Have sex. The carriage rattled the young girl, and all the men around her.

  She sat on the floor, which was hard and moist, and had given her splinters. She was squeezed between two Liton men, who smelled of sweat and cooked meat. Once, when she had arrived, their eyes switched at her; now, they were still, and closed now and again, sometimes leaning onto her when they lost consciousness. One did so now.

  The Liton snored in her ear, and she looked around at the other men in the cart. The carriage wall was covered end-to-end with men and their eyes. Lashes crept over the shoulders of some. Others had burns on the chests and faces. A Rootcliff missed three fingers on his right hand; the scars atop the nubs were jagged and scraping. The open mouth of a Larun boy lacked a tongue. Another bit together their teeth and the young girl could make out crooked growths and black holes in them. The hands of each were covered with years of labor. The face of each was covered with years of sun.

  They saw her and the black on her hand. One of them began to speak.

  "Who are you?" he asked in Sprak.

  "…"

  "What is your name?" asked another.

  "…"

  "Are you hurt?"

  "…"

  "Little Otiseran," a young man said. He leaned forward, pushed his palm of three fingers in her direction, and made a big shrug. He tapped his head with the stump of his right arm. "Why did they put you here?" He raised up his arms by his shoulders, pointed at her, and shook his head. "This is not your spot."

  "…"

  "She is feurkun," said a silver-haired man. The men turned to him. "Idiots."

  "Feurkun," a wrinkled Moat said. "What does that mean?"

  "They say it like ‘woman'. That is what I've heard. And that is what she is."

  "Woman is not all of it," a Shamar said.

  "Woman is not near all of it," a Remer said.

  The other Tjeni badgered the explainer, who held up his hands against them.

  "She doesn't have the words," said the silver-haired man. "Their ways. The rain-blown ones. It's what they say for it."

  "Look at her shade."

  "That's a nightish shade."

  "May be Franer. Trethbiek?"

  "May be."

  "…"

  "The two of you," the young man said. He pointed to the Litons at her side. "Come here. Give her her place."

  "There is no place where you are."

  "So lay on me."

  "And me."

  The Litons sighed. They squatted and, waddling over, steadied themselves as the cart shook, and fell into the laps of men on the far side of the cart. The girl was alone.

  Her eyes ran across the wall of men looking at her, unseeing.

  The Tjeni looked at one another, and back at her.

  -

  Their carriage travelled for a day. Its wheels ground through the salty patches of the Five Fires Firm, dripping chunks of the soil as its charges dragged it South.

  Their train passed through a place with short slanted roofs and narrow, shrouded faces, peeking in at them from the gaps in the boards of their keep. It travelled further, and the carriage stopped. Its door opened. The men looked at the young girl.

  "Come on." A voice at the door struck it twice. Tan dust-clouds wept from the ceiling. "Alight. We are home. Here is home, tithefolk."

  The men crouched up and began to file out. The metal around their limbs clanked as they hopped into the dirt. Near the end of their departure, one of them looked at the young girl and reached down at her. She did not take his hand or address him.

  A club struck the cart, and more dust fell. He took his hand back and exited through the door.

  She had a moment of silence. A shadow came to the door.

  "You too," it said. "Boy. Get out, boy."

  They dragged her out. They threw her down, letting her get a taste of the soil. It tasted of worms and fumes and oil.

  The nivmen placed them in a line. A man with paper, with a badge, and with a heavy fur coat went down the line, writing as they said.

  He came to her, and looked down. He turned to his escort.

  "What is this one doing here?" he asked the nivman.

  "She was taken as a man."

  "A man she is not. Are you, Trathbik?"

  The young girl did not answer.

  "Speak, Trathbik," the writer said. "Speak when men speak on you."

  The young girl did not speak.

  The nivman's club lashed across her cheek. Her head snapped to the side, and her posture kept. She returned her neck to its place. Blood fell from a bruise that scratched rotten blue fruit across her face.

  "This one was written as a Freehouse," his friend said to him. "How can it be so, when she has no words?"

  "It has her for bending, too," the writer said. "You'll bend twice, Trathbik. In fields, and as fields."

  Her shackles were loosed, and unbit her arms and ankles, and fell into the turquoise mud.

  "Do you see it?" he asked her. "The firm?"

  She looked forward.

  "This is it," he said. "Harmony. The knowing place. The best one in the world."

  -

  The young girl was given over to a old man. He was tall, and gentle.

  When the young girl and the other tithefolk had been brought to their bedplace, a long wooden shack between the keep and the fields, she watched him speak to the writer and come back over to her. He brought her to a shed, where there were crescent hacks, and baskets, with folds of green fabric pouring out of a tube on one side. He tied one of them onto her, and another to himself. He took a hack, and handed her one, and brought her out, into the place where hundreds of ashy-browed, thin-figured men chopped at miles of green shoots with white, fuzzy bases.

  The old man pressed a hand to her eye. He took hold of a plant. The spikes along its base bit into him. He struck its base three times with great ferocity, which saw his muscles bulge. He pulled out the whole, from the roots, and stuck it in to the basket.

  She struck a plant and worked, and the day ended. Each day she woke up, and he tied on her basket, and then they hacked.

  The days passed and she swung her blade. The old man's eyes widened as her strike blew through their harvest with four swings, to two, to one, cutting and stuffing them into her basket without taking breath. Her basket overflowed.

  Soon, she heard shouting. A nivman threw the old man down where he stood. She turned her head and gripped her weapon.

  "What are you doing?!" the nivman asked. "Are you so weak? That feurkun girl has cut three-times you count, in one-third your time! She cannot even speak, thrustless. Is you laziness liked by the Otiser? Is your laziness liked by your producers? Is your laziness fitting Sett? What do you see?"

  The young girl watched as the nivman took his club to the old man. The old man wept blood and tears.

  She heard and felt nothing as her body moved, digging her thumb into his trachea. She had hands, and she felt the metal in them swing and crack through something.

  The hands fell down again. She felt them become wet, as they had when they had gone in water, before it was time to eat. Her hands were pulled away from the rock and her face was stuffed into the dirt.

  -

  The young girl and the old man were placed in chains. Their hands and feet were bound and they were wrapped around heavy wooden columns.

  Nivmen poured out from the keep and lashed everyone in the fields into a crouching and running, back into their huts and bedplaces. The flag of Larunkat flapped in the wind, blustered by gray clouds that brought in shadow and cold drops, which dashed lightly against her face and forehead.

  The gilded Larun chief walked, arms flopping and boots stomping, out from the keep too. The body of the Larun was brought before him, and two women who stood next to him.

  Coster looked at the nivman's wounds. He placed his finger in the Larun's split skull, tracing the blade of the cut, and rubbed it.

  He looked at the young girl. He whipped his finger clean in the wind and stepped over to her.

  "There is the strength in you," he said. His fingers wrapped around her head and he attempted to move it toward his, but they failed.

  He frowned. "But not enough."

  He pointed to the nivmen standing by. "Free her." They did.

  Coster withdrew a short niv from his belt and drove it up against her throat, halfway cutting it and drawing blood.

  He pushed her with the knife's point over to the old man.

  "This day," Coster said. "We will see how strong is your speaking. If it is great enough that you can bring it out. Otherwise, for your tenderness, I will finish this one. And that will be the end of it. We will go back into the cutting and the new harvest."

  He put his knife's point to the old man's chest. "Why did you cut my boy?"

  She did not answer.

  He put the knife into the old man's chest. He cried out and looked down at her. Tears formed in his eyes. Coster did not watch the wriggling, but kept his eyes fixed on the young girl. She did not speak.

  After a second thrust, the old man did not remain standing, and the metal tore from him as he collapsed onto his knees.

  "He hurts me," Coster said. "I am old. I could fall, if I bent that low."

  He held the old man's neck and put the knife to his brain.

  "Speak!" he hissed and screamed the metal dug razor into the old man's head.

  The young girl looked at Coster. He smacked his lips. When she remained silent, he raised his hand. Rain pat the blade and slid down its edge.

  "I."

  Coster paused.

  "I," she said. "Want. To."

  Coster paused again.

  The knife dropped into place. A crack sounded in the old man's ear and he knew darkness. His body fell, kept by the chains. His head sank forward.

  Coster's had an open-mouth smile. He lunged forward and smacked her with the palm of his hand. Whap, whap! She did not move and looked again at the body of the boy.

  Coster bent down low and held her cheeks with his hand. His thumb brushed her cheek with blood and he looked into her eyes.

  "I decide what you want," he said. "And I decide what is first. That is ‘First Point'. Sett is in me. The hand of everything. Out of you. Feurkun."

  He rubbed her skin, released her and stood up.

  "Wash her," he told the nivmen. "Bring her inside."

  He went back into the keep.

  "We'll see what else she can cut."

  Once upon a time…

  Near Sidedark Eye.

  Look up Operation Condor.

  The Pit sat before them.

  Wander stood, analyzing its form. Its shape was that of a sheath. It was colored a gentle tan, the color of Laruns' flesh, bleeding out into brown and black near the edges as the Goalish grass reached for it.

  Fragile quivered on his knees, gripping them as he leaned down toward it.

  "Please do not shake, gentle," Fragile said. "I cannot hurt you."

  The Pit's form shifted. Its material, which was halfway between the thin fibre of a leaf, and a hard layer of air, folded in and out of itself, expanding into a flap when it emerged as it did to Fragile's approach.

  "I promise that I will not always shake as such, Firstpoint Fragile," The Pit whispered. "But I have been hurt and thrown by- by many, many hurting things, in this place of ours. It is so hungry, and I have been cut, with such…"

  It shrivelled up, its body changing color, from tan, to black, to red. "Such burns! Such dark and smoking burns!"

