Tellak ended up being the only person to join Ana in approaching the Waystone, though with three empty slots Ana also invited Rill and Kaira into her Party. They were the most likely to put themselves in harm’s way if things got hot.

  As a group they’d decided that no more than two should go, so as not to look too threatening, and Kaira had been roundly shouted down when she eagerly volunteered. Tellak, everyone agreed, would make a much better choice. Not only did she give a far more serious impression than the impulsive Evoker, but her being an Earth-mage herself should hopefully engender some basic respect from the mercenary mages.

  Kaira’s reaction had been first to scowl, then to scrunch her nose thoughtfully, shrug, and say, “Yeah, fair enough.”

  What Haytham and his followers had set up around the Waystone was a proper fortification. A bit small, perhaps, but the walls were tall and made of stone. There was only one entrance, and that had a screening wall in front of it, ensuring that no one could shoot in. It wasn’t perfect by any means, especially not in a world infused with magic, but it ensured that no one could easily attack the people within.

  Speaking silently to the Wayfarer, Ana asked, Are there any of your worshippers inside that thing?

  None that I can see, the goddess replied after a few moments. And none of mine would be so stupidly sacrilegious as to take a Waystone hostage. Or so I hope.

  The mages had one person on guard outside, leaning against the short side of the screening wall before the entrance. Ana had seen her the moment she entered the square, but had pointedly ignored her until she and Tellak approached. Tall for a woman, with her hair in a bun and wearing that same simple dress; even if Ana had only gotten a general look at her features in the darkness of the previous night, Aaspiyah the Iron Warrior was unmistakable.

  Aaspiyah was no more pleased to see Ana than Ana was to see her, that much was clear from her scowl and the challenge in her eyes. And no surprise there; Ana could see the dark stain of dried blood under the woman’s armpit, where Ana had struck her with her hammer, and there were livid bruises around her throat.

  In the noonday sun, Ana could see that the woman’s colors were strikingly similar to her own: skin on the lighter side of olive, hair the same chestnut as Ana’s ever lengthening roots, and steel-gray eyes. There was a subtle similarity in their features as well — shave a few inches off the mage and give her a messy side-cut and a dye job, and people might’ve mistaken them for each other in poor light.

  Aaspiyah seemed to be realizing the same thing as Ana approached. For a moment she wore an expression of thoughtful surprise, before the scowl returned.

  “Companion,” the mage said when Ana and Tellak came near. Her tone made it abundantly clear how much she believed in that label. Tellak got a more respectful nod. “Here to finish what we started last night?”

  “I already did,” Ana replied smoothly. “If you like being choked out that much I’m sure we could arrange a rematch, but that’s not why we’re here.”

  “We’ve come to speak with your leader, Mister Talleh,” Tellak said before the Iron Warrior could reply.

  “I guessed as much,” the woman said, her tone becoming at least somewhat polite when she addressed her fellow mage. “Wait here.”

  “I think she may be Sapahran,” Tellak murmured when she and Ana were alone. “At least her accent sounds like Sapahran Inter-guild. Very stratified society, with mages set above everyone else. She may be less dismissive of you if you mention your aptitude.”

  “Don’t really give a damn what she thinks of me,” Ana replied, having already mostly dismissed the woman from her mind.

  “Even so. It might help.”

  Ana snorted. “The Earthbreaker’s got the same accent, and he wasn’t nearly as much of an asshole as her. But sure. May as well.”

  When Aaspiyah returned accompanied by her chief, Haytham, Ana renewed her Ironskin, pushing as much mana into the Shaping as it would take. At the same time she slipped into her Marshal Stasia persona, confident, decisive, and more serious than her natural personality.

  “Mister Talleh,” Ana said, nodding a greeting as the two mages stopped several feet away. “I would like to introduce my friend and instructor in the magical arts, the Metal-mage Tellak.”

  “Miss Tellak,” Haytham said, touching his fingertips to his chest and bowing almost imperceptibly. “I am Haytham Talleh. Are you one of the leaders of this Splinter? I need to speak with someone in a position to make binding agreements.”

  “Not at such, Mister Talleh,” Tellak admitted. “With the captains currently indisposed, the next in line would normally be Mistress Drisa, with the other officers advising her. However, Anastasia here was appointed marshal for the duration of the crisis that befell us two months ago, and I would argue that it has not yet ended. Until the captains recover, she is the highest ranking guild member in the Splinter.”

