The sons and daughters of Onn were placed in carts. They were driven in long trains out of Trethbiekilon.

  In each wagon, the people were packed tight. Some scratched at the marks on their necks. After some time the smell and substance of the floor grew intolerable. In all were wails that grew low and slowed as they were roaded from Ourland.

  Onn's youngest was a child. Her little shape was stitched between the women. Already the noise, which had once filled her throat, was fallen back. She gripped the edges of the cart, where her finger had scratched blood and splinters and sight into the wall, giving her a little round view of the path they followed. Burnt red-orange rays fed the blue of her iris.

  She took flickers of the high country, where she had taken the call of Onn and her beginning, and seen the smoke in cities. There was smoke again, now in its country too, where hamlets burned hotter than the city had. Banners waving bones and arrows and seventeen-sided signals were laid all around, dismembering the body of the First Kind. Parts of the Onnpeople came into view, men and women and little boys strayed from the roadside which had smashed them. Others were stacked in groups and laid in long holes by tall, gray-coatted beasts, where their similarity found series.

  The new symbol on the back of her neck spread a roar through her skin and stomach.

  An older woman on the girl's left, pressed on her by the space of the wagon, saw the child turned around, linking her face with the new sight of Trethbiekilon.

  "Look away," she said. She laid a hand on the girl's shoulder and gripped it and pulled her back. She resisted.

  The woman grunted. Two hands grabbed her arm and began to yank. "Look away! Those sights are empty, moveless!"

  She was driven back, and the girl followed, but not for her pull. All the cart's inhabitants cried out as a light shined in from the outside, covering up its color and blinding them.

  Great moving and pounding on the woman's chest. When her sight returned, she found the young girl emptying her lungs, tearing at her skull and banging it against the wall of the carriage. She and the others leapt against it as its wheels scratched out a halt.

  Loud footsteps planted in the dirt beyond the cart. They splashed around the side, followed by the riders' eyes, whose gaze was only drawn from it by the screams of their kinsman. Metal rattled at the cart door and it opened, blowing in wind and more firelight. It was night, but there were no stars, and the sky was not black.

  Keeping all these from showing in detail was a Freeman-of-Arms. He was nearly as tall as the cart itself, with a heavy frame and a cloak spun from a flock of wool. His eyes, silver-and-gold, blazed wide and they looked down at the scene inside.

  The women looked back, and were quiet for a moment.

  "The little one," they said in Sprak.

  "The little one. Help."

  "Girl."

  "Help girl."

  "Let us help her."

  "Get us out."

  The Freeman bent down and reached his head inside. It bumped against the ceiling as he sought a good look of the girl. He raised his brow, and extended his hands. He squeezed the air twice.

  The women brought her up to the Freeman, who carried her out of the cart. He unbound his cloak with one hand and laid it down in the mud for her. The riders jumped down and out of th cart, some releasing her and scrambling into the darkness in twos and threes. The Freeman's head turned to the splash and splatter of their retreating feet for only a moment before he handed a bag of water to the older woman, who sat at the head of the young girl's care.

  Her howling was mixed with pronouncements, and the Freeman's brow lowered. As more of the Onnpeople fled, pursued by riders diverging from the column, he spoke to the woman. "What is she saying?" he asked. "I cannot know your words."

  The woman drank from his skin before he used it to douse their subject's forehead. The sound of her never shut.

  "She is saying ‘get out,'" the woman said. "'Get out. Wisi. Get out. Get out.'"

  -

  The word was Bell.

  After the smoke and grass were left behind, the cart rolled for a long time. Night turned to day and dirt roads became stone. The girl followed them all as the word echoed between her ears.

  Her throat was bruised, so the young girl became quiet with it. She lay against the wood far from the view she had carved out, even as the substance of its sight appeared more clear the farther that she moved. The dim colors and limbs it offered her dissolved the parts of her first place, and brought her in to the new chest of roads and banners and gray, and jingling coins.

  Bell, the word echoed. They did move far, but its tenor was the same, and was its sound. Bell. The word kept the shape she had known and the sound she had given it since its first speaking. And there she was offered a path that did not dissolve.

  Sometimes, the word shivered, and she could hear it mumble. It knew how to speak, and it had wishes, whose volume pressed tight on her attention. She could never speak in silence. Instead there was the word and its ranging sensation. But this became easy soon, because she did not see that she would see much longer, and this took its foundation from the contents of her room.

  Whenever the cart stopped, as it did many times over the days and lumps of days that passed since the first hour, more were taken from it. Some were pushed back in, and some were new. Most were not. And most were at first already from a place other than her own, keeping of their own words. But the first part of these, those who had kept, went easily, and repeated promises and offerings to the girl.

  That group thinned, and soon their last piece formed a short wall around the girl and her word. They went with roars, when the door opened and when the Freemen would come back with arms outstretched. They jumped in with strength that they had lost, strangling the keepers and striking them down with feet and fists and bulk. All those who died were replaced with others, who finished the work, and who she had not seen. Each looked near the same as the last, and there was none who struck back when they were not told.

  These faces sometimes brought her and what inmate of hers remained a heap of bread to eat, and passed in a bag of water to sip, and sometimes a bag of leather to fill. At first, these moments seized her, which were separated by long swells of the sun, and sometimes nights. She reached out and grabbed the flat, crustless cakes that they brought her with a grip and long fingernails that dug into the dough, and shoved them in whole down her throat. She gulped at the bag until it was empty, and when the others with her had not yet known a drink.

  One day, her last inmate was dragged out by the Freemen, into a cloud of dust and figures and stalls and voices. On that day, when they came again, she received the bread slowly, eating it one bite at a time. She took a sip of water and handed it back to a hand and its face. The word repeated itself, and she laid down. From the time she shut her eyes the sun rose and fell and none reentered the cart.

  With this new condition, she laid down as much as she could. That was the means she had to touch and hit all her problems. Her shut eyes let her speak. They let her shout in her need for the half-green, half-white look of the beast-cleaning nivman. They spoke in the blind of the beast, and they spoke in the way that her inmates had moved, smashing the heads of the Freemen, and wringing their necks, and holding the breath from their mouths. They spoke in a weight on her lap and a figure in her hand. Everything spoken was becoming one object. She grew roots of sweat and hair and planted in her room, which rolled around from road to road.

