wisely; all men are born equal. That was a distinction that the citizens of Light’s Hollow might not think twice about, but the Langustians would be comforted by it.

But no, Philip was merely the mayor’s aide, and he had been warned once about overstepping his boundaries. Speeches would have to wait until later.

❧❧❧

A closed meeting of the city council was called to order late in the day. There had been some discussion about whether or not it should be open to the public, but it had to come together in such a hurry that only the most ardent followers of town politics were likely to show up (the council-botherers, Philip’s father called them). Besides that, there were things to be discussed which weren’t for the general public to hear. Philip might have made the case that even the aides should be left out, so that nothing would leak from the meeting, but of course that would have meant excluding himself.

“There’s not enough money to pay for them,” said Linwell. “In time, they will convert life into labor and labor into money, but they cannot pay for the houses we’ll need to build for them, for the food they’ll eat from our supplies, and for the clothes on their backs. They didn’t come entirely without resources, but taking from them now will just retard their progress towards being productive citizens.”

“And where would the money come from?” asked the mayor. Philip took a brief moment from making his meeting notes to write down a few notes on different taxes, ready to be slipped over to his father at a moment’s notice. In this case, the mayor appeared to be asking with purpose rather than at a loss for what might be done; it was rarely politically expedient to suggest a new tax.

“We should slay them down to the last,” said Golland. He was looking less well than he had at the inquest, and of course the first thing from his lips was insanity. “They suck blood from the teat, their teeth biting into flesh, slain down to the last, that’s the only path for our picaresque little town if we hope to survive these trials.”

The room was silent. If Philip had any faith whatsoever in the city council, it would have been broken by the fact that no one spoke up about what was spilling forth from Gregor Golland’s lips. The truth was, removing him from the council now would throw things further into disarray, and everyone had privately decided that it was better to have a hobbled council than to deal with the Golland problem. He had no power on his own, only a single vote, and since three votes could decide on any matter they were likely to come across, everyone could simply vote against him for the time being. The biggest risk was that he would be unmasked as unhinged before the general public, but apparently that was a risk that the councilors were willing to take. After all, they were surely lining up their excuses, even the chief glimwarden, who was normally above such things.

“Charity,” grumbled Glimwarden Seaborn. “No one likes a tax, but they might give freely of their own accord.”

“No,” said the mayor. “Their man, Farrell, has seen to it that charity will never meet the needs of his people.”

“We could auction off the land for the new lantern,” said Linwell. “We’ve never done a preemptive auction, but now might be the time to start. We would simply tax the auction and have done with it, I think no one could argue with that.”

Philip could certainly have argued with that. The price an auction of the land would bring was more or less static, depending on the actors, which meant that a tax would only change how much of the pie ended up in the city’s coffers. It wasn’t a tax on those paying the auction prices, it was a tax on the people of the city, with the only difference being that it would wear a flimsy disguise. That disguise was all that Linwell was after though, and Philip thought it was sensible, so he said nothing against it.

There followed some squabbling about the exact numbers, which ended as soon as Philip drew forth a series of estimates about how much each refugee would cost the city in the time it took to get them all appropriately settled and working again. He had been the one to take an informal census of the immigrants, and the analysis had been completed before lunch. He’d tried, as best he could, to account for what condition everyone had been in, but there hadn’t been the time to ask everyone what their jobs were, which would have helped to refine the numbers some.

“I don’t suppose you have some gauge of how much the eighth lantern’s land will be worth?” asked Linwell.

“No ma’am,” replied Philip. “It will largely depend on how much money the three largest families have in reserve, and I expect that advanced purchase of land which won’t be available for quite some time will depress the income we might otherwise generate, especially if the auction is held on short notice. I do have a report on the auction that took place when Singer’s Lantern was built, but I don’t have much confidence in using that for predictive power. In any case, I was under the impression that the location for the eighth lantern was still to be decided.” Philip knew damned well that they hadn’t decided, but it paid to be polite.

Linwell rubbed her eyes. “We need more time. Can we divert funds?”

The mayor balked at that. “The last time we did something like that, we ended up with a shortfall which this very council was unable to correct for better than a month,” he said. That had been a sore spot discussed often over family dinner, but Philip thought his father was making a mistake in bringing it up now.

“The answer might be a form of bonds,” said Philip. It wasn’t his right to speak, but his father was the only one that looked at him askance. That was a good sign that he’d won a fair amount of respect from the council. “If those interested pay in, we can give them back that money plus interest when the time comes for auction. The city’s balance of funds would remain untouched. The only question is what sort of rate we would have to give them. The impact on auction proceeds wouldn’t be so great, I don’t think.” Anyone who bought a bond would naturally discount it by the time the auction rolled around.

“If your aide would be willing to lead that charge, I would consider the matter settled,” said Linwell. “Chief Seaborn?”

The glimwarden paused for a moment then nodded. No one asked for Golland’s opinion; his attention was focused out the window, and had been while this discussion took place. That was, at any rate, three votes in favor, which was all that were needed. Philip marked this down in his notes, though his father had never technically cast anything that might be considered a vote in its favor.

“We have other matters to discuss,” said the mayor. “We’ll pay for them, but what are we to do with them? Houses will need to be built for them, and by all accounts they’re hostile to the idea of integration and assimilation.”

Philip was fairly confident that no one save Golland would broach the subject of exiling them en masse like Gossom had done. It was an obvious solution to the problem, which would also avoid the issue of paying for the care of nearly three hundred people. There were a fair number of practical considerations, such as the fact that they would need to be sent away with supplies, and the injury that would be done to the reputation of Light’s Hollow, but Philip knew that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was empathy. The council members would imagine themselves in the shoes of the refugees, turned away to face another dangerous trek through the wilderness to ever-further towns. The council members all saw themselves as good people, that was part of the problem.

Solutions were offered, but Philip could tell that most of them would be ineffectual. Linwell focused too closely on a sort of forcible conversion whereby the Langustians would be taught that their deeply held beliefs were wrong. The mayor spoke of ad hoc integration, as he seemed to hope that immersion was the salve that cured all wounds. Seaborn seemed to believe that the problem would solve itself in some way, so long as it was handled as such problems were normally handled.

“A man’s soul is not sundered from his body save by death,” said Golland during one lull in the conversation. “The soul is permanent, intangible, immutable, unable to change save by contact with the soul of another, so the crux of the conundrum can be clarified as a small egg sitting in a nest, to which the enterprising hater of birds might simply steal the egg away. Why make plans for when the egg hatches, when one might be forced to see what creature lives inside?”

If Philip cared solely for the well-being of Light’s Hollow, he might have agreed. Farrell was clearly an effective politician, whatever else he was, which made him a danger. He would first dig his hooks into his congregation until there was no possibility of their loyalty to Light’s Hollow, then he would seek to expand. Three hundred people weren’t enough to control a town of eleven thousand, but Farrell wouldn’t be limited to just them, not in the long term. Philip was fairly sure that he could use Farrell, he just wasn’t sure entirely how he would do that.

The meeting rambled, with no clear consensus, let alone a proposal that could be brought to a vote. The refugees were a problem, albeit one that could now be paid for, but the solution was entirely unclear. Eventually, the mayor rapped his gavel.

“We need to discuss the matter of sabotage,” he said. “Councilor Linwell, what do you have to report?”

“Nothing,” she replied with a huff. “Examination of the lanterns has shown no visible tampering. With the aid of one of the glimwardens, we did confirm that some of the internal damage had been caused using the bind, but that only confirms a suspicion.”

“My people have been on the lookout,” said Seaborn. “We haven’t seen the shadow of the bind of anyone who wasn’t known to have it. That might not mean anything though.”

“Yet a lantern failure in Langust concurrent with one here means that there is no coincidence,” replied the mayor. “It can only be sabotage.”

“A man might cut a finger from his hand in order to prevent venom from reaching his arm,” said Golland.

“Sabotage without motive,” said Linwell. “We can only keep our eyes open and hope that we spot it before it happens again, if it does. There are no leads to follow, no clues that we’ve missed.”

“We should hold off on the contest,” grumbled Seaborn. “We need more glimwardens, no matter where the threat is coming from. Better to have it done without complications.”

“You wish to use the city’s share,” replied Linwell. “We’ve agreed to our terms on that score. I speak for the runesmiths and they’re unwilling to take such a blow to their professional interests without getting something in return.”

The mayor rapped his gavel once. “Glimwarden Seaborn, our course is set in this matter. The long-standing arrangement allows for a diversion of hearts only in time of great peril, which — so far — this is not. You have stated that recovering the ranks could be done without undue stress upon the glimwardens, in keeping with the summary of forces that was given to me by your predecessor six years ago. It is in the public interest to keep the runesmiths from having to seek work elsewhere.”

“It might yet become an emergency,” Seaborn replied. “If things go sour, if the Schism rears its head again …” He folded his arms across his chest. “Fine. Let us have this competition and be done with it.”

❧❧❧

The next morning, Philip’s early morning work was interrupted with a knock on his office door. When he opened it, he was mildly surprised to find Melanie Masters standing in front of him, with a girl he didn’t recognize standing off to the side.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Is now a good time for a meeting?” asked Melanie.

“As good as any,” Philip nodded. He went back into his office and gestured toward the two chairs. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said to Melanie’s companion.

“I came in with the group from Langust,” the red-headed girl said.

“You directed her to the Black Mare?” asked Melanie. “This is Chloe Masters, Chloe, this is Philip Phandrum.”

Philip was certain that he’d never seen this girl before. She was wearing something of Melanie’s, a high-collared dress with long sleeves and a conservative cut, and it was likely that she would have had a shower or a bath in the interim, but still, Philip would have remembered her, and he would have remembered directing her Melanie’s way. He had asked whether there were any Masters among the refugees, but no one had answered in the affirmative, not even when asked about those who might have met their fate during the lantern failure. He looked Chloe over carefully; there was a steely confidence to her, but she was at the same time avoiding direct eye contact.

“I’m sorry,” said Philip. “That was a hectic day and I spoke with many people.” He held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to formally make your acquaintance.” He watched her relax slightly as she took his hand. She was a liar, certainly, but Philip had ensured that his complicity wouldn’t be explicit. “What brings the two of you here?”

“Chloe has some information about the lantern failure in Langust,” said Melanie. She turned to look at Chloe, as did Philip.

“I am an illuminatrix,” said Chloe. “I came to Langust chasing stories of a bright red suit of armor. I had stolen it for my own when the lantern failed. I turned back to help those in need, which is when I encountered the man responsible. He was far beyond my ability to stop.” Her words were clearly rehearsed, and she spoke them with a steady voice. “The protection of the civilians went poorly. I was attacked by their illuminators. They stopped only when it became clear that any victory would come at a steep cost. I have been helping them ever since. I am prepared to pledge myself to Light’s Hollow for a set period of time in exchange for help.”

For her part, Melanie seemed shocked. Philip only nodded along as he mulled this over. The primary question was how much truth there was in what she was saying; it was almost inconceivable that this description of events didn’t hide something, if any of it was in fact true.

“Where is the armor?” asked Philip.

“I can’t say,” replied Chloe. “It’s power and leverage.”

Philip nodded. That much was obvious. “If you have no loyalty to the Langustians, where does your loyalty lie?” he asked. “Not to us, surely, but you haven’t cut loose from Farrell.”

Chloe opened her mouth to answer, but closed it before any words could come out. She looked to the one window in Philip’s office, as though she might find some answer there. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I would like for … for the world to be a better place.” She paused, as if about to say something more, but kept her silence instead.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” asked Melanie.

“I’m sorry,” said Chloe. “The truth is complicated and ugly. It doesn’t come easily.”

Philip was trying to see all the angles and having difficulty. Clearly Chloe couldn’t be trusted, but it was also clear that she was a valuable person to have around. Langust had nine glimwardens before it had fallen, and if she had been telling the truth, she had been able to fight them to a standstill, which meant that either the armor was ungodly powerful or she was singularly capable, perhaps both. Farrell was using the spirit of Langust as implicit leverage, but he had no purchase on her … unless his hooks in her were hidden, which Philip considered unlikely given that Farrell had displayed no power beyond that of rhetoric and loyalty.

This meeting was not something that Philip could negotiate alone, at least not given his rank within the city’s power structure. Yet he knew both the explicit and implicit laws of the city better than anyone, and he alone was best equipped to make a decision on this matter. Chloe Masters would not fit neatly into the systems of power within Light’s Hollow, but no one currently in a position of real power had made a study of the ways and means of power. It therefore would fall to Philip, and if it didn’t, he could count on his father, Seaborn, and Linwell to arrive at a bad solution.

“Can you handle the darklings?” asked Philip.

“Yes,” replied Chloe. She clenched her fist. “Even without wearing the armor. They’re weak in this region.”

“And you can cloak the shadow of the bind to keep yourself from being found out?” asked Philip.

Chloe hesitated. “Yes,” she replied. “Though it leaves me vulnerable to do so.”

“What does Farrell know about the suit of armor?” asked Philip.

“I stole it from his house,” said Chloe. “He has girls close to my size who I assume were meant to wear it in times of need.”

“The citizens of Langust don’t know that?” asked Philip.

“No,” said Chloe. “Just Farrell and the girls. Those that survived, anyway.”

Philip frowned. “But they aren’t glimwardens?” he asked. “Hidden ones, like yourself?”

Chloe shook her head. “Farrell wouldn’t have allowed that. It gives too much power.” Philip waited for her to continue, which she did reluctantly. “It’s simple for an illuminator to kill someone without the bind. There are a hundred attacks that the common person has no defense against, and the armor only protects against perhaps twenty of them. His girls would have stepped into the armor knowing how easily they could be put down. The armor is a razor that Farrell didn’t want to cut himself on.”

“Alright,” said Philip. He sat back in his chair. “Here are the problems, as I see them. First, you stole something of value from Langust which arguably contributed to the fall of their town. Light’s Hollow traditionally refuses to arbitrate for crimes which happened in other towns, but Farrell and his people aren’t going to like it.”

Chloe shrugged.

“Second, you’re a glimwarden,” Philip continued. “You’re going to be asked to pledge yourself to Light’s Hollow as soon as any of our own glimwardens know that you exist.”

“I’ll make the pledge,” said Chloe.

Philip shook his head. “You’ve already earned their mistrust,” he said. “You should have revealed yourself as soon as you set foot in protection of our lanterns. Warden Myles challenged you and you refused.”

“I needed to see what sort of place Light’s Hollow was first,” said Chloe. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I needed to hide the armor so it wouldn’t be stolen from me. I’m coming to you now because I’ve done what I needed to be done.”

“I understand. You’ve been through a lot,” said Philip. “I’m only trying to outline the problems that you now face, not suggesting that you should have done differently given the information available to you.” Philip backed off. She was valuable; it was important to stay in her good graces. “These problems have solutions. Our glimwardens will forgive and forget so long as you help collect hearts. Would you be willing to do that?”

Chloe nodded.

“Third,” Philip continued. “You have information about the man who sabotaged Langust’s lantern. We suffered a similar act of sabotage not long ago. The question of motive is going to be on everyone’s lips.” He looked to Melanie. “Had word of that reached you?”

“Sabotage?” asked Melanie. “Someone deliberately turned off Healer’s Lantern?” Her face was pale. It was no particular surprise to Philip that she was out of her depth. “Who … who would do something like that?”

“Vicissitude,” said Chloe. “That was the only thing he said.”

“It’s a philosophical stance,” said Melanie, after it was clear that Chloe wasn’t going to say anything more on the matter. Her reticence was starting to annoy Philip. “It means strength through trials. Apparently someone thinks that creating destruction is a way of helping people.”

Philip had come across the term before in his reading, buried in a few books imported from far away. It had long been one of the lenses he used to look at the world. Locks were built to be strong enough to deter the average thief, which meant that better thieves would beget better locks. Monopolies on goods and services tended to be bad for consumers because competition spurred greatness. There was little doubt in Philip’s mind that the defenses of Light’s Hollow would become stronger following the lantern failure at Healer’s. Of course vicissitude was nearly unworkable as a political philosophy, and it broke down as soon as anyone began to take it too seriously, but Philip had a certain respect for it.

“It’s not much to go on,” said Philip. He had been idly making notes as they spoke, in the same way he recorded meeting minutes for the council, his pen moving almost automatically to capture his thoughts. He looked down at these now to make sure there was nothing he was forgetting. There were more questions to ask Chloe, certainly, but she had already withdrawn. “Chloe, how would you like to proceed?” Philip asked. “I can represent you and maintain your anonymity until an agreement is reached, if you would like.”