  Haytham’s gaze when he turned to Ana was appraising. “Not just a fighter of unusual power, then? There must be something about you to convince your captain to give you such authority. Very well. We can speak. Though I imagine anything you agree to will need to be ratified.”

  “Most likely,” Ana agreed. “Though the people of this Splinter have trusted me to keep them safe before. If I tell them that you’re to be left in peace until we can work something out properly, I think they’ll listen.”

  “And are you willing to do that, despite the damage we have done these past few days?”

  “Mister Talleh,” Ana said, both Acting and Charm making her radiate sincerity, “I want three things: I want the fighting and the dying to stop with as little additional damage to this Splinter and its people as possible; I want answers; and I want Karti. You and your subordinate both told me last night that you want out of here. As long as that’s all you want, and as long as you can wait until the end of the cycle in just under two months, I think we can come to an agreement.”

  “Two months?” Aaspiyah barked incredulously. “You want us hanging around this backwater for two months? What—”

  Ana didn’t even look at her. Haytham raised his hand, and the Iron Warrior fell silent.

  “Aaspiya speaks out of turn, but she’s right,” he said. “Two months is a long time to be away from home and surrounded by potential enemies, when we expected this to be done in a few days. Why should we agree to such a thing when we can overcome the lock on your Waystone and be on our way home in hours?”

  Tellak spoke up. “Mister Talleh, you know very well that breaking the lock at this point would be nearly as bad as destroying the Waystone outright. We can’t allow you to destabilize the Splinter. We may never be able to stabilize it again. We may not even be able to evacuate without risking collapse.”

  “Meaning that if we even suspect that you intend to do that, we’ll just have to fight it out,” Ana continued. “You can ask Karti in there how well that went last time. I don’t know what you think of us, but believe me, the people of this Splinter are willing and able to fight, and we have mages who are fully capable of breaking these walls of yours. Hell, I’m pretty sure at least one of them wouldn’t even need to. She could just heat the stone until it cooks you alive. At that point your only leverage will be to threaten to destroy the Waystone, and we all know you don’t want to do that. It wouldn’t matter who won the battle; you’d die here when the Splinter collapsed. Everybody would lose.”

  Haytham didn’t flinch. Neither did he dismiss Ana and Tellak’s argument. Nodding thoughtfully he asked, “What, then, do you propose instead?”

  “We can’t let you stay in the outpost,” Ana said. “Lots of people here want to see you all dead for what you’ve done, and I’m guessing some wouldn’t care about the consequences. But there’s only a few of you, and as you’ve shown—” She gestured to the walls the mages had thrown up around the plinth, “—you’re more than capable of fortifying a position. So, I say that we set aside an area, off limits to our people except with your permission, where you can set up camp and wait out the rest of the cycle. As long as we have assurances from you that you’ll remain in that area, we’ll guarantee that there are no reprisals.”

  With her Keen Hearing, Ana couldn’t miss the unhappy murmurs that her proposal sparked inside the little fort. And while Haytham remained stony faced, Aaspiyah was no more pleased than her companions. With an angry scowl she spat, “Two months, in the gods-forsaken forest?”

  “Soldier,” Haytham said, not looking away from Ana. His tone was not angry but left no room for disobedience, and the Iron Warrior’s jaw clenched shut. Her eyes remained furiously locked on Ana. “We have neither the desire nor the equipment to rough it for that long,” her chief continued. “Our brief trip just now was quite enough. We need more from you.”

  Ana made a show of considering his words, then said, “I’m sure we could provide you with whatever you need that you can’t easily get yourself. Tents, cookware, tools, even food and drink.” She paused, then added, “You would need to discuss the details of that with either Mistress Drisa or one of the captains. I don’t have the background to know what you may need, or what we could reasonably provide.”

  Aaspiyah fumed silently beside her chief, but her frustration and outrage were visibly blunted by Ana’s calm sincerity. Haytham stood in thoughtful silence for several long seconds before speaking. “You said that you wanted three things,” he said slowly. “We both want peace. I may be willing to provide answers, depending on the question. But I cannot give you the Grand Summoner Karti. Our employer may be dead, but returning Mister Karti to the Primes was our primary duty on this contract. I cannot abandon him.”