  She stopped up the view she had carved with a bit of cloth, and with its removal took a place again. A never-knowing-where, but for the rattle of the stone underneath, and for what she missed and for all the cut things that were scattered in many other spots, and she knew a shape in which, even beyond the word's constant repeat, she could never be lone, hitched and grabbed as she was by the demand of these foreign things.

  So the girl laid down again, with her crying Bell, and continued to wrap up them up.

  -

  The sun grew hot.

  Light shined as biting rays through the ceiling. The way they burned, resting on one spot of her, told the girl that the cart had come to a halt while she had shut herself. She did not open her eyes.

  After learning this, she heard a man say words she did not know, but whose shape she had cut into her ear since she had heard the beast and its speaking. She looked up then.

  Her look was blurry. She rubbed out golden crumbs from her eyelashes and crawled over to the hole. She removed its muffle, and crouched down to its spot, and put onto the speaker.

  "...fed well," one said. "A good little one. For your friends and age."

  "My house can carry. I have a little one."

  "A Freehouse then. She can carry soon. You need a good Freehouse."

  "Need? No."

  "She's right at the turn for it. Bring me half price. But she will be gone today, Firstpoint. They will not let me keep her. Today. By a niv or parts, Firstpoint. Gone."

  "..."

  "Open the door."

  The door to the cart rattled. The girl sat up as it swung open and the light streamed in. The bright was such that the shapes beyond the threshold were dark and blurred.

  Her eyes adjusted, and found an association of nivmen, all dressed in knives and stickers. Two stood out from the crowd.

  The first man was young. He wore a heavy gray coat of fur, bound at the chest by small ties. A twining band of gold wrapped around his forehead.

  The other man, another Larun, was tall, old and shaven. A metal badge depicting a horizontal stroke was pinned to the thin white robe he wore.

  The robed man held out his arm, and the tiecoatted man stepped inside. When he crouched down to the girl's eye level, she did not retreat.

  "She's firm," said the tiecoatted man.

  "It was written."

  "That's bad for a house."

  "A Freehouse? What does a Freeman see?"

  The tiecoattted man looked around at her parts. His eyes fell to her fists. The right was streaked by red and black marks.

  "She's hurt."

  "What? Where?" The robed man jumped inside, rocking the cart.

  "Her hand."

  He snorted. "That's old. Three turns, at least. She's breathed with it. It won't bury her. The majam said. It works."

  "It's filthy."

  "It works, point. Give it a cover. What does a Freeman see?"

  The tiecoatted man returned to her eyes.

  He put a hand to his chest. "My name is Coster," he said. "I am Firstpoint to you."

  "Don't run over it. I've no parts. You've no house."

  The girl's expression did not change. Coster looked back at the other. "Can she hear us?"

  "She's Chamun. Trathbik Chamun. Feurkun. It was written."

  Coster shook his head. "What good is a hand I cannot tell?"

  "It was written." He pointed at her. "A house needs hands. There they are. A push tells good. What need have you for words?"

  "If a man shall have her, they'll need to speak."

  "They won't. But you have fields in hand. She has hands in hand. Make her work for a day. She'll get words there."

  "She's a girl."

  "Come." The robed man bent down and reached out, gripping her arm. He yanked it into the light, exposing hard lines, and thick ridges his hold could not put a dent to. "These Trathbiks, they do it right-handed. She's only come by steep work. Ten thousand firms tore at them before the Teller tore them down. Steep work. Only Sett could put it in. She's half a man already. A field will make her one. Him. It's the water of this kind. Trathbiks. And you with their last drop. A kind's last drop."

  Coster frowned. His eyes went around her arm.

  "I won't give all for this," he said. "Half a boy. Half the price."

  "Half a half. One fourth for a breather? Her meat could feed me more. And my sons."

  Firstpoint Coster looked into the girl's eyes again. Her return was as still as she. No part of it shook or changed. The gaze of the soldiers looking in met its temperature.

  He pressed his lips together.

  The robed man went out from the cart, into the sun of center Shamarkat, with his hand wrapped around her wrist. The metal that trapped her legs clanked and jingled with each step.

  Beyond the soldiers, carts, and high towers nearby was a windy, yellow plain. The girl looked down at the soft and gritting soil, which soaked in between her toes as her keeper hoisted her down and pushed her into it.

  After they had moved, Coster emerged from the cart. He took out a sack and coins from his waist, dropping a cluster into the palm of the other. The robed man handed him a key.

  "You are seen, Firstpoint," he said. "May you take much work by it."

  Then her keeper withdrew, back into a vessel that sat after her room of three months, which was empty at last and the stains and smell of it shuttered up by the men. Both containers began to move, and descended into the haze of this new place.

  Coster took her by her clean hand and tugged her along. He walked slowly, and she could maneuver even despite her bindings. He brought her to another line of carts opposite her own, toward a pair that were smelled and stained but colored red rather than grey. The back of one was filled with a gaggle of unshaven men, and its mate was filled with unshaven women. They spoke as she approached.

  He handed the girl off to a nivman standing by the men, and did not give her a second glance before he began to walk up the train. The nivmen looked at each other, and the one with her led her toward the second cart.

  "No," Coster said, turning.

  He pointed at the first cart. "That one."

  The Larun balked. "Firstpoint?"

  "She was given as a man. She goes with the men."

  He did not turn away again until they had hauled her inside the cage and shut the door. The floor of it shook and its wheels began to roll, shifting the mass of bearded eyes that became fixed on her.

  The girl took up a seat on one side of the carriage, where her inmates made room for her. As they rode out, she could see their place rattling further into that vanishing yellow plain, where nothing grew and there was no smoke. The word whispered behind her eye.

  Be with me, said The Bell. Be with me.

  Remember you. Remember them. Remember them.

  Remember them. Remember them.

  Recall the call.

  I am yours. You are mine.

  We have nothing but myself.

  But myself shall be a many.

  Fourteen years later…

  Near the Ash Road.

  The sun rose on Goal.

