After their run-in with the would-have-been horse thieves, Ehrban and Xiun avoided the rest stops altogether, travelling so as to be as far between towns as possible before making camp for the night.

  Xiun admitted that this had been his way, coming west from Tabaranta and north into the mountains. Bandits were indeed scarce in these parts, and at least if they kept far enough from the towns at night, they wouldn’t have to contest with townspeople’s misguided acts of kindness or fear.

  On the last day, they set off just as the sky started to lighten, and reached the city five hours later, when the morning sun still pooled a thick, golden syrup in the basin in which the city lay.

  Approaching from the North gave a view of the entire city, grown like a flower around the silvery stems of the two confluent rivers. From here, all the achingly familiar landmarks were visible: the spires of the Alcazar in the watery heart of the city, the University on top its hill, the turrets of the vast Bazaar, the ancient tower of Alchemists, the thick tree-lined esplanades along the rivers into which bougainvilleas poured their purple, pink, orange and white flowers.

  Not a single place was not replete with memories, thick and bitter and hurting like salt in an open wound.

  What was Pia doing right now? Where was she? With whom? It had been four years, by now she should be a head physician somewhere, or an esteemed scholar at the University. Students from all over the Empire would be travelling just to hear her speak.

  Any attempts Ehrban had made at fishing for news along the way had been met with a contemptuous silence from Xiun. Ehrban had nothing but conjecture. Even now, it was strange and frightening; a lack felt like loss.

  He and Pinadarya had known each other since childhood, when Ehrban and Ytharn had moved into Uncle Zhuain’s house next to the house where she lived. For almost a quarter of a century their lives had run together, first alongside each other and then intertwined.

  For five years at war, the thought of her had sustained him. Always with the promise of a future, of the life they’d have together again once it was all over.

  That promised future had been a beckoning hand, a golden thread Ehrban could follow through the long nights and the dark storms and the vast emptiness of the deserts and the desolate mountains. If only he could keep hold of it, he’d thought, he could make it through anything — and she’d be there, waiting on the other side.

  When war broke out, Pia had gone to Lebran to treat the wounded. Ehrban would count the miles from wherever their campaign had taken them to where she was. Two weeks’ ride. Three weeks. Ten days in good weather.

  She’d written to him, vividly scrawled letters in her cipher-like handwriting: of her days in Lebran, the wounded, the fortifications, the fear and preparations should Barsland push through, of sleep snatched on the benches in the courtyard of the fortress-turned-hospital, of spiced potato balls and the one time she’d tried the Lebranese barley spirits and had been so violently sick she had hallucinated all the aspects of the Goddess dancing in the sky above the lake with a herd of llamas.

  Ehrban had never meant to go back to Pia tainted in spirit and soul. When he’d come back to himself after the dungeon and found out that she’d fetched him from that hole, wounded and rambling with delirium, and was nursing him in a new small, sparse, neat little apartment walking distance from the University, he had been horrified. Grateful, and horrified.

  During those first days, the sight of her face, the touch of her hands, the sound of her voice had been all that had kept him from sinking into his nightmares of Dnisenfeld never to return.

  She’d had to leave sometimes to teach, and had paid the old woman from next door to keep an eye on Ehrban. Pinadarya would rush back as soon she could, still stuffing a steamed bun she’d bought on her way home into her mouth, and would tell him about her day as she washed his wounds and helped him bathe.

  Over time, her tales of the University had become more and more terse, the frown with which she returned home deeper and deeper. It was by chance only that Ehrban, one morning when she was out, had found the letter, half-torn and balled up in a corner of the room where she must’ve thrown it in anger.

  It was from the University Council, warning that her failure to heed their concerns regarding her ethical standing and dismissal of their repeated requests to dissociate herself from disreputable elements would soon lead to the termination of her position with them.

  By then, Ehrban had regained enough strength that he could walk without assistance, albeit with frequent rests, and the old neighbour no longer needed to tend to him. Being able to stand was already enough. He packed some food, took some money from the tea tin in the kitchen, and crept from the house like the thief and the coward that he was.

  “I said — Ehrban, are you listening?”

  Ehrban started guiltily. Xiun was looking at him wryly from atop his horse.

  “No, I was…”

  “Brooding, yes, I’m familiar with the look. I said, our audience with the Matriarch is this afternoon. Don’t — ah, too late.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  This last was likely meant to prevent Ehrban from involuntarily drawing sharply on Uliorn’s reins. He grimaced and relaxed his grip. His poor horse, she deserved a more equanimous rider.

  “Better to get it done and over with, I thought,” Xiun said cheerfully.

  “And not give me a chance to change my mind.”

  “And run away in the middle of the night, yes.”

  Ehrban ignored the pointedness of this statement. His flushing face likely spoke for itself. “Where are we going now?”

  “The Temple had made available accommodation for us where unthulan would not offend anyone. At least, won’t offend anyone in a position to do anything about it.”

  This meant the neighbourhoods surrounding the Lower Heistan docks, an area less disreputable than the Greater Docks further downriver, where all the big boats bringing lumber and stone from the western banners met the incoming of textiles and tea from Zhibren; spices, oil and fruit from the South; and — if not disrupted by one of the many, frequent wars in the last century — amber, ore and wool from the Barsland princedoms.

