Astrid had never experienced Travis' headspace before. She woke with a start, memories of savagery and combat fresh in her mind, to find a calm and relaxed ally there with her. The last memory was the pain of being shot from the blast like a cannonball, and then nothing. "I died."

  "Looks like it. No one else arrived yet." It was another situation where Travis wished he could hug his friends. Astrid had sounded a little lost and worried. "What happened?"

  Focusing on the events leading up to her death helped to center Astrid. "We reached the city." That's when the conversation on the train came back to Astrid. "We need to talk about firearms for our pack. Also, I need to discuss something important with you about divinium."

  Travis found himself with dozens of questions shooting to the fore, but he didn't want to interrupt.

  "The siege is going well. The King knows how to wage a proper war." It surprised Astrid how important that was for her. The quality of a leader, she knew, shouldn't be entirely related to their leadership in combat, but it was high on her list of desirable features. "We wanted a run on the city gates and he promised to do all he could to make it happen."

  Without a physical body, Astrid couldn't properly smile, but the memory did restore her mood more. "We planned. He had diagrams for the wall, the doors—everything.

  "The wall was easy to climb. Adamantine climbing daggers…" It still surprised her how well-equipped they'd become. "Hreti and Liv were taking over the gatehouse. They were attacking it while the rest of us sought the inner gates of the kill tunnel. It wasn't tough at first. Behind me, they cut down the doors, smashing hinges and ensuring they couldn't be restored quickly.

  "Then I saw the cannons. I expected a single large ball, but they had loaded them with grapeshot." Astrid, for all her strength and power, wished her pack was with her to crowd around and share warmth with her. "Two of them. They—" She tried to look to her right to assess the damage, but remembered she wasn't exactly in her body. "They shot off my right arm while I closed. In return, took down one gun crew and the other with my breath. It set their powder keg off. Then the second one."

  The flat finality that Astrid used tipped Travis off that having two barrels of black powder explode near her was too much for even her to handle. "It sounds like you paid a price to give your pack more time to get the gates open."

  Astrid was about to reply that she would have preferred to do that and survive, but the headspace faded away and she gasped—back in her body. Looking around, she saw Brayden standing to the side. There was something about him that felt different to her. Focusing as best she could, she noticed a white smoke clinging to his arms.

  "I thought you wouldn't want to wait the whole day for Travis' system to bring you back. Since you were on my altar, it seemed easy enough to ask Brogdar to return life to your body." Brayden wanted to ask for the details, but could appreciate that Astrid and her pack weren't of his faith or even his culture.

  Her first instinct was to grunt and leave, but that felt wrong. Every day she seemed to get more ability to recognize the magic in the world—magic she'd been brought up to believe was evil and wrong—and she could see he'd expended a lot to give her a head start back to West Reaches.

  It wasn't just that he'd done it, Astrid realized, his god had done it. "Does your god know you expend power to non-believers?"

  "Brogdar?" Brayden chuckled. He often got a tell from Brogdar that betrayed his feelings on those he healed. Resurrection was relatively new to him, but he got similar feelings from that. "If you have a few minutes, I'll tell you about it. You are not obligated to listen, and neither Brogdar nor myself would hold it against you if—"

  "Please. Tell me."

  Glad he'd gotten a little more height than his initial kobold form, Brayden lifted himself up to sit on the altar. "When I first made my dedication to Brogdar, I noticed a… Travis calls it a vibe. It's not a bad word, but there's more to it. It's a feeling and knowledge of Brogdar's opinion on the one I was healing or attacking with magic.

  "Mostly, all I could tell from it was if the target was evil. I got used to this sensation, even found out that was common. It got stronger, though. Next it was other things. Were they a warrior, though I could usually tell that by sight; were they prone to lying; and even an inkling of what gods they truly followed? It was a mess of sensations, and I did my best not to judge.

  "This has all gotten stronger as I've come deeper into my faith. Brogdar seems… open to me. He offers his opinions and thoughts. The strongest sensations, though, are reserved for resurrections. The first time, when I brought you back after the attack on Northridge, I got a small glimpse into your soul—through the lens of Brogdar's view of it.

  "You're a good woman, Astrid. You have always fought for those you considered your brothers and sisters. You abstained from taking and owning slaves in a society that wouldn't have considered it a bad trait.

  "This time I have more insight and something important to tell you. Whether you follow Brogdar or not, he will have your back. On the field of battle, mostly, but not all fights require armor. He doesn't mind if you have your own beliefs. This last death was a price you gladly paid to put yourself between a tyrant and the people that he should be protecting." Brayden drummed the claws of his right hand on the stone altar. "So, yes. He knows you don't follow him, but you believe he exists. He knows there's good in your heart, even if there is blood on your hands. That's the way of warriors. That's the way of Brogdar."