  The fire in Wander's hand spurred to life. The Pit shook and swirled away from it, behind a bush. "Do not hurt me!" he cried. "Please! I have said what I am!"

  Fragile looked at her. When she looked down at him she found a mixture of fear and anger, and feeling stirred in her chest.

  She quashed the flames and looked then at the creature.

  "Whatever you have said," she said. "There is nothing for you here, disorder. Go and fall."

  The roadpeople, gathering, wrapped around the scene. Besthand picked through the crowd and found Wander and Fragile.

  "What is it?" he asked. "Is it the beast?" He looked toward The Pit. "What is that?"

  "I don't know," Wander replied.

  Fragile tiptoed toward The Pit in flight. He knelt down.

  "I am not a Firstpoint," Fragile said. "We are not Firstpoints. I do not help your ruler, He. I do not help any rulers. There was once a day, but the day is over. Can you go home, where you will be safer?"

  The Pit crept out.

  "I am commanded," The Pit said. "I cannot return home, and I do not know the way. Please, Firstpoint Fragile. I have heard of all your Firstpoint's works. I am now given to help you help her, in all the ways she is capable, of stopping up men and beasts and old, hurting ways."

  Fragile held his knees.

  "I will tell her," he said.

  The Pit crept back to his spot as Fragile moved back over to Wander and to Melody, the tall, bearded partsfighter, who had come out of his seclusion in the front. Wander's arms were crossed, and she had narrowed her gaze.

  He looked up at her. "Your ear is very strong. I believe it has taken everything."

  "It has taken everything."

  He nodded.

  "What is it, Goal?" Melody asked. "What does it say?"

  "It wants to help, and it cannot go back where it is from," Fragile said. "It likes Wander."

  "It knows of me," she said.

  Fragile pinched his hands behind his back. She looked at him.

  "You want to keep it," she said.

  "It seems hurt. It does not seem like it can do any harm."

  Wander frowned.

  "We have just finished vanquishing one beast," she said. "And you wish to bring in another."

  Fragile furrowed his brow. "I do not want anyone else to be hurt. If you want to leave it here, you know more than me."

  Wander paused. She looked at the cowering, shrivelled gap, peeking out from the bushes.

  "It does not seem a strong thing," Melody said. He looked at Wander. "You struck down our cages quickly. This cannot have a harder swing than our hunter."

  "It is a beast. So it is not what it seems."

  "Few things are," Besthand said.

  Wander looked at Fragile. He spoke agreeably, but she got the impression that he would never forgive her if she hurt it.

  Cante Waste. Towards an Indigenous Egoism. I don't even like Stirner but that one is cool.

  She lit the fire in her hand moved over to the creature. She seized it by the tail and stretched it out as it shrieked. She burned it and the Bell reached out her jaws as it shrieked louder and began to flicker.

  "Stop!" she heard the scream. "Stop!"

  A hand touched her shoulder and whirled her around.

  "Star!" Melody screamed. "Stop! For the sake of the Goal! For the sake of the Goal!"

  She looked at Fragile. He was writhing on the ground, filled with fire. His body was being crushed into a ball.

  She released the creature. The roadpeople beat out the flames.

  "I'm sorry," The Pit wept. "I'm sorry."

  Fragile shook. He looked at Wander standing over him.

  Pit leapt from Wander's grip and swirled around his shoulders, cloaking him in mantle. The white of Fragile's coldover was obscured by a yellow robe. He and Wander looked at each other. Wander looked into his eyes and found them frightened.

  She yanked off the robe from Fragile's shoulders and bound it to the stronghoof with a long rope. Besthand called out to the roadpeople then.

  "That's all," he said. "Keep to your places. The problem is over. The firmpoint's work is done."

  The roadpeople muttered to each other as they dispersed. Wander looked at Besthand as Melody retreated to the front of the train, and Fragile carried Pit back to the animals.

  -

  Pit slipped free of Wander's bindings and again wrapped himself around Fragile's shoulders. The night had near passed, and few were capable of sleeping in wake of the excitement, so Besthand mounted his cart and blew his horn.

  The partsfighters began to chop and hack a way for the train out of the Wild, back toward the Ash Road. Wander and Fragile stood near the fore of it, where Wander hacked at trees with a cut, and tore them up by the roots. The Pit reached out, and a glimmer that could not be seen slipped into Fragile's neck.

  The Pit's sheath turned towards Fragile and called. The way obeys, Firstpoint.

  Fragile blinked. He found that there were many trees torn up in front of him.

  "How did you accomplish this?" Fragile asked.

  "What?" Wander asked. She was behind him.

  He turned. "I was not…"

  He realized Wander's flame had kindled in her hand. She looked down at him, impassive. The partsfighters likewise held their weapons.

  Fragile held his head.

  Melody approached him. "Goal," he said. "By what means did you come to move so quickly? And with such anger?"

  "I do not feel to have moved."

  Seeing his expression, and as the partsfighters otherwise knelt down to inspect him and carry away the cut and set part of the forest, Wander turned her mind to The Bell.

  You can destroy such things as this, she said.

  The Bell curled tight around her waist. I have.

  Await my say. When it is given, do it quickly. I will take the first chance we have.

  The Bell curled tighter.

  The carts fumbled through the trees. And shouts went up as the fore caught sight of the Ash Road, its gray cascade falling out against the horizon. An old mother sighed and held her chest, as she found it peel in heavy gray strands across the green-red light of the West. They passed in sight of many travellers and carts, fires and round tents gathering in mass, producing heaps of smoke and shadow.

  Wander turned her attention from The Bell to Fragile. He stood beside her.

  "Please do not leave me alone," he said.

  Her fingers flexed.

  -

  The peak of a two-faced building showed in over the horizon.

  It was inverse, expanding near the top, hollow near the base, and thrusting down into the complex below. Fragile and the roadpeople gasped as its stature became apparent.

  "The Sidedark Eye," Besthand said.

  "I've never seen such," Wander replied.

  "Never?" Melody spit.

  "I have only visited the light."

  "That follows. The Eyes of Sidelight are now all gone."

  "Gone?" Fragile asked.

  Melody nodded. "Their Otiser dismissed them. They are putrid. And smell of Gird."

  Fragile tilted his head. He hugged his arms.

  "There will be men," Besthand told Wander, as the spire grew near. Wander looked up at him, atop his cart, where he fumbled through a box.

  "Get away your hair," he said. "Or change your robe with the river son's. They are searching for a blade with two canes. Do not let them see what remains of yours."

  Wander removed her singed, ashy black shoulderskin and held it in her arms. Its ends were wispy and had been made torn and ragged, by a cane and fire. She stuffed it into a bag on the stronghoof. The absence of her thick covering showed in the straits and protrusions of her upper body; her hesigns glowed.

  Fragile looked at it. His eyes widened, and his brow crinkled. After a moment he returned his gaze to the Eye. He tightened his grip on his arms, and looked at his stomach.

  She took out a second coat, which scratched the skin, and ran down her wrists and up to her collar. She slid into it, latching shut two knots at the breast.

  "That paper may have inked our hoof," Wander said to Besthand, handing her hat and gloves to Fragile. Besthand's eyes ran it over. "It hasn't," he said, tucking it away. "It has your face. And speaks of him."

  "His garment?"

  "Yes."

  Fragile removed Pit, and his coldover. Wander stuffed it in the stronghoof's bags. As soon as it was free, Pit wrapped himself around Fragile again. Besthand raised his eyebrow.

  "Please let go of me," Fragile said.

  The Pit did so slowly, and Fragile held him in his hand. He shivered; the upover that once kept him warm was completely open, its skin full of all their disasters.

  "I'll find you something," Wander said. Her eyes ran over his long, smooth torso. "I don't have anything more.

  The Roadpoint called. "It is not needed, Dry Man."

  Besthand threw an over down at Fragile. It wrapped around his head and face. Fragile pulled it off, and found it light and green. Its color shifted in the light.

  "Cover yourself, river-son," he said. "That's tough. It should not break as soon."

  Fragile hugged it to his chest and blinked. "Ih – it is so warm," he said. "Are you sure, eldbrother?"

  Besthand clucked his tongue and turned away.

  -

  The train rumbled towards the Eye's barricades. Patches of empty land sat in each direction around the Eye. Patches of weeds and bushes sat there, their heads swept free by the action of a blade. Wander found a splatter of dry blood on the wind, contained to a part of the perimeter very close to the wall and door, where there was also the scent of fire and the Goals' grain liquor.

  Past the heavy doors, they could hear laughing and shouting. Atop the wall were Larun nivmen, gazing down at Besthand's train. These were accompanied by a tall Goalish fighter, wearing chains around his wrists.

  "Wander," Fragile whispered. She raised her head.

  He asked, "Is that a Freeman?"

  She squinted. "Doesn't look like it."

  The chained fighter placed his hands on the wall and called down to Besthand. "What are your carries?"

  "Pieces for the men in Herdetopp, Goodpoint," Besthand said. "A man should have been sent for our coming."

  "You're late. This train is managed by a Larun roadpoint."

  "We met with plague on the road. That old point is injured. Nothing could be done about it. A fall while climbing. I am Besthand. Roadpoint, now."

  The fighter put his eye over the train. His gaze fixed on Wander and Fragile.

  "Wait," he said, and he went away from the gate.

  The sun dropped in the sky as they did so. Other carts and carriages gathered up behind their own.

  After the stars had begun to show, the doors opened. Besthand blew his horn and his driver lashed his cart's hoofs. The doors shut behind them once the last in their series passed through, and the fighter remounted the wall, addressing the next applicant.