“You’d do that?” asked Chloe, looking up to meet his eyes. There was, for a brief moment, a look of relief. “What’s in it for you?”

“I think it would go more smoothly with me speaking on your behalf,” said Philip. “I know the people that will need to be brought on board for you to transition into a productive member of the community. I know the personalities involved.”

“You gain power, in other words,” said Chloe. Melanie frowned at that, but said nothing.

“Everyone gains,” said Philip. “That’s the ideal end of any political arrangement.” This was a bald lie, but it was the sort that was expected of any politician; the ideal end varied depending on the politician, but was almost never about mutual benefit.

“I have a condition,” said Chloe. “At some point we need to find the people responsible for these attacks and bring them to justice. I can’t do it alone. When the time comes, I’m going to call on you for help.” A fire had returned to her eyes.

Philip held out his hand. “Then we have a deal,” he replied.

Melanie

It had been a long time since anyone else had lived in the Black Mare. Melanie had a night of restless sleep, and when she woke up in the morning to the sound of carts and footsteps outside, she had a feeling of unease before remembering that there was someone sleeping in what had once been her bed. She moved quietly as she got dressed and used the bathroom, trying her best not to disturb Chloe. She knew the upper floor well enough to avoid the creaky spots, which she’d always had to look out for when her father was hung over. She made her way downstairs in silence.

Breakfast was usually nothing more than grains boiled in milk, but Melanie hadn’t had company in a very long time, so she decided to use some of her store to make a treat for herself and Chloe. The girl had been traveling for a long time and was twice exiled, presumably without any friends or family if she came to the Black Mare alone. That called for warmth and hospitality. The refrigerator and pantry were both nearly empty given that she’d given food and drink to the refugees the night before, but there were enough scraps to pull together a breakfast. She turned the stove on to cook some scraps of beef while she made the most of the leftovers. Melanie assembled two plates piled high with too much food: toasted butter-crust bread, black currant jam, beef, and fried eggs. Once that was complete, she added cutlery and made her way back up the stairs, hoping that Chloe would wake up before any of it got cold.

Melanie didn’t need to worry though, because Chloe was standing in the small living room. Her head was tilted sideways as she read the titles on the spines of Melanie’s book collection. Melanie shifted her weight on the floorboards to cause a creaking sound, but the other girl showed no reaction.

“I made breakfast,” Melanie said.

Chloe turned from the books and nodded once before sitting down in one of the cramped living room’s two chairs. She took the offered plate and began to eat quickly, intent on her food. It had been the same when she ate dinner last night, as though she expected to have to run at any moment. Melanie tried to imagine it. The desperation of a destroyed home wasn’t uncommon, though it was rare for books to dwell too long on the destruction of a town and the scars that loss left behind.

“There’s a bathroom if you’d like to take a shower,” said Melanie. “We have hot water. And I can loan you some clothes if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” said Chloe between bites. “I can’t repay you.”

“I know,” said Melanie. “You didn’t have anything with the wagons?”

Chloe paused to chew for a moment. Her eyes stayed on Melanie though. “I woke up to the sounds of screaming and ran for the lantern. Everything I had, I left behind.” She frowned. “My mother … didn’t make it.” She fell silent. “Langust fell and there was never a chance to go back for anything.”

“I’m sorry,” said Melanie softly.

“It’s fine,” Chloe replied with a wooden voice. “These things happen.” She returned to her meal, and this time Melanie joined her.

Melanie wanted desperately to ask about the girl’s family, but that line of questioning now seemed closed off. It would be absolutely heartless to launch an inquiry into the girl’s genealogy when she was still mourning the loss of her mother. Melanie noted that there was no mention of a father, which piqued her curiosity, but that too would have to wait for another time. Melanie would have to content herself with the fact that they were both Masters and almost certainly distant relations.

“Do you like books?” asked Melanie, nodding toward her shelf. Money was tight enough that books never stayed with Melanie long; they were traded or sometimes sold as soon as they were read. Her bookshelf was a collection of books she’d borrowed from anyone who would agree to a loan, library books, and books she owned that were waiting for a trade. She could only hope that Chloe wouldn’t judge her on the basis of that collection.

“I don’t really read,” replied Chloe. She glanced briefly at the books, only long enough to confirm that they were of no interest to her.

“Oh,” said Melanie. “And … can you read?”

Chloe glared at her.

“I’m sorry, that was a terrible question, it’s just that you hear so much about what single lantern towns are like, how difficult life is and how little they have,” rambled Melanie. “Books are a luxury and a printing press is one of the last things that anyone would build, so there aren’t really any books if you only have a few hundred people, and besides that you know who everyone is anyway so you could just borrow whatever book you needed. I just thought that maybe it was possible no one had taught you how to read.”

“One lantern towns aren’t like that,” said Chloe. “Early on, maybe, but most one lantern towns aren’t early on, they’re either on their way towards expansion or they’re holding steady and not growing.”

“I’m sorry,” Melanie said again. “I was just … I read a lot of stories and the one lantern towns are always so backwards.”

“They’re dysfunctional,” said Chloe.

“Have you been to other towns then?” asked Melanie. “Besides Gossom, I mean?”

Chloe glanced toward the window that led out onto the street and took some time to eat the last of her bread. “How long can I stay here?” she asked.

“That —” Melanie paused. Her question had gone unanswered. “I don’t really know what the long term plan is. I’ll have to talk to Philip. You can stay here until that’s figured out though. We don’t have the spare housing for another few hundred people, I know that much, so it will take some time to get everyone settled.”

Chloe nodded.

“There’s something that you’re not telling me,” said Melanie. She squared herself. “That’s fine. Whatever it is, you can keep it to yourself. But I can’t promise not to ask questions.”

“Can you keep secrets?” asked Chloe.

“Yes,” said Melanie. “I don’t really have anyone to tell secrets to.” The list only had two names on it: Sander and Philip. Sander would (try to) provide a sympathetic ear, while Philip might actually get something done.

“Good,” said Chloe. “Don’t tell anyone that I’m staying here.”

“And … that’s the secret?” asked Melanie.

“For now,” said Chloe. “I need to get the lay of the land. I need to think.” She twitched her hand and clenched it into a fist. “I need to find out what the others are doing. We can talk tonight.”

Melanie nodded. It was infuriating to have a mystery with no clear resolution in sight, but she reminded herself that life wasn’t like the stories and sometimes a person had to wait for ages before there was a resolution to things that had been started much earlier. Sometimes there wasn’t any resolution at all. Chloe was an unrepentant mystery, far different from the surrogate sister that Melanie had been hoping for last night, but Melanie would give her a chance, if only to find out what secrets she was hiding.

❧❧❧

With the issue of her unexpected house guest put to the side for the time being, Melanie set about her morning work. Nights at the Black Mare were for cleaning, which left the tavern ready for customers come lunch time. That normally left the morning free for cooking, baking, and restocking her supplies. Last night she’d been nearly cleaned out by the refugees, which meant that the morning would be spent at the market, unfortunately leaving little time for reading. Rogue’s Lantern did have a general store, but the prices were higher than at Chancellor’s, which meant that Melanie was in for a two mile walk each way in order to save some money.

When she opened the door to step outside, Sander was waiting for her.

“Hi,” he said with a smile as he pushed off from the wall he was leaning on. “Are you busy?”

“I’m always busy,” replied Melanie. “I need to get to the market.”

“Well, we can walk and talk then?” asked Sander. “Actually, wait a second — do you want to teleport with me?”

“Sander,” Melanie began, ready to shoot him down. She stopped and thought about it for a moment. “Okay, sure, if it will save me some time.”

“Oh, it won’t,” said Sander. “But it will save you some walking, if I can get it to work right.”

“Sure,” said Melanie. “But I thought that teleportation happened in the blink of an eye?”

“I mean, it does,” replied Sander. “Normally, I guess. Or so fast that it might as well be instant. But my signature is a little bit different, because it adds velocity.” He looked at her face and apparently decided that she didn’t understand. “So, velocity is movement in a given direction. That’s two parameters, right? Say, twenty miles per hour due north.”

“I know what velocity is,” replied Melanie. “Can we start walking in case this doesn’t pan out? I don’t want to lose my morning.”

“Sure,” said Sander. He turned to look down the street. “To Chancellor’s?”

Melanie nodded.

“Walking is actually a great example,” said Sander. “Our velocity before, while we were just standing around, was close to being motionless and directionless, relative to the ground, obviously.” He paused for a moment. “Do you know anything about relativity?”

“Do I need to?” asked Melanie. It wasn’t something she remembered from school, but that had been two years ago. “It’s some complicated math thing.”

“It’s also a complicated physics thing,” said Sander. “Anyway, forget that for now. We’re walking, so we have a speed, which is walking speed, and a direction, which is towards Chancellor’s, right?”

“I guess,” said Melanie.

“One of the cool things that you can do with velocity is add them together,” said Sander as they made their way down the street and out of the buildings that collectively made up the neighborhood of Rogue’s Lantern. “Like, let’s say that there are two velocities. Velocity one is our velocity right now, which is walking speed toward Chancellor’s. Velocity two is, maybe … running speed toward Healer’s. If you add those two together, you’d get a new velocity.”

“Running speed plus walking speed, headed that way?” asked Melanie, pointing between the road toward Chancellor’s and the road toward Healer’s.

“Well, kind of but not really,” said Sander. “You need head-to-tail vector addition to get the real result, which is pretty difficult to do in your head … or in your tail for that matter.” He smiled at her, not seeming to mind that she didn’t smile back. “You only add the speed parameters together if the direction parameters are the same. But if the directions are opposite from each other and the speeds are the same, then the speeds would cancel each other out. Get it?”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with your teleportation,” said Melanie.

“Oh,” said Sander. “Well when I teleport, there’s a time parameter and a distance parameter, which naturally gives both a speed and direction, which is a velocity, and it adds to my current velocity.”

By Melanie’s estimation, they were a quarter of the way to Chancellor’s already. “Meaning?” she asked.

“Meaning … well, lots of things,” said Sander. “But the big reason I can’t just teleport us instantly should be obvious: near-instant teleportation means very, very high speeds. High enough to kill me. But even at lower speeds there’s a chance for injury, because I’m going from stopped to a dead sprint all at once.”

“So we can’t save that much time,” said Melanie. “That’s disappointing. Can’t you just run in the opposite direction and then teleport?”

“Yes!” said Sander. “Velocity cancellation was one of the first things I thought about. Come on, hop on my back.”

“I am absolutely not going to do that,” said Melanie. “You can hold my hand. That’s how you did it with Philip, isn’t it?”

Sander nodded. “It was, but that’s inefficient. After I finished at the Black Mare last night I did a few experiments. Mass is a factor, but surface area is too, because the bind needs to envelop that extra mass in some way. So basically, if we’re just holding hands it’s going to take me a lot more bind.” He crouched down. “Hop on.”

Melanie frowned at him and he gave her an expectant smile. She almost never touched other people. Her father had cared little for the concept of personal space; he was always lifting her up to move her aside when she was in the way, wrapping her in hugs, or patting her on the head when she had done something well. Melanie wasn’t averse to touching other people, but at some point she became aware that she wasn’t having any physical contact at all. It was one of those things which, once she’d noticed it, couldn’t be unnoticed. Whenever she touched another person, almost always incidentally in the course of serving food and drink, her mind called attention to it.

The Briars Once More opened up on the main character, Lucian, cursing and grumbling his way down a country road. Melanie had immediately thought to herself, Ah, so Lucian is a gruff and cantankerous character who will slowly be changed by the road of trials he does not know lies ahead of him. But as it turned out, she was wrong; Lucian was normally happy and upbeat, and for the first two chapters he had simply been in an uncharacteristically bad mood. That had left a lasting impression on her, because it opened up the possibility that every future story would trick her in the same way. She began to wonder what it was that defined characters, and eventually she began to wonder what it was that defined people. There was a difference between someone who was acting like a jerk and someone who was actually a jerk. Some things were fundamental to a person while others were only transient, and language did a poor job of differentiating between the two. There was a wide gulf of difference between saying that Melanie read books and saying that Melanie was a reader, because one was a thing that she did and another was a thing that she was.

Melanie didn’t touch other people. It had been that way for so long that she wondered whether it was fundamental. When she was serving people, she found herself handing over plates and cups in such a way that her fingers would have no chance of brushing theirs, if only because it would draw her attention to the fact that this was the only physical contact she would get in the near future. When did it change from something that she did to something that she was?

“Thinking?” asked Sander. He was still crouched down in front of her.

“No,” Melanie replied. She climbed onto Sander’s back and tried to keep from making a squeak as he hooked his arms under her legs and lifted her up. He was more muscular than she would have imagined, but she’d heard that those born of wardens were unnaturally fit. She wrapped her arms around him to keep herself steady; it was uncomfortably intimate, and all the more so because she hadn’t even had so much as a hug in the last two years.

“Okay,” said Sander as he turned in place, back toward Rogue’s Lantern. “Based on my experiments last night, I can go about a mile and a half at my maximum.” He started to jog back towards the lantern. “I can run about three times faster than I can walk, it takes me about forty minutes to walk between lanterns, and we want to come out at just under running speed in the opposite direction, which means … five minutes?” He started picking up his pace, until he was practically sprinting with Melanie clinging to his back. She finally did squeak, just as the scenery changed around them.

Sander gripped her tight as he slid along the road, killing his speed with the friction of his feet. Rogue’s Lantern was far away now, and they were skidding along the cobblestones away from it. Sander nearly lost his balance, but he managed to recover just as they came to a stop. Melanie untangled herself from him and smoothed down her dress as he turned to look at her with a grin on his face.

“There,” he said. His smile was infectious, and Melanie found herself smiling back at him despite herself. “That’s a forty minute walk reduced down to five minutes, so I guess we did end up saving quite a bit of time. I should have done the math before we set out.”

“Are you okay?” asked Melanie. She looked him over. “You’re not going to faint?”

“Nope,” said Sander. “I’m stronger than I was at the battle for Healer’s. Though I have to say that you’re a lot heavier than you look.”

“Sander, that’s rude,” Melanie replied, as though she were talking to a child. She felt a flush creep into her cheeks. She was offended, certainly, but she didn’t imagine that Sander had actually intended any offense.

“No it’s not,” said Sander. “If anything, it’s a compliment, right? I’m saying that you don’t look heavy.”

“No woman wants to be called heavy,” said Melanie. “It’s not a good adjective.”

“I didn’t call you heavy,” said Sander. “I said that you were heavier than you look. You’re still quite light, if I’m on talking about the spectrum of how much people in general weigh. Though I guess I haven’t picked up that many people.”

“Sander,” said Melanie. She tried to put as much warning into her voice as possible.

“All I’m saying is that you can be either heavier than you look, lighter than you look, or weigh as much as someone would think you do when they look at you,” Sander continued, unabated. “I don’t know why one of those would be preferable to the others, because they’re all relative terms.”

Melanie sighed. She could see the direction that the conversation was heading, with no clear resolution in sight, which meant that one of them would have to simply drop it — and this was the sort of thing that Sander could be incredibly obstinate about. She had once listened to him give a long monologue about how stupid fishing quotas were, which he’d delivered with the same sort of tone. “Okay. I have to get all this shopping done so I can start on lunch.”

“I’ll come with,” said Sander. “We still need to have a talk.”

Melanie started walking toward the market and Sander fell into step behind her. “About what?”

“The competition,” said Sander. “I was thinking that we would game it ahead of time. All we really need to do is to figure out what sort of things will be asked of us, so that way we’ll be able to prepare. You’ve read lots of historical accounts, so maybe there’s some precedence?”

“I don’t know,” said Melanie. “You just want to know how glimwardens are chosen?”

“In other towns, if they don’t do it like here,” said Sander. “I went looking for a comparative guide to selection processes, but didn’t find anything. I can’t imagine that someone never wrote one, but apparently it never made its way to Light’s Hollow.”

Melanie could easily imagine that. There were demonstrable gaps in what the libraries and personal collections held, many of which she’d discovered by trying to use the books she was reading to track down other books. “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” said Melanie. “It’s hard to know what’s based in reality. I read a story once where new glimwardens were chosen by fairies, which I’m pretty sure don’t actually exist. But if we’re not talking about the fantastic or improbable … maybe we’d be asked to run a race? Or fight each other? Or hunt darklings?”

