Mandollel bounces the stake in his hand, the metal slapping against his palm. “I will run for an hour before setting up the stake. Do not set the stake before that. We’ll meet at the third location. I’ll wait for you there.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Finna says.

  “And don’t try to hasten the process! Just stick it into the ground and let it be. That way, it drags less on the ether.”

  “What does that even mean?” she says, pushing a hand into her hair, tousling it. “We got it. We’ll handle this end. You just worry about getting out yourself, Peacock.”

  Mandollel tosses the stake one last time into the air, snatches it, and slides it into a pocket on his vest in one smooth movement. He tosses his hair, and it catches the sunlight, sieving the light golden.

  “Actually, maybe just let them kill you.”

  Rworg chortles and sits down to lay his back on a palm tree. The second location turned out to be next to a grassy patch of green in the middle of sand. Everything is full of sand. The grass, the bark of the trees, my mouth and ears. The wind carries it everywhere, pressing it against the hill and up into the sky. At least the hill hides us from the Kertharians in the camp.

  There’s no water, so there’s less chance of someone from the camp just stumbling over to where we’re huddling. Unfortunately, it means there‘s no water for us, either. My waterskin is running low. We’ll need to get more, soon.

  Mandollel leaves most of his gear behind. We all travel light, but it will still help him move faster. “Don’t mess with my pot,” is the last thing he says before taking off.

  I watch him run and shake my head in disbelief. He’s basically sprinting, but doesn’t raise a dust cloud behind him. He jumps from one stone to the next, only tapping the ground on each step.

  “Super annoying, isn’t it,” Finna says.

  I yelp. I didn’t realize she was had creeped so close. She’s not any better. They’re all a bunch of show-offs. I chuckle and glance at the sky. “So, one hour. What should we do while waiting?”

  She yawns so hard I can see right down into her stomach. “Sleep, obviously.”

  Rworg shakes me awake. It feels like I didn’t have time to fall asleep at all, but the sun has moved in the sky and the shadow of a palm tree has moved from the stick Rworg stuck on the ground at its edge earlier.

  “Two handwidths. It’s time,” he says.

  “What?” I ask, still groggy.

  Finna snores on the other side of the camp, head resting on Mandollel’s pot.

  Rworg shows me his palm, almost as large as my face. “Two. An hour.” He places it on the ground to show how much the shadow has moved.

  I guess he knows what he’s talking about. He has lived here his whole life. I have to remember that, though. No one in the village has ever had a watch, but we have a sundial. Being able to do that on the field would by much more impressive than just squinting at the sun. Knowing the exact time is usually not that important, but it could be a nice trick.

  Rworg shakes my shoulder again. “Folke, no time for a second nap.”

  “Oh, sorry. I just... it doesn’t matter. Let’s get the stake into the ground.” I dig into my backpack and pull out the last two stakes. Mandollel took the one with number four on it. He said it would be the least probable one to disturb what we’re going to do otherwise. I can’t wrap my head around the way he considers risks. Why is leaving a stake alone on the ground for fifteen minutes more risky than messing with the whole ether? I just have to trust his judgement with this.

  Rworg snaps his fingers, hand reached out to me.

  “Right, right.” I hand him the second stake and go wake up Finna. I shake her boot with my foot. Her eyes snap open and flick around the area. She’s not groggy at all, rising up with a bounce. Her hand moves away from her waist, where I know she has a dagger. What kind of life has she been living before this, if that is the way she wakes up from a nap?

  “This area is stupid,” she says. “There’s no cover, nowhere to hide. If we have to run, it’s uphill in every direction.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Maybe the plan will work and we’ll get away in time?”

  “Ha!” she says.

  The map is laid out on the ground, stones holding it down. The marked spot is in the middle of the green area of grass.Rworg smashes the stake with a sizable rock. I can feel the thumping through my feet. Hopefully, he doesn’t flatten the runes or something.

  “Mandollel said it’s not a coincidence it goes into the middle of the grass,” Finna says, watching me look at the map and Rworg banging away. “He said this place has a current of mana running under it. That’s why there is grass and trees even when there’s no water. Kerthar is a dumb place.”

  Rworg stands up and slaps his hand together to puffs of sand and dust. “This land has endured much at the hands of wizards. The effects are plains to see.”

  I don’t so much laugh at the pun, but the expectant face he makes, eyebrows lifted nearly up to his copper ponytail at the top of his otherwise bald head.