  They were met by crowds of Laruns. There was the sloshing of drink. All- nivmen, Larun men and women in thin, rough brysts, and children- had smiles on their faces, brought out by torchlight. The roadpeople gaped at the party and their carts moved forward, ceasing beside the stalls, where Besthand hopped off his perch and approached the foreigners. Melody the partsfighter went by his side.

  "We'll be here for a while," Besthand said. "You'll have time to supply, and recoup your strengh." He nodded at Fragile. "Determine this one's new problem."

  "Once you depart, we'll not be coming with you."

  Fragile looked up at Wander. "We won't?"

  Besthand's brow rose as well, and he tilted his head.

  Wander said, "Your group sees too much. If we find another group, it will be smaller. Where less can fall, and where we are less seen or spoken of."

  "Leaving will not keep these from speaking, Star."

  "That helps my aim, and my Family."

  Besthand frowned.

  "I'll accompany you," Melody said. "As long as you're here."

  Besthand turned to the kontor. "You?"

  Melody nodded. "If she will it, I wish to know my fellow for a time. My sight will conceal them from the Laruns' own, in this wounding place."

  Wander looked down at him. "There is no duty I expect."

  "And I heed none. But will you meet my friendship, for a while?"

  He waited. Wander looked to Fragile.

  The Sixbraid jumped up and wrapped his arms around his neck. The partsfighter's eyes widened and he looked at Wander.

  The roadpoint put up his hand to his mouth. He too looked to Wander.

  "Don't take him away," he said. "We still need him."

  "I never know how I will move."

  Melody had a black, muscled hoof, which he shifted out from his place beside the partsfighters' carts and was strapped with his bags. It had yellow eyes that shined, and a heavy mane the same color as its skin.

  He lead it over to Wander and Fragile, furnished with his equipment. Melody's right eye stole Fragile's patron: the stone-hoofed, blood-red charge that stalked behind him, watching the new animal with narrowed eyes.

  "Is she friendly?" Melody asked.

  Fragile looked up at The Stonehoof, who looked down at him. He reached up his hand and rubbed her nose. She blinked.

  "Not always," Fragile said. "She has struck many bodies."

  Melody's hoof moved over to the one hind Fragile, sniffing her. He knocked his head with her own.

  Melody crossed his arms and Fragile smiled.

  -

  "I am going into Herdetopp," said Melquiades.

  The foreigners sat around a circular, green-stone table, their heads covered by a tall, triangular tenting, drinking a sweet black juice. Outside, clumps of cattle, which were heavy and dark and unlike the ones tended by the Goals, groaned and snorted. They chomped at troughs established within a pen of the Eye, full of berries and moisting dew. An old man refilled the troughs from buckets. In the distance, the Laruns still flung their gold and silver tents around the huge thrust and the pit beneath it.

  The woman at the head of their table, Melquiades, was built stout, and a heavy wooden cane laid across her knees. She had dark skin and silver hair. She addressed Wander as her hoofs hummed, pouring foaming, green-golden grain into new cups that they alone drank from.

  "But we don't have carriages," she continued. "Me or my pair. You'd have to walk."

  "We walk."

  "How much can you give me?" Melquiades asked.

  "Not much," Wander said.

  "I have parts," Melody said. He removed a heavy pouch from his waist. It spilled with gold coins, nuggets of it, and lumps of stone with gold flecks.

  Wander raised her eyebrow at it.

  "I wanted to make good on the beast's offering," Melody said, pushing it over to Melquiades. "Make it good for something."

  "There are rules that move against it."

  Melody frowned. He tugged the gold back.

  "That is enough," Melquiades said. "More than enough. A very good amount."

  Wander took her hand and pushed the sack back over.

  Play Starsector. "There are many rules," she said. "And many useless ones."

  Melquiades took the pouch and put it in to her sack. She saw Fragile looking at the tremendous gathering in the distance, the streams of leather-bound Goals and Laruns wandering around it, and the heights of its keep.

  "You've never seen such, have you Goal?" asked Melquiades.

  Fragile turned toward her. He pointed toward the crowds. "Many why?" he asked in Sprak.

  Melquiades shifted to the Wild's pidgin. "The outmen come out here when cold drops from the dark. It collects, from all their hands in The Wild. They make words, put men in lines, cut them into stone. They form their friends here, and give gifts."

  Wander looked over at the Eye itself. Near the center, where the structure gave way to a large gap, a cage was suspended from a pole.

  "What's in the cage?" she asked.

  Melquiades drank. "A plague. An unusual piece. It has their ear, their tells. He can speak."

  "They call it plague? The Laruns?"

  Melquiades nodded.

  "Then we know where to keep from," Melody said.

  Wander tapped her cup.

  "Are you sure?" Melquiades asked. She raised her brow. "The plague is strange. But it's a good shake. Many smiles. Much drink. The Laruns do not ever shake themselves so hard. We go each turn."

  Wander replied, "We're not looking for a crowd."

  "Wander," Fragile said. Wander looked at him.

  He got up and whispered in her ear. "Maybe… for a little while?"

  "Why?"

  He twiddled his thumbs and whispered again. "They have songs. Our face is very changed. You have a way – nobody will see you, if you do not want. And they will certainly have much food. Won't they?"

  She looked at him. He blinked back at her.

  Wander turned to Melody. "Want to come?"

  Melody's thick arms were crossed. He shrugged.

  -

  They approached the Eye.

  They passed through the rows of partiers. The complex jutted up into the sky. Ring columns thrust into the soil beneath it. In the dark, its texture was inky black, pasting its shape over the mass of stars, but as they approached and found it illuminated, Fragile saw the same red rock that Goals cut out from the mines of Eighty.

  The columns wrapped around a bowl at its center, which the structure dug into, creating foundationed departments in the center and the periphery. Petalling pads flowed out from a pinch in the middle, outward.

  They approached the middle. Pit began to writhe and and cling to Fragile, whispering and crying. Fragile held him still.

  "Goal," Melody said. He moved closer to Fragile so that his bulk blocked him in part from the crowd. "What's wrong with it?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

  "It's me!" The Pit whispered. "It's me! It's me!"

  Fragile caressed him. "What do you mean?"

  "The beast," Melody said. "It calls itself Pit."

  "Yes, eldbrother."

  Melody nodded forward. "Then look."

  They emerged from they crowd, and fully entrenched themselves in the Eye's beneath.

  The bowl spread out before them, containing thousands of seated heads. The plague's cage drifted in the wind above the canyon, from the pole stretched across the bottom of the tower.

  Closer to the center of the hall, rows of inkists, nivmen, and men in thick cloaks of smooth liq, pins fit to their chest, and gold and silver bands fixing their features were partitioned in a section of their own group by walls and doors. They whispered to each other with elbows leaned over the side, looking in to the pit.

  The pit too was round. Its floor was a canvas of white dust, which kicked into the air and smacked those inside. These were an arrangement of men, animals with teeth and claws and thick fur, and a woman.

  The contender's torso, arms, and face had been splashed with the chalky medius. Red mixed and painted over it, on her hands and chest. Fragile caught her face, caged in delight, as her knee threw out the air from a Larun fighter. The sole of her foot cast him into a wall, and she exclaimed.

  They went closer. Her knee smashed a man's head, and her heel cut down a boy.

  "She has hesigns," The Bell said.

  "The words!" The Pit said. "The words of Azad!"

  "Another Blade," Melody said. "Another you?"

  He turned to Wander, who watched the contender move.

  "Not me," she said. "Not my like."

  "Then who is she?"

  Fragile looked at her. His mouth opened.

  "She's Virtuous!" he cried.

  Virtuous the Wandering Star cut her body from the path of a Larun fighter's hand. It moved around her, and she trounced him, spitting a grunt from his mouth and clouding him in dust. With speed she thrust her foot. Her spine twist and leapt. The swings of his friends and their snarling did not hit her.

  The crowd gave out a low, whispering chatter. The most noise came from the mass of Laruns in rough brysts, hoisted far away from vision of the fight in the theatre's tallest and most distant seats. There was no cheering from these cohorts. In the front, the gilded Laruns, draped with silver scarves and tidy gray robes, watched with their arms crossed, pointing into the ring, and whispering to other men.

  Some of their necks craned upward. Wander looked there too.

  The cage still swung at the center of the Eye. Its bars were thin and lumpen. They contained a shifting figure. Wander discerned flapping. She found claws clinging to the bars, and not hands. A long-toothed snout ran through them and flowing hair maned his throat. The torches gave out colors of green, and spots of white. Its face pointed directly at the flight of Virtuous and her strikes.

  Virtuous turned, and rose into the air. Her foot met a cheek, knocking off its man and tumbling him into the wall. He stopped there and rattled. There was a gasp from the outer cohorts.

  There was a second spin in her, and Virtuous thrust herself into a stride. She smiled and her eyes flashed at the high crowd. They laughed. The pit was empty.

  A gutty horn lowed, ripping out waves of air from the top of the Eye. Doors to the rear of the pit opened, and Tjeni went inside. They dragged away her victims.

  -

  Virtuous retired to an enclosed shade on the side of the pit, where she was attended to by men in thin, bagging legs, dyed red. Wander watched as her blood-stained, sign-written foe was pulled from view. As she did so, the plague's cage was pulled back along its suspension, hoist by teams of men pulling on winch. It retreated at a steady paced towards a flowing, rectangular toproom wedged in to the largest column supporting the Eye. It was dragged into the shadows there, and its doors thud shut.

  Fragile looked at Wander.