  Outwardly, Ana didn’t react. Inside, she clenched her fists until her tendons creaked and told herself repeatedly that she could accept that. Karti wasn’t the most important thing here. Surviving and preserving the Splinter was the absolute priority, and anything the Earthbreaker might be able to share about Summerland’s and the other fanatics’ plans, however little, was secondary. Punishing Karti was a distant third when it came to actual, practical importance.

  If Ana had thought that the elf was the only one with the knowledge and ability to steal people from Earth or elsewhere and infect them with the void plague, the situation would be different. If that were the case, getting rid of him would have been almost as important as their immediate survival. But the Lord of Order and his minions could not possibly be that reckless and stupid. Ana herself had taken a book containing the relevant rituals off one of Karti’s Summoners, and they’d found several more copies in his camp after their victory at the white obelisk. There was no world in which those books hadn’t spread far beyond their Splinter.

  And yet, for what he’d done to Ana and her friends — for what he’d done to Messy — Ana wanted so very much to see that man dead. She didn’t care if it was she herself who did it, but she wanted to know that he’s paid the ultimate price for his crimes, and part of her screamed “at any cost.”

  She locked down every outward sign of the fire that rose inside her. It was something she had plenty of practice with. Nothing showed in her posture, on her face, or in her voice. And yet, as Ana said, “That’s unfortunate. Are you aware of just what he did? How goddamn monstrous his crimes are?” Tellak threw a worried glance her way, the Earthbreaker’s eyebrows rose, and the Iron Warrior took a half-step back before scowling and resuming her place.

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  Right. Her aura. She didn’t always control that reflexively, the way she did her face. She’d have to work harder on that.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she continued without acknowledging their reactions. Let them think what they would. “He abducted and murdered thousands, for the sake of destroying the Splinters and murdering millions more. But I find it hard to think that you care. You sacrificed all the Stolen in your group for a distraction, then abandoned the rest of them to die so we’d be tied down for as long as possible. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that appealing to your conscience is a waste of time.”

  Or perhaps not. A twitch of the lips; a knitting of the brows; a split-second flick of the eyes away from Ana’s own. Haytham’s body betrayed him; he wasn’t as unaffected by what he’d done as he appeared. That, and Ana just felt, deep in her gut, that he wasn’t as stone-hearted as he tried to pretend, Earth-mage or no.

  Raising her voice ever so slightly, to be absolutely sure that Karti and the mages inside the fort heard, Ana continued. “I just want to make it clear that there’s not a soul in this Splinter who hasn’t lost someone they cared for because of Karti. We’ve lost dozens, maybe a hundred. Might be more. And that’s not counting all the Stolen who live here now, who were torn away from their lives by him and his cult. If you insist on keeping him with you, I honestly don’t know that I can guarantee your safety.”

  “Even so, I am obligated to return Mister Karti to the primes.” Haytham’s voice was steady as he considered Ana’s words. But the slight downturn of the mouth was there, as were the drooping eyes and the slumping shoulders. The mage was troubled.

  And that was all Ana needed for now. “Well, I won’t throw away the Splinter for his sake,” she said. “Consider my offer. I’ll make sure that no one bothers you until we speak again.”

  She gestured to Tellak and mid-turn, prepared to go, when the Wayfarer whispered in her mind. Sure, Ana replied, and when she turned back to the Earthbreaker she was grinning. “One more thing.”

  “Yes, Miss Cole?” Haytham asked.

  “The Wayfarer wants you to know that if you damage the Waystone in any way, even if you make it out of here you will never travel reliably to or from a Splinter again for as long as you live.” With that, Ana turned and left, Tellak only a step behind her.

  “Their expressions were amusing, there at the end,” Tellak said as they were walking away. “I hope it makes them less likely to attempt to break out.”

  “They’d better not,” Ana said. “She meant it. Gods only know where they’ll end up. Or they don’t. I think that was the whole point.”

  “It strikes me as somewhat petty,” Tellak mused.

  “She’s more human than I would’ve expected of a god, that’s for sure.”

  Ana and Tellak relayed what had been said to Kaira, Jancia and the others. Then Ana asked them to keep an eye on the Earth-mages and left the square to take care of some things.

  She’d gotten a couple of notifications while speaking with Haytham, so she checked those while heading back to Petra’s to hopefully collect Messy’s key for the apartment.

  The Skill Levels and Crystals were nice. Of course they were. She was now another 1,200 Points closer to Level 20, after all. And Perks were always useful. This one was no exception, though it made her stutter a step by just how on the nose it was. “You have come to rely more than most…” indeed.

