Lore was the face of Coldharbour’s salvation, and for good reason.

  He was a local boy, with enough charm that he was still known around the city. It had been him who had provoked Yusef into revealing his true nature, and it had been him who had broken the news to Coldharbour’s leadership that the malae infestation was over. People knew him. People almost worshipped him, like he filled a void of faith left by the Players. So it was him that I took to our next stop on the recruitment drive.

  Val and Arzak remained in Lenktra for now. My wife encouraged the city’s citizens to join us in battle, while Arzak sent word north through her network to summon the rest of the Tundra in the same way. Corminar was back in camp, having assured Arzak that he and Zoi had the matter well under control, despite the camp starting to billow in size.

  So it was only Lore and I that took my distant portal to the place where he’d grown up. We stumbled out of the portal to find a city in rejuvenation. Along the high street, buildings were patched with slightly off-colour stone, the holes caused by the corruptions having been quickly dealth with. For the larger projects—where whole buildings had fallen—new structures stood in their place, still using the stone so prevalent in this area, but formed into bricks. The architecture of these newer builds stood out from the older, but still the two eras of design complemented one another. Some of these buildings were still in construction, and the little wood I could see—the nearest forests to Coldharbour were still far to the north—was used to create scaffolding. Unlike in Auricia, I would not be destroying this scaffolding.

  Lore’s eyes lit up at the sight before him, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I saw him blink back tears. I got it. It was nice to know that a city could come together enough to achieve so much in so little time, even despite all they’d lost.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, tapping my friend on the arm, then nodding towards the second government building we would visit in two days.

  ‘Can I…’ Lore trailed off. ‘Nothing.’

  I didn’t press; we had work to do. We travelled through familiar streets towards the central palace, Lore waving back at those who recognised him and greeting them with a smile. On occasion, he asked about people, called them by name, sometimes even mentioning their family members. I wondered where he’d found the time to meet all these people.

  Before long, the Palace of Coldharbour was looming before us. We had no trouble getting inside. Even without sending word ahead of our arrival, we were assured that the council—not the evil Council; note the lower-case c—would gladly meet with us shortly. Well, they said they’d gladly meet with Lore, but I was with him. We still had to wait for the best part of an hour, but in the context of government workings, that was only the blink of an eye.

  Before long, we were ushered by a receptionist through a door at the end of the palace, and told that we would be speaking before the Rejuvenation Select Committee. The chamber was smaller than that in Lenktra, and was far less intimidatingly designed. There was no podium, no sloping benches to loom over you. No, this was more like a luxurious living room, with a little over a dozen armchairs placed in a circle. Two of them were empty—the receptionist gestured us towards these.

  ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘I’m good,’ Lore replied with a smile, ‘but thanks for asking.’

  The receptionist bowed, then took his leave. Only when the door was firmly shut behind him did a man in the armchair opposite Lore speak. ‘Welcome, heroes of Coldharbour,’ he said. There was no ounce of insincerity in his tone, but why would there be? We had, after all, saved the city. ‘I am sorry, we didn’t know to expect you, or we would have welcomed you into the Chamber of the Commons.’

  I looked to Lore to speak; he was the one who held the most sway here. But he was hardly one for public speaking. I had to nod at him encouragingly.

  ‘I… We…’ He gathered himself, and a smile crossed his face once more. ‘That’s alright, we weren’t even expecting this. I mean, it’s nice that you welcomed us, I don’t mean that I wasn’t expecting you to be organised or anything, I just…’

  ‘We’ve come with a request,’ I offered, helping to focus Lore.’

  My friend nodded. ‘Yeah. Right, we should get straight to business, as I’m sure you’re all very busy.’ He sounded more confident now, and was making sure to look at each of the ten members of the committee in turn. ‘I’m afraid we’ve come to tell you that the world is ending.’

  I would maybe have expected a greater reaction to this than we received. There were a few raised eyebrows, a few glum expressions, but nobody rose from their seats and began shouting. These people had already faced so much; maybe they’d come to expect the worst.

  ‘It’s the Council of Players,’ Lore continued, ‘in Auricia. Amira has given them all they needed to complete their plan. And it turns out, their plan is to create a new world for themselves. At the expense of this one.’

  There was no question of the committee members not believing Lore; they held him in too high an esteem. This wasn’t the challenge here. The challenge was to convince them to do something about it.

  ‘What do you ask of us?’ the same man said, apparently the head of this committee.

  ‘We want you to raise your armies. We want you to march to Auricia. For war.’

  A stony silence passed around the room.

  ‘To be clear,’ the committee head eventually said, ‘you are asking us to declare war against the strongest empire in Alterra. An empire, I must add, that is backed by a Council of Players. It is…’

  ‘A lot to ask,’ Lore said. ‘Believe me, I know. But we have to.’

  Another silence.

  ‘You have asked others to raise their armies too, I assume?’

  Lore glanced at me. ‘We’ve… been to Lenktra. They would only let volunteers go south.’ I probably would have left out that bit, personally.

  The committee head nodded. ‘I see, I see. I…’

  ‘Geron,’ another committee member said, her tone coming across as pointed. ‘You know what our answer must be.’