  "Go back to the camp," she said.

  Melody looked at her. "What?"

  "You can stay," she said to him. "If you want."

  "You're going to help her?" Fragile asked.

  Melody's mouth opened.

  "I'm going to see about her tongue."

  "Her tongue?" Fragile's eyes widened.

  "It's my Family's aim. You know the way. Go back to Melquiades."

  He squeezed his hand. She continued to look at him.

  "Her tongue?" he asked again.

  "Go back to the camp."

  "Firmpoint," Melody said. She turned to him.

  He pushed his hand in the direction of the pit. "Who is she?"

  "An enemy." "A kind friend."

  She looked at Fragile. Fragile looked at her.

  "She helped us," Fragile said. "I believed she had."

  "Go back to the camp."

  She started to descend the bowl. She tugged on The Bell, wrapped around her waist, and began to mutter.

  Fragile started a retreat into the crowd. Melody grabbed his arm and yanked him back. He followed Wander.

  The foreigners wandered down to the stalls of the pit. Inkists crowded around the cell of Virtuous, peeking inside, scribbling what they could of the interior. They were restrained by a box of nivmen, which stood against them all.

  Wander forced her way past the inkists. The nivman at the center addressed her.

  "Who are you?" he asked. "This place is for watchers, and the New Kontor's captive. Where is your ink?"

  "We're friends of the fighter."

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  She heard Melody's voice thunder out behind her. He stepped forward.

  The nivman looked at him.

  "The captive doesn't have friends," he said.

  "Let us through!" Fragile's voice cried. His eyes were white. "I command it! Let us through!"

  Melody clamped a hand over Fragile and stepped away.

  "Who is that?" the nivman asked.

  "A friend of the captive. He hasn't seen her in many turns."

  The white in his pupils retreated and Fragile gasped. Wander watched Fragile. He looked up at her gaze and turned away.

  "You can't come in," the nivman said. "Get back."

  "You'll find Grown tonight," she said.

  The Larun looked at her. He crinkled his nose. "What?"

  She turned back to him. "He's arriving, in a gathering. His friends have been hurt badly, and he is afraid. He still breathes. You'll find him at the Sidedark wall, soon. He will need you then."

  He stepped forward, and looked up at Wander.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

  He turned and pointed at his lieutenants. "Get out of the way."

  The gaze of the nivmen, pressed against the crowds, turned to their kontor. "Firstpoint?"

  He stepped to the side. "These are meiam. Men of water. They are here for her hurt. Get out of the way."

  The nivmen looked at each other. They made a gap in their line.

  Wander passed through. Melody carried Fragile through and followed her.

  -

  Remember to stay hydrated!!!

  Virtuous drank, holding a jug of water in one hand, and a skin in the other. She switched between each as her men rubbed rags over her, their color bringing loose and drinking the white and red of the pit, as Fragile, Wander and Melody entered her circle.

  Virtuous looked up at Wander. Her head turned.

  "Hill-measure," she said.

  She looked at Fragile. "And the boy."

  Fragile stepped forward, holding his hands to his chest. "Eldsister."

  She ran over the lines of his face. "Why so worried, little Camp?" She drank from her skin. "My fight is not for you. I have many smiles for our rejoin."

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Virtuous squeezed the cheek of one of her attendants and pressed them out. She stood up and placed her hands on her hips.

  She looked at Melody. "Who are you?"

  "A stranger."

  She looked back at Wander. "Young girl," she said. "Is it me you're looking for?"

  "For now," Wander replied. "But soon, you and I will be gone."

  "Why is that?"

  "For my work," she said. "And my work's aim. What mistake put you in here?"

  Virtuous cast a hand at her attendants, who stood quietly in the corner.

  "I receive great quantities of meat and grain for my performance," she said. ‘There are men available for my relief. What mistake do you see in this place?"

  Wander's fist closed.

  "You are here by choice, eldwoman?" Fragile questsaid.

  "I am where I am, soft one," she said. She drank. "That is my own course."

  She set the skin aside.

  "But such wheres do diminish," she said. "Especially if one is kept. It is a shapely day you picked to find your way here."

  Wander looked at her.

  Virtuous sat back on her cushion. She laid one leg over another and sucked on a sticky, hard gray nodule, on the end of a thin gold stick. "The Eye is host to a great many of my kind," she said. "More tjeni. There are many of those and not me. So they do not enjoy such delicious parts."

  "Do you mean to help them?" Fragile asked.

  "Do not doubt me. The trouble I have faced is the plague in support of this place."

  "The cage-thing?" Melody asked.

  Virtuous nodded. "You have not been here long. So you have not seen the young girl fight. So you have seen nothing like him. He is heavy, and old. His thirst matches ours."

  "We have never known the Laruns would take Lodge from plague," Fragile said.

  "Their work is plague," Wander replied. "It serves their course."

  "We have only seen men help build their Harmony. And we have seen plague attack them…" Fragile rubbed his hands. "We… we have spoken of the problems with this."

  "We have many problems. Some newer than others."

  Fragile flushed. "This is a new thing for us both. Or have you seen something shine so before it?"

  Melody watched their chatter. Virtuous sucked her candy.

  "The shine is not important," Wander said. "I have said that."

  "The shine was on m-me. Which is it? Will you tell me?"

  "You are a Goal. Goals do not serve their aim."

  "I have seen Goals work as Laruns. Ones like Petal, and another, who destroyed my birthman."

  "Those are small. They are not important."

  Fragile's face was red. As he was about to reply, the noise and gaze of Virtuous broke on to him, and his head snapped toward her.

  "Soft one," she said. "Leave it alone. She is young. She knows nothing."

  "Wander knows many things, eldwoman," he said. "More than me."

  "Then why argue with her?"

  Fragile quivered. He looked at Wander, who was not looking at him. Her arms were crossed.

  He folded his hands and stepped back.

  "Go now," Virtuous said. She spit out her candy and set it aside. "I am tired. I have fought all day. I will thrust apart my friends and rest. Then, we will speak later, of more interesting things."

  "How will we speak again?" Melody asked. "You are kept in, woman."

  Virtuous scrunched her brow up at him.

  "Then I will be kept in," she said. "What concern is it of yours? Shiny new gapman."

  Now Melody grew red in the face, and Wander's hand reached out to hold his shoulder.

  She said nothing, and Melody's face twisted. Wander turned around and left, taking Fragile by the arm. Melody soon followed, leaving Virtuous to recline, and place her hands behind her head.

  -

  They left the masses of the Eye, and returned up, to the carry trains and that of Melquiades.

  The crowd began to change shape, from skipping children and cloaked writers, to men with arms and armor. All wore the same teeth and hide of that one who still stood above the gate, admitting travellers.

  At their head was a tall one. Like the others, his eyes were browless, and he carried a tube under his arm.

  They soon stopped as the men shoved them back, and surrounded their lot. Their cordon opened up.

  The man with the tube stepped forward. He removed it and popped it open, revealing a scroll which he handed to Wander. She did not take it.

  "My Firstpoint," the man said, "the first one- who keeps the keys of us Cage Howls- wishes to speak with you, Dry Man."

  When he said the name, Fragile looked up at her and grit his teeth. Her brow kept low.

  The Cage Howl saw Fragile whirl and widen. "Do not be afraid," he said. "The men here do not have tongues. And none will suffer the joy of Partless. That one is a disaster- which knows no cage- and was not known. Before."

  Wander looked at them.

  "You shall not separate me from the Firmpoint," Melody said. "Or her other."

  The Cage Howl looked at Melody.

  "You do not interest him," the Cage Howl said. "Stay or go. The New Kontor shall have a Blade for his ruler's house."

  They were still for a moment.

  "Partless," Wander said.

  The Cage Howl nodded. He held up his hand, back the way they came. "Please."

  -

  All were guided back to the Eye.

  Rather than approaching the descent, and the pit that lay there, the nivmen brought them to the large column which the beast-man's cage had retreated into. A flow of bodies, clad in gray fur, scales and skins avoided their company, carting rolls of paper, pots, and other carts to the arched gape which offered the chambers within .

  The column's first floor was a hall. At the end of the hall was a circular staircase going up. The hall was filled with others of the Cage Howl's appearance. They stood in a circle around a table, where one of their number stood. They dashed black dust on his naked body.

  "Our Firstpoint is in the height of this place," the Cage Howl said.

  They walked around the display, and ascended the stairs. The second floor of the shaft was filled with smells of cinnamon and carrion. Walking up, they glimpsed rows of men, sitting at desks wih their brushes and paper before animals, and people of many types: men, women, and children, of different tones. One sitting in reverse to the host showed a Tjeni mark on its neck. Each was wearing different garments.

  "Change to bryst," one inkist said.

  An old woman on display quickly disrobed and placed herself in a bryst.

  "Kneel down," another drawer lilted. A Freeman standing in the shadows of the Tjeni took him and put him to his knees. The inkist squinted at the Goal.

  "It has a round shape," he said.

  "Neck is of the third kind."

  "Dysformity above below the waist."

  There was murmurs and yesing from the watchers who surrounded him.

  Other inkists sat before animals, restrained by more Freemen. Their handlers, who were covered with claw and bite marks, pressed down howls that scratched the floor, whined and growled as they were sketched, wings with wings cut away, and furred crawlers that were kept in pens, peered into by the Laruns.

  The nivmen and foreigners passed the floor by. Wander's ear remained free of Fragile's inquiry, but they caught on to the sound of bones in his neck popping. His eyes swirled around.