“I don’t know,” said Sander. “It can’t be anything too dangerous, and it probably won’t be anything where the bind helps too much, because otherwise someone like me who’s in the Auxiliary has too much of an advantage. But I don’t really know what they want from a candidate.”

As they walked past the tall buildings that surrounded Chancellor’s Lantern, they began to hear the buzz of a crowd. The market was only another two blocks away, but on impulse Melanie changed course to go toward the voices. Sander followed without comment, as he had started in on a rather boring description of how he personally would select the next glimwardens, a scheme which apparently involved rewriting (or simply ignoring) a substantial number of laws and completely changing what it meant to be a glimwarden.

The crowd was gathered around the hospital, and standing on some sort of elevated platform in front of the double doors was the old man from Langust, Farrell, who Melanie had seen the day before. He was dressed in finer clothing than he had been, and appeared to be giving a speech. Melanie shushed Sander so she could listen without distraction.

“These people worship fractured gods, but we must not disparage them for their heresy,” said Farrell. “They live decadent, manicured lives, but we must not disparage them for their excess. They live under mob rule, their leaders selected on the basis of mere popularity rather than divine guidance, but we must accept that the divine light of the gods does not come easily. We live now among heretics, but we must make peace with that heresy, lest we find ourselves thrust onto the dangerous path of pilgrims once more.”

“What does any of that mean?” Sander whispered to Melanie.

“It means they don’t like us,” Melanie whispered back. The speech was giving her a queasy feeling. She looked at the people that were gathered around him. They were all refugees, dressed in dingy clothing and with a battered look about them.

“We have been beaten,” Farrell declared. “We will be stronger for our scars. We have been broken. We will be stronger for having mended. We have been exiled. We will be stronger for our journey. There is an old story about the Diplomat, from whom I so gratefully take my name. He came to a large town, much like this one, to speak with them about a structured trade agreement by which all might prosper, as was common before the darklings were so bad as they are today. The people of the town found him to be too foreign and shut him away in their jail, where he could see their town only through a small window to the streets outside. Yet the Diplomat was perfectly content with this arrangement; he waited and listened, gathering what information trickled in. When three days had passed, he learned enough to convince the guards to let him go, and with another three days after that he was able to bring the leaders of the town to heel. His confinement was no punishment. His disadvantage was not just inconsequential, but a blessing in disguise.”

“Come on, let’s go,” said Melanie, though Farrell was continuing to speak.

Sander followed after her. “Are you allowed to just give speeches in front of the hospital like that?” he asked. “What if someone needs emergency care? There had to have been a few hundred people there.”

“I can see why Gossom kicked them out,” said Melanie. The speech was still going on in the distance; Farrell was repeating a story that Melanie had heard before, about the Chancellor and the King coming to terms with one another after the Chancellor beheaded his own wife. “I wish Philip were here.”

“Why?” asked Sander.

“Because he would know what that was about,” said Melanie. “He was insulting us.”

“Maybe he’s just a jerk,” said Sander. “People can be jerks sometimes.”

“He wasn’t just talking for the sake of talking,” said Melanie.

Sander shrugged. It was as though he had already forgotten it. Melanie could tell that there was something dangerous about Farrell though, an unpleasant intensity that was looking for a target. He was, to all appearances, their leader. The truth was, there were too many things happening in Light’s Hollow, and they were happening all at once. A lantern failure, an influx of immigrants, talk of expansion, and all of the usual things that always went on. The town had troubles in the past, but they came one at a time, which allowed for time to adjust and recover. She couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that something bad was going to come of all of this.

❧❧❧

For lunch, Melanie made a large pot of shredded chicken in a fragrant squash broth. It wasn’t her best work, but it was quick enough and the squash — the first harvest of late summer — had been quite cheap owing to some discoloration. Sander had offered to stay behind and help her with the cooking, but she had spent more than enough time with him for one day. For once, he listened to her and didn’t attempt to force himself into her company. The remainder of their morning had been pleasant, for the most part. Sander did most of the talking, and she let his words wash over her like a wave. She was growing more accustomed to the idea that Sander was a friend, rather than someone trying to be her friend. At the very least, he would be an ally in the upcoming competition.

Lunch service was slow at the Black Mare. Construction was still ongoing at Healer’s Lantern, which was pulling in a lot of labor from around Light’s Hollow, and she was certain that the refugees were pulling in their own share of attention, which left Rogue’s Lantern more sleepy than it normally was. One of the worst parts of running a tavern was trying to account for the ebb and flow of customers. Melanie didn’t normally care for keeping her ear to the ground, but that was almost a necessity if she wanted to be able to predict how busy she was going to be.

After lunch there was a lull, which happened on most days. Since there were no pressing matters, that meant it was a time for reading. Melanie buried herself in Shadows in the Lantern Light, which lasted her until it was time for dinner and the copious amounts of drinking that always followed it. Melanie had expected Chloe to make an appearance at some point during the day, if only to grab a bite of food, but there was no sign of the other girl at all, not even after most of her customers were finished with their dinners and halfway drunk. The Black Mare was always most crowded after dinnertime, as it swelled with people looking for a place to be social. Melanie found it annoying, but the margins on drinks were better than on anything else she served, while also requiring the least amount of work from her.

It wasn’t until closing time, as Melanie was encouraging the last stragglers to leave, that Chloe came through the door. She watched the room closely for a few moments before striding in and, without a word, going up the stairs that led up to the living area. Melanie suppressed a frown at that, but she cautioned herself that she shouldn’t have expected too much from the mysterious girl. If Chloe was in bed and asleep before Melanie finished cleaning up, then, she decided, she would have a right to be frustrated.

When she came upstairs though, Chloe was sitting in one of the chairs, waiting patiently.

“How was your day?” asked Melanie. She tried to keep the annoyance from her voice. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Did you tell anyone that I was here?” asked Chloe. She was fidgeting in her seat.

“No,” said Melanie. “Not that I talk with people all that much. Though if you wanted to keep it a secret, you should have waited until the tavern was properly closed.”

Chloe shrugged. “People might talk, but they don’t know who I am. No one does.”

“And who are you?” asked Melanie. She realized that might come off as combative, so softened it immediately. “I mean, I don’t know anything about you, or who you’re hiding from.”

Chloe frowned. “I’m in over my head,” she said. “I need more power. I need allies. I need information.” She hesitated. “Does the word ‘vicissitude’ mean anything to you?”

“It’s a fancy way of saying a change,” replied Melanie. She stopped to think for a moment. “It comes up in stories sometimes, but it’s usually the bad sort of change.” It was a rare word, one that she’d learned from context rather than from looking it up.

“It’s a philosophy from far to the west,” said Chloe. “Some people believe that hardships are the only way that we can become better than we are. A change in circumstances forces a change in the self. My mother …” She paused. “If you mount an attack against someone, they’ll be forced to learn defense. If they’re not challenged, they become lazy and decadent. People only grow when they have no choice but to grow. It’s a way to be cruel and pretend it’s an act of kindness.”

Put a woman under a mountain of debt and claim that you were helping her grow, thought Melanie. “I don’t understand what this has to do with your secrets.”

“The lantern failure in Langust was a vicissitude,” said Chloe. She spat the last word. “It was a challenge they were meant to rise to, and if they didn’t … then they weren’t worthy of their survival.”

“How do you know this?” asked Melanie.

“I saw the man responsible,” said Chloe. “He was an illuminator, with an aura as black as pitch.” She clenched her fist until her knuckles were white. “When he saw me, time stood still, an effect of his signature, I think. He spoke a single word, using it as an apology, an explanation, and a challenge.”

“Vicissitude,” said Melanie.

Chloe nodded.

“Wait, you saw the shadow of the bind on him?” asked Melanie. Which would mean that she herself was a glimwarden — or a cullion.

Chloe flushed. “I need your discretion, for now.”

Melanie hesitated. “Okay,” she said. “But if you need power, allies, and information, I can’t do anything for you.”

“You know people,” said Chloe. Her eyes were intense and searching. “Philip Phandrum is the closest thing that this town has to a crown prince.”

“He —” He has an office, you can just go there and talk to him yourself. Melanie had, of late, been trying to be a more pleasant person, so she stopped herself from saying that. She had never thought of herself as someone with connections, but she supposed that was part of who she’d become. How Chloe knew that was another matter, one question to add to the pile. “Yes, I can help you talk to him. I can’t promise that he’ll be receptive, not without proof, but he’s very reasonable.”

Chloe nodded and sat back in her chair with her eyes closed. “The survival of Light’s Hollow might be at stake,” she said. “Maybe the stone has already been thrown. Vicissitude … it might be visited upon you.”

Chloe

Chloe hated Langust from the moment she set foot in it. It was a pimple of a town, insignificant and yet still somehow more unsightly than its size should have allowed. The bulk of the houses were hidden behind a ten foot stone wall with heavy gates leading out into the patchwork of fields. Chloe felt disgust when she saw those walls; darklings could climb walls almost as fast as they could cover open ground, and they were hardly a deterrent to anyone waging a war, since even a halfway powered illuminator — called glimwardens, this far west — could leap the barrier in a single bound. Walls weren’t good for anything. That made them a sign of weakness. People built walls because they wanted to feel safe and secure, but weren’t capable of accomplishing that.

Langust had only a thousand people in it, all huddled around their singular lantern. They were simple people, but that was no great surprise. A town of a thousand people could support only a limited number of businesses, and a single lantern could only capture a limited amount of resources within its circle of safety. The most obvious sign of Langust’s material deficiency was a lack of proper windows. There was presumably some reason that Langust couldn’t make glass, but the result was that the houses were open to the air, protected from the elements by curtains and shutters. Similarly, there was a distinct lack of color within the town, both in what the people wore and in the decorations that adorned the houses and businesses. Clothes were either brown or white, with only small accents of embroidered thread or poor quality jewelry.

If those had been the warning signs, then Chloe’s internal alarm bell began ringing the moment she spotted the cathedral. It was the tallest building in Langust, built with what must have been a damnable amount of labor, and it stood in stark contrast to everything that surrounded it. The buildings of Langust were like too many teeth in an overcrowded mouth, pushing each other aside and built without regard to straight lines or structural stability. It wasn’t a surprise that there was a surfeit of wood in the structures, considering the clear-cutting that had been visible as Chloe had entered into the town. The cathedral was different though; solid stone rose to ten stories, making it visible from practically anywhere, even beyond the walls. It was designed as a place of power, a symbol of authority, which meant that it was exactly where Chloe wanted to go.

Every westward city ultimately descended from Tor Ellsum. Chloe’s mother had once said that visiting a new town was similar to archeology. Each town bore a mark of its descent in one way or another, reflecting the state that Tor Ellsum had been in when the founding caravans were first loaded up. Tor Ellsum wasn’t the direct progenitor of every city in the vast continent, but it had a hand in founding many of them, enough that it paid to know some history.

None of that really mattered though, not in the grand scheme of things. The only thing of any importance was power and who had it. In Chloe’s experience, the best place to start was with whoever had the largest building.

She adjusted her clothes as she went. She was out of place here, and she didn’t know enough about Langust to convincingly blend in. She would need to steal or buy clothes in order to slip back into comfortable anonymity, if she were forced to be here for any appreciable length of time. She had grown accustomed to sleeping behind buildings and under the shade of a tree, but the problem there was always that people didn’t take kindly to it. Renting a place would involve expenses, which meant that Chloe would have to make money, and there were other problems as well, all of which would slow down her plans considerably. She could tell that Langust wasn’t the town for her. Every day spent here would fray at her nerves.

The front face of the cathedral presented three figures in bas-relief standing above six abstract symbols. That alone was enough to give a good measure of how distant the town of Langust was from Tor Ellsum in terms of time. There had been nine gods, once upon a time, but they had been consolidated in three, only the King, the Chancellor, and the Diplomat. The other six gods hadn’t been removed from the collective consciousness all at once, but here it could be plainly seen that they were vestigial. Chloe vaguely recalled the doctrine as suggesting that the three central gods each had three expressions, such that the Singer and the Watcher were merely expressions of the Diplomat, and so on. It was only important that she know enough to not make some terrible gaffe, and that was as simple as remaining silent.

Chloe stopped to watch the entrance to the cathedral. There was a fair amount of foot traffic going in and out of it, which appeared to indicate that it was open to the public, but on closer examination she realized that all of those coming and going were men. A frown crossed her face as she thought about that. She had passed for a boy before, but the fashions in Langust appeared to demand long hair for women and short hair for men. Chloe had no strong opinions on the length of her hair, nor on her personal appearance in general, but cutting her hair now would commit her to a masquerade — one she would be punished for if she were ever found out. The cathedral, then, would have to wait until nightfall. Unfortunately, there were no other likely buildings to case, aside from the nearby lantern which was too closely guarded. Chloe was forced to fall back on her least favorite activity — waiting.

In a town of a thousand people, waiting was a tricky thing. Stand in one place for too long, and eventually someone would come along to ask her who she was, sometimes politely, and other times with their hand on the hilt of their sword. Moving around helped, as did pretending to be engrossed in deep thoughts, but that was a stopgap measure; if anyone was watching, they would pay attention to the fact that the same girl had passed them by three times. What the act of waiting really asked for was somewhere to lay low, but Chloe had only the vaguest understanding of how the city was laid out, let alone the usual paths that people followed, who owned which corners, and how to respond if someone asked her what she was doing. What she needed to do was to find a place of business where she was allowed entry, but she worried she was still too young to not stick out and invite comment. On top of that, she had no money.

That last problem was solved easily enough by pickpocketing from a passing woman. Chloe held no compunctions about stealing from people, aside from the obvious practical matter of what might happen if she got caught. She was usually more concerned with the attention it would bring to her than the actual consequences of incarceration. She was confident that she could escape from any jail this small town would throw her in, and that aside, wasn’t long for Langust anyway. She matched pace with a woman in a long, flowing gown, and slipped her hand into the woman’s pocket. The hardest part of pickpocketing wasn’t actually the skill needed to execute the techniques, but the sheer fortitude necessary to reach into a stranger’s pockets and pluck something out while looking like you were doing something else. Chloe accomplished this with ease and split off into an alley where she could make sure there was no attention on her.

Her prize, as it turned out, was a handful of small metal coins, all impure silver, if Chloe had to guess. They were imprinted with faces of different men and numbers that gave their values. With those in hand, Chloe strode through the streets of Langust, looking for a likely business that would allow her to loiter until the sun had set.

Actually interacting with people was nerve-wracking. Each city was different in its own subtle ways, but the subtleties were never lost on the inhabitants. When Chloe ordered lunch, was the fact that she didn’t order a drink to go with it unusual enough to draw attention? Which kind of drink was an appropriate pairing? Was she supposed to say please and thank you? Show deference to the waitress, who was hosting Chloe, or receive deference, as Chloe was the customer, or possibly both at the same time? Was she meant to pay after placing her order, after the food arrived, or after she was finished with her meal? Was she supposed to clear her own plate? It was these small details that could get people talking, to the point where they would remember her, if not to the point where they would inform the town guard or possibly the illuminators.

Most of the time, Chloe settled for playing a character. She could pretend to have her head in the clouds, or to be lost in the inner workings of some serious intellectual problem. In Langust, the former seemed more suitable than the latter; she’d seen no women going into the cathedral, which was a bad sign. She’d seen from the street that there were women eating in this place though, and some even eating alone, which provided her with some cover. She placed her order with the waitress without incident, picking a baked pork bun off the chalkboard menu. Then she began to listen.

“Well I don’t understand why he would even say such a thing,” said a petite woman who was eating her lunch with another friend at the next table over. “It does nothing to advance his cause and everything to make him look bad.”

“He wasn’t trying to advance his cause,” replied the other girl, who couldn’t have been much older than Chloe (and was one of the reasons Chloe had decided that this place was probably safe). “You think that the man is only looking out for the one thing that he says he is, but it was more about inflicting lasting harm. Diplomat Farrell cares about inflicting harm more than he cares about his cause.”

“That’s so uncharitable to the man!” cried the first woman with a laugh. “I know you don’t like him, but he truly does care about ensuring peace and stability.”

“I never said that he didn’t care,” replied her friend. “I only said that in this particular case, he cared more about inflicting harm on an opponent than he did about his own success. There was no benefit to him in his remarks, at least so far as his chances go, so we must look for benefits elsewhere.”