  It was not a ruler, or a ruled thing. It brought warmth onto a world, and fed the snow, which walked down from the thick trees, and the flanged branches of wingtrees, back into the roots and to the soil.

  Green emerged in many places. Trees bristling with thorns gave out buds, and shoots of red flowers opened up on their tips.

  Sledges cut through the forest. Some wagons with wheels rolled through it, cracking weeds and stones underneath with the weight of the properties. Alongside the transports, clinging to the bodies who rode in them and the weapons they bristled with, carried with heartless soldiers that hung from the sides, who shut their eyes as the wind smiled past their eyes and hair, were the road people. Packs of travellers from every place, with a few packs and animals, following the train and its safe passage. And among these road people were three foreigners.

  One of the foreigners was a wanderer; another was something fragile. The Fragile Thing lifted its face, and with the soldiers, felt the sun and its green pass onto him with warm satisfaction. Heat tingled through his skin and fingertips. A gust blew back the wide black mantle of his greater friend, and the heavy white robe that he himself wore. The other travellers on the carts fixed their caps and held fast to their coverings of steel and silver wool.

  The bluster rose and pitched off the wide-brimmed hat worn by the wanderer. She reached out a hand and caught it as it fell through the wind. The wanderer and her companion walked alongside a pair of hooved animals; she gave it to the bags of the shorter one, with fur and strength.

  A long rope, knotted around itself and a cresting perch atop the lead wagon in the series, observed the wanderer and the fragile thing from a distance. The rope, too, was a foreigner. She called herself, and her word was Bell. She thought and spoke, and could conceive another's thought. She did it then, and studied their faces and her own, like she could not have at any point before the warmth.

  She imagined that Fragile wondered. His wonder had found her once, and it was happening much more now. The roam between two ears was too green, and too quiet, for the soil of his space. It was full of new seeds, all of different shapes and voices, and five hundred unseen spots. A sun had found its way in, and there was a lie in it. The Bell was finding many lies, in every single place.

  She turned to Wander, and wondering found her too. Her Joyous One was hard and certain, and she did not often roam between two ears. She was in the world, where she muttered to the air and unrolled heavy papers from The Stronghoof and scrawled on them with a length of rock. The Bell watched the mutters crowd out wonders. They grew still, and she saw them strong.

  The Bell conceived a wonder in herself. It made her shake.

  Fragile was brought out from his wonder by Wander's noise. Her gaze found his and it brought her out from her muttering.

  After a moment she asked of him, "What is it?"

  He blinked. "Do you know where we are?"

  She turned her head to the sky, where hundreds of daylight stars twinkled and mixed around.

  "We're close," she said. "We're on it. Does your gap hurt?"

  Fragile touched the pack of fabric with which she had plugged the hole in his chest. At the little contact, a metal spike thrust itself back through his whole, and he flinched.

  "I'll fire some more spirits later," she said. She rolled up her papers and returned them to The Stronghoof, grabbing some seed for its taller cousin. The Stonehoof clopped forward and lapped it up; the sun licked across her tall red weight. "We should be able to get stronger ones in Herdetopp."

  Fragile flinched again, and squeaked, because as his mouth opened he became tangled up with The Bell. She descended from the cart in a heap around Fragile's shoulders, spilling over his chest and back. His face scrunched and he jumped. "E-eldsister?!"

  "Once we arrive," she said, "we can get you cuts, weak thing."

  She draped himself down the length of his black locks. Where once, in younger days, they had fallen only midway between his shoulders and the small of his back, they were now by his legs. "Soon, these strains shall meet again your soil ruler, pick up his dust and branches. Your yonbrothers and yonsisters, yonbrother. They would find you rough and not virtuous, and you wouldn't want that."

  His brow crinkled. He scratched at her coils.

  At that moment, a cry came out from the lead cart.

  "Road seen!" A Goalish Roadpoint, clad in heavy robes, with long silver hair wound up in a thick bun, knelt up on the roof of the lead cart. He laid a hand over his eyes, and pointed out, the sun and all its waves and rays breaking over his finger and brow. "Road seen!"

  The trek up the hill was complete, and when they saw the Ash road, each foot-trod member of the entourage paused, even as the carts and their charges continued.

  The road was made from blocks of carved grey stone. The blocks were laid fifty feet in either direction. Its path cut through hills and mountains, and rarely moved up or down. Banners with digits sat spaced out with a hundred feet between them. Other traffics rolled over the path of their aim; a single carriage, and otherwise.

  Many of their fellow walkers offered to He, Sett, prodda, and the rulers. Wander could feel Fragile's knees threaten to buckle, so she reached out and held him up.

  The offerings ended. The sledges were wheeled up. They moved on the road West, where the road was flat for miles. A distant carriage sank below the horizon. Fragile's eyes bulged.

  The stone was warm beneath his feet and he flexed his toes. "I can't believe it," he said.

  "The cart?"

  "The snow. The snow is gone. It's dry. There's nothing left."

  "Ha." Wander nodded. "Ice is always in flight."

  "I need never see it again for as long as I remain."

  "If you believed this cold was bad, you might one day journey to Ourland," she said. "The Shamin for it is, ‘dark sky time.'"

  "Will you tell me more about your land?" Fragile asked. "I have never seen a place besides Goal. What is that other one like?"

  Wander's eye wrest with the unseen. "I was very young when I was out from it," she said. "I have lost its face. But I do see it as a wide place. A high place. There was space for many feet and hoofs, and all could go and run."

  "It sounds adorable."

  "It was."

  "When you go back," he said, "to Azh Makas- will you go through there again?"

  She shook her head. "No. It's out of the way. I would go through some part of Shamarland."

  "What's that like?"

  She paused.

  "It's a big place," she said. "It is less strange than Goal."

  Each stamp of Wander's boots upon the rock produced a loud clank. Fragile jumped at it, and again, as their edge honed and dulled.

  They proceeded along the road for some time. Acclimating to the smoothness of its stone and the flat expanse of the space before them produced a stumbling and a rubbing of the eyes in Fragile, along with a few of the Goalish knots mixing with the other roadpeople.

  The road did not stay empty for long.