  These sights were changed when they had reached the next floor in the spiral. There, large blocks of metal sealed in masses of Tjeni, and barking, howling, crying pens of tusks, howls, and stompers. A Cage Howl at the end of the room gave slack to a rope, which, affixed to a winch, lowered a platform of grain into the Tjeni room. And this sight was echoed on more floors as they ascended the well.

  They reached its peak. A single door remained, barred with a heavy yellow block.

  "This is the point of contemplation," the nivman said. "The Dry Man's company must keep here. Remain quiet while you are in his view."

  Four of the nivman's unders hoisted the bar away, and two more pulled it open. Wander was driven inside. Fragile watched her go.

  The chamber was a short chapel. The walls to it closed in in two running edges. A palm-wide canal of water flowed on the left wall, which was etched with letters, animals, numbers, and rooting plants.

  At the end of the chapel was the cage that had been mounted over the Eye's pit. As Wander approached it, she found a Larun woman standing to its side, seated by a team of bells contained in a patch of floor, rising at different heights and growing to different sizes. She struck them slowly.

  At the center of the cage, the New Kontor sat.

  His eyes were closed. The Bells rang into them, and they fluttered, pulling tight his mouth and nose. His lips parted and his head tilted as the striker ran her strike across the whole length of the group in a blur.

  She struck a deep note, and stopped. He opened his eyes.

  The striker took her strike and moved away as Wander met the beast-man directly. His eyes switched toward her. He rose, and stepped toward the edge of his cage, into the light.

  Fires, hoisted on the ceiling on swirling paper towers, brought out the beast-man's full appearance. She could see now the feathers on his wings, the flesh of the nails that still took the face of claws, and his mouth, whose teeth were tall, and which did not close.

  It opened. The noise of his voice rose and plunged. "What have you seen?" he asked.

  Wander did not tell him.

  "I have seen dances," The New Kontor said. "I have seen the work that they perform."

  Water slipped from his jaws onto the floor.

  Wander asked him, "What is your project?"

  He continued to slaver.

  "Your question," The New Kontor said, "is: ‘why I am here'? First, I will tell you: why I am here. Then the ask will be no more. My project, you will have."

  He stepped closer. His eyes pressed up against the face of the poles retaining him. "I have put the howls in cages."

  "It was the Laruns placed me here. And here, I gained many theories, which have surrounded them in turn. It is the cage which produces the strength in me. It was wrought when I first arrived. The hunters of the ancient people sought me out for my viciousness; I remember the tales told. Their greatest niv man locked me in, and made me the prize of his keep."

  His claws scratched the edges of the cell. It bled white. "Now I have the keep. I spoke with Gird, who gave me my seat. I make cages. I enjoy them all."

  He released the bars. Wander crossed her arms.

  "I have brought an animal here," the beast-man said, "asking her to stay in this cage. I have brought her here for it. That she may benefit by the work of this place."

  He said no more.

  "Why?" Wander asked.

  The beast-man went back into his cage. Paper ripped. He came back, and stabbed his nail against the bars. A scroll of paper had been staked onto it, and the light fell on Wander's likeness.

  "I am not for a Right-, or Left-Handed kind," the beast-man said. "I have taken your shape from my most precious figure. Which has issued the tell of it."

  He dropped his nail and the paper dropped. He drooled.

  He continued. "Come in to our cages, little star. There is nobody outside them here. This is a special place. My Cage Howls will keep you safe."

  The nivman and his friends stepped forward, baring their teeth.

  "There will be no break needed in the bars," the beast-man said. "There will be peace where you did not have it."

  Wander looked at him.

  "What do you consider?" he asked.

  "If I can walk from this room," she said. "Or if it is needed for me to destroy you, and this place first."

  The New Kontor raised his finger. The Cage Howls at the doors opened them.

  "Until you close them, the doors to your cage will always be open."

  He stepped back. The light retreated from him. "My offering is little, little star, and made everywhere. You are one of many friends. But I like more. Come find me again, if you will not have the friendship of partless. And if his knife is too near to the place which you would close."

  His yellow eyes remained in darkness. "Here or not. The working will continue."

  Wander turned and walked away from the cage. The Cage Howls did not obstruct her.

  She exited the room and found Fragile and Melody, in their regular state.

  Fragile stepped forward. "Is it well?" he asked.

  She looked at him.

  "We're leaving," she said.

  They descended the spool. They returned to where the ground was thick and warm. They stepped past the arch and went away from the Eye. The eyes of the Cage Howls followed them only to the base.

  -

  They lurched back through the night to Melquiades camp. It was then a deep night, and the festivities had not dimmed from their bright red color. They were more tight and loud and the children were all away. They heard speeches from the Base of Azad Kadra. There was more drink being drank.

  They found Melquiades camp once they had distanced themselves from the crowds, enough that they were silent. The herds were penned and the herder was pitching a tent and brewing a bubbling pot. She looked up at them.

  "Did you enjoy the shaking?" she asked.

  Wander looked at her. "Where will we lay?" she asked.

  Melquiades pointed at the tent to her side. "My man and I placed it up. Nobody will go to you. And you can take some eating once I'm done.

  They took from her pot, which she gave to them in a basket, and went into the tent, where there were cushions and a fire. They sat there and ate.

  "Of what did you speak?" Melody asked Wander.

  "He wants me to be caged, as he is."

  "Why would he believe you want that?"

  She shrugged. She ate a large hunk of meat. "I do have cages of my own. But not as his."

  "How did he know who we were?" Fragile asked.

  She looked at him.

  "Perhaps someone recognized us in the crowd."

  Fragile looked ashamed and away.

  "Yes," he said. "You were right."

  "It doesn't matter," she said, eating the cattle meat. "It seems fit to ignore me."

  They ate for a time.

  "What happened to your family, Firmpoint?" Melody asked Wander. He did it in Shamin.

  Wander looked up at him. Fragile did also, his ear twitching when he heard the venturing tones of the Shamin word.

  "Mine may still be warm, somewhere," he said. "What happened to yours? What has set you on this course?"

  Wander replied in Goalish. "I was sent To-Light," she said. "My knot is gone. I helped the camp. They marked me."

  "Have you seen others?" he asked.

  She picked at her food. "You are the first."

  "And you mine." Melody leaned back. He drank from his cup. "I have looked for many days. Even under my head, where it is dark."

  "Where are they?" Fragle asked Melody.

  Melody looked at him. "I don't know. But what of you? Where are yours?"

  "In front of me, eldbrother," Fragile said. Melody tilted his head. He smiled.

  "Where is your knot?" Melody asked.

  "They still breath," Fragile said in sprak. He returned to Goalish. "Wander helped them and me. She broke in. Now I am out."

  "Breaking in is a sad thing."

  "It brought her to me," Fragile said. "I hope that it is not."

  "Somebody's coming."

  They both looked at Wander. "Who?"

  She did not answer. The entrance to the tent rustled. Melody drew his red-bladed sword. Wander remained relaxed.

  A figure crouched beneath the covering. The light cut at her, and they saw.

  Melody kept a tight grip on his weapon. "The fighter," he said. "Why is she here?"

  Virtuous was covered in a bryst, which was lined with gold. She pulled back its hood and looked at Melody. "You don't listen. What was it that I said?"

  "If you have cut out from them, you would you bring their knives onto us."

  "Be still. Larun knives are not so quick." She smacked her lips.

  "Disgusting."

  Fragile looked at him. His brow crinkled.

  Virtuous looked at Wander. "For your third, I would find one tongueless. You must offset this noise."

  "I like his question," Wander said. "And would see it answered."

  "It's you!!!!!!" Virtuous said. "Wander, YOU are the Captive Animal!!!!!!"

  Virtuous let herself inside, pushing her way past Melody's shoulder. Her shove was breezy and it knocked him on his ass. She pinched Fragile's cheek and flopped out against a cushion, raising up her knee. She took the Lot meat and poured it down her throat.

  The three watched her in silence.

  She wiped her mouth. "So," she said. "Let us speak about this project."

  Fragile turned in his knees. "Work, eldwoman?"

  "Whatever it is," Wander said. "It is not one we will share."

  "Let's go see." Virtuous reclined. "You have seen all the best and shining Laruns come out here. Haven't you?"

  "I have smelled them."

  Virtuous picked her teeth. "It is well-known that they come here from Herdetopp for the last bits of cold," she said. "What I mean to do is quit their gathering at this point," Virtuous continued. She took another drink. "Smash up their I besides. And take some of their parts for my trouble."

  "How can we help, eldwoman?" Fragile asked. Wander looked at him.

  "Tonight I will enter the Eye." Virtuous flicked dust from her finger. "There are many there who do not prefer their condition. They will be sent out and given fire to place on those nearby. Once the place is aflame I will gather my things and leave."

  "If you are so capable," Melody asked, "what use would you put to the Firmpoint?"

  Virtuous burst out laughing. "Her a Firmpoint? What change have you worked, young girl?"

  Melody glowered. She shook her head. "Firmpoint or not, I hope to cut down the thing over it all. It has a heavy push, and does the young girl. You two-" She shrugged.

  "So you have really come to ask her."

  "It's listening."

  Melody looked to Wander.

  "You're a Right-Handed Blade," Wander said. "And you have submitted yourself to them."

  Virtuous frowned. She stood up.

  "When we last met," she continued, "you said that you would see what my feeling is. This is mine. If I have your face again, I will break it."

  Virtuous smiled. Wander sat down. She removed a green fruit from her pocket and began to slice it.

  Virtuous opened the flap to the tent and began to duck under it. Fragile looked at her and Wander.

  "Eldwoman!" Fragile said.

  Virtuous turned to him. Wander stopped cutting.