Chloe switched her focus to another table, making sure that she still wore the expression of a daydreamer. There was a group of three men having a rather heated discussion about the glimwardens.

“You think it’s not the right of a warden to retire?” one of them asked.

“No,” another replied. “Of course not. They make a pledge to the town, and that pledge is for life, not just until the point when they want to stop earning their keep.”

“Might not their retirement be included in their lifetime earnings?” asked another. “There are employers who give their workers one day of the week off, but you wouldn’t say that on that one day they’re not earning their keep.”

“That’s not it,” the second man replied. “A day of rest provides a chance to relax and recuperate for future work, it’s not a reward for work well done. Retirement, for the wardens, would be a gift given by the people of Langust, in direct contradiction with the doctrine of service.”

Chloe itched to ask questions. How many wardens were there, how powerful were they, where were they stationed? She needed to know whether there was any sort of organized opposition to the monopoly of power in the town, as that was the best predictor of whether there were internal patrols. Unfortunately, everyone around her was discussing the nitty-gritty details of daily life rather than the broad picture of how Langust was actually organized. It wasn’t even clear that the cathedral was the seat of power, as she’d expected it to be; surely it had been constructed at great expense, but it was entirely possible that a coup had occurred which moved power over to some other area of the city.

When the food came, she ate quickly, though not so quickly as to draw attention to herself. She let the conversations wash over her, but they were either about issues she didn’t understand, or about the petty experiences people everywhere had in common. Religion was mentioned once or twice, specifically in regards to the Diplomat and Chancellor, but it was difficult to ascertain anything specific. She listened to their accents, trying pick them apart so she could copy them later. Some of the vowels were flattened, and some of the pronouns were occasionally dropped. It was impossible for Chloe to learn it all, but if she kept her answers short, perhaps it was possible to slip beneath notice.

After she was finished eating, she left her money on the table, as she’d seen others do, and headed out to walk around the city. In a fight, she would be against someone who knew the twists and turns of the disordered streets, but scouting out the pathways allowed her to mitigate some of that disadvantage. She tried her best to keep to where other people were gathered, so as not to stick out. As the sun began to set, she made her way back to the cathedral and found a position behind a business that was closed for the evening.

Chloe felt the warmth in the center of her chest, which she’d been carefully carrying around within her all day. Hiding the bind took a significant amount of skill, but her mother had taught her well. A woman could move through even as small a town as Langust without worrying too much about being thought unusual, but if an illuminator had seen her cloaked in the shadow of the bind, there was no chance that she wouldn’t have been chased down. She relented on the suppression, just a small amount, and opened her mind to allow in the extra sensations. When nothing seemed to change, she allowed more out, not enough to refill her stores but enough to see the altered light. She was just in time to see two men, one lit with an aura of sunset red and the other with an aura of sage green, as they walked together into the cathedral. These were the first illuminators that she had seen. She frowned at them, then sealed the bind back inside herself with a force of will.

When they had gone inside, Chloe sat waiting for them to come back out, which didn’t happen until the sun had set. She casually strolled away from the business she’d been hiding behind and made her way to the cathedral, doing her best to look like she was simply out for a stroll. The cathedral was surrounded by a courtyard, which left little space to hide in. That meant that the only way to hide was to pretend that she belonged. The earlier foot traffic in and out of the cathedral appeared to have stopped, leaving her alone as she walked across the cobblestones. When she got to the base of the cathedral, she took a moment to look around, to make sure that no eyes were on her. In the growing darkness, she would only be a shape, except to those eyes that could see the shadow of the bind.

She felt the warmth in her chest again and this time set it free all at once. The bind came flowing back into her, suffusing her muscles and erasing a day’s worth of fatigue. She scanned the town around her, trying to see the telltale glow of another illuminator, but thankfully there were none. She turned her attention back to the cathedral and looked up toward the roof. This close, she could tell the cathedral was fortified, capable of slamming down metal shutters to provide some token resistance; there were few windows, which were mostly set high up in the face of it, above the massive reliefs that showed the Chancellor, Diplomat, and King. She waited as the bind accumulated within her and prayed that no one would come out to stop her.

After two minutes had passed, Chloe accessed her signature. It was pointing down, as it normally was, but now she yanked it with an act of will, turning it to point up instead. She shot into the air, accompanied by the familiar sensation of falling. She adjusted her signature slightly, weakening the pull, then killed her signature entirely as she drew closer to one of the windows. The arc she traced was imperfect, but a steadying hand on the window frame kept her from stumbling as she landed. Thankfully, the lack of glass in Langust meant that she wouldn’t have to take the risk of shattering anything.

The room she stepped into was empty, with only tarp-covered furniture within it. Chloe was not terribly surprised at that; the room was so high up that it would be a terrible place to live, suited only for extravagant parties whose function was to display wealth and power. The height made it unsuitable for proper storage, except perhaps for those things which needed to be kept away from the public eye. Chloe listened closely for the sound of footsteps, then when she convinced herself that there was no one around, set to snooping.

The cathedral’s upper floors were mostly empty, which only reinforced the idea that they were rarely used. One section had a railing around a circular hole, which looked down forty feet to row upon row of pews. For anyone else, the height might have been dizzying. She kept her ears open and let her bind refill, but every new room held only more furniture and sealed up things that were of no use to her. She was beginning to second-guess herself; the cathedral was the largest building within Langust, but it was so far bearing no fruits, and it didn’t seem like anyone made this place their home. The armor she was looking for would take up quite a bit of space and be difficult to hide. She took a rare moment of self-pity to slump against the wall and think about what she knew.

Women were, in most respects, better at being illuminators. The reasons mostly boiled down to physical size. The bind had many functions, but two of the most important were to enhance the physical strength of the user and to propel the user across the field of battle. The first function was muscle agnostic; a person grew more powerful in relation to how much bind they had, regardless of their physical strength without the bind. For the second function, size was a detriment, because the bind required to move the body around increased with mass. There were benefits to having more physical strength, such as the ability to go without using the bind, and there were benefits to being taller and having a longer reach, but in general, shorter, less muscular people made better illuminators, especially as the amount of bind increased. For that reason, it was quite common for enlightened societies to use only women as their illuminators, and then only short and slender women.

The armor that Chloe was looking for had once belonged to one of those women a long, long time ago. A group of despotic matriarchs had controlled a town with an iron grip, one which they tightened by gorging themselves on hearts and fashioning elaborate runework arms and armor. They had become renowned warriors, with their legends eventually finding their way across the land, until some terrible fate befell their city and doomed the survivors to be scattered to the winds. One of those women had marched west to found a new town of her own, wearing bright red armor which increased her strength a thousand times over. Her name had been Langust.

To be sure, there were reasons not to get too excited. Even if the town of Langust had been founded by the legendary Langust herself, there was no guarantee that it would still be around. It was supposed to be a tall suit of armor, rendered perfectly indestructible and capable of producing force to more than match the wearer’s own, but it was possible that only parts of that tale were true, and if its indestructibility had been overstated, perhaps it would have been dented or rusted away. Lastly, even if Chloe could find it somewhere in Langust, she would still have to pry it from the hands of whoever its current owner was — and that was assuming that the tailored armor would fit any small, slender women.

She waited until the cold, dead stillness of night had fully overtaken the town of Langust. As she continued her explorations, she began to feel despair creeping over her. Had she thought that the armor would be tucked away in a storeroom? That it would be proudly put on display instead of used by the local illuminators? The armor was supposed to be an artifact of immense power, built using complex runework and imbued with hundreds of thousands of hearts. Surely it wouldn’t have been buried away, though … the only illuminators she’d seen were men, and not short ones either. At any rate, the suit was nowhere to be found among the cathedral’s empty upper floors, nor did her brief excursions into the lower floors provide any useful fruit. Chloe sighed and rested her head. Unfortunately, this would take some digging.

❧❧❧

Chloe’s first two weeks in Langust passed slowly as she gathered information about the town. She practiced their speech until she could emulate them, stole clothing so she could look like them, and made subtle changes to how she wore her hair. Food and drink were either stolen in the night, or paid for with stolen coin she’d taken from the same businesses that she plundered food and clothing from. Nights were the worst, because she needed a place to sleep without fear of someone finding her. She would have rented a room, but that would raise questions she would be unable to answer, and of course she had no references to give (the same reason she would be incapable of finding a job). In the end, she settled for sneaking into industrial buildings and resting her head on a sack of textiles or a bag of grain, then slipping out before the sun could come up.

She watched Langust’s singular lantern and studied the movements of the illuminators. There were nine in total, far more than required to fuel their lantern, and apparently much more regimented than in other towns, given the similarities in their armor and weapons. Once she knew their movements, she was able to avoid them and plan times when she could use her own bind to her advantage.

Her only real options for information, aside from eavesdropping and watching the movements of the people, were to find the local history books and to actually speak to the citizens to see what she could find.

She tried the books first, but she’d always found reading to be fairly boring, and she didn’t really know where she was supposed to be looking. One of the frustrating things about coming into a town under the cover of darkness is that you couldn’t simply say, “Hello, I’m new here, please explain all the basics to me.” The books weren’t written for outsiders either; where she found histories, they went into the arcana of forgotten political disputes and long-past disasters. For being no more than a hundred and fifty years old, Langust appeared to have had its fair share of tragedies and upheavals. Its historians also had a maddening tendency to ignore chronology. Of the early history of Langust, there was only confirmation that Langust, the person, had actually existed, though confusingly they called her a man. There were two references to “the spirit of Langust”, which apparently came out to protect people in times of need, but the descriptions contradicted each other and didn’t make terribly much sense. Chloe assumed that the spirit of Langust referred to the armor Langust wore, rather than some para-magical effect, but the spirit came out only infrequently; that implied that someone wore it when there was great need. The purpose of restricting it to special occasions was lost on Chloe. The books shed no additional light on the matter.

When she had reached the end of what the histories could tell her, she was forced to speak with the citizens, which she was loathe to do. There were so many ways to go wrong when speaking with strangers. A few days of being in Langust and stealing from its citizens was not sufficient to avoid all pitfalls, nor was there a good way to broach the topic that she was interested in. Her mother had always said that when there were no good ways, bad ways would have to do.

“What do you know about the spirit of Langust?” she asked a young man who was walking by himself on one of the side streets.

He stopped and stared at her with his mouth agape. “What?” he asked.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Chloe. She stuck out her hand. “Chloe Lemprose.”

“Oh,” said the young man. He stuck his own hand out. “Joseph Wells. Are you related to Diane Lemprose?”

Chloe nodded. “We’re second cousins, I think.” The Lemprose name had been borrowed for just that purpose; it was common here, enough to muddy the waters. “A friend and I were having a discussion over lunch and I was wondering whether you knew anything about the spirit of Langust,” Chloe said. “Sorry to just stop you, but I need some direction and you seemed like you might be knowledgeable.”

“I’m not, really,” he replied. He scratched the back of his head.

“Well do you know anyone who might?” she asked.

“Sorry Chloe,” he replied. “All I know is that he comes out when things are at their most dire.”

Chloe clucked her tongue. “Alright, I guess I’ll ask around some more.”

It was a useless exchange, but it did give her an idea — two ideas, actually. The first one was manufacture some reason for the spirit to show her — or his — face though, and that seemed like it was slightly more reckless than the situation called for. The second idea was more simple; follow the pathways of power.

If the spirit of Langust was just the name given to a suit of armor which was worn only in times of needs, that implied that someone had control of the suit. Power accumulated. If you had physical strength, you could use that to gain political strength. If you had economic leverage, you could use that to hire physical power. Chloe had seen it dozens of times before. If someone owned the suit, they were almost certain to have some other sort of leverage within the town of Langust. If they were using it rarely, it was because they didn’t need it to maximize their power. Why anyone would retire a powerful artifact, Chloe didn’t know, but that certainly seemed to be the case.

The most powerful man in Langust was Clement Farrell, the Diplomat, an older man with slicked back gray hair. He was an anointed representative of the god whose name his position bore, and he could be seen in the cathedral day after day, speaking quietly with the men who came to visit him. There was some division among the sexes in Langust, but it was clear that here, men were in control. The illuminators were men, the politicians were men, and men owned all of the businesses. It wasn’t so bad as in other places, as women were allowed to walk freely and speak their minds; Chloe was thankful for that, because it gave her cover to go where she wanted and do what she pleased.

She sat in the upper floors of the cathedral and watched him speak from the balcony there. No one went into the upper floors, so she had made it into a home for herself, albeit one which she couldn’t enter or leave without considerable trouble. She stored food, water, and clothing under one of the wrapped up tables, and occasionally slept up there, leaving before first light so she could wander the town in the middle of the day. She had many of these hidey-holes throughout the town, hidden in out of the way places where they were unlikely to be found. The cathedral was one of the only places where she could spend time without worrying about whether anyone was looking for her, but it was difficult to leave without being seen. Some days, she watched the constant procession of men and tried her best to listen in from dozens of feet away.

The histories told an incomplete story, but at one point there had been a triad of leaders, each taking their title from one of their three gods. The King was the ruler, in charge of directing the productive output of the town. The Chancellor was the adviser to the King, a thinker who steeped himself in the way and means of the world. The Diplomat was a listener, serving as a combination of judge, arbiter, and confession-taker. At some point, the position of King had been retired, leaving only the Diplomat and the Chancellor. Langust’s Chancellor was bed-ridden, and had been for quite some time, leaving the Diplomat as the sole figure at the head of their government, tasked with all responsibilities. So far as Chloe could see, that mostly involved mindless chatter, but she guessed that this was one of those occasions where appearances deceived.

Diplomat Farrell arrived at the cathedral just after the sun rose each day and left just before the sun went down. He had no guards, but people treated him with extreme deference, and not just when he was in the cathedral. He knew everyone in the town; it was quickly apparent that if visiting him once per day wasn’t mandatory, it was at least expected of every healthy adult male. All of the illuminators seemed to report to him as well.

Chloe followed him home one day, from a great distance. She wasn’t surprised to see that he lived in a large house, though the extended family she saw through the windows was surprising. After a brief moment looking in on the house from a safe vantage point, she realized that she was mistaken. The six or seven girls in his house weren’t family members. Her thoughts turned tawdry for a moment before she realized that any one of them would be properly sized for the suit of armor she was seeking.

It took another two days of scouting the house to decide on a method of entry. She eventually settled on breaking in through the third floor, into a room which appeared unoccupied. She waited until deep into the night to do it, both so the town would be as silent as possible, and so that she could regain as much bind as possible. She wasn’t spoiling for a fight, as all she wanted was the armor, but going into an unknown place demanded caution.

She used her signature to fall up towards the window, then immediately pulled back on it until she was drifting upward. She reached out and grabbed onto the shutters to slow herself, which thankfully didn’t make a noise. The shutters were latched by some internal mechanism that Chloe couldn’t see, but she had always been strong with using the bind for telekinesis. The bind suffused her bones and muscles; it clung to her skin to prevent injuries. But skin was just a conceptual limit, and the protective field could be pushed and shaped. As she clung to the shutters, nearly weightless, she pressed a finger where the latch would be and closed her eyes to give special attention to her extrasensory perception. She extended the bind from her finger, pushing it forward and into the crack between the slats, feeling with it until she encountered the latching mechanism. With a mental push, she unlatched it, then swung the shutters open. Chloe swung herself inside before allowing her signature to fade away and leave her standing in what appeared to be a storage room. She looked around carefully, then glanced down the street outside to make sure no alarm had been raised. When she looked back into the dark room and let her eyes adjust, she saw the armor.

It was larger than she’d thought it would be, seven feet tall and splayed open, which only served to make it seem wider than it really was. The exterior was metal, painted red, but the inside of it was gray cloth, some of it clearly stained with blood and sweat. Chloe approached it cautiously.

It made a certain sort of sense to hide the armor; if there was a mythology around it, it was better to bring it out in times of need to claim a mandate from the founder of the town. And if it were to be hidden, it was better to hide it near where those who would use it would have ready access to it. Chloe had no idea who the girls who lived in this house were, but she accepted that they were meant to use this suit. It felt like a moment of undue serendipity to find the armor here.

Now it was time for the moment of truth. She strode forward to try the armor on. If it fit her, she would run away from Langust that very night, leaving all of her caches behind. If it didn’t fit, she would have to find some other way to steal it; carrying it through the woods while darklings made their attacks didn’t seem like a winning strategy, even if she was able to procure a lantern small enough to carry with her. She slipped off her shoes, unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the floor, then clambered into the armor.