  Four dots assembled on the opposite side of the Ash, blurred by distance. As they grew near and descended a tall hill, they elongated, producing gray twists in the road that did not end for a very long time. The sun sparkled on the twists' armor, the plates of which resolved into Freemen.

  When they had come into common view, their body halted. A lump of nivmen detached from their center and was lead by a Larun, trotting along, on a tall black stronghoof, before the clump of carts and wagons. He wore a shining helmet with a gray feather affixed to its front by straps and wax.

  The Freemen stepped unblinkingly before the lead cart and assembled a wall three ranks deep, which closed on them and blocked their path. The roadpoint's head jerked up and he blew his horn just as his cart was about to roll over the first rank, and the column stopped.

  The Larun kontor's hoof canted swagger beneath the lead cart. The Roadpoint looked down at the visitors and smiled. "What have you seen, Firstpoint?" he asked.

  The Larun was old, and his face was rugged. His bryst was covered in heavy metal grids.

  "You're coming off Sideslight?" The Larun asked. His voice was bright and sweet.

  "That's it, First."

  He took a roll of hide out from his Stonehoof's bag and threw it up to the roadpoint. He tried and failed to catch it, and it tumbled back down to his pilot, whose hand snatched out and wrapped around its length. He tossed it back up to the Goal, who laid on his back and unrolled it.

  "Tithe is delivered," said the Larun. "Every group coming off Sideslight is to have their load checked for this figure."

  The roadpoint squinted at the fibre as the kontor looked among the horde of roadpeople lining the carriages.

  "A thin vision," the roadpoint said. "Appears like none of mine. What a strange niv…"

  "Who is that?" The Larun asked, thrusting out his finger.

  The roadpoint turned, as did many of the roadpeople.

  As they did so, they saw Wander, cut out alone from the crowd. A small hint of white, with a cord bound around its waist, was hauled away from her quickly, vanishing into the mass.

  "The partsfighter?" The Roadpoint laid on his stomach and scratched his cheek. "She's one of many. I don't know her name."

  "Is she alone?'

  "She's from the others of my company. In Partplant. We've gone on some rides together."

  "And you don't know her name."

  "She's one of many, First."

  The Larun's eyes traced her figure.

  "A partsfighter, you said. Where are her weapons?"

  "She keeps a club in those bags. It has been quiet, Firstpoint."

  He cocked his head at the Larun. "Because of you."

  The Larun met Wander's gaze. His look flattened, and his brow crouched over his eyes. Her hair blew freely in the wind, unconstrained by any covering.

  "Are you owed further, First?"

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  The Larun turned away from Wander, back to The Roadpoint, who had rolled up and proferred back down the sketch at him.

  "Yes," he said. "You will keep and display that vision. Men with tells will check for it at every house between here and Fjelltopp. There is a man she carries- small, hillfaced, bryst-covered. He may be used by the other, for wrong purposes. His breath can be kept; his due is different. Tjeni papers. The woman's due counts the hurt of fifty men."

  He spoke now to the roadpeople, shouting. "If you see this kind, do not approach it. Say her place where Firmsmen are found. If she is seen, all may be hurt, and many will fall without our help. Deliver it to your friends and tellers: In Harmony is a Right-Handed Blade."

  He glanced back up. The Roadpoint smiled and retracted the drawing. Air popped in the corners of his mouth.

  The Larun turned his twentytithe back to the road and held up his hand. The nivmen stepped away from the carts. The Roadpoint blew his horn, and they continued forward.

  When the Laruns were out of sight, Wander replaced her hat.

  -

  As they met the evening, the group's carts came across a site on the side of the road with leather coverings large enough to house the wagons, alongside troughs, pens and a dirt-stained well. The carts were unhooked from their charges, and some of the roadpeople started fires.

  The Roadpoint came down from his cart and took a stack of wood, leaning its cords up against each other. He removed a clump of brown dust from a red pouch and sprinkled some over it. A shower of lights came down on the fire, spun from his knife and a glassy rock, and flame blew into the mixture.

  He closed his eyes as the heat kissed his face.

  "Who are you?"

  The Roadpoint opened his eyes and looked up. Wander stood over him, accompanied by Fragile. Around his chest and waist, The Bell coiled still. One of her strands peeked around his side.

  He sat back. "Great change," The Roadpoint said, "has come to The Wild. It is such that no name of ours will be rewrote, Dry Man. We are little shapes in a little place. It is our fires that they will rewrite. When our spark becomes a sun."

  He took a metal pot from beside the fire and tilted up three rods over it, binding them together and suspending it between them. "But you can call me Besthand," he said. "It's what I say."

  Wander sat down. Roadpoint Besthand mixed water, green fluid, and dark, thick seeds around in the pot, and spooned it out in bowls for them. When his own was empty, he set it down.

  "Did you really cut down forty Laruns?" Besthand asked.

  Wander drank up her bowl in a gulp, and said nothing.

  Besthand pushed out his palms. "Ih- I do not ask, so that I might find or have some true heart of yours – but they speak false, sometimes. These men of totaling."

  "The count you heard was fifty."

  "Was it?" Besthand rolled a pouch of powder between his hands. "There are many counts. And counters."

  "You heard that one."

  He nodded. "Fifty… I heard it was a blaith you keep. A Makarish cane. Is it hidden from us?"

  "No."

  Besthand smiled. His teeth were clean, but some were missing.

  "Who is this one?" He raised his hand at Fragile. "That call seems not so long. Is he as virtuous?"

  "He is not a blade."

  "He is born," Besthand said. "Which is half as good. Maybe more."

  Fragile curled up his legs tight and shrunk under Besthand's look.

  The Roadpoint's brow went down. "Maybe not."

  He picked out the last seed from his bowl and placed it in his mouth. He chewed.

  His eyes went toward Wander's again, and her face.

  "They'll like you in Herdetopp," Besthand said. "Nobody there smiles either."

  "Goodpoint," Fragile said.

  He turned back to the Sixbraid.

  "Please," Fragile stumbled in Sprak. "You is… you will tell of us?"

  Besthand swallowed.

  "How do you see this path, little one?" he asked in Goalish. "Have you ever seen its like? Do you adore it?"

  Fragile brow rose. He shook his head low. He kneaded the top of his right hand.