  "Aren't we-?" Fragile grit his teeth. "What you have in mind is a good and proper thing! We are certainly interested! Aren't we?"

  "'We'?" Virtuous questsaid. "I enjoy you, soft thing, but I cannot do it that night. You and your nothing is nothing for this."

  The Pit uncurled himself from Fragile's shoulders. He did not meet her eyes.

  "I am interested," Fragile said. "H-he is interested."

  Her eyes shifted to the sheath. Wander watched the two of them.

  "And what little knife can that shape draw?"

  "It can cut down trees!"

  Her mouth bubbled into a smile. Melody stood up.

  "It is a problem," he said. "A plague." He addressed Fragile. "What is in your head, little Goal? Even if it does not have a plan for you, you will go when it does."

  "You have also seen the pain of those inside," Fragile said. "They are making Harmony here. I have seen Wander destroy it! It has always been a good work! If the Pit can help do it, I wish it would!"

  "Can…" The Pit whispered.

  They looked at it.

  "Leave it alone, soft thing," Virtuous said. "I do not want much of a plaguiesh thing. Perhaps it would be something, but I doubt that it would be enough."

  He bowed his head. She left.

  Wander looked at Fragile. Fragile looked at her. He looked hurt.

  She sliced a piece of fruit with her blade's shard. "She is Right-Handed," she said. "None of hers is good."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means she is not a kind to me. She works towards He, now."

  "The first time you said she helped you."

  "It was for her own enjoyment." Wander finished slicing. "I do not know her. I am commanded to throw her down; I will not. But I will not supply her either."

  Fragile squeezed his fists.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "You have bad commands," Fragile said.

  She looked at him.

  Fragile could not meet her gaze.

  "Virtuous is kind," he said. "She is our friend. She adores the others. I do not know if all of them are bad. Some of them do not know something."

  "You know very little of this."

  Fragile's eyes bulged. They shrank, and his gaze went down from hers, and his frame became small. He stepped away.

  "Yes, star," he said.

  He stepped out from the tent, his cheeks red.

  Wander could feel Melody looking at her. She looked back at him.

  -

  Melody laid down. Wander waited until Fragile had returned, and fallen himself. Then she did.

  In the chambers of the pit, in the gilded cage of Virtuous, those still awake watched in terror as the latch to her iron burst open, and leapt free. The Cage Howl who walked by her rooms fell down, his neck bitten up.

  Virtuous departed the chamber. Her mouth was full of blood, and as she moved toward the tower of the New Kontor, she rushed on and pinned a small form, creeping through the darkness.

  "I'm s-sorry, eldsister," it said.

  Virtuous blinked. Her eyes shrank and searched for the deformity's name. She found a cold spot beneath her.

  She snatched him up and brought it in to torchlight.

  "The soft one," she said. "How have you come here?"

  "I don't know where I am," Fragile said.

  She raised her brow.

  "You are in the pit of the Sidedark Eye," she said. "A far point from where we last met."

  His eyes widened.

  "My friend," he replied. "He can move me. I suppose he moved me here. He has said that he wants to help."

  She tilted her head. The corner of her mouth tittled and curved up.

  "It brought you here?"

  He nodded.

  "And what about you?" She pushed on his head. "Do you want to help?"

  Fragile crinkled his brow. He nodded.

  "Then come."

  -

  The nivman walking around the stone paths of the I's column-keep vanished, and their lights went out. The captive strut back, tall and bloody, her hair flapping and a long langniv in her hand. She outstretched her other; Fragile bounded forward and took it. They walked up the steps of the Eye in the early morning dark.

  "Watch this," she said, "Plague and Goal."

  The Eye had been closed up by a long sliding gate. She kicked its base, shooting a hole into it and dust into the darkness. She looked inside with a smile, and crossed her arms. Fragile peeked in and his mouth opened.

  "Wander would have used her hands," Fragile said.

  "Your preference is little," she said. "Young-young. Fist fighting is very bad for you. When she gets old, her hands will be in pain. Better for a leg."

  They stepped up the circular stairway of the Eye. The spaces that once contained the inkists and their subjects were empty. There were only brushes, drawing places and pots of ink.

  They passed a floor for the dwelling places of the Tjeni, which were so many pens and cages.

  "They're gone," Fragile said.

  They moved past them in favor of the way's peak, and faced the chamber of contemplation. The doors were closed.

  The New Kontor's nivmen did not surround it. Virtuous moved to make its opening.

  "Eldwoman," Fragile said. "Why would he keep his spot without watchers?"

  "I don't know." She looked at him. "Perhaps he is laying down. I will see, Goal."

  Fragile nodded. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.

  The chamber was also dark. Water ran in the chapel. The lights had been put out.

  The cage remained where it had once been. The door to it was open.

  A Goalish man knelt down before it in the light. Two of the New Kontor's cage-howls stood beside the cage. Virtuous covered Fragile's mouth, and moved him into hiding behind a case of scrolls.

  The hands of the New Kontor reached out and pulled the man inside, by his head. There was no noise as he was brought in. The cage howls closed the door.

  The New Kontor stepped into the light and fixed his eyes on them. The Cage Howls looked at their place too.

  "Come in," the New Kontor said. "Price which I favor. You have a come at a good time. My belly is full. And I have not asked for you. So I do not need to."

  Virtuous pushed Fragile down into his place. She stood up and stepped out. The niv kept behind her back.

  She approached the New Kontor and his men.

  "I yearn to give attentions to your rule," she said.

  "Good. What attentions do you have, on this day?"

  "Gratitude," she said. "It has been so many long ones since the first, when you brought me and my gold out of the Wild, and into this shining place."

  "Do you intend a gift, my price?" The New Kontor asked.

  Her blade moved out and struck the head of a Cage Howl. His head fell down onto the floor. "My meat and water, Firstpoint."

  The second Cage Howl growled. She struck the knife through his neck as he dove into her. "My own meat and water."

  "A good price from my favorite one," the New Kontor said.

  Virtuous struck at the cage of the New Kontor. She stopped when the cage opened.

  The door unlatched itself and swung ajar. His eyes were no longer segmented by the bars.

  "All can see you, star," The New Kontor said. It stepped forward once. "The cage has failed you. Like this other in my mouth. The last cage is a belly."

  He stepped out from it and stopped speaking. Water fell from its mouth.

  It seized Virtuous and grappled with her. The floor gave way to their tugging and collapsed into the hall of ink, which was free of watchers and subjects. The New Kontor swung himself at her.

  He swept up one of the platforms and tossed it through the air. She threw a pot of ink in his face and swung her blade. He took fire in his hand from a fixture. When he brought his paw down, the ink lit, sending flames ranging through the room. He lunged at her, and sent her against the wall, splitting a tide of bits and dust from it.

  Fragile looked into the fight. Pit approached him.

  "Please, friend," Fragile whispered. "Help her."

  Pit shuddered on Fragile's shoulder.

  "I need work from you," he said. "Then, I will do it."

  Its sheath slid over his body. His sweat fell back from The Pit's entrance.

  "I will work, eldbrother," Fragile said.

  A broad shaft thrust over The New Kontor's shoulder as he pushed at Virtuous. It burrowed through the ground underneath him, which gave way.

  Virtuous yanked the New Kontor into the hole with her. Fragile's body rushed after them.

  It looked into the darkness with white eyes as sparks and flashes and roars belched out from the dark. They went silent at once.

  There was a footstep. It was followed by more, and he retreated. The New Kontor emerged, ducking under the dipping beams of wood, grabbing a foothold on the platform above. He held the body of Virtuous in his hand.

  He saw Fragile's body.

  All around, Cage Howls poured into the room, bearing stickers, and claws of The New Kontor's own like. One of them, a performer dressed in their uniform, rang a bell. The New Kontor shrank back and knelt.

  "It's the white-robed one," a Howl said. ‘The Dry Man's friend."

  "Place yourself down, Goal," said another. They shoved their stickers at him. "Our Point will put her in. And your Firstpoint, too."

  "Gone the knot of peak," Fragile's mouth said.

  The air was silent as his feet rose off the ground.

  "I am The Pit of He," The Pit said. "The Firstpoint of the entire riversland. The one who has created me, is created by the one above all. It is the order that you go away, or that you bring your hands to my feet. Disobedience is disaster."

  The Pit's eyes widened as The New Kontor shrieked and struck.

  -

  Fragile awoke to his body being rubbed down.

  Virtuous was in front of him, her eyes still closed, lashed by a team of heavy iron chains into a chalky white medius. The nivmen and The New Kontor stood to the side. He was caged.

  "...presented in the morning," said The New Kontor. "Have the descendants come in early. Send out letters to each of their positions, that they might all be here and ready."

  One of the nivmen nodded and left the Eye's pit.

  The New Kontor saw Fragile looking at him. The Cage Howls' heads turned and they lifted his cage as a palanquin, setting him down before Fragile.

  Fragile looked inside. The New Kontor was wounded.

  "Destroyer," he said. "And plague. My men will run you over. I will eat you then. And you will hurt no other thing."

  Fragile shrank away from him. "Please don't hurt me," he said.

  The New Kontor bared his teeth.

  His men lifted him out. Fragile was left alone with Virtuous.

  He looked around at where they were. It was the Eye's pit.

  He heard a groan. The links on the body of Virtuous jingled.

  "Eldwoman," Fragile said. He crawled over to her and found himself restrained.

  She looked at him.

  "You should have left," she said.

  "I'm sorry."

  She was silent.

  "Don't burn up over it, soft one," Virtuous said. "I have been searching out this day for many others. They are many, and we are few. It was a good time, anyway."

  Fragile was quiet.