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  The words hit Astrid with only marginally less impact than a pair of powder kegs (something she was now familiar with). She looked down at herself. Nudity wasn't a big taboo in the North, but she was scaled and furry enough that even the greatest prude would have trouble finding something to get upset about. Her own gods, she knew, were concepts. They were lessons her society held to—used to inspire those traits in their children and into perpetuity.

  After some time in silence, finally Astrid asked, "Would you tell Brogdar thank you for bringing me back to fight again?"

  Sliding forward and landing on his feet, Brayden turned to Astrid and smiled. "You are sitting on his altar. He already heard you. There is a better way to find Brogdar's ear, if you want to show your thanks." Brayden patted the morning star at his hip. "A crossing of weapons is ever welcome."

  "My armor… didn't make it." Looking at the pile of twisted metal to one side of the altar, Astrid could tell she would have another trophy.

  Laughing, Brayden removed his weapon belt as he led the way out. "Then we make use of the first weapons we're all born with.” The solid smack of Astrid's fist slamming into her hand let him know she understood.

  Baroness Casey Sanderson frowned at the paperwork. It was crazy, but she'd learned that a lot of crazy came from the city north of Far Reach. "We can't spare anyone." The problem with saying no was that there was a price in gold in the offer and that price was more than most laborers made in a year and, due to what she had already discovered was not a clerical error, it was per month. "But we can't afford to tell people no."

  "They're really going through with the project while the capital's at war?" Brandon Sanderson had so far left the "boring" paperwork to his sister and done the important (to him) task of clearing out the city guards of anyone bent by the previous administration. They had been told they weren't welcome in Far Reach, given their last pay, and sent on a train south. So he sat there, reading over the reports from the guards. "It's funny how much crime spikes when you take out a major source of corruption."

  "Really? I haven't seen anything in our reports…" Setting her current document aside, Casey checked the inbox on her desk and found nothing about crime waves. "Are you sure?"

  "Positive, because Far Reach and the merchants are working together to stop all the petty stuff." Brandon passed over what he'd been reading. He sighed. "She's amazing, isn't she?"

  Both of them felt the flush of embarrassment at his words. Likewise, they both knew it was external to themselves. "You are," Casey said. "Don't try to say you're not. If anyone else says you're not, tell Brandon. He'll punch them for you."

  Far Reach, Brandon had found, didn't use a lot of words since their arrival, but what its voice didn't convey was more than made up for with its emotions. He'd never been one for all the flowery words some of the people his aunt associated with spoke, and being able to spend an hour focused inward on his own emotions—in order to communicate with Far Reach—was a welcome change from it. "I will, too."

  It was hard for the city to contain the boiling camaraderie and joy she felt from her link with the two siblings. Brandon was the staunch guardian of the physicality of her being that she'd wanted, and Casey was a vigilant mastermind who tracked every sale, purchase, trade, and deal being made in and on behalf of Far Reach and her citizens.

  Far Reach wasn't precisely sure why she didn't speak, but sharing emotions was better. She knew the hearts of her avatars as well as their words. Words could lie but hearts couldn't. Hearing the missive from Northridge, she felt a little unsure at first. Trade with the little city that she thought of as her child had increased, and the flow of gold from Northridge had become substantial.

  The news of a dungeon linking cities together had been a surprise, and while she hoped that one day she might be able to have that, a railway link direct to Northridge was the next best thing. She reached out to the minds of her avatars and spoke some of her rare words to them, "I would like a rail link to Northridge."

  "That settles it, then," Casey said. It had only been a tough choice before because the pay would deplete the city of a lot of laborers, but with Far Reach's desires made clear, neither of her avatars would try to stop it. "Anything else we need to focus on?"

  If Far Reach had heard the words from her previous administrators, she would have immediately suspected something dire. The genuinely curious feelings coming from her avatars, though, made her think if there was something else. There was a slight strain on the kingdom itself, but Far Reach leaned into it and offered her own substance to reinforce the greater whole. She wasn't alone, either, but whatever the kingdom was fighting seemed formidable. Contentment flowed out from her, though she wanted to see the man and woman who had liberated her—the King and the Inquisitor.

  It had become utterly untenable. "Head west, you said."

  "Yeah, yeah. How was I to know there would be a freakin' war starting?" Parking his rifle's butt on the wall by his feet, William scanned the army circling West Reaches. "I think they're going to start shelling this wall again."

  "How can you tell?" Peter asked.

  "Because they're loading their mortars. We should've gotten out of this place before they circled it." Spitting between merlons, William set about cleaning his rifle. "Pen would have picked up on this. She was better at information gathering than you."

  Peter's hand slid down to his hip, ignoring his sword, and to one of the daggers he had sheathed and caressed the handle. "Maybe you should shut the fuck up and help me think of a way to get our asses un-drafted so we can plan a way out." The urge to reduce the former trio to a solo party was great, but he needed William—and the rifleman always had a spare pistol handy and loaded.

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