  "This path," Fragile said. "I don't know a word – a way to say of it, eldbrother. It's after anything I've seen. It's after anything I've tried to see."

  "Who produced it?"

  Fragile tilted his head. "I don't know, eldbrother."

  "It wasn't only Tjeni," Besthand said. "There were Freemen also. And nivmen. But these were from a very far place."

  "Who is Tjeni?"

  Besthand looked at Wander and back at Fragile.

  "Tjeni is a type," Wander said. "Not a who."

  "What is it?"

  "Heartgifts." Besthand tapped the back of his neck. "The heart-cutting shape. Have you never once seen it? Heartgifts. The ones they take."

  Fragile's eyes widened. They stuttered between Wander and the roadpoint.

  "I h-have," he said.

  Besthand folded his hands.

  "Stone is cured in water," Besthand said. "The Ash has lots. It was very hard. Those bodies are beneath our feet."

  He took back his bowls from them and stepped away. "This road is Larunkat."

  -

  The foreigners retired to their own encampment.

  Wander's burned hand snapped to life with fire. She buried it in a pile of wood until it was lit. Fragile fed and watered The Stronghoof as Wander removed her papers, pouches of seeds and fibres, a thick metal rod, and a metal cup from the different sacks on its back.

  She laid out her materials by the fire. The cup she filled with seeds, which she set into the cup and ground with the rod. She laid water over them, mixed it, and seated the cup inside the fire. When it was red-hot, she extracted it, putting smoke to her fingertips. which she deposited further a sprinkling of the fibres from the second pouch. She set it all to the side. Vapor rolled off the surface of the brew.

  As her drug cooled, and Fragile set himself down by her way, Wander took up her papers and began to look between them and the sky, sketching circles around distant points. She made more muttering.

  "No," The Bell said.

  She and Fragile looked up at The Bell's rope, which was deposited in a bundle on the opposite side of the flames. Two of her ends rose up of her it, full of the heat's haze.

  "My say," she continued. "To your ask. ‘Do I like this one'?"

  "There was no ask."

  "The weak thing is here. This face-speaker has his face too. I know you want for it, so why don't I say it? I do not like him. He has your name to speak."

  Wander slid aside her guides.

  "What have you seen in him?" she asked The Bell.

  "He does not adore Am," The Bell said. "He does not adore anyone. Neither Sett nor rulers. Such is a baseless kind, which lets things rot. He has no path toward your friendship."

  Both The Bell's strands switched to Fragile quickly, after this was delivered. His face was twisted. The Bell twisted too, protruding her tangle in his direction, but she said nothing else.

  His gaze clutched toward her before he fully grasped the accuse in her shape. "Eldsister?"

  A moment had passed before she jerked back toward Wander. She raised her leg and tilted her head at The Bell.

  "Each of you must keep stood up," The Bell said. "Your eyes, and your ears, should not shut. These soils we meet, we have met – are strange. They are destroying our paths, the lines we trim. It is a feurkun place, with feurkun happenings."

  Her strands fixed fully on Wander and reached out. "I believe that sticker said it right. The words go inside us. And we are wrapped by them."

  "Sticker?" Fragile asked.

  "You recall your members. You must. If you do not, I-"

  The Bell stopped and shrank back. Fragile looked at Wander. Her brow was loose, but her eyes did not see. The Bell recoiled from them.

  "Then go your way," The Bell spat. She crept beyond the fire. "Keep the good of you, if you can. If you cannot, I will be waiting there. I will do you work, as I have done… when you reach for your strike, even if you should have lost it here, I will show its parts back in."

  She disappeared into the grass.

  "Where is she going?" Fragile asked.

  Wander stuffed her papers back into The Stronghoof's sack. "Nowhere."

  "She seems hurt."

  "Her work has been strange to me for many days. More with De gone. She'll be back."

  She took out a piece of bread, broke it in half, and threw some at Fragile. She gestured at the drink, the top of which no longer steamed.

  As Fragile suffered the debilitating pleasures of the drug, Wander took out the last piece of her blaith, a shard of Hesign-covered metal, out from her belt, and held it to her chest. She laid down on her back and stuffed in the bread. She brushed her finger over the symbols, whose shine and strength were now broken.

  Fragile nibbled on his crust. A warm breeze passed over, and he opened his coldover that it might come in.

  "She spoke about ‘cuts' this morning," he said.

  Wander's head turned to him.

  "What did she mean?" he asked.

  She turned her body on its side. "Some hearts cut their hair," she said. "They throw it down. Laruns do. Their faces too. You've seen."

  He sat up and crossed his legs. "I have never seen you do it."

  "I don't have to."

  "Ih." His eyes widened. "Well…"

  She crooked her head.

  "If it's all the same- why do you- the… ‘hair-speaking'?"

  Wander scratched her scalp. She had already removed her hairpiece.

  "Most women do not take cuts," she said.

  Fragile's brow lowered.

  "The hair. The eyes-" She waved at each feature. "-the face. These come together and make a path."

  She closed her hand into a fist.

  "It leads to smiles and friends. I am here for those. Even though it would not be said that way."

  "Do they take cuts in Shaminkat?" Fragile asked.

  "They don't. But I am a star. I need no cuts; my water breaks it off."

  "Your heartswater?"

  She shook her head. "Another. A shapes-water."

  "Shapes-water…"

  She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her chest. "Most have like. There are a few kinds. Some have yours; it makes the shape, the hair. Others have another."

  "I didn't know."

  Wander shrugged. "Most do not."

  "Which is a Star's?"

  "Neither. There is a third water. The Family makes it."

  "Does it change your shape?"

  She shut her eyes. "It brings a push. Like the first. It brings an absence, too. That is what they said."

  The breeze was cold. Fragile closed up his cloak. "Absence?"

  She paused. "Yes. Of children."

  "Ih… why would they change that?"

  "It may be needed. Something they cannot prevent."

  She opened her eyes and looked at the sky.

  "Children hurt," Wander said. "When they come out. They put in pain. I believe that is why."

  "To keep out pain?"

  "No." She paused. "I can keep it out. They know this. If one kept it out, this hurt, we could discover something. A new power."