  "Soft one?" she asked.

  "I wish I had told Wander something," he said. "I do not believe I ever have."

  "The young girl knows much," she replied. "You said so yourself."

  -

  Melody awoke in the tent of Melquiades.

  He found Wander holding Fragile's blankets in her hands.

  "Firmpoint?" Melody stood up. "Where is the Goal?"

  She set aside the blankets. She ducked past the opening, and Melody followed.

  The cattle were awake, and lowed. The gold of dawn cut over them and shined into their black eyes.

  Wander ripped The Bell off her waist and threw her into the dirt.

  "Where did he go?" she asked.

  The Bell's coils writhed around.

  "Out," she whispered. "As he always does."

  Melody looked at the rope with wide eyes. Wander held her chin. "Where is he now?"

  "I have not looked." She shivered.

  They heard shouting.

  Wander picked up The Bell and the two of them left. Outside the pens of Melquiades, a Larun crier had passed by. The other cart trains, including that of Besthand, looked over to his exclaim.

  "Come and see the works of the Right-Handed Blade!" he cried. "Come and see the works of her Goalish helper! Much power to be sought from the knowing of these two! The New Kontor wishes you would come, and gain it! No parts for the watching! No parts!"

  -

  The seats of the pit filled in with Laruns and roadpeople. They bent their necks down at Virtuous and Fragile. Their whispers were hot and sharp.

  Fragile's Pit was clung to his shoulders, and silent.

  The Eye became quiet as a cage descended from the roof of the cavern. Inside, the New Kontor took on the view of all the Laruns and Lots who had arrived.

  He shouted his words. A number of Tjeni clinging to the chain transmitted the messages with their hands to the watchers, but all could hear him.

  "Priceless captors of my patronage!"

  He called. "My kind brings you more, today. A rare and ancient animal. A Right-Handed, Wandering Star, split from the Disloyal Set! A plague, work-proud, bound now, and the hillface who is her thrust. Though you see two, know that they are one. Now complete. The time has come for the revelation of form. Open your eyes, and see!"

  The crowds sang a song toward the Otiseran. They grew silent, and sat.

  Gates to the pit, surrounding Virtuous and Fragile creaked open. She saw him sweating.

  "Be still, soft one," she said.

  Out of many gates leaading in to the pit came men, wearing thin, torn shirts, colored red. They held rocks and knives. They looked around, and approached Fragile and Virtuous, their eyes wide, shaking, and fleeing the gaze of the crowd.

  "There are parts offered for this Blade," called the Kontor. "You men are working a steady duty of mine- of great price. The one to throw down each, and give their breath to me, will fulfill their mark. I have said it; it is seen!"

  The Tjeni looked up at the New Kontor and listened. They looked at one another.

  They approached Fragile. Virtuous writhed.

  "I thrust apart your birthwomen," she said. "Your producers. I have cast out your rulers! Come here, and show me how slow is your knife."

  They did not look at her. One of the men raised their knife to him with both hands. He was pushed back by another.

  A scuffle broke out and veins were pierced. The last stood up. He moved back toward Fagile.

  "I will be quick," he whispered. "I will be quick, yonman."

  As he brought down he knife, his face was scattered across the floor, sending up a cloud of white dust.

  The crowd gasped as Melody tumbled into the pit, running after his Firmpoint.

  Wander stood up, her hand rich with blood and white. She looked down at the body of the Tjeni she had dragged, which had been displayed across the length of the floor.

  The red tint went out of her vision and her brow creased. She clenched her fist, and lit the fire in her hand.

  The New Kontor itched his jaw as they advanced on the captives.

  "Seize them!" he screamed. "Seize the interlopers! They are breaking the cage of Sett!"

  Melody picked up one of the Tjeni's stones and bashed at the chains of Virtuous wih a rock. Black fluid trickled over her lips, which smiled, as Wander strode past her, toward Fragile's place.

  Fragile blinked, his eyes full of blood, as he felt a pair of hands mess with his binds. They snapped with a jerk, and a smattering of dust was thrown up as he fell to his knees.

  A hand took his shoulder and swiped the blood from his eyes, and he saw her.

  "Where's the-" She began to ask a question. Fragile threw his arms around her, squeezing tightly.

  She pulled him back and felt his hair. "Where's The Pit?" she finished.

  "I don't know," he said. She brought him to his feet and rubbed his hand.

  "He's inside." Wander turned. Virtuous was still captured by the chains of her contraption. Melody huffed and puffed.

  Wander walked over to it and brought down her foot on its central mechanism. It snapped apart, and Virtuous tore herself up, dragging around her chains.

  Nivmen began to throw back the inkists and swing ladders into the pit. The gates opened again and Cage Howls loped inside, baring their teeth.

  Melody withdrew his weapon from its sheath. It was a stuf, a Shamin blade, with a thick handle and red metal, ending in an angled point. Wander handed Virtuous the knife.

  "Ten-Six," Virtuous said. "What is our move?"

  "Hit them as you like. Keep in the signless ones. Bring them out of harm."

  "There are thousands of rain-coats. They can lay down harm wide and everywhere."

  Virtuous looked up at The New Kontor. "I wish we would scorch their monument, first. They have a means to throw it, but it might make a fine problem for them. For a while."

  "Then that will be my work," Wander replied. "Get them from the pit."

  "How will you reach that place?"

  "With my hands and feet."

  More words grew in the throat of Virtuous, but they fell away as Wander retreated from the pit, walking toward the column of the New Kontor.

  She stopped.

  Nivmen, in the blood-spattered, hide-skinned, tooth-wrought garb of the Cage Howls jumped down into the pit, foregoing the ladders of their friends. They bared their teeth, and circled around the foreigners, and walked toward them.

  "Put down your weapons." One stepped out among the others, who had brought the scroll to them. "Put out your hands."

  Virtuous squeezed her knife. Melody squeezed his sword, and raised his hilt behind his head. The blade pointed down.

  "Bring them back in!" The New Kontor screamed.

  The Cage Howls launched themselves forward.

  Virtuous and Melody struck them down. Wander pierced a hole in the line obstructing her and started toward the Eye.

  -

  Wander entered the Eye's first hall, where she found many more Cage Howls. Their bodies grew claws and long teeth. They got down on all fours and jumped at her.

  She caught a howl in her hands and tore apart its jaw. She put her arm around another, and its neck let out a pop that jarred and brought spit from the others.

  She ran through the masses of them, throwing them from the stair of the Eye and ascending its heights, and they followed in hot pursuit. The air grew cold and empty, and the sounds of battle below grew more distant.

  She achieved the chamber of contemplation. Without any halt, she raised up her knuckles and passed through it, aching them as it caved open and fissured apart. The hall was expoed, and a gap in the wall opened to the New Kontor's cage, where it was suspended high above.

  The Cage Howls lapped at her heels. She jumped the gap, and many of them plummeted into the pit as she mounted the pole which The New Kontor's cage was slung from. She began to shinny it as his eyes locked onto her.

  -

  Far below, the Cage Howls addressed Virtuous. She dismembered one, opening his body for all to see, and used it as a club for his company, driving them back, with a snarl.

  Melody held a howl at bay with his hand and thrust his stuf through another. It snapped at him and latched on to his arm.

  The Pit grabbed onto it, piercing its throat with a hole, from a hidden blade Melody could not see. And Melody beheaded his second partner.

  "Thank you, beast," he told The Pit.

  The Pit placed his hands together and shook them at him. "You are in the Firstpoint's favor," he said. "It is my order."

  They looked toward Virtuous, who had mounted a pile of Larun corpses. She struck the chest of one and he fell down, clutching his chest. She picked over the mound and walked toward them. They reviewed the barricades, which had been exhausted of armsmen. More men with bows began to take up spots.

  Virtuous caught an arrow in her hand. "Into the Eye," she said.

  "What is our due there, Star?" asked The Pit.

  She smiled.

  The arrows chased them as Virtuous lifted open the heavy metal gates of the pit, enabling The Pit and Melody to crouch inside. They stood, and met a battalion of nivmen approaching them.

  The Laruns massed in a wall, and layered ranks of stickers that they drove against them. At their center, a man with a feathered helm screamed. "Lay yourselves down!"

  Virtuous leapt over their line, tumbling through the air. She plucked off the kontor's head as she went, and Melody and The Pit watched with loose mouths as she found a smile and dismantled the rest of the form.

  "Come," she said, when it was finished, and the walls were smeared. She took Melody's hand. "To the project."

  They moved to the floors where the Tjeni were contained. They retreated from the doors with creased brows and muttering, holding the children, and some crying.

  "Soothe them," Virtuous entreated Melody and The Pit.

  They called out to cells as she tore apart their doors.

  "Come," The Pit said. "Come, virtued ones! The watchers are gone! There are others! Seize canes and go! Seize canes!"

  Melody guided the Tjeni down the well. They took up weapons from the fallen nivmen and picked through the breach in the arched gateway. The nivmen were driven from where they gathered by the building. The Pit watched as, in breaking apart another door, the Tjeni lit fire to the inkists' materials, and wowed at the sharp and hot fire it caused.

  Outside, noise grew. The howls, stompers, and tusks ran out, past Virtuous and Fragile and Melody and all the others, shaking the ground, moving on the freshest air, and then through the Larun tents and crowds. peering through a viewlet, Fragile saw women in ripped white cloth seize a Larun dynast in his star-shaped seat. They put a blade to his scalp.

  -

  Wander shimmied along the New Kontor's pole. The Cage Howls who had failed the launch tumbled, flailing, into the pit. Others lamped their hands to the cage, the pole, or their body, whereupon they were wrenched free. Victims of the jump cracked apart below.