  Two hours later, Ana felt like a new woman. Sendra had cleaned her up, she’d gotten into a new set of whole, clean clothes, and Mikkel had fed her. Everybody she wanted to see awake had still been asleep or unconscious, so she’d done her good deed for the day and gone to talk to Sidney and Peter. They hadn’t been pleased to see her, exactly, but they didn’t have a say in the matter and they knew it. They’d sat in polite silence as Ana explained what had been going on the last few days and made it exceedingly clear that while everyone was free to move around as they wished, she and her friends would be making sure that no one bothered the mages around the Waystone.

  “By the way,” she asked as she was leaving, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Have our fellow Earthlings made any progress?”

  Peter shrugged. “Some, but not a whole damn lot. People are bored enough that they want something to do, despite everything going on, but there’s the language, right? Most of us speak Wanteul instead of Inter-guild.” It was telling that he pronounced Wanteul perfectly, as far as Ana could tell, while he said Inter-guild with a distinct accent. “We’ve had a young lady come down from city hall three times a week to teach Inter-guild, and her lessons are pretty popular, but it’s slow going, right?”

  “I can imagine, yeah. This tutor of yours: big girl named Dilmik Ters?”

  “Oh, yes!” Sidney replied with more verve than Ana could remember seeing in him. “Lovely young woman. She could do well as a teacher, I believe. Do you know her?”

  “She’s a friend of mine. Make sure people treat her right, okay? For their own sakes. She may be a Clerk, but she goes out and kills demons for fun.”

  They both promised that no one would be anything but polite to “young Miss Ters,” as Sidney called her. She promised to hold them to that, but it was mostly theater. Dil could take care of herself just fine.

  With that done she’d returned to Petra’s. She could have gone to the square to help keep an eye on Haytham, but she wanted to be by Messy’s side when she woke up. And so she was lying on a simple mat on the floor of Petra’s common room, trying to read a book of fables that she’d borrowed from Sendra while silently praying for Messy to wake up, when she heard a voice she didn’t know.

  It was just a whisper at first. Won’t it be nice when this is all over? It was so soft and so similar to what she told herself all the time that she mistook it for a stray thought. She let it pass without reflection, trying to focus on the book.

  A second later it came again. Why do you fight so hard? Why sacrifice so much, when all it gets you is more hardship?

  This time it grabbed her attention. The voice came from the same part of her mind as the Wayfarer’s, but it wasn’t that goddess’s. It wasn’t anybody’s; Ana doubted she would have been able to recognize it five minutes later. She just knew whose it wasn’t.

  Who are you? she asked, not sure if she was speaking to the voice or the Wayfarer. How could she even differentiate between the two, when all she could do was direct her thoughts in the idea of a direction?

  The voice either didn’t hear her, or it didn’t care. Just relax. Stop fighting. Be at peace, it said. You and those you love will suffer so much less if you do.

  She tried a few more times to get the voice to tell her its name, but as suddenly as it had first spoken, it was gone. And when she asked the Wayfarer, and the goddess finally answered, she had no suggestions either.

  The next day at noon Ana was back in the square. Haytham had asked to parley.

  The elfin mage stood alone outside of his little fort when she reached the square; a sign of good faith, Ana supposed. She chose to go alone as well; entirely symbolic, of course, with the crowd that now habitually hung around the square. “Miss Cole,” he greeted her as she approached. “I appreciate your promptness.”

  “Mister Talleh. It sounded important,” Ana replied, slipping easily back into Marshal Stasia and offering her hand to shake. Haytham accepted, clasping her wrist, and as they touched Ana did her best to read the man with Sense Motive. The way he held himself, from his grip to his eyes to the way his feet were placed, suggested that he was calm, confident, and determined. But thanks to Ana’s new Perk, that wasn’t the whole story. Haytham’s aura was as impeccably suppressed as might be expected of a high-Level Earth-mage, but as close as they were, and with Ana’s Connection almost hitting 50 with her Multiplier bonus from Auratic Empathy, Ana’s gut told her that the mage was resigned. Not to surrender, but to compromise. He was willing to budge on something, and he wasn’t happy about it.

  Ana was very happy about it. Happy enough that she allowed a bright, genuine smile to slip through Marshal Stasia’s serious mask as she said, “Let’s talk!”