  She crossed her arms. "But I was never told. And I did not ask."

  Fragile frowned.

  He moved closer to the fire and laid on his side. "I always wanted a child."

  "Why?"

  One of Fragile's fingers stroked the soil, which had finally begun to melt. "I don't know. I don't like hurt. I am afraid to have my water taken. It's strange. It seems adorable. To be made a body."

  This being said, Wander did not reply for some time. A hand went up to her face and onto her head. Her brow furrowed.

  She crossed her arms again and shook her head. "You'd be a good lawsman."

  A pause took Fragile. When he spoke again, he slurred.

  "Have you ever seen a birth?" he asked.

  "No. Have you?"

  "Once. My birthmen still walked. They brought me in to see the baby. I held it in my hands."

  "Whose was it?"

  "I didn't know. A woman. I believe it stopped her. The hurt. Bata cried."

  "It stops many." She turned her head at him. "How did it feel?"

  "The born?"

  She nodded.

  Fragile bit his lip and shut his eyes. “Soft.”

  The wind grew quiet. He wrapped himself up and fell on his side.

  "Your head makes me smile," he murmured.

  She looked at him again. His mouth hung open, hissing air. She could smell the drug and him wafting off each breath. She rested.

  -

  Rays of morning came through clouds, which were gathering in size and weight.

  As Wander rinsed out her mouth and equipment, Fragile looked around the brush and the other campsites, full of stretching limbs and mouths and teeth crunching on bread. He did not see The Bell.

  They gathered up the animals, and – the fires extinguished, the spirits consumed – the carts of the train tracked back onto the ash and their movement continued. In the distance, columns of smoke rose.

  They led the Stonehoof and the Stronghoof alongside the carriage of Besthand, who did not speak down at them. He slumbered, his tongue flopped out from his mouth and trailing slime. Wander's eyes searched his figure for a blink or the tweak of an ear.

  The road moved down into the base of a grassy flat, where dew marked the tips of the grass, and a very light foundation of white still splattered brief corners of the firm. Its expanse burrowed into the distance. The columns grew larger.

  "It is nice to see paths again," Fragile said. Wander turned to him. "I wish the whole rulersland was one. Then we could go everywhere, and see everything."

  "There are many paths. More are built. You may get your wish."

  "It is nice to see paths again," Fragile said. Wander turned to him. He threw his hands up.

  "I wish the whole riversland was one," he continued. "Then we could go everywhere, and see everything!"

  He lowered his hands and looked at her. Her expression had become fixed on the road ahead.

  "Would it be wrong?" he asked.

  Wander scratched her jaw. Her boots clanked. "You have wide eyes. Like a little one. You do not know what is its use. And I wish you would not."

  "What is its use?"

  "It is like said Besthand. They carry Harmony within their parts."

  Fragile shuddered. "They do?"

  "How else did you see the Laruns move toward the sun?" Wander asked. "They could not otherwise move the knives and carts that cut down Goal or other places. It is how they bring out born in metal, and how they carry back the stabs and their shine to their first places. It is how they carry the stone for their aldirs, and bring them up in a new spot."

  "What if there was no Harmony?" Fragile asked. "No tells. Would it be wrong then?"

  "I don't know. I would just as soon see them all ripped apart. And so I prefer this country."

  "But they are in this country."

  "They are not its making."

  She looked out to The Wild on their side.

  "You said once, ‘it embraces all,'" Wander said. "It has embraced me. If a path would break it, I would not put it in."

  Fragile almost smiled, but caught himself and did not.

  A tapping and a knocking began to sound out from the cart beside them, as Besthand stretched his body. He leaned over and bent down at the foreigners.

  "If you should like to tear them down," he said, "please do not start with this one, partsfighter. Or at least provide a word. I would like to reach my house with it."

  She looked up at him. "I am never sure I will be still."

  He pouted and lay back. "I will have to occupy you then. A Right-Handed mark!- but better this, than to lose one's way."

  Wander paused.

  "Tell me of it," she said. "The Ash."

  "What do you lack?"

  "Its path remains. The Wild has not cut in."

  Besthand sat up and looked down at them. The rolling of the cart lolled his head about, and he steadied it.

  "I don't know what is different," he said. "It does stop in places. By Herdetopp, and there in size. There we will climb some hills that were not always. But those changes were long ago. The paths are well-worn. A section of the Otiseran's fighters walks back and forth along it."

  "Why?" Fragile asked.

  "They search for sneaks, and animals. Such is the only problem out here. We still have a Wild. There are many bright kinds that will walk out from between the trees. And these fight well. The road has no walls. One must get where one is going, or it might seize them. And that is a coin of no parts."

  Wander raised her brow. "Of what weight is this wear?"

  Besthand shrugged. "The quiet parts change. The loud ones don't. It has been looked at. But-"

  He stopped. Wander found that his eyes had become fixed on the horizon. Her head turned and sought it.

  A team of beads was rushing in from the distance. They went closer and became Stonehoofs, trailing blood and harnesses, free of any rider. They rattled and galloped past the carts, and a loud yell was produced by the roadpeople. Besthand reached to the side, took up his horn and blew it, bringing the column to a halt.

  Over the next hill, occluding their view of the hoofs' origin, plumes of smoke rose. On the road ahead was a mess of stone confines, raised up and cracked at the base.

  Besthand stood up on his cart as the roadpeople began to gather. The pilots hopped up on their perches, hoisting their brows and crossing thir arms at the Roadpoint.

  When they had massed in whole, Besthand shouted. "I'd like friends and blades. As many as six, no more than twenty. Everyone else should stay close to the carries."

  "Say it loud, Roadpoint!" one cried.

  "What's happening, Roadpoint?"

  "Why are we stopped?"

  Besthand lifted up his horn again and blew it. They grew quiet.

  He let it down. "I'm sorry," he said. "There is a pack of smoke and fire in a place I cannot see. Its size is improper. And-"

  He held out his hand to the hairy, retreating spirits that clopped away over the road, marked with red.

  "I believe you should stay close to the carts," he said, when they had all turned back. "It will be safe. I will go look. I want for help."

  "Are you our Firstpoint, then?" asked a pilot.