  In contrast, the smaller docks of Lower Heistan was meant mostly for local travel and housed the ferries going up and down the river. Around it boarding houses and inns for travellers abounded. In recent years it had become the place where most non-Sigilists ended up, and kept to themselves.

  It was a long ride per horse, across almost the entire width of the city. At least the immediate terror of the crowded city streets temporarily displaced the dread of an actual audience with Mishafat IX, Noblest Servant of the Holy Goddess, Humblest Receiver of the Wisdoms. Ehrban could concentrate no further than the next step of Uliorn, and the next, and the next after that. Even with the very early morning traffic of deliveries being past, the stores and businesses were just opening, classes just starting, and the streets were thronged with shoppers, clerks and assistants hurrying towards their workplaces, children running not to be late to school.

  The two knights got many stares. Most people looked away immediately and turned their heads as they made the eight-fold star of protection. Some spat. Many crossed the street to avoid them, earning curses from those on the other side forced to make way to accommodate them, which turned into dirty looks aimed at the two unthulan and their horses.

  Ehrban kept his gaze fixed firmly on Uliorn’s ears, his face burning. It was all he could do to keep a light hand on the reins, and he dimly realised he was all but shaking. Surely, at any moment, someone’s gaze would linger just a moment too long, someone would step in front of them and refuse passage, make a grab for the reins of their horses, call the guards.

  But unlike the towns they had passed, where each of these things had happened at least once, the early morning crowds of Heila all had more important things to do and were in too much of a hurry to do them.

  *

  In good time, Ehrban and Xiun found themselves in Lower Heistan, where the smell of water overlaying dead algae, damp mud, dank water, rotten wood and tar reminded Ehrban sharply of the riverbank where the abbey of Saint Celund stood, further upriver.

  The house the Temple lent them was in the central-Vallenese style, a low building of red-stone that had been bleached a rosy pink by years of sun, built around a central courtyard and topped with enamelled turquoise roof tiles. The front door was set level with the street and was opened by a middle-aged man, by the earrings that lined both ears as well as one flank of his nose a Southlander. His Vallenese was impeccable as he directed them to the stable leased to the house.

  With the horses entrusted in the care of the stablehands, the former knights entered the house. There was food waiting, sourced from local eateries, and the steward explained he would bring another delivery for dinner, before he left the two to themselves.

  “I’m guessing Bergram is staying at one of his family’s holdings for now,” Xiun said, opening the various boxes and baskets containing their rations. He looked unimpressed. “Ruoi only knows where Lianu had holed up. I suspect we’ll find out when we see them later.”

  He glanced up at Ehrban. “Can you please find a place to sit? That pacing is getting on my nerves.”

  Ehrban stalked out to the courtyard, equal parts embarrassed and annoyed at himself. He was inside, he told himself. Off the streets with its stares and whispers. The non-Sigilists might not be obliged by faith to avoid the unthulan, but they had absorbed enough of Vallenese culture to be wary of them. As of something unclean, contagious.

  The stablehands had been a pair of Barslanders, overseen by a hard-eyed Vallenese man who’d assured Xiun that they had forsworn their filthy god-eating ways. Here, at least, it seemed, being a Carnifex Barslander was still worse than being unthulan. If only barely. The Barslanders, likely refugees, had refused to meet the eyes of the former knights. But then, they more than anyone had cause to hate the knights of Saint Celund.

  Ehrban sat down in one of the wicker chairs in the courtyard and, failing to get comfortable, got up again. He’d just decided to go pace somewhere Xiun couldn’t object, when Xiun himself came out, carrying the food he’d deemed worthy of his standards.

  “No wine, but that’s probably for the best, I don’t know if I can trust myself around an open bottle just now. But I made tea, if you can wait for it to steep.”

  Ehrban had no problem waiting. Despite having been up and travelling since before dawn, he had no appetite. He pushed away the plate that Xiun had rather pointedly put in front of him.

  “Do you know if Bergram and Lianu would speak to me?”

  Xiun looked up sharply, a bite of cold soy noodles halfway to his mouth. “Hmm.” He lowered it to the plate again. “I haven’t talked to them personally aside from letters, but I don’t see that they wouldn’t. You’re hardly the only one to blame for what we did at Ungberg.”

  “I was your captain.”

  “And you’re alive while Innisgard is dead,” Xiun conceded. “I don’t know that the living is an easier target than the dead. Of course, if we were to tell them the truth — ”

  “No.”

  “Ehrban.”

  “No, Xiun, please.” Ehrban dragged his hand down his face. “Not yet. I can’t… It’s too… The burden of it…”

  “We swore our lives to each other. We can help each other carry anything.” The gentleness with which Xiun said it stung. Compassionate and sincere, when Ehrban wanted neither. Deserved neither.

  “We were brothers and sisters in our pledge to Ruoi,” Xiun went on. “Bergram and Lianu would die for you. As would I. As would you, for any of us.”

  “I did not for Yuan,” Ehrban said quietly. “I did not for Ytharn.”

  Xiun reached over the table to clasp Ehrban’s arm. He was shaking his head, as if he wanted to say something, but he closed his mouth again without speaking. For once even he had no words to offer.

  Ehrban pulled away. He said, “If the dead is an easier target than the living, then it must also be easier to owe a debt to the dead than to the living. Please. It’s my burden to carry. Don’t tell them yet.”

  Xiun’s expression was unreadable, but he nodded. “If that’s your wish.”

  Patreon.