  Wander reached the New Kontor's cage. She jumped onto it, holding the chain, and it swung.

  "What are you doing?" The New Kontor asked. "I am one inside. Do you believe that my fall will keep them from you? You do not even have a blade. I will always have my place."

  She looked down at him and lit the fire in her hand.

  He snarled and seized the bars beneath her. She paid him no mind as she thrust her fire against the metal of the chain.

  "You cannot break them with one more body," he said. "Your rulers are vanished, and they are millions. There will be no place for you."

  A thread in the chain snapped, tilting them. He screamed and pressed his snout against the bars. She kicked at it and he fell back. He clibmed back up.

  "I will chase you to the edge of all breath." He slavered, and his drops of venom flew dropped through the bars into the pit. "I will gain my favor from your acquiry. Their men- their animals – The Silence, The Attack, Roundjewel, the Teller, Partless, that cageless taint - they will strip you bare; they will know you in ways you have never seen before. We have walls here."

  A second thread snapped. She took hold of the chain with both hands and kicked it.

  "No."

  She kicked it again.

  "NO!"

  She kicked again.

  "WHY?"

  She looked down at him.

  "Because I want to," she said.

  His eyes widened.

  She punched her knuckles through the chain. It snapped and he screamed the word and he fell, plunging through the air into the air of the pit.

  -

  Virtuous, Melody, and The Pit continued to usher the Tjeni out from the gate of the column. They were able to witness Wander's work, along with the rest of the crowd, which screamed and cheered as the descent arrived.

  "My points," The Pit cried. "Look!"

  Their eyes were caught by the cage's fall, but only for a moment, as it struck the ground and exploded, throwing out its dark mass into the white, concealing it with a billow of smoke.

  The Laruns and the Cage Howls approached the smoke, as it began to clear. They looked into it and blinked. The dust got into their eyes and irritated them. The watery glare of those closest was the first disrupted by the swipes that brought them low, and brought out screams that grew louder as they escaped the pit.

  Atop the chain, a tiny figure clung. She began to work her way back towards the pole.

  "We need to go," Melody said.

  "What of He's fighter?" The Pit asked. "What of Wander and her Bell?"

  Virtuous hurled a rock at a team of bowmen assembling on the seats nearby, making shots at the fleeing Tjeni. The stone cleaved one of their heads, and they retreated. "I'll hold this position. She'll make her way back."

  The Pit screamed. He fell to his knees. Melody was thrown back by the slap of his hand.

  "No!" he cried.

  The white drained from his eyes. They became green.

  Melody pulled Fragile to his feet. "Control yourself, beast!"

  He looked at Fragile's quivering.

  "Partsfighter," Virtuous said. They turned.

  Wander stepped out of the entrance of the arch. She dusted off her hands, which were fixed with molten metal.

  Fragile fainted. Melody hoisted him over his shoulder and they departed.

  -

  They returned to the quarter of the Eye where trains were stowed, stealing towards the cart of Besthand and his men as the Larun battalions met the New Kontor in battle.

  "I do not know what trouble you have made, star," Besthand said. The roadpoint peered from the top of his cart over at the Eye's structure. Fire and smoke rose from its base and a column collapsed. "But it brings a lifting to my heart."

  He hopped down from his cart. "That I might know of it again," he said. "If you should keep, till you and yours find the gates of Herdetopp – find there a house of red and blue, and speak inside my name to the meeters there."

  "You once said you would be rid of me."

  Besthand threw his hand out to the disaster of the Eye. "You are adventurous," he said. "I believed your word, star, was the whole spot of you. But perhaps it is not. I hope that this is so."

  She nodded, and shook his wrist.

  Besthand turned to Fragile.

  "I hope you will be safe, eldbrother," Fragile said.

  Besthand frowned at him. He smacked his cheek lightly.

  "You cannot jump like me," he said. "If you see me again, I will show you the path of it."

  Fragile's expression lit.

  Besthand turned to Melody, who stood aside Wander and Virtuous. "We'll be moving forward, kontor. Your men await you."

  "I'll not be going with you."

  Wander and Fragile turned to him, as did Virtuous. Besthand raised his eyebrow. "What's this?"

  Melody rested his hand on his blade. "This onndaughter has many enemies, and new ones. I do not wish to leave her without my cane, at least for some time."

  He turned to Wander. "If it is acceptable to her."

  She looked at him.

  "Your cane is not needed here," she said. "I will be fine to share your passage. But those here would be made safer, as it is here that I am not."

  He bowed his head to her.

  "I told you not to steal him," Besthand said.

  There was an explosion of air and fire in the distance, and a scream.

  "Ten-Six," Virtuous said. "We need to move."

  "Let it be, then." Besthand wrapped his arms around Melody. Melody was surprised as the Roadpoint kissed his nose and slapped his cheek, and then mounted his cart, unsheathing his sword. The gates, smashed apart and torn down by masses of Tjeni in flight, lay before them. "I see that we are favored. The way stands unseen! What an eyeless place this is." He blew his horn and the driver to the train rattled forward.

  He called back to them, shouting. "One more thing. At my house- if a problem is seen with you, by my friends there- it is like I said. Speak my name, which I have told you."

  Wander crossed her arms. Fragile's face twisted as the carts moved into a tumble.

  "But eldbrother," Fragile called. "We- we do not know it! You have said- we do not know your name!"

  "But you do, yonbrother!" he cried. "You always have! My name is me! It is the one that does not keep still!"

  The train was already distant. Besthand's hands clasped together and shook a them as they crashed through the Eye's unguarded post, back onto the Ash Road.

  -

  "Do you know his name?" Wander asked Melody.

  "It's Besthand," Melody replied. He shrugged. "What else would it be?"

  The cattle lowed as they kept within the middle of them. Melquiades drove them out of range of the Eye and its colossus, which lost another column as the Road regrew before them. Its gates became mouldy ruins in the distance.

  "Perhaps it is a trial," Fragile said. "He said that he had told us. Perhaps we did not notice."

  "Are your knots known for their humor, soft one?" Virtuous asked. Her nose turned at the cattle, which let out belches and other smells.

  "No." Fragile shook his head. "But I do not know any such as Besthand. He is of a strange type."

  Wander was silent.

  Melquiades and her husband rode in a cart. They lashed at the animals and carried them forward. The meatbearers lowed and moved on, as the sun rose high into the sky.

  The herd halted at night, beside a pond where the cattle could drink.

  Wander pulled The Pit from Fragile's shoulders.

  "Bell," she said. "Hold him down."

  The Bell fixed The Pit in place. He screamed as she forced him down onto the dirt. Air blew around and Fragile crumpled.

  Melody went to him. "Firmpoint," he shouted. "What are you doing?"

  "Fragile will go either way," she said. She looked at him. "This beast has sent him to his destruction. We have spoken of it. It is his offering. I will desist if he insists."

  "No," the pit squealed. "No!"

  Fragile looked up at her.

  "Me," he said. "Not him. Me."

  The Bell tightened her grip on the The Pit. It cried.

  Virtuous moved on Wander. Wander turned aside the star's blade and they threw down into the grass, pulling on each other.

  Fragile rose. "Stop," he cried. "Please stop. It was me. Not him. It was me."

  Wander emerged on top of Virtuous. Her hand burst into fire and she raised it, calling to Fragile the image of it plunging through her throat.

  He wrapped his arms around her back.

  "Please stop," he said. "Please! I left the tent. I wanted to help eldsister. I let him in! I let him in! My risk! My risk! Do not hurt her! It was my risk! It was me!"

  Wander's hand hovered in the air.

  The fire went out. Fragile fell back as she took the throat of Virtuous in her hand and lifted her up by the chest. She threw her back towards Melody.

  Virtuous caught herself, her arms and fingertips stretched to the sides. She stood, and dusted off her legs.

  Wander turned towards Fragile. He looked up at her with his teeth grit.

  "We cannot be a unity if you will take the side of beasts," she said. "You must choose your position."

  "It is your position," Fragile said. "It will always be yours."

  "My position is The Family's." Wander said. She nodded towards Virtuous and Melody. "Theirs is that of want. It is a position of no position. Of shaking. Of parts. Of wanton suns."

  She looked back down at him.

  "You are the most important person I have ever known," she said. "If I lost you, it would bring low a vast part of me. It would never rise up again. But I would."

  She turned from him and stepped away. "You are not a jewel. So you must decide. Where you are."

  She stepped towards the water.

  The Bell released the pit, and the wind fell down. The blowing ceased, and the sheath slugged toward Fragile, curling over his knee. Melody laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Virtuous watched Wander. She looked West, across the water.

  Lead me to the land that you understand

  Ocean man, the voyage to the corner of the globe

  Is a real trip

  Ocean man, the crust of a tan man imbibed by the sand

  Soaking up the thirst of the land

  Ocean man, can you see through the wonder of amazement

  At the Oberman

  Ocean man, the crust is elusive when it casts forth

  To the childlike man

  Ocean man, the sequence of a life form braised in the sand

  Soaking up the thirst of the land

  Ocean man

  Ocean man

  Ocean man

  Ocean man, take me by the hand

  Lead me to the land that you understand

  Ocean man, the voyage to the corner of the globe

  Is a real trip

  Ocean man, the crust of a tan man imbibed by the sand

  Soaking up the thirst of the land

  Ocean man, can you see through the wonder of amazement

  At the Oberman

  Ocean man, the crust is elusive when it casts forth

  To the childlike man

  Ocean man, the sequence of a life form braised in the sand

  Soaking up the thirst of the land

  Ocean man