  "No. My hand points roads. I'm going. Perhaps you will also."

  "I'm going."

  One of the partsfighters in the company, a man, spoke up and stepped forward. "The hillfaces know your price, Roadpoint. If they are waiting, you will seem a coin to them."

  Besthand looked at him.

  "Our kontor is going," Besthand said. "I don't want you to be seen. If it is a problem, it has just hurt or destroyed another company. That is our problem."

  The partsfighters muttered.

  Wander watched as Besthand somersaulted off his cart, leaving the roadpeople to whisper among themselves and pass out blades. He retrieved a long, thin blade from the underside of his wagon, and swept a green cloak over his shoulders.

  He turned and found Wander standing before him. Her hat placed her eyes in shadow.

  "Where is the born?" he asked.

  "He's staying."

  "Good." Besthand fit a pair of metal troughs over his wrists. "Did you want to join her? My friend is a smiling kind. He'd be enjoyed."

  "I need a niv."

  Besthand nodded. He reached underneath his carriage and took out a second. She caught it.

  A group was assembled at the front of the train. Looking back at Fragile and the animals, Wander felt another pair of eyes on herself. She turned to the kontor, who was not engaged in chatter as the others were.

  The kontor was a tall man with a dark complexion. His hair was cut short, into a bowl that fell around his ears, and contained at the top by a red oval cap. A Larun langniv was tied to his side. A Larun guard, in the shape of a diamond, was affixed to his right arm. His eyes were bright and blue.

  "Are you from Ourland?" the kontor asked.

  Wander turned toward the partsfighter.

  "Tue," she said.

  The partsfighter reached out his hand. Wander extended her own.

  "My word is Melody," he said. "If you knew my kind, you'd call them Trathbik. What is yours?"

  "They said it Trethbiec."

  Melody blinked.

  "It is so," he said. He had not released his grip.

  Melody and Wander walked at the edge of their company as it advanced on the road. They moved into the point where the smoke rose.

  As its source came into range of their consideration, few of the roadpeople remained standing or still. Only Wander, Melody, and a few partsfighters did not succumb to weeps or some vomiting.

  Crowds past the hill had fallen down in the stone, in long ranks, side-by-side. Wagons trailing them had not been spared the flames. The fire had turned each part of the mass black and ashen, and it stretched out for a distance that consumed much of the open road.

  Wander and Melody walked between the fallen, each of whom was assembled in neat marching lines. Every man was wrapped in the remains of gray fabric or metal, and the pose of each, no matter how chopped and slashed their skin ahd burned, gripped the stone in front of them, with their feet pushed forward.

  In their excavations, an indentation lay in the fields beside the Freemen. Pale, ancient stone, had been covered up by roots and dirt that continued to mix with it a quick pace as the partsfighters sifted belongings and turned over bodies.

  Wander remained at the rear of the group. The sun shined on a yellow tint that was clasped between a Freeman's digits. She knelt down and swept through his ashes.

  "Impossible work," said a partsfighter.

  "A plagueish kind," said another. "Right-handed."

  "Or their own."

  The roadpeople turned to Wander. She threw her discovered piece at Melody. The partsfighter captain held it up by the handle, and found a jug, built of glossy yellow stone.

  "It smells of fire-makers," Wander said. "I count five more."

  Melody put the opening to his nose and sniffed. He handed it to one of their companions and moved back toward Wander.

  "These were still moving," he said. He waved two fingers at their hands. Wander looked down at the curling moves they had last made on the path. "They were not kept in metal, or where is it? They did not even break form as they threw it on."

  Wander rubbed a bit of ash between her fingers and looked at him. Melody took hold of the cap on his head and slapped it onto the ground. He squatted and rubbed his mouth, looking over the mounds.

  "Friends." There was a call from another partsfighter.

  The company, roamed further by the tip of the nivmen, had begun to pick bits and shining parts from the mass of bodies. One of their number held up a shining metal helmet. A group surrounded it with wide eyes.

  Melody and Wander approached the group, which split apart. In plain sight, the remains of a feather were bound to the front of the metal. The parts that were not singed gave out a gray light.

  "A kontor," one of the roadpeople whispered.

  "The nivman?"

  The Freemen! The ones we saw!"

  "They got past?"

  "How?"

  "How did they get past us?"

  Melody took the cover in his hands and squinted at it.

  "I am asking why," he said. "Not how."

  He handed it to Wander and tapped it. "Our paths were opposed."

  More of the roadpeople looked down at the bodies. Their feet were clutched by the disaster's remains. These existed in such volume that they dusted their shins and Wander's boots.

  One of the walkers reached down and brushed it off. It stuck to his skin. A wind came up and blew around a volley of it, tinting the sun black.

  -

  The carts waited for their friends to return.

  Fragile sat in the grass with The Stonehoof, as some others did, massaging their legs, drinking from buckets and bags of water. He scratched the animal's head and fed her seeds, which she licked up from the ground.

  The warm feeling of the Stonehoof went away from him. He bent his head and gasped. Insects chittered and wings flapped silently, without song, bursting the air.

  He reached out a hand and grabbed at the wrecked parts of his thigh, and at his right knee. He rubbed them. His legs were covered with thick, dried leggings, but against the stone, it felt as though he had went into the dirt.

  The Stonehoof watched him lean forward and blinked. He met her gaze.

  "I"m sorry," he said. "I don't…"

  "They're returned!" was the call. "They're all returned!"

  Fragile trembled to his feet and his eyes went back to the horizon. A group of small figures was descending the hill, including one that wore a hat and a very large cloak. He nuzzled The Stonehoof.

  The roadpeople grew closer and, as they walked among the carts, were met by many questions about their pallor and appearance. Wander walked past him, taking off her gloves and a brush, which she seized from The Stronghoof and beat herself with.

  "Did you see something? Fragile asked.

  Besthand's horn blew in the distance. She stopped brushing and poured water over her head. It ran to the ground in a thick grey rush.

  "Yes," she said. "I wish that you would not see it."

  The carts began to move and she took up The Stronghoof's lead. The road carried them back over the hill, and the other members of the company, whose first sight was the black and charred firmament that had begun to seep between the stone, made much retching and hiding of the eyes. Besthand rapped a fist on the wood behind his pilot.