  Geron, the head of the committee, glanced in her direction, and once again, he nodded. ‘I do.’ He turned back to Lore. ‘I am sorry, heroes. In the Devastation, we lost many in our city. There was not a family that was untouched; we are a city that is still grieving. I… We cannot ask our families to lose more than they already have. The chamber will not pass it. I am sorry.’

  ‘But the world—’

  ‘Will need to be saved without us,’ Geron finished. ‘I don’t think our broken army will be the key to success in either case.’

  ‘The world will end,’ Lore said, putting it simply, letting the words hang over the chamber.

  When the silence grew unbearable once more, Geron cleared his throat. I could see the torment behind his eyes, just as I had seen in Yua’s. These were leaders who wanted to help, but they were good leaders of their people. They couldn’t subject their people to any more hardship.

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  ‘We will do our due diligence,’ Geron said. ‘We will, of course, put it before the Commons for debate, but I must reiterate that the chance of such a bill passing… it is unlikely.’

  I opened my mouth, about to channel my inner Val and argue our case, but Lore rose from his seat. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said.

  I stood too, and bowed my head in gratitude before following Lore out of the door. ‘You didn’t argue with them?’ I asked.

  Lore shrugged. ‘I know what people are like around here. If you want them to do something, it has to be their idea. I could’ve argued, yeah, but it wouldn’t have helped. Might’ve even put them off.’

  I pressed my lips together, saying nothing of the doubt that still lingered in my mind.

  ‘Could we stay in town a little while longer?’ Lore asked. ‘There’s something I want to do.’

  * * *

  I knew what Lore had wanted to do, of course, but I gave him a little space. Instead of going with him, I ambled down Coldharbour’s main street, grateful for an hour or two of downtime. I stopped in a jewellers, picking up a green hair clip for Val that I thought might complement her magicks, and I brought some interesting looking yarn for Arzak’s knitting. Only when I’d left the shop did I realise I hadn’t seen my orcish friend do much knitting of late, and I wondered if the contraption around her arm made it difficult. If that was the case, I hoped that the gift would be received in the intended spirit, and not make her feel more upset about her injury. I put both purchases in my pocket world for now for safekeeping, despite neither being particularly heavy.

  My last stop was a florist.

  I asked the woman behind the counter for a suitable selection for my needs, and they were more than happy to oblige. She created a bouquet of simple white flowers, which I noticed were the most common flower in stock. This was not a cynical decision to shift some stock, I realised; this flower was here in great supply because Coldharbour had lost so much.

  Geron’s words echoed through my mind once more. We cannot ask our families to lose more than they already have.

  With bouquet of flowers in hand, I travelled west through the streets of this dusty city, to where I knew Lore would be. The cemetery was much busier than it had been during our last—prolonged—trip to Coldharbour, with the new graves having maybe doubled it in size. There were many locals visiting, paying tribute to those they’d lost, and I bowed my head to them in recognition of that fact. But my focus was on Lore, who knelt before his sister’s grave. There was a newer grave at its side, one with the inscription:

  ALENNA TARKOS

  SHE WANTED TO SAVE US

  For all of Alenna’s crimes, her original motive had been pure: she had wanted to protect her people. That it had got out of hand—that it had eventually led to the Council’s army of corruption—was her fault too, but I forced myself to give the dead woman some benefit of the doubt. After all, she’d been the closest thing to a sister that Lore had had left, until the corruption began. Lore was many things, but he was rarely a poor judge of character; if he believed her to have had a good heart, then a good heart she had.

  I approached slowly, and placed the flowers not on top of Plyas’s grave, as I had intended, but between the graves of Lore’s adopted sisters.

  The barbarian looked up at me, eyes watery, when he heard the rustle of petals upon dirt. When he saw the offering, he smiled.

  ‘For Plyas?’ he asked.

  ‘For both of them.’ I took a seat in the dirt at Lore’s side, and we sat like that for nearly an hour without another word spoken. It was a time for contemplation, to think about matters past and the journey ahead, and for me to wrestle with my doubts. There were many of these doubts bubbling beneath the surface, but I had a handle on them. For now.

  It was me who finally broke the silence. ‘I’m sorry for being so distant,’ I said. ‘Not just from you, either. From the whole team.’

  ‘Not Val.’

  ‘Not Val, no. I’ve been working on that.’

  Lore turned to me and smiled once more. ‘Good. I like that.’ After another extended moment of contemplation, he added, ‘You shouldn’t be sorry; we get it. I think we’ve all been a bit distant lately. Arzak has, for sure. Corminar’s been quieter than usual.’

  ‘And you? What have you been thinking about?’

  ‘The barrier,’ he replied.

  ‘The…’ It took me a moment to understand what he meant. ‘The one in your head?’

  Lore nodded. ‘The one holding back all that Divination magick. Maybe I should pick at it. Maybe we need it. Maybe we need to be able to look ahead a little, even if it costs me my mind.’

  ‘Lore?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I can’t ask you to give more than you already have.’

  Only after I’d said the words did I realise that I’d just echoed Geron’s sentiment.