Armor was normally thin; even full plate was no more thick than padded fabric. Langust’s armor was monstrously thick, enough that it seemed to envelop Chloe as she stepped into it. When her foot was halfway down the boot, it stopped, leaving her feeling as though she were standing on foot-high heels. Her hand snaked its way through the forearm of the armor and found a thin cloth glove which her fingers slipped into, still far from where the gloves of the armor appeared to be. She moved her fingers, experimentally, and saw that the red fingers of the armor moved in sympathy; she was simply controlling them from within the forearm.

The armor did not fit perfectly. It was tight around her calves, and as she sealed it up, she felt it pinch slightly at her hips. The suit was all one piece, though individual parts of it flexed and opened. The only piece that wasn’t connected was the helm, which Chloe put on once she had everything else in place. When she’d put it on, she had a shock; as seen from the inside, the helm was completely transparent. That was impossible with any of the effects runework could produce, and Chloe had no idea how an artisan might have accomplished it. She looked around the room, being careful in her movements so as not to make any noise, then took her first step.

To start with, the armor was light. That couldn’t possibly have been natural, given how thick and layered it was, but the effect could be accomplished through runework, if you were willing to pay the price. That allowed for better mobility than Chloe would have expected for something so bulky. The real boon that the armor provided was how it added to strength. The effect was subtle at first, but as Chloe moved silently through a few martial arts forms, she saw the trick to it. The armor amplified what the wearer did, but it did it unevenly; it added little when moving slowly, but provided a great deal of power when attempting to leverage full force. There were other strange things to get used to, like the slope her feet seemed to be on and the sensation that her fingers weren’t where they were supposed to be, but the armor very nearly fit her and seemed to be in good working order.

Chloe stepped up to the window, whose shutters were half-opened to let in moonlight. She stepped up to the sill, conscious that her feet were in a very different place than they should have been, then turned her signature toward the sky and started falling toward the moon and stars, leaving Diplomat Farrell and his house behind her.

❧❧❧

Chloe had passed the city walls of Langust and was loping through the fields when she saw the first darkling. She stopped in her tracks and took a quick gauge of her bind: halfway full. It was one of the smaller ones, dog-like, and it was visible only briefly as it ran between two fields of maize. She waited for it to spring towards her, and grimaced as she realized that she was unarmed. There had been no weapons within the room that held the armor, or else she would have taken something with her. Given that she was encased in the armor though, a small darkling like that would hardly prove a problem.

It took another moment for her mind to catch up with her fighting instinct. She was within a few hundred feet of the town’s walls, well within what should have been its domain. In the two weeks she’d staying in Langust, she had never ventured outside those walls. The large lanterns all tended to be the same size for reasons of efficiency, but it was possible that Langust used a much smaller lantern for some reason, but —

Another two darklings darted through the fields. The maize was tall enough that they could only barely be seen as ripples in their stalks, nearly indistinguishable from the movement of the breeze.

Chloe tugged on her signature and fell up into the sky to get a better view before she could be attacked. She looked toward the town from above, and saw not a single light on in any of the windows. It was the dead of night, but even then there should have been lights on, places where someone had forgotten to turn off a light before bed, or public places that were constantly lit even at night. The whole town was dark and silent. Chloe let herself fall back down to the ground. There was no wailing alarm, no voice calmly projected over speaker asking people to wake up. A quick glance to the wall showed that the early darklings were scaling it with practiced ease.

Chloe swore to herself and dropped back to the ground, allowing her bind and the armor to break her fall. Without much of a thought, she ran back toward Langust, kicking up dust and muttering under her breath as she covered the ground. When she reached the city walls, she leapt over them in a single bound, passing by the darklings and landing on a roof with unsteady, armored feet.

“Wake up!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Wake up!”

Melanie

The competition had been announced as planned, even in the wake of the lantern failure. Melanie had responded by making an announcement of her own; for the duration of the competition, the Black Mare would be closed. She posted the notice on the front door with a certain feeling of trepidation, not just because of her deal with Colsum, but because of the faint worry that if she closed down for long, business would be dry when she reopened the shop. Through the rest of the day, there were a few whispered conversations and glances in her direction, but it wasn’t until William, her ill-favored suitor, came in that anyone asked her about it directly.

“You’re going to join the competition?” he asked. “Why?”

“Was there something that you’d like to order?” asked Melanie. “The soup of the day is a creamy fennel chowder.”

“You never said anything about wanting to be a glimwarden,” said William.

“A woman is allowed to have her own private life,” Melanie replied. It still felt odd to refer to herself as a woman, but she managed not to stumble over that. “As it happens, my private life is quite extensive and no concern of yours.”

“You’ll make a fool of yourself,” said William. He straightened his shirt and looked around the tavern, which had a large enough crowd that Melanie had little time for her current book. “Look, I’ve made no secret of my affection toward you, but it’s precisely this sort of thing that makes my father think that we’re not a suitable match.”

Melanie frowned. It was true that it wasn’t a secret, but he had never said anything outright. Instead, he’d come to visit the Black Mare from time to time and always sat at the bar, asking her questions and attempting to engage her in conversation. William Wright came from a moderately wealthy family, but that was the only thing that was attractive about him. His face was plain and forgettable and he had neither a workman’s firm roughness nor the delicate grace of an aristocrat. Melanie had already decided that she had no interest in him, not even as a potential solution to the problem of her debt. She had imagined that he would fade away into the background, never to be seen nor heard from again.

“What is it you like about me?” asked Melanie.

“I — well, I think you’re beautiful, to start with,” said William. “And you’re smart, you’re independent in a way that’s really very rare …” He looked around again to see whether anyone was watching. Melanie saw a couple in a booth turn away before William laid eyes on them.

Melanie wanted to respond that he was wrong. She wasn’t smart, she just read a lot. She had done well in school, but that was mostly because she’d had few friends. She wanted to tell William that she was not, in fact, beautiful, which seemed like a simple objective fact. Melanie didn’t think of herself as ugly, but when she looked in the mirror she saw too many flaws. William was only saying that she was smart and pretty because that was something he thought he should say. Perhaps he believed what he was saying, but that didn’t make him right. And that left only her independence, which was a simple illusion; she was independent only because her parents had died, not because of any personal attribute. She was shackled to the Black Mare; that was the least independent arrangement she could imagine.

Telling William he was wrong would only result in him insisting that he was right. He would believe that she was either humble or self-deprecating, but either way she wouldn’t convince him that she shouldn’t be the object of his affections. In the past, Melanie had dealt with suitors by being herself, which seemed to be more than enough to put them off. So far, that hadn’t worked with William, and Melanie wasn’t convinced that it ever would. Still, she didn’t see why she had to be the one to tell him that his pursuit was ill-advised, and she wasn’t about to do it in her place of business while nosy people were listening in. The problem was that the Black Mare was open most of the day, and she was loathe to cut its hours and reduce her profits. That left little time to seek William out in a place where they could have a painful discussion in private.

“So you like that I’m independent but you don’t think that I should try to become a glimwarden?” asked Melanie.

“You’re twisting my words,” said William.

“You like that I’m independent because it means that it will be easier to chain me in servitude?” asked Melanie.

“That’s not fair,” said William.

“I don’t really care,” replied Melanie. “I don’t think it’s fair of you to come to my place of business and insult the choices that I’ve made for my own reasons. If I pay back unfairness with unfairness, that almost seems equitable, doesn’t it?”

William frowned at her. “I suppose I’ll see you on the battlefield, won’t I?”

“I suppose so,” said Melanie. “Unless you wanted something to eat?”

William scoffed and turned away from her. She could only hope that this was the end of him coming into the Black Mare. She watched his back as he went, trying to push him along with her gaze. As William pushed his way out the door, Sander slipped inside.

“Melanie!” he called. His curly blond hair bounced as he jogged toward her counter. “I ate your cake, it was delicious.”

“You’re alive,” she replied. She felt a contentedness settle into her belly at that. “Don’t do that again.”

“Don’t make a miraculous recovery?” asked Sander with a ready smile. Philip, who had entered just after Sander, came up to lay the two borrowed swords on the bar.

“You know what I meant,” said Melanie. “Stay safe so that people don’t have to worry about you.”

“It’s nice to know that you worried about me,” replied Sander. He was giving her one of his idiot grins, like a dog that couldn’t stop wagging its tail.

“I didn’t say that I worried about you,” said Melanie. “I only said people were worried about you. I presume, anyway.”

“Thank you for use of the swords,” interjected Philip. “They served us well. I can only apologize for the delay in returning them.”

“It’s not a problem,” said Melanie. “At least now they’ll have one true story attached to them.” She lifted the swords and looked them over, in part to distract herself from the way that Sander was looking at her. She’d known the cake was a bad idea, but it had helped her feel better in the short term. She had encouraged his friendship and was now reaping the rewards. Comparing him to a dog was unfair, but there was some truth to it. He was both excitable and loyal, quick to take a compliment but slow to understand criticism. In The Briars Once More, everyone had an animal familiar that followed them around; Melanie had thought that Sander’s would be a dog for as long as she’d known him. (She felt that her own familiar would be a cat.)

“I’m sorry to cut this short,” said Philip. “But I need to attend to a matter that Sander and I were discussing.”

Sander looked at him in surprise. “You do?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Philip. “I consider it under the umbrella of my duties to the mayor’s office. If I’m right, there are going to be both political and logistical challenges to be met.”

“I can come with,” said Sander.

“Dealing with people isn’t where you’re most skilled,” Philip replied, which Melanie felt was an enormous understatement. “Melanie’s been looking forward to seeing you better, and I’m sure there are things the two of you would like to catch up on. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, depending on how things go with the foreigners.”

Sander looked at Melanie, then nodded to Philip. “Alright, thanks for taking me to see Kelly.”

“You were the one doing me a favor,” Philip shrugged. He turned and left the tavern, walking quickly as though he were afraid that he would be followed.

“What were the two of you talking about?” asked Melanie.

“Oh,” said Sander. “Kelso Kelly is an engineer, he invented a new type of gun that’s … beautiful would be under-selling it, though I still want to see how it performs. Anyway, we got to talking about sulfur and I suggested that we pump it out of the ground by melting it first. Kelly seemed to think it was a good idea, which made me feel great, especially since it’s been a while since I put my mind to engineering.” His excitement dampened somewhat. “Of course, actually building the pump will take some time and I don’t know much about drilling, but I’m hopeful that something will come of it.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t demand to be his apprentice,” said Melanie.

Sander shook his head. “I’m going down a different path now, remember? I’m going to become a glimwarden. If I’d met Kelly when I was an apprentice engineer, I have a feeling he could have introduced me to some new and interesting problems … but at the same time, a lot of it is probably tedious machining work to get the parts right, and he doesn’t seem to be well-respected — not that I really need respect, but it seems like he must deal with grunt work if the other engineers don’t give him the resources he needs.”

“Oh,” said Melanie. She hadn’t forgotten that Sander was trying to become a glimwarden, but she had never seen wardens as being terribly intellectual, and the match still seemed odd to her, even with Sander’s proclamation that he was going to bring his brain to bear on the power of the bind. “But wait, why did Philip have to leave? This engineer is building the brimstone pump quickly?”

“No,” said Sander, shaking his head. “There are people coming in. I saw them when I was flying.”

Melanie paused for a moment, at a loss for words. “When was it you woke up?” she asked.

“Uh, earlier today?” Sander replied.

Melanie pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. One of the frustrating things about Sander was that he seemed to do more in the span of a single day than she did over an entire week. He had been laying in a hospital for six days, during which she’d accomplished little but turning raw ingredients into profitable meals, and when he woke up he’d raced right on ahead of her. He did this sort of thing constantly; it was how he’d burned his way through three apprenticeships in record time.

“Okay,” said Melanie. She waited for him to fill the silence, as he always did, but when she opened her eyes, he was just looking at her and chewing on his lip. “What?” she asked.

“Well, I was just about to tell you about how I flew, but then I thought that you might not like it,” said Sander. “I was … have I ever told you about how people are like equations?”

“Yes,” said Melanie. “At length.”

“Well, I have a partial Melanie equation,” said Sander. “I mean, a real person’s full equation would be impossibly complex — I mean, not impossibly, because people are real, but implausible to work through even if you had months with a pencil and paper. But for all the important people in my life, I try to keep a partial equation that I can plug numbers into so that I can see what the results will be.”

“And you do this with actual numbers?” asked Melanie.

“I tried it for a while,” said Sander. He shrugged. “I was young and naive. I thought maybe people were simple enough that you could narrow them down to a few hundred variables. The more I read about brains, the less I thought that was true though. So the partial equation is more based on intuition.”

“So you’re treating me like I’m a character in a book,” said Melanie. It wasn’t what she’d particularly wanted to hear, but she couldn’t deny that there were some similarities to how she sometimes tried to frame the world.

“Sort of,” said Sander. “I mean … stories are just stories and it’s about figuring out how a person would respond, not sticking people with stereotypes and then treating them like they’re in a plot.”

“That’s not how stories work,” said Melanie. “Or at least it’s not how good stories work.” She waved a hand. “Anyway. You were saying that I wouldn’t like that you flew.”

“Right,” said Sander. “I mean, technically it was more falling than flying, but birds aren’t always flapping their wings, right? They’re falling, but we call it flying. I guess the distinction would be that they’re still producing lift.”

Melanie shrugged.

“My signature is teleportation-based,” said Sander. “So I just teleported myself straight into the sky.”

“And then teleported back down to the ground?” asked Melanie. “Godering did that in The Skywarden’s Plight.” If Sander had actually read all the books in Light’s Hollow, he would have known that, but really, he wouldn’t know a story if it hit him in the face.

“Oh,” said Sander.

This was one of those moments when Melanie was expected to say something to reassure Sander that he really was clever, but that sort of thing always took far too much energy. She was about to let the moment pass in silence, until she remembered that she had thought he was dead and cried in the back room thinking about all the regrets she’d had in how she’d dealt with him. Sander wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, and she was lonely enough that she didn’t really want him to.

“What was it like, being high in the sky?” she asked. Too much time had passed for this to be a deft conversational gambit.

“Wonderful,” said Sander. His voice was soft. “You look at maps of the region, but seeing it from above in all its glory, spread out … I wish there were a way to bring the image back, so I could show it to you.” He paused for a moment. “Actually, it’s possible that I could take you.”

“Teleport me?” asked Melanie.

“Sure,” replied Sander. “I can take my clothes with me, so there’s no good reason I couldn’t take a person. Or if there is a good reason, no one has told me yet. We could travel into the sky together.”

“I’d like that,” said Melanie. She hesitated and looked at the door of the Black Mare, where her notice had been posted. Had Sander seen it when he came in? “I hope that my signature is something interesting like yours.”

“Your … signature?” he asked.

“I’m entering the competition,” said Melanie. She tried to prepare herself for the moment when Sander would inevitably disappoint her. Sander stared at her for a moment with his mouth slightly open.

“That’s great!” he said. “Philip and I were looking for a third, or at least we were when I … when the lantern failed.” He shifted in his seat.

“There aren’t teams,” said Melanie.

“No, but there are probably going to be opportunities for us to help each other, even if it’s only a little bit,” said Sander. “And there are three slots open, and three of us, so I think it will work out well.”

“Five slots,” replied Melanie. “At least, that’s what —” my aunt told me “— I heard.”

“Either way,” said Sander. “We can help each other out. I don’t think it will be hard to talk Philip into it. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Right,” Melanie replied. She even managed to give him a smile, even though her thoughts had turned in the direction of her split loyalties. “Speaking of Philip, you didn’t tell me where he went off to, just that there were people.”

“I was scouting,” said Sander. “There’s still probably a Schism out there somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. What I spotted instead were a few hundred people coming from Gossom.”

Melanie felt herself stiffen at the mention of that. Every time a caravan came into Light’s Hollow, she thought about her father. There was a small part of her that she’d tried her best to extinguish, a little girl that lived inside her and wanted nothing more than to see her father come back home, no matter what he’d done. In the first year, she’d closed the Black Mare every time a caravan came in and rushed to see whether her father had returned home, even though he’d left no doubt about whether he was gone for good. She didn’t rush to the caravans anymore, though she hadn’t stopped wanting to.