  "Fly us from this spot," he said. "There is a part for it."

  "No part is needed, roadpoint."

  The pilot lashed his stonehoofs, which coughed and trampled over the dust.

  The dead pursued even those who did not take their sight. The smell and the air mixed in to the spokes of their wheels. The light of the morning took up the burnt color of the Freemen and mixed with their eyes and what lay inside. It slashed and bit at them. Fragile stood still in the sunlight, his eyes uncovered, as the carts turned their backs on the spot. Wander came up to him.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I know what you said."

  "A wish is not a tell."

  His eyes shifted from the vision. "Is it something that should not be seen?"

  "I don't know." She paused. "Their like has moved in me."

  He stayed and they saw it for a little while.

  Many of the roadpeople, filled by whispers and muttering, looked back at Fragile and Wander. It was not long before all had tread well past the ashes, and they were almost left behind, that Wander walked back toward the carts, and he followed.

  -

  As they travelled, the sun rose higher. The Stonehoof moved at Fragile's side and did not go away from him. She hung her long face and head over his, and he was short enough that his scalp only grazed the crook of her neck. The Stronghoof, likewise, hugged the side of Wander. She laid her hand on it, and Fragile fed their company from his palm.

  The cart's company became ragged as the day turned. The rolling of the wheels put down on them, and Fragile's feet sank against the soil. He leaned against The Stonehoof. The other roadpeople behaved like it, dragging themselves about. Many began to fall behind, and soon its rear was full of walkers.

  Fragile's hand came up and held his side. His eyes squeezed shut and his mouth opened. Wander turned to him.

  "Is it your chest?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "It is…" He reached beneath the layers of cloth and felt his bare skin. His fingers traced over the throbbing, which had a jagged, slashing shape. They ran over it, pinching and squeezing.

  "I cannot see it," he said.

  There was a clatter and they both turned. One of the men had collapsed, and he was soon surrounded by their friends. The carts kept rolling.

  Wander scooped up the man, a Rootcliff, in her arms. She carried him over to The Stronghoof and slung him onto its back. "Keep walking," she told his friends, who placed their hands on her and whispered.

  As she fixed the Rootcliff in place, Wander turned her head forward and could see another body drop, further along in the company. Besthand's horn rang out.

  They continued. Fragile clung to The Stonehooof, and Wander held a pair of travellers over her shoulders. Litters, lashed together out of wood from the carts, moved others who had fallen. When the litter-bearers began to fall, Besthand's horn blew again.

  With the train curbed, Wander met with Melody and Besthand by his cart. As they talked in the distance, she watched Fragile's condition, and noticed how little he was moving. She could see ice climbing up his arms and toward his heart.

  "...can't keep like this." Her ear began to stand up Melody's voice.

  The kontor wiped his brow, which was thick with sweat. "What is this problem? Is it the wind?"

  "It's not the wind," Wander said.

  He looked at Wander's brow. It was dry. "It does not seem to hurt you."

  "It does," Wander said. "I have been looking at it."

  "What have you seen?" Besthand asked.

  "Cuts where there are none," she replied. "Weight where there is none. The push of a nivman's covering."

  Melody's brow raised. "How could you know that?"

  "I have held them before. They have put a push on me."

  "You know it?"

  Besthand's voice was soft. Wnader looked into his eyes, which were wider than Melody's.

  "I would seat it in the ones we saw before," Wander said. "Before they were burned. Those were covered by a new, smaller cloth. It is better for the warmth."

  They looked out at the others, who were already setting up camp.

  "All of this besides," Melody said, "these look stopped, in this spot."

  Besthand shrugged. "We can wait out the night."

  "We'll be late if we wait another."

  "So, we'll wait one. We can eat and offer, and see in the morning if they are well."

  The kontor scratched his head. "We will need to go whether they are well or not."

  "Then we should hope for it."

  -

  The first scream came before midnight.

  Fragile broke apart throughout the evening. When the other roadpeople began to stand again, he did not. Wander laid him on blankets and and gave him water to drink, but his hand would not lift it to his lips. She stayed away from him, keeping her heat in a separate place, and watched him from over the hearth.

  The shout brought up their heads, and a yelp from Fragile. "Outness!" they could hear. "Outness!"

  It was accompanied by more cries and muttering. Wander retrieved her blade and got up.

  "W-Wander…" Fragile said. He gulped. "Where…"

  "I'll be back," she told him. "Don't talk. Shut your eyes." He did.

  She found a group around one of the roadpeople, gathered under a covering between poles. A man was splayed out on the ground and embraced by the others.

  "What is the hurt?" one asked.

  "What is the hurt, Movement? What do you see?"

  Movement was a Rootcliff man with cheeks painted black. He babbled. "A woman," he said. "A woman. She is calling me a name. A Larun."

  "Who is calling you?" Wander asked.

  Movement and her friends looked up at her.

  "She has said to keep from you, partsfighter," Movement said. "She says that you have thrown others from the path."

  "If we could see the path," Wander said, "we could know if she is right."

  Fragile's eyes bulged. The sound of rushing water rumbled through his ears. His hands rose off the ground and brushed his brow, which was dried of sweat.

  He put himself on his knees and looked around.

  The Stonehoof perked up, her eyes turning open from where she nestled against The Stronghoof.

  "Please," he whispered to her.

  She stood and he leaned on her. They walked over to the rushing, where it continued and turned into a mumble of waves. It was by the edge of their company's area. There, a group of Goals looked out into the dark, their faces soaked in light, begging for the partsfighters.

  "What do you see?" Fragile asked.

  One of the women turned back to him and exclaimed, "Come and look."

  He went forward. Some more of the Goals came around, dragging the partsfighters with them. The hillfaces swarmed them with their bodies and their chatter. The partsfighters' knives and armor jangled.

  "I cannot hear you," one said. "Eldmen, we cannot hear you."

  They pointed out to the Wild, throwing around their hands.

  "He says tippers, eldbrother." The partsfighter turned to Fragile.

  "Tippers and fires," he continued. "Tippers and fires."

  The partsfighter stepped forward and squinted. In the distance there was light.