  Haytham’s offer was simple. He had spoken with his people, and with Karti, and in the end it was the elf who’d insisted on a compromise. “You can have Mister Karti, for whatever justice you desire, once we are back in the primes,” he said. “Until then we will be responsible for him, both for his behavior and his protection.”

  “He’d give himself up?” Ana asked incredulously. “Just like that?”

  “He is tired and remorseful. He doesn’t want to be the cause of any more suffering,” Haytham replied. Then he lowered his voice. “And between us, I believe he doubts the wisdom of his god. For a man like him to have a crisis of faith… I don’t think he much cares what happens to him now. But I do. I must at least fulfill the letter of my contract, if not the spirit.”

  So they would get Karti once the cycle ended. And until then it would be as Ana had suggested: a square mile or so north of the outpost would be set aside for the mages. They’d be provided with what they needed for a somewhat comfortable camp, and there they’d stay, unbothered and bothering no one unless they had specific business in the outpost.

  Ana made one small addition. A demand. Messy’s blade had gone missing after the battle, along with her own arms. Ana wanted them back.

  Haytham went inside the fort, and returned with a sullen Aaspiyah who handed over her trophies. And so they had their agreement.

  It wouldn’t be popular. Ana knew that much. It could, if one were so inclined, be seen as both amnesty and tribute to a group that had caused death and destruction on a scale that demanded retribution. But it would bring peace, and it would get them away from the Waystone, and that was what was important. No vengeance in the world would bring back the dead, but a bitter peace would ensure that no one joined them.

  And if people hated Ana after this, so be it. She was strong enough to take it.

  Messy woke to song.

  She was surprised to be alive. She couldn’t recall exactly what had happened, but the flashes that she did remember painted a grim picture. A battle in the night. Screaming. Driving her sword through a man’s eye. Then pain, confusingly distant, and the sense that she was going to die and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. And then… this.

  More sensations filtered in through the grogginess of a mind too long lost to sleep, and with every detail, she became more and more glad to be alive. The sensation of something warm and soft under her head. The pleasure of fingers running over her hair, every so often combing gently down to her scalp. And the singing. It was a song she didn’t recognize, in a language she didn’t understand more than a few words of, and in a voice that was completely untrained. It was the most beautiful sound in the world.

  She wished her angel would sing more often.

  She didn’t stir, and she didn’t say a word, but when the song ended Ana whispered, “Hey, babe. Welcome back.”

  Messy opened her eyes to see steel-grey eyes and a much-abused head of hair looking down at her, upside down. Ana was still wearing the thunderstone earstuds that Messy had given her, and Messy’s chest warmed as she thought about how Ana almost never took them off. “How—” Messy started, but her voice was so raspy it failed her and she had to start over. “How did you know?”

  Ana smiled. “Your breathing changed, and your heartbeat sped up. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You heard that over your singing?” Messy said, laughing tiredly.

  “Felt it through your neck on my thigh, too,” Ana admitted.

  “Amazing.”

  “I’d bet you Ray could do the same.”

  Messy breath caught at the mention of their friend. Rayni! She’d been there, too. She’d… had someone thrown Rayni at her? “Rayni?!” she asked, reaching up to grasp Ana’s wrist. “Is she…?”

  “She’s alright,” Ana said soothingly, stroking Messy’s jaw with the back of her fingers. “She woke up for a few moments a little earlier. Long enough to ask about you and to join our Party. She’s sleeping again now. And things have calmed down. Some buildings are destroyed. Some people are dead. A lot more are angry, some of them at me. But the fighting’s done. For good— or for now, at least. Until the cycle ends.”

  “Really?” Messy found that she could relax just a little bit more. “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So now what?”

  Ana answered by curling in on herself, a quick, smooth, inevitable motion that ended with her lips upside down on Messy’s. For a few seconds, or possibly an eternity, all that Messy could think was, Gods have mercy, but this woman is limber.

  “Now we relax,” Ana said after raising herself so that they could look one another in the eyes again. “Then we get back out there. I have promises to keep, and we both need to level. But first we rest, and recover, and relax.”

  “I like that idea,” Messy said breathlessly, reaching up and hooking one hand behind Ana’s neck so she could pull her back down. “That’s a good idea.”

  “I thought you might like it, yeah,” Ana said, laughing softly. “Hey, babe?”

  “Yes?” Frustration tinged Messy’s voice as Ana, for some inexplicable reason, resisted her pull.

  “I love you,” her angel whispered, and stopped resisting.

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