She blamed the stories for teaching her the wrong lessons. In a story, if a child was left on the doorstep at the beginning and became the protagonist, it would be a crime against storytelling for him to never find out who his parents were. If a child’s mother went missing in the woods, no sane author would conclude the story without her being found. Even apparent deaths couldn’t be trusted, because it was fairly common for parents to come back from them, even if it was sometimes as a phantasmal spirit. Melanie knew, logically, that the world didn’t work like that. Even if she could have figured out a way to follow in his tracks, she was never going to see her father again. Yet that didn’t stop the small part of her that believed she would see him again, as illogical as it was.

“Hundreds of people,” said Melanie. “Did something bad happen?”

“I have no idea,” Sander replied. “They were too far away to make out all that much, except for the guy in red armor.”

Melanie itched to find Philip and wait for the caravan, but there was always — always and forever — the Black Mare to think about. There was a pot of root vegetable stew going, ready for the influx of patrons that came at dinner time, so it wasn’t just a matter of the lost sales of sagewine and ale, the stew would need to be kept until the next day. There was also some question about whether her patrons would come back the next day if she shut down; if they came to the Black Mare and found it closed, they would pursue other avenues to slake their need for drinks and company. It was possible that they would be slow to come back.

What she really needed was an employee, but she had only very recently gotten to a place where she wasn’t exclusively putting her money into necessary purchases. She had almost half of the next payment ready long before it was needed, and there was so far nothing that she needed to spend that money on. Having someone work for her, even if it was only part time, would erase all that. And yet … she had so little time to herself. There were moments when the business was quiet and she could read a book, but even then she was chained to the Black Mare, unable to leave and subject to interruptions.

“I can watch the tavern for you if you want to go,” said Sander.

“What?” asked Melanie. “Why would you say that?” There were stories where glimwardens had frightening signatures, ones that could reach into heads and pull out thoughts. She knew Sander’s signature wasn’t like that, but if each signature was, in theory, a learnable technique —

“You’re thinking about your father,” said Sander. “You don’t do a lot of talking, most of the time, but you have very distinctive silences. The caravan made you think about your father, which … I can’t describe it, but there’s this look you get. You want to go to the caravan, like you’ve done before.”

Melanie watched him closely.

“Am I right?” asked Sander. “Like I said, I only have the partial Melanie equation.”

That was Sander, through and through. Most of the time he seemed perfectly oblivious, content to wander through life without worrying about what other people were thinking or how he was perceived by them. Yet in contrast to that, there were these moments of vulnerability where he bared his heart without even seeming to realize how much he’d exposed of himself. And there were moments of insight into other people, though they were few and far between, and almost always about people he was close to. Melanie had often worried that if he got to know her too well, he would pull her apart like a flower and expose every dark crevice of her mind.

“It’s stupid,” said Melanie. “There’s no point in me going.”

“If it will make you feel better, it’s not stupid,” said Sander. “I have no idea how to run a tavern in the long term, but in the short term I think I can handle it. Consider it payback for the cake.”

“I won’t be gone long,” said Melanie, before she could change her mind.

❧❧❧

There was another reason for Melanie to go meet the new arrivals, beyond the faint hope that her father would somehow be there. Gavin Masters had come to Light’s Hollow as an outsider, which had caused him a fair amount of grief and hardship. Melanie was an outsider by proxy, especially following her mother’s death and her later rejection by the Linwells. She had never met another Masters before, but she held some hope that she would.

Melanie found the refugees — as that was clearly what they were, just from looking at them — standing around at the outskirts of Rogue’s Lantern. There were hundreds of people, though it was difficult to count how many, and it was clear that many people from Light’s Hollow had come out to discuss or gawk. Some relief had already been brought out to the refugees in the form of water barrels, but for the time being no one was making a move to provide anything more substantial. No one who lived in Rogue’s Lantern had the supplies necessary to feed hundreds of people with no notice. That lack of notice appeared to be the subject under discussion as Melanie drew closer. Philip, naturally, was at the center of it, though he was accompanied by one of the town’s glimwardens.

“We have an agreement that mandates three day’s notice,” said Philip. He was speaking to two men. One was tanned and fit, in the way that glimwardens often were, with two swords at his hips and a knife in a sheath on his leg. He had a strained smile as Philip spoke. Melanie was fairly sure that she had seen him before, acting as a guide for caravans from Gossom. The other man wore red full plate armor and stood seven feet tall, towering over everyone else around him. His weapon was a spear whose tip was adorned with feathers and a sharp, gleaming bit of metal. There was no skin exposed and no movement of the armor; Melanie would almost have believed that it was simply a suit of armor. Everyone seemed to be paying him as little attention as possible.

“We tried on the radio, right at the usual time,” said the tanned man with a wide smile. “We can only be asked to try, can’t we? If you don’t respond, what are we to do, assume Light’s Hollow has fallen?”

“We’ve been dealing with a lantern failure of our own,” said Philip. “We can find a place for the refugees, but without any advance notice it’s going to be quite difficult.”

“We lost five glimwardens,” said the female warden standing next to Philip. Melanie tried to recall the name, but came up with nothing. She was dressed provocatively, with her midriff exposed and her arms completely uncovered. “Both of those responsible for checking in via radio died. We’re obviously so, so sorry that it slipped through the cracks.” She didn’t quite spit out the words.

“Five?” asked the tanned warden. “Is that a blow you can recover from?”

“Of course,” she replied. “You might understand how we wouldn’t welcome distractions though.”

A man stepped forward from the crowd. He was better dressed than the others, though his clothes showed signs of wear. Melanie had no idea where Langust was — or had been — but if these people were coming to Light’s Hollow by way of Gossom, she guessed that it was quite distant, at least by the appearance of his clothes.

“Who is in charge here?” he asked with a deep voice. His face was lined with wrinkles and his gray hair was slicked back. He had a familiarity to him that it took Melanie a moment to place; he reminded her of Colsum. “Certainly not the boy, and certainly not the woman.”

“Now you, I think, aren’t going to be coming into this town unless you learn to show a little respect,” said Merry.

“Glimwarden Myles is the second most highly ranked of our wardens,” said Philip. “As I said to your wardens, my name is Philip Phandrum and I act under the authority of the mayor’s office. What’s important now —”

“You have the authority to tell us where we’ll go or what we’ll do?” asked the old man. “You can give us the food, water, and shelter we require? Find jobs for us?”

Philip frowned. “I apologize, I didn’t get your name.”

“Clement Farrell,” he replied. “I would prefer to deal with someone who has some measure of power.”

“As I said,” Philip repeated, “I speak with the authority of the mayor’s office and will act in his stead until he is notified and arrives to treat with the survivors of Langust. Citizenship is guaranteed to all who enter Light’s Hollow, so long as you declare that you intend to take up permanent residence here. Is that your intent?”

“Our intent was to take up in Gossom,” snorted Farrell with a look toward the tanned glimwarden.

Melanie watched the reactions to that. The tanned glimwarden winced and Warden Myles stiffened up. The hulking red suit of armor didn’t move at all. For his part, Philip stood firm and impassive, as though he had known this all along and was entirely unconcerned with the fact that Gossom had, apparently, forced these people to become a problem for Light’s Hollow.

“What do your people need in the short term?” Philip asked Farrell. “Were you sent away from Gossom with sick and wounded?”

“Oh come now,” the glimwardern from Gossom interjected.

“We will need to speak with you about the circumstances under which this happened,” said Philip. He folded his arms across his chest. “Our two towns have enjoyed a mutually beneficial arrangement which I think entitles us to at least an explanation for your behavior.” His look softened somewhat as he turned to the refugees. “Of course, I’m only here to see to the immediate problems. The city council will have to convene in order to determine what resources can be spared, but be assured that we will do our best to integrate you into the city, if that is your wish.”

“There’s one other matter,” said Warden Myles. She turned to confront the seven-foot tall suit of armor with a spear at its side. On looking at it again, Melanie was unnerved by the fact that there wasn’t a single bit of skin showing from beneath the articulated plate. “The man in red. You’re from Langust?”

“Yes,” the man in the armor replied. The voice was deep and sounded off in a subtly unpleasant way.

“We can deal with this later,” said Philip.

“You’re a glimwarden without a town,” said Warden Myles. “If you mean to stay here, you’ll need to make your pledge to Light’s Hollow. Until that time, drop the spear and start stripping down.”

“Come on now Merry,” said Gossom’s glimwarden.

“No,” replied the man in the suit of armor.

“He cannot remove the armor,” said Farrell. For the first time, he had a smile on his face. “He is a spirit, the spirit of Langust himself, bound into the holy red as our protector.”

Melanie watched carefully. There were stories about such things, but she’d never thought that they were real. A few books had described automatons, beings of clockwork, while others had posited a soul bound into either armor or statuary. Either way, that would make the suit of red armor a being of immense power.

“I can see the shadow of the bind creeping out from that armor,” said Warden Myles. “It’s got a hue like a cloudless sky at noon. Don’t try to pull one over on me, there’s a person in there.”

“The spirit comes and goes in times of need,” said Farrell. “He saw us safely across the wretched wilderness, then again during our exile. He will not bow to the likes of you.”

“The likes of me?” asked Warden Myles. She dropped her hands to her hips, where they rested on a pair of pistols. “Well I can see why Gossom didn’t want you. But I’m afraid I must insist that your hulking glimwarden strip down.”

“No,” said the voice in the suit of armor.

“It is customary,” said the tanned glimwarden.

“I think that in light of the circumstances we can dispense with custom,” Philip said quickly. “These people have lost their homes and it would do us well to be sensitive to their unpleasant situation, one which has been exacerbated by Gossom.”

“The armor cannot be removed,” said Farrell. “It is bound to the spirit, as old as Langust himself. There is no person to see beneath it.”

“Bullshit,” said Warden Myles. “You’re with us, in which case you can take the pledge now, or you’re stripping down. There’s such a thing as the rule of law.”

The suit of armor, whether there was a man in it or not, turned and began walking away, back down the road they’d come in on. Warden Myles tightened her grip on her pistols, but made no move to stop him as the crowd parted for him.

“Where’s it going?” she asked.

“The spirit will return in our time of need,” said Farrell. “It is Langust’s legacy, its strength, unable to be opposed by mere laws. Where it goes and what it does is not the concern of mortal men, let alone mortal women.”

“Let the darklings take it,” muttered Warden Myles, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Philip turned from the gathering and walked over to Melanie. She was startled by his sudden approach, rooted to the spot under the scrutiny of his gaze. When he was only a few feet from her, he leaned in and spoke in a low voice.

“How much food and drink do you have in the Black Mare?” he asked.

“I — enough for the next few days,” replied Melanie. “But I can’t feed these people —”

“You would be compensated,” Philip replied. “The city would pay you as much as your customers pay, with an additional sum for the inconvenience.”

Melanie looked into his pale blue eyes. He was offering her a substantial sum, but she didn’t know whether this was a personal favor or simply a necessity of expedience. Either way, selling her entire stock of food and drink at a profit would be an incredible boon, especially since she was planning to close the store in the near future.

“Sure,” she said. “Now?”

“If you’d please,” said Philip. “There’s no need for you to host them, but I don’t want this to turn any uglier than it already is.”

“Thank you,” said Melanie. She paused slightly. “If you find anyone who shares my last name, can you let me know?”

“Sure, since you’re doing me a favor,” replied Philip. He gave her a smile and slipped back toward Warden Myles, who was having a low conversation with the tanned glimwarden.

❧❧❧

Melanie was putting up the chairs for the night in preparation for sweeping the floor when there was a knock on her door. She frowned in irritation; cleaning up the Black Mare every night was something she often sped through so that she could get some reading in before bed, and she’d been lost in thought trying to work out what the ending of Lamplight Delight would be. She was clearly closed, but on occasion someone would knock on her door in order to plead for just a little drink.

When she unlatched the door, she found a pale, redheaded girl looking at her with sunken eyes. They were the same age, to all appearances, though Melanie considered herself exceptionally bad at divining ages. The girl’s clothing was stained with sweat and dirt; her hair was tied up in a bun, but also clearly in need of washing. Melanie had been prepared to say that the Black Mare was closed, but it felt like far too rude of a thing to say.

“Can I help you?” asked Melanie.

“I was assigned to you for housing,” said the girl.

Melanie looked her up and down again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t agree to let anyone stay with me.”

The girl shrugged. “I was told to come here.”

Melanie bit her lip. There were two bedrooms above the Black Mare, one small and the other large. The small one had been hers; she had waited two months after her father had left to switch from the cramped room beneath the eaves to the master bedroom. She had often thought about renting one of the rooms out for more money, but it was so tightly integrated with the tavern below (it had no kitchen of its own and it was difficult to sleep while there were patrons in the bar) that she didn’t expect the income to be worth the effort.

“Do you run this place?” asked the girl. “Or can I talk to who does?”

“It’s mine,” said Melanie. She held out her hand. “Melanie Masters.”

“Oh,” said the girl. Her handshake was limp. “Chloe Masters.” She shifted on her feet. “So can I stay?”

“You’re a Masters?” asked Melanie. “Did Philip send you?”

“Philip?” asked the girl.

“Nevermind,” said Melanie. “So we’re family then?”

The girl shrugged a second time. “I guess.” She swayed slightly on her feet.

Melanie had questions, but it was clear that Chloe was in no state to answer them, especially while standing outside the door in the cold. A quick look at the girl’s shoes showed that they were threadbare, almost more like slippers, and Melanie felt a pang of discomfort at the thought of walking in them. She had to assume that Philip had pushed this girl in her direction, but that still left the question of why she was coming over so late. Melanie felt a sharp pang of pessimism come over her. It didn’t quite feel right that she should ask for something from the world and get it with no strings attached, not after the day had already gone so well. She pushed her feelings aside as story-thinking not suited to the real world.

“I have a room for you, yes, but I’ll need to prepare it,” said Melanie. “In the meantime, I have a small bit of cheese and meat left over, in case you’re hungry.”

The girl’s eyes lit up, and she followed Melanie into the Black Mare.

Sander

Sander woke up with a start.

“Did I miss the competition?” he asked Philip.

“No,” replied Philip. “It won’t be happening for another week.”

Sander looked around the unfamiliar room. It was painted a creamy white and very sparsely furnished, with just a bed, two chairs, and a small table that was laden with fruit and flowers. Sander looked to Philip, who was staring at him expectantly.

“Why are you here?” asked Sander.

“You saved my life,” said Philip. “Do you remember?”

“I — yes,” said Sander. He felt a yawn coming on and stretched out until he felt like he was going to crack his bones. “How long was I out?”

“Six days,” said Philip. “Much longer than they’d thought it would be. There was some worry that you had brain damage.”

“And you’ve been here this whole time?” asked Sander. He had never saved someone’s life before, but that was more gratitude than he’d expected.

“No,” said Philip. “I have to attend a number of meetings during the day. Part of my duties include reading from ledgers, meeting minutes, and legal documents, so I’ve taken to bringing them with me and doing my reading here. It’s just as quiet as city hall and this way there was a better chance of someone being around when you woke.” Sander could see a stack of documents on the chair beside Philip.

Sander stretched out a second time. “I feel fantastic.” His muscles seemed more powerful, his limbs lighter. “I was unconscious for six days?”

“Yes,” said Philip. He folded the book he was reading. “You should go talk to your father. He’s been worried about you.”

“Dad’s alright?” asked Sander.

“Overworked and stressed about everything that’s happened, but perfectly healthy last time I saw him,” said Philip.

“And is —” Sander stopped. His memory of the frantic battle was a blur, punctuated by frozen moments of crystal clarity. Helene’s fingers had sunk into something like black tar as she screamed in pain. A darkling with horns had charged straight at him. Philip had stood in a ruined field, borrowed sword in front of him, facing down the Schism. There had been bodies laying around the field, blood pooling on the ground …

“Is Merry okay?” asked Sander. He closed his eyes as he waited for a response.

“She’s fine,” said Philip. Sander breathed a sigh of relief. “I can give you a list of the deceased if you’d like, but I don’t know who you had a connection with.” He shifted in his seat. “If you knew anyone who died, you have my condolences.”