  “That’s awful,” Finna says, but she can’t hold back the smile either. “Besides, it’s mostly sand. That doesn’t even work.”

  “We saw a lot of plains earlier--“

  “Wait, it’s starting,” I interrupt him. “Look.”

  The sky to the north twists. Light rotates, like storm clouds gathering, swirling in and forming a disc of green light above the ground. It’s hangs surprisingly low, now that I see it from further afar and not from below. The auroras are more violent this time, purple lightning rippling through it, tangles of dirty red flowing like the sky was bleeding.

  “Whoa,” Finna says.

  I have to agree. “Come on,” I say, running up the hill to see what the Kertharians are doing.

  I reach the top of the hill to see activity in the camp stop. Then it begins again, frantically. Some people shout the Kertharian battle cry, but only once. Like it’s also a call for people to gather, instead of just being something they rave while in battle.

  People pick up gear, strap on armor, and saddle horses. The first group of soldiers starts marching north, carrying a palanquin with a mage, or at least someone in a robe, sitting on it. The palanquin is probably the most exotic thing I have seen so far. It seems almost as unpractical as the conical hats the wizards in Tenorsbridge used. Maybe all mages are unpractical?

  Finna curses. “There’s still three mages left at the camp. I bet they’ll spot what we’re doing if they stick around.”

  Three figures wave their arms in the middle of the camp. Their heads are the size of pins, arms barely visible as they swing them around, but the robes are different from what everyone else is wearing. Occasional glints of blue light make it clear that something magical is happening. The camp reaches out all around them, with still maybe fifty people milling about. “We’ll just have to hope they won’t notice it in time. There’s still far too many people around to attack. They would see us coming, and the mages would have time to cast whatever spells they wanted.”

  I’m pretty certain that taking a mage out quickly is the only way to do it safely. If they get to prepare, there’s no telling how dangerous they can be. Corum needed just seconds to put up a shield and demolish half the room.

  “Bleh, do you want to fight them while they roll over us from every hilltop? I’ll handle it.” Finna drags a hood out from under her collar and pulls it over her head, bolting forward, running low over the sand.

  “What do you mean, you’ll handle it?” I start by shouting, but lower my voice. Too close to the camp for that.

  She spins while running, an impressive move by itself. She jogs backwards for a couple of steps and slices a finger over her throat, before turning back to run toward the camp. Sliding on the sand, she reaches a clump of rocks and makes herself small behind them.

  It’s broad daylight! Sun is shining down on the camp and us and there’s a pitch black shadow under her feet. And is she really just going to start slitting throats? How is that her first solution to anything? What the hell kind of life has she really lived until now?

  A thick cloud of sand drifts in the air, kicked up by her and pushed to the side by the wind. Two Kertharians standing at the edge of the camp closest to us point at the cloud. They watching it move, hands on their weapons. Finna circles to the side, now treading lightly. She crosses the wide open area to the camp in moments, staying hidden by the tents and what little plants and rocks there are.

  The lines of tents for corridors with small plazas of sort between them. There are larger structures like a stable and what might be a kitchen, looking at the amount of smoke and steam rising from holes in its roof. The Kertharians are not in a hurry anymore, now that most of them have already left. The rest are handling things that look remarkably familiar and ordinary. Some chop wood, some hang up laundry to dry. Two unfortunate men look to be emptying a latrine. Everything that keeps a camp of that size running.

  Finna walks right past them all. She’s a small dark figure, weaving her way through the camp. Sometimes she walks right past them, hood pulled up to cover her obviously too pale skin. Even this far away, I can see she walks relaxed, like she’s on a stroll. A moment later, she darts to the side, vanishing behind the tents. A soldier sharpens a sword, the repeated motion easy to make out. The moment they look down at the sword, Finna crosses the gap between two lines of tents. The soldier looks up, perhaps alerted by movement at the corner of their eye, but she’s already gone. I’m not sure, but I think I see the soldier shrug before they continue working on the sword.

  One of the mages has gone inside their tent. Two still stand in the plaza, waving their arms in the air.

  Rworg crawls to lie beside me. “What’s going on? Where’s Finna?”

  “She went to handle some mages. She thinks they would notice what’s going on here,” I say, waving a hand at the camp.

  Rworg squints at the camp. “She’s there? Hmm. Daring. I approve.”

  “You think it’s safe? I know nothing here really is safe, but still. For her to be alone in there? What if they catch her?”

  “Ha!” he says, so loudly that I fear they heard it all the way to the camp. “They won’t. And if they do, we save her.”