“Most of them were friends of my father’s,” said Sander. He waited, but Philip said nothing in response, so the words started pouring out. “They would come by the house and tell me how much I’d grown.” He shook his head. “The wardens are close-knit, and my mother was especially well-liked. Every time someone who knew her dies, I get upset, not just because they’re gone, but because … people are information, right? They’re collections of facts, like a favorite food, or mannerisms, like the way they brush hair from their face, or their cause-effect pairs, like how they react to a probing question or an unexpected gift. If you had all the time in the world and math more complex than I’ve ever even heard about, you could reduce every single person down to their own beautiful equation with all its own variables. When a person dies, that equation gets washed away, but everyone she knew still has a piece of it, an expression of that underlying truth. When my mom’s friends die, they’re taking some of the last pieces of her left with them.” He pinched the bridge of his nose to stealthily wipe away a tear that was forming. “I don’t want to know who died, but if I hear it later it’s going to be a punch to the gut, so … just tell me.”

Philip flipped through his papers until he found a single loose leaf sheet. He glanced at Sander with impassive, pale blue eyes. “Hephzibah Hepburn, Helene Hepburn, Jonas Jardine, Evan Edwards, and Thelma Thornton.”

Sander laid back in the bed and closed his eyes. He’d known three of them as friends of his father and mother. He could put a face to every name though. Evan was the youngest of them, young enough that he and Sander had been going to school at the same time, though Evan had been four years ahead. Sander opened his mouth to ask when the funeral would be, but then he remembered that he’d missed six days and it was a certainty that the funeral had already come and gone.

“How many of the Auxiliary?” asked Sander. The bodies that he’d seen had never been his focus while the battle was going on, though he’d been aware of them. The memory of them was blurred and indistinct. When he tried to make a count of them in his mind’s eye, he could feel his mind inventing details, adding more bodies, until there were stacks of corpses —

“Thirty-one,” said Philip. The number seemed high and low at the same time. “You were one of five survivors and the only one who stayed to fight the entire battle. The others broke and ran.”

“You were there too,” said Sander.

“I’m a civilian,” replied Philip. Sander had forgotten that. It made the image of Philip facing down the Schism all the more impressive.

“Thirty-one,” murmured Sander. “But … how many are in the Auxiliary?”

“One hundred and thirteen,” Philip replied.

Sander shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense, we were all supposed to come when the alarm sounded.” He remembered the bodies and shut his mouth. Sander was no stranger to death. His mother had died when he was ten years old and even before that he had attended funerals with his parents for every glimwarden that fell in the line of duty. Most of the time there hadn’t been a body, but on two memorable occasions the wardens had limped back to town with a mortal injury. This recent attack represented death on a much larger scale, but it had the same, familiar, wretched feeling to it.

“The Auxiliary are commanded to stop whatever they’re doing when they hear the alarm and move with all due haste,” said Philip. “Some of those who didn’t show up were sleeping at the time, taking a mid-day nap, so they didn’t hear the alarm. Those at Watcher’s, Builder’s, and Singer’s would have had a longer journey, conceivably long enough that they wouldn’t have gotten there until after it was all over.”

“There should have been more,” said Sander.

“I agree,” replied Philip with a shrug of his shoulders to punctuate his indifference. “In this case, I don’t think it would have helped much.” He looked Sander over. “Are you doing alright?”

“I’m fine,” said Sander. He stretched out and started to swing his legs over the side of the bed before realizing that he was naked beneath the sheets. “Six days? What did I eat? How did I use the bathroom?”

“You were conscious enough to be fed broth,” said Philip. “I imagine that you can guess what happened with regards to your other bodily functions.”

Sander felt a brief moment of shame over not just the thought of soiling himself, but the help he must have had for the last six days. He’d been useless in the battle as well, saved two or three times by people stronger and more skilled than he was. He hadn’t actually done anything, aside from saving Philip’s life. No matter; time only moved in one direction and there was no point in dwelling on the past. The only thing to worry about was making sure that next time, he could actually contribute something.

“Melanie stopped by,” said Philip. “Once on the day of the battle and again two days ago. Perhaps more than that, given that I haven’t been here the whole time.” He nodded to the table. “She baked you a small cake, it’s the one wrapped in paper and twine.”

Sander smiled. He still felt the miasma of depression, but that added one high note to his day. “Wait, we took her swords,” said Sander. “Did you pick them up?”

Philip nodded. “I was going to wait for you to wake up before taking them back,” he said. “There was some concern that you weren’t going to come out of it. I thought it might have seemed inconsiderate to bring her the swords without having some good news.”

“Alright,” said Sander. “Well, let’s go do that then.”

Philip began collecting his books and papers. “You’re going to need to speak with the doctor first, then with your father. I have some business at city hall, then a meeting at Rogue’s Lantern … which, actually, I might want your help with. Do you know an engineer by the name of Kelso Kelly?”

Sander shrugged. “The name rings a bell, but I wasn’t an apprentice for long enough to know everyone important.”

“Meet me outside the lantern in three hours or so,” said Philip. “I’ll bring the swords. Before we see Melanie, I’d like to borrow your engineering expertise.”

❧❧❧

Sander was seen to by five doctors, who examined him together. One was older, a white-haired man in his sixties with a serious demeanor, but the other four had been in Sander’s graduating class. The younger ones weren’t there to help with the diagnosis. Instead, they were there to learn. Healthcare, like engineering, was considered a vital profession which couldn’t be left to the whims of the market. A fair number of the graduates were taken on as doctors every year, with their wage paid for by the city. Once they reached the end of their first two years, they were evaluated for progress and either kept on to fill the spot of someone who was retiring, or (much more likely) released back into the labor pool where they would try to find an apprenticeship. In this way, there was never any shortage of people who knew the basics of medical care. The elderly doctor, Womack, had asked Sander whether it was alright for the others to listen in, but though Sander wasn’t exactly enthused, he considered it to be part of his duty to the town.

“Are you feeling well?” asked Womack.

“Fine,” said Sander. His leg and arm were both completely healed; they must have suffered shallow wounds. The only things troubling him were in his head, images of the dead and a feeling of worthlessness. The doctor didn’t care about that though. “I’m fantastic, actually.”

“You were a member of the Auxiliary?” asked Womack.

“I — I still am, aren’t I?” asked Sander.

“Yes, of course, forgive me,” replied Womack. “Now, how long had you been a member of the Auxiliary?”

“A single day,” said Sander.

Womack nodded. “Do you feel dehydrated or hungry?”

“No,” said Sander. He frowned. That didn’t seem right to him. He’d had a diet of broth and water dripped into his mouth. “What happened to me?”

“Your father gave you roughly two hundred darkling hearts,” said Womack.

Sander flexed his muscles and thought about that while Womack and the apprentice doctors watched him. He tried to do what Merry had taught him and feel something like heat coming from his skin. This time the sensation was instant and obvious, so obvious that he wondered at not having felt it any sooner. Power was soaking him and leaking out through his skin.

“How is that possible?” asked Sander. “I wasn’t conscious enough to swallow them. And … two hundred, a fifth of the way toward being a glimwarden, in the course of six days? The math doesn’t really work right unless —” Sander paused and swallowed. Merry had said she took in thirty hearts in a day, but she’d also implied that this was a constant rate since she’d begun, which probably wasn’t true given that both her skill and level of bind had been increasing since she was made a glimwarden. But she’d also implied that perhaps bind wasn’t entirely linear either. Either way, Sander had received two hundred hearts, which was thirty-three and a third per day, or forty per day if he hadn’t gotten any this morning. That was an entire glimwarden’s productive output, including what should have been going to the lanterns.

It was something that he would have to ask his father about. It was also something that he probably shouldn’t have started saying in front of other people.

“The hearts do not need to be ingested, as I understand it,” said Womack. “Only enveloped in flesh. They can, for example, be held in the mouth if one is willing to wait for them to shrink down there. You can feel the effects?”

“Yes,” said Sander. He flexed his muscles again. This time, because he was paying attention, he could feel the bind doing its work. He wasn’t actually any stronger, he was just being assisted in everything he did. But that wasn’t quite the right way to put it, because the increase in bind was now a part of him, forever. At least, until the next time he ran ahead of his recharge rate.

“This intervention was done without your consent,” said Womack. “However, it was felt that without the additional bind, the degradation might overtake regeneration and leave you permanently disabled in some manner, or possibly that death would result. When you were brought to us, you were quite unwell, worse than any other case I’ve seen in my career. Normally there is some sickness accompanying the overdraw, in most cases only nausea, dizziness, and a depressed immune system. There have only been a few times when a coma-like state occurred.”

“Okay,” said Sander. He really should have been happier about being alive and having an appreciable amount of bind, but all he could think about was how much trouble everyone was going to for someone who hadn’t done something to deserve it yet. Sander was perfectly confident that he would prove his worth at some point, probably within the next few years, but his father didn’t believe in him — nor did anyone else — so all the love and charity was more like pity than actual support. “When can I go home?” Sander asked.

“In normal circumstances we would ask that you stay for a day, but the hospital has been quite overworked this past week and I believe I could let you leave with only a few more questions and a handful of tests,” said Womack. He gave Sander the practiced smile of someone who is pleasant as part of their job.

It wasn’t too much longer before Sander had dressed himself and gotten ready to go. The hospital table was crowded with flowers, but the only thing Sander took from it was the small cake Melanie had baked for him. Sander disliked flowers unless they were in the ground, where they could live and thrive, continuing on with their cycles of change. He was fairly sure that he’d told Melanie that once and he wondered whether that was why she had baked for him. It was dense and sweetened with honey, flavored with preserved lemons and herbs that made it almost savory. Sander ate it in bits and pieces while he walked. He was looking forward to seeing her again, even though it had only been a few subjective hours.

He was halfway home by the time he’d finished the cake, which gave him ample time to test his newfound power. The bind made him stronger, but one of the things the battle had taught him was that the bind couldn’t be trusted to make its own decisions. It had nearly sapped him of his strength while protecting him from a threat that was too far away to hurt him. When Sander stretched, the bind put power into his muscles, helping them along. Since his total store of bind was limited (if replenishing), this was a fairly terrible use of his reserves. He was certain that this was something one of the glimwardens could teach him, but there was a lot he had left to learn, and he didn’t want to come to them asking for help without having at least made an attempt at figuring it out on his own. Experimentation couldn’t hurt.

Sander pictured his arm like a reservoir filled with water. When he tightened his hand into a fist, he could feel the bind supplementing the strength of his muscles. Sander tried to imagine the water emptying from his hand. The metaphor started getting in the way when he started thinking about what kind of mechanism would have to be created to pump water from down in his hand up to his shoulder. Eventually he solved that conceptual problem by simply raising his hand into the air, which would cause the “water” to run down, away from his fingertips. The change was noticeable right away, as Sander felt his grip weaken. It took another few minutes of practice to think his way past the metaphor he’d been using (since the bind didn’t actually behave like water and any constraints would be purely psychological), but by the time he arrived at the house, he could retract the additional strength at will.

Sander crept into the house, hoping that his father was out hunting darklings and not home. When his father came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron, Sander felt like running and hiding. He locked eyes with his father. There was no warmth there, no exuberance at the fact that Sander wasn’t dead, only fatigue and resignation. Sander’s father took off his apron and set it on a hook, then sat down in a large chair that was built for his solid frame.

“You almost died,” said Sander’s father. “So many times, you almost died. I saved your life. Baxter saved your life. Merry saved your life. Aaron saved your life. When we had to pull away, to go defend the lantern … I made a covenant with this town, and I nearly broke it to save your life yet again. I thought it was the last time I was ever going to see you alive. When the lantern had been turned back on, I went rushing to find your body. Philip saved your life too, did you know that? You overdrew so hard that it nearly killed you.”

“I had to come,” said Sander. “I ate the heart, that puts me in the Auxiliary.”

“There were dozens of men and a handful of women who should have been there and weren’t,” his father replied. “They walked to the lantern; you ran. They waited to see whether the alarm would continue; you came at the first sound.”

“They were dishonorable,” said Sander. “I’m not going to stand back just because everyone else does.”

“You should have,” his father replied. His tone was cold and passionless. “You were worse than worthless on the battlefield, you should have known that about yourself. Merry told me that you had already overdrawn once, earlier in the day. You ignored the creeping sickness that had overcome you, you ignored your lack of ability, and you ignored everything that I’ve asked of you. I saved your life for the last time by giving you those hearts. When the next alarm rings, if you show up, it will be up to you to save yourself.”

Sander swallowed. His skin felt cool and clammy. “I should have some time before the next time a lantern fails,” he began. He had meant to go on about how he had time to learn and train, how he had already managed to learn one technique on his own, but something in his father’s face stopped him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.” It was a clear and obvious lie. His father was a terrible liar.

“It’s usually years between failures,” said Sander. “Between serious failures, anyway. Sometimes its as long as decades. What’s going on with the lanterns that you think it’s going to be soon?”

“It’s official council business,” his father replied. “It’s nothing that you need to worry about.”

“Of course it is!” said Sander. “I care about this town as much as you do, if there’s something the matter, and with a new darkling out there, and the wardens dead —” He remembered the bodies, strewn across the field, Helene screaming in pain and clutching at the black tar on her chest that seemed to swallow up her fingers.

Sander felt a hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes. He hadn’t even realized that he’d closed them. His father was standing in front of him.

“Everything is going to turn out fine,” his father said. “You fought in your first battle. You saw your first deaths. It takes its toll on a man, but you’ll pull through it. The town might be going through a rough patch right now, but it’s nothing that we can’t ride out.”

“The Schism,” said Sander. “Are there more than one of it?”

His father hesitated. “We haven’t seen it at all since the attack. For now, we take that as a good sign. With Eppie gone we don’t have a scout though, so don’t go into the woods.”

Sander nodded along. His father was trying to be soothing, but it wasn’t working. The chief glimwarden was not the sort of person to soothe. That he was trying was a sign of how bad things must really be.

“I’m sorry,” said Sander. He knew that it was something that needed to be said, and the sooner the better. “I’m sorry for … for overestimating my abilities and rushing in to help when I didn’t have any idea how I was going to help.”

“You know that I don’t want you to die,” Sander’s father replied. “But I don’t want to break my commitment to this town either. I don’t want to have to turn my back on honor and duty in order to keep you safe.”

“I’ll be safe,” said Sander. “If the alarm goes off again …” Sander thought about how useless he’d been at the battle for Healer’s Lantern. “I’ll do my best to be a coward.”

❧❧❧

When Sander arrived at Rogue’s Lantern, he saw Philip standing outside, surrounded by people.

“Are those the swords you used?” asked a girl that Sander didn’t recognize.

“I only used one of them,” said Philip. He had a gentle, knowing smile, as though he was talking to a close friend. Sander stood back to listen in. “Sander Seaborn used the other. They were on loan from the Black Mare, where they serve as conversation pieces. We’re actually going to return them today.”

“How many darklings did you kill?” asked the girl.

“It’s hard to count in the heat of battle,” Philip replied. “When you’re in the thick of it, everything just blurs together. I killed far fewer than the glimwardens though.”

“And what about the big one?” asked a man with his hands folded across his chest.

“Well, I didn’t kill it, I can tell you that,” said Philip. There were laughs from around him. It was at that moment that he spotted Sander, or, perhaps, on that note that Philip wanted to end things. “Sander, are you ready to go?” He smoothly disengaged from the people around him, waving goodbye.

“I don’t even know where we’re going,” said Sander. He looked down at the two swords, which were slid through the belt loops on Philip’s pants. It looked like at any second he was going to pull them out and start dual-wielding them. Sander could imagine that. His mind flashed back to Philip standing in front of the Schism, staring it down. If Philip turned out to be proficient in dual-wielding two swords that weren’t made for that purpose, Sander wouldn’t have been entirely surprised.

“I told you,” said Philip. “We’re going to talk to Kelso Kelly. He’s an engineer who was supposed to be responsible for building some kind of rotary gun to help in defense, but it never got built. It’s not really important, because no one on the city council is after him for it, but I want to find out why he never delivered.”

“Then why do you need me?” asked Sander.

“I’m not even close to being an engineer,” said Philip. “But I do know that when you’re talking to someone outside your area of expertise, it’s quite easy for them to swamp you with terms and concepts you don’t know in order to deflect attention away from whatever it is they don’t want you to see.”

“You think that he’s hiding something?” asked Sander as they walked. Rogue’s Lantern had one of the smallest communities of the outlying lanterns, but Kelso Kelly’s shop was apparently quite far away from the center mass of buildings.

“I don’t know,” said Philip. “I know that the project was commissioned six years ago following a lantern failure, but there’s no further record of it in the city council meeting minutes. There’s probably some trace of the project in the city accounting ledgers, but I would need to talk to my father in order to get access to those.” He paused. “I would rather not bring it to his attention if the answer is trivial, and the ledgers likely wouldn’t tell the whole story anyway.”

Sander was silent for a moment as they walked. Kelly’s building was situated out among the fields. It was likely an old farmhouse that had been converted to another use. “Do you attend all the city council meetings?”

“Yes,” said Philip. “The councilors sometimes have meetings amongst themselves that aren’t part of the council per se. I only go to those when I’m welcomed, which isn’t often.”

“Do they know when the next failure will be?” asked Sander.

Philip turned to look at him with pale blue eyes, then looked around them at the empty fields. There was a runework tractor in the distance, creeping its way across a field, but it was far from earshot. Sander waited on tenterhooks for Philip to speak.

“Your father talked to you about what’s been going on?” asked Philip.

“Yes,” said Sander, which wasn’t entirely a lie, technically speaking. “He said they would be looking for the Schism if they had a scout.” The thought of Eppie, dead on the battlefield without him even knowing about it, ran through Sander’s mind. Sander was sad, but at the same time impatient for the gaping hole of loss to patch itself closed. He hated being sad about things he couldn’t change.

“If we could make a prediction, we could prevent it,” said Philip. He shook his head. “I don’t know anything your father doesn’t know.”

Well crap, thought Sander. The moment had apparently come and gone, as Philip started walking again and Sander followed after him.

Close up, the building reeked of strange, unnatural smells that Sander couldn’t identify. The gray brick house had once been a typical farmhouse, a single arched shape that kept snow off in the winter and provided two stories of livable space inside. Here, additions had been made that were visible on the outside, including several chimneys and air intake fans. It was then that Sander noticed the thick power lines coming out from the ground and into the house. It was uncommon for electricity to be run this far away from a lantern, especially if large quantities were being used. Sander began to feel a stirring of excitement that was hard to tamp down. He’d never seen this facility before.

When Philip knocked on the front door, it took only a few seconds for it to open and reveal the tall, thin figure of Kelso Kelly. He was dressed in simple clothing and had a beard that had been unevenly tended to. He stared at them with steady green eyes.

“What are you here for?” he asked. He glanced down at the swords on Philip’s hips. “Please don’t kill me,” he deadpanned.

“I’m Philip Phandrum,” said Philip. “This is Sander Seaborn. We’re here from the office of the mayor to talk about the rotary gun.”

Kelso snorted. “Alright, come in then.” He pulled back and walked off into the bowels of the house. There were no walls in the interior, only supports made of the same gray brick used for the exterior walls. It was brightly lit with dozens of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a wide variety of equipment, only half of which Sander recognized. There was a persistent buzzing sound whose source wasn’t obvious. Kelso reached the back of the large room and pulled back a dusty tarp. Beneath it was a gleaming metal machine consisting of a heavy stand and ten long barrels bundled together.

“Ta da,” said Kelso. “One rotary gun. I don’t suppose you’re going to haul it out of here? Frickin’ thing weighs close to fifty pounds. It was meant to be given a stationary mount.”

Sander wanted desperately to touch the machine, to find out which pieces of it moved and how it handled. It didn’t appear too complicated, but Sander had never seen anything like it before.

“I’m sorry,” said Philip. “But what was wrong with it?”

“Wrong with it?” asked Kelso. He spat at the floor. “Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s a rotary gun, works just like I described to the council six years ago. It flings metal at high speeds, it’s durable without the need for runework, it can be operated by people without the bind, and it has no need to tap into the supply of hearts.”

“Can I touch it?” asked Sander.

“Sure,” said Kelso. “Don’t get your fingers pinched.”

Sander walked forward and began looking over the gun. It got complicated at the place where the bullets were loaded in, almost as if — yes, on close inspection Sander could see that it had a mechanism to eject spent casings, but there was something more than that. With the right kind of input, it would be capable of loading itself with the recoil action.

“So why is it just sitting here?” asked Philip. “No formal report was made to the city council about its completion.”

“I made plenty of informal reports,” said Kelso. “Both to Linwell and to Seaborn.” He paused and looked at Sander. “Any relation?”

“Son,” replied Sander. He was still looking over the rotary gun. It was built in such a way that the firing and reloading were synced to each other, so that it was all part of a single cycle.

“They both told me the same story in different ways,” said Kelso. “It’s too expensive to actually fire the thing.”

“Sulfur?” asked Sander.

Kelso blinked. “Yes, how’d you know?”

“I remembered your name,” said Sander. “You make bullets for Merry?”

Kelso nodded.

“She said they were expensive, but it can’t be the casings or the bullets themselves that are expensive, because those are just small pieces of metal that need to be shaped, and it can’t be the process that’s expensive, because you should be able to just do it with a press and anyway the bullets are uniform so it’s not a bespoke process. That leaves the gunpowder, which is charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. The first two are easy, the last one is hard, so unless you were bilking Merry, it’s probably that one that’s tough to get.” Sander paused. “But I don’t know exactly why that would be a problem.”

Kelso snorted. “So you’re fourteen years old and think you know everything?”

“I just said I don’t,” replied Sander. “And I’m sixteen.”

“Is he right?” asked Philip. “Does Light’s Hollow lack the sulfur reserves?”

“He’s right for the wrong reasons,” said Kelso. “I make a special blend of gunpowder with a different process, but it’s still sulfur that’s the bottleneck. I have pyrite heap leaching in the back, but that’s a pain and a half with its own costs. At least we have a fair amount of the pyrite to convert over. When I made my proposal six years ago, I had said that we should establish a sulfur mine to supply the gunpowder, but while I was building the Kelly machine gun here, apparently the council members got cold feet.”

“What did they say, specifically?” asked Philip.

“Seaborn said that a sulfur mine would get glimwardens killed,” said Kelso. “Then he went on to say that the gun was a stupid idea and that it, too, would get someone killed. I’m paraphrasing there. Linwell said that it would cost too much money to build the mine, whereupon I said then maybe you shouldn’t have voted for it, whereupon she said that I was a short-sighted idiot who would never move up the ranks. Again, paraphrasing.”

“You should have come before the council,” said Sander. He tore his eyes from the rotary gun, which was one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering he’d ever laid eyes on. Philip was looking in the direction of the gun, but clearly not seeing it.

“He knew how they would have voted,” said Philip. “The original motion was three to one and called for a prototype to be built. He could have gone before the council to ask that they authorize the mining of sulfur, but he knew it would be two to two at the very least, meaning that at worst —” Philip paused and looked at Kelso. “— meaning that at best he would have humiliated Linwell by calling her to task for a project she’d approved, while at worst it would silently get voted down.”

“Not worth the hassle,” said Kelso. “I built the gun, I got paid for building the gun, everyone wins.”

“Except that it was never installed anywhere,” said Sander. “So it cost the people of Light’s Hollow some non-zero amount of money while providing absolutely no benefit.”

“Such is the way of the world,” said Kelso.

“How far away is the sulfur mine?” asked Philip. “And how quickly can you build more of these?”

“I would have to dig up the patterns I used,” said Kelso. He was watching Philip closely. “This one is tested and ready to fire, but my original idea was to have one stationed along the natural approaches of all six outlying lanterns. Five more guns … done in parallel, maybe a year of work if I’m still tied to my other duties. As for the sulfur mine, there was sulfur found in an experimental boring fifteen miles radial seventy-nine from here. They were looking for metals, they found sulfur. It’s two hundred feet down, which makes for a long shaft. Once you’ve got all that running, you need wardens to babysit a traveling lantern on top of it while the mining is done. I’ve heard there’s been some success in sealing mineshafts from the darklings so long as everyone clears out, but if not, you’re looking at digging a shaft again every time you want sulfur. And that’s before getting into the large quantities of gunpowder that would need to be mixed and the thousands of bullets that would need to be forged.” He shrugged. “Linwell wasn’t wrong about it being expensive.”

“Sorry to have wasted your time,” said Philip. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to make use of this weapon.”

Sander looked at the gun. “You test fired it?” he asked. “How many rounds does it put out?”

“Six hundred a minute,” said Kelso. “That’s theoretical, because I’ve never had six hundred bullets to waste. The most I ever shot at one time was fifty, which was a glorious few seconds. All without any cooling issues.”

Sander frowned at the gun. This was exactly the sort of thing he’d taken on a job as apprentice engineer for, but no one had let him close to a project like this. And even if they had, it seemed as though this marvelous weapon was just going to sit under a tarp forever, fired for fun at great expense a few more times in its life. It was the darklings’ fault, stopping their town from growing, preventing peaceful walks in the woods, and confining them to sub-par materials. Sander sometimes wondered how no one seemed to notice the restrictions that the darklings placed on their lives. Dropping a shaft for sulfur would be trivial without the darklings around, but it was going to take time until the glimwardens were back to full strength, and the fifteen mile expedition would represent an enormous amount of resources. It just didn’t seem fair. Something tickled at the back of Sander’s mind.

“Could you melt the sulfur?” Sander found himself asking.

“Melt it?” asked Kelso.

“Melting point of sulfur is just a bit higher than the boiling point of water, right?” asked Sander.

“Right,” said Kelso. Philip was looking back and forth between them.

“So … superheat some water by pressurizing it and then pump it down to the sulfur,” said Sander. “Use hot water to melt the sulfur. Then you can bring the sulfur up in a pipe, no need for a shaft.”

“That,” said Kelso. “Might actually work.” He grabbed a pen and paper from a nearby table, then swore when a quick test showed that the ink had dried up. “Well nevermind that then,” he said. “I’ll work out the details later. If it would actually get the sulfur up … there are going to be problems at first, kinks to work out, but if it does what I think it would, that might just make getting sulfur economical, which means more than enough bullets for the Kelly.”

❧❧❧

Sander left the workshop feeling buoyed. He’d had a clever idea that someone, for once, responded positively to. If he’d met Kelso Kelly during his apprenticeship, there was a strong possibility that Sander would still be an engineer. It was too soon to get his hopes up about free-flowing sulfur and the thundering of fully automatic guns, but he felt a grin spread over his face all the same.

“I’m worried that it won’t be fast enough,” said Philip.

“It won’t?” asked Sander. “Six hundred rounds a minute seems plenty fast. Maybe even enough to take down the Schism.”

“How much did your father tell you?” asked Philip.

“Oh, that,” said Sander. “Uh … enough.”

“Enough to try to get information out of me?” asked Philip. His expression was blank.

“Yeah,” said Sander. “Sorry. He just seemed sure that there was going to be another failure, and he wouldn’t tell me, so … will you tell me?”

“The lantern failure was an act of sabotage,” said Philip. “There were nine people at the inquest who heard that, plus however many engineers were involved in both the initial investigation and the repairs to the lantern. I’m skeptical that the secret will hold for long enough to make any progress in the matter.”

Sander stretched out, feeling the strength that the bind lent him. Being powerful felt good, good enough that he could almost push away the horror of what Philip was saying.

“We can’t handle another attack,” said Sander. “If we lost a quarter of the wardens this time, we’ll lose more the next time. Unless we could kill the Schism with Kelso’s gun … but you’re right, even if melting the sulfur works, it’s not exactly going to be fast.”

“I was hopeful when I thought the problem was just that it hadn’t been finished,” said Philip. He shook his head. “It was worth a few hours of my time though. Thank you for the help.”

Sander looked up at the sky. “Can I ask a favor in return?”

“Certainly,” said Philip.

“Time me,” said Sander. “And if I fall unconscious, drag me to the hospital.”

Philip raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I want to take responsibility if you do something dangerous.”

“Tell them there was no reasoning with me,” said Sander. “Ready?”

“Sure,” said Philip.

“Time starts when I disappear,” said Sander. He got down into a crouch and felt the bind swelling in him. He had no idea how much bind he had in him, but reasoned that there must be a way for more experienced people to tell, if they were able to prevent themselves from getting sick. He paid attention to the feeling of power radiating from his skin as he pushed off the ground and started running. He retracted the bind from his limbs, so he was running under his own power, then teleported, just a minute distance forward but three seconds into the future.

The shift in his perceptions was so subtle he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. That made the impact of the bind all the more apparent; he felt the power drop in that small instant of crossing. He wasn’t exactly sure, but he imagined that he’d used perhaps a tenth of his power, which meant that he could safely teleport another eight times without worry. He’d come out running at the same speed; he skidded to a stop and called out to Philip, who was standing on the road behind him.

“Time?”

“Three seconds,” Philip replied as he started jogging to meet up with Sander.

Good, thought Sander. That was one experiment down, another hundred or so to go. The power seemed to work by altering his speed in accordance with the teleport’s distance over time, but it also obeyed some form of conservation of momentum as well. It was really just a matter of adding two velocities together.

“Was that dangerous?” asked Philip.

“Not really,” said Sander. “I’m about to do the dangerous thing right now.” Though it wasn’t really necessary, Sander looked up at the overcast sky. He frowned for a moment as he worked through the math (it would be a parabola, with time spent going up roughly equal to time down, and sufficient speed) then teleported straight up.

Wind was instantly rushing around him, pulling at his clothes and whipping through his hair. The wind borne of his passage slowed quickly as gravity sought to reclaim him. Sander’s attention was focused down at the ground below him. Light’s Hollow was a patchwork of ordered fields, six outcroppings of buildings where the lanterns were, and Chancellor’s in the center of it all. Sander could see people down there in the streets, but he tore his attention away from them and looked outward. Light’s Hollow was a bit of manicured land, a flower with six petals, surrounded by a thin rim of planted berry bushes and fruit trees, but beyond that … there was wilderness, untamed forests which had only been nibbled on for wood, and stretches of prairie beyond them. Where trees didn’t obscure the ground, Sander could see the darklings roaming, like insects on the canvas of the land.

There was no sign of the Schism. There were fallen trees that marked its passing, or the passing of a Fracture, but it should have stuck out from the surrounding landscape. Sander doubted that it had just disappeared, but at least there wasn’t any evidence that there were multiples.

He’d just reached the apex of his journey and felt a brief, thrilling moment of subjective weightlessness when he saw the caravan. They were in a clearing, either stopped for lunch or repairs, but no more than five miles from Light’s Hollow. He felt a surge of excitement at seeing them, since caravans from Gossom were always a rare treat, but that excitement dimmed when he realized there were too many people gathered around the traveling lantern, hundreds instead of the two dozen or so that normally came. And there was a tall man in red armor, tall enough to tower over the others, obviously a glimwarden —

Sander looked down at the ground and gave his full attention to the descent. The really fun thing about his power, one he’d started sketching out the possibilities of while on his way from his house to Rogue’s Lantern, was that it combined with itself. Since his hunch about added velocities was right, that meant that it was possible to teleport in one direction to gain speed, then teleport in the opposite direction to instantly shed that speed. It was complicated, because air friction was definitely a factor, and the calculations had to be done on the fly. Worse, that math had to account for how long the math took. For something as simple as falling though, Sander could do most of the math ahead of time and wing the corrections.

When he was a second from hitting the ground, Sander teleported again, aiming himself just a slight bit upward, crossed the distance very quickly. He managed to kill his velocity almost entirely, though of course he started falling again, since he was five stories up. This time he teleported upward from much closer to the ground and found himself falling from ten feet up. He let himself drop and felt the bind cushion him. He’d used perhaps half of it in his transit, if what he was intuitively feeling was correct.

He looked over to Philip with a manic grin on his face. What he’d done was basically just as good as flying, and proof that he could function as a scout for his father. Philip didn’t seem terribly enthused by it.

“There’s a caravan from Gossom,” said Sander. He ran his hand through his wind-ruffled hair. The sense of speed had been incredible. The view had been incredible. It was almost certainly true that he should have done more tests first, but he had needed something like that, some proof that he was walking the right path, that it wasn’t all for nothing. “Hundreds of people, five miles out.”

“We should go see Melanie then,” replied Philip. “If there are a hundred people coming into Light’s Hollow, we should attend to business while things are still calm.”

“I flew,” said Sander.

“Yes,” said Philip. “I saw.”

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Author’s Note: Most discussion for Glimwarden takes place on /r/rational. Chapters are posted there shortly after they’re posted here. Here’s the link for Chapter 9. Also, have you tried Rationally Writing, the podcast I host with DaystarEld?

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Chapter 10 will be posted on 7/30/16. This message brought to you by Shaun, the Schedule Slip Snail.