The vision tore Tirlav from sleep. He jerked upward with a shout, twisted from his hammock, and slammed into the floor.

His boy.

His son.

Glentel burst into the room.

"Liel?" he asked, kneeling beside Tirlav. "What is it?"

Tirlav wept, face to the polished grain of the ebony floor. Glentel took his arm, trying to raise him, but Tirlav waved him away, shaking his head, gasping for breath amid sobs. He had seen him. He had seen his son.

***

Jareen awoke, her head throbbing. The world rocked back and forth. How did she come to be aboard ship?

That made no sense. Opening her eyes, she saw the forms of quth above her. She was not aboard ship, she was lying on a litter carried between four of the beasts. Even with that knowledge, the world still spun, and she felt nauseous.

The tincture. Vireel had dosed her. What kind of distillation could have such potency that even the fumes could have such an effect. No doubt it was the same formula the quthli had used when Vireel had kidnapped her and Coir from the enclave so many years ago.

Faro.

She rose on the litter. The quth spoke something in their bizzarre tongue, and all at once the rocking stopped. The lurch as the quthli halted nearly made her vomit. More quth speech broke out around them. The beasts lowered her litter to the ground, and one of them pushed a wooden drinking cylinder toward her, intoning a strange gasping word again and again.

"It is wine."

Jareen knew the voice and turned. Quth were just setting Coir's litter down beside hers. He sat with a look of relative comfort, one leg folded beneath him.

"Faro," she said.

"You should drink the wine," Coir answered.

"I would not drink quth fare." Who knew what they drank?

"It is wine from the glade brought for you. You need to drink."

She regarded the cylinder suspiciously, and carefully reached out to take it, making sure not to brush against the quth's hand and watching the beast in case it made any sudden move. Years in the glade had not endeared them to her, and she had always kept her distance. They rarely left the jungle, anyway. She smelled the wine; the aroma was like any of the wine they made in Vireel's glade.

"You shouldn't fear the quthli. They are truly marvelous creatures. Do you know I think their hair is finer even than silk? And it repels water. They shed it twice a year, and I think if it were collected, it would make marvelous clothing." He had told her all this before.

"How can you speak cheerfully when my son has been stolen from me?"

"Only possessions can be stolen."

"He is my son. If he knew what that witch has done to me—"

"Drink," Coir said, gently. "Drink." She raised the cylinder to her lips and ventured a sip. It was cool, fragrant, and it washed the foul taste from her throat. As she swallowed, Coir spoke again:

"Was it love that wanted to keep him, or fear?"

She lowered the cylinder and looked at him. Her face wrinkled in rage, but the clear and powerful retort she expected did not come. She grasped for some response, but only found a question at last.

"How can love not fear?"

"That is too great for me," Coir answered. "But I am a human. In Nosh, your son would have many children, maybe even a grandchild or two. If he were born to the sea, he would have weathered storms by the time he sprouted the hair of his manhood."

"I know the customs of Nosh," she said. Movement drew her eyes. The quth clustered around them, taking the opportunity to drink and eat from their own gourds and oily sacks of provisions. She heard their front fangs tearing of the dried flesh of slain animals. The smell wafted to her, worsening her nausea, and she drank again to smell the wine. Many of the quth present were female, their doubled dugs uncovered except for the fine yet thick silvery hair of their kind. Some held infants in their arms or had kids that clung at their legs.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"She has abandoned her glade," Jareen observed.

"Yes."

"Do they always keep supplies ready, or was there enough time?" She asked, for the quth appeared well prepared. Even their nursing females were laden with burdens wrapped in hide.

"There was time," Coir answered. "She gave me the courtesy of the day to prepare my documents."

"What? A whole day?"

"She told me we must flee the Findelvien. She had the quthli remove my tenae into one of their lodges, to be sealed in hide bags against the damp. I thought it considerate." He nodded at a burden born by one of the female quthli. "I went with them to sort the tenae."

"Why did you say nothing to me?"

"I didn't know you were unaware. I'm sorry."

One of the quth swung over to them with the long, angled strides of their kind. It held out a cloth bag to Jareen and said something.

"It is fruit," Coir said. "Brought for you."

She took it, mostly so that the creature would leave. She set it down unopened on the litter. Where were they headed? Vireel had told her, but her mind was yet hazy.

"What now?" she asked.

"We will be in the enclave of Forel by nightfall," Coir answered. "Vireel said we will be granted refuge there, along with her quthli. They will guard us."

"We will be their prisoners?"

Coir frowned.

"They will be our protectors."

Jareen was sick of protection. In her experience, it only meant captivity.

They were in a portion of the Mingling that had burned decades ago, leaving charred husks that now served as pillars for vines. New trees had sprung up, and new pitthorn hedges. A few mature trees had survived the fires, fresh growth expanding out to subsume the black scars on their trunks.

Was there any chance she could escape, fleeing into the Mingling to go find Faro? As she looked around, it was clear how futile the effort would be. She did not know where she was or where Faro might be. It would do him no good to get herself killed. If she went to Forel, she might see her son again. If she fled into the Mingling, she almost certainly would not. She was clenching her teeth and fists without realizing it.

"I'm sorry, Jareen," Coir said.

"Oh?" she snapped. "As if you are not on Vireel's side?"

"Do you accuse me?" Coir asked, raising his own voice. The uncharacteristic anger startled her. "As if I have ever done you harm." He let the ire fade from his tone as he continued. They were speaking Noshian, allowing him the freedom of his native tongue. "Would that life were different. But to keep Faro from danger until we are gone would only hand him over to destruction."

It was a twisted fate, and Jareen hated it. She hated Vireel. She hated that Coir spoke the obvious and revolting truth. Her son lived in a world that would treat him even more viciously than it had treated her. If he were to survive, then the gentle babe who had tenderly clung to her breast must grow likewise hard and strong and cruel. It was that hardness which she feared, the calcification not just of his body but of his soul, cutting him off from her. Would that she could give him just a few more years of gentleness, peace, and innocence.

The quth stirred. One of them spoke.

"They wish to continue," Coir said.

The litters were lifted, the troop formed into a loose line down the narrow path, and they hurried on.

***

Laevi clung to the pendant hanging around his neck, his fingers rolling the edges of the stone as he stared at the carnage. The pendant was a piece of worthless smooth rock taken from the seashore, but it was priceless to him. It had streaks of blue in it. Hilva had collected the rock, wrapped it in a thick setting of silk, hung it from a woven rope, and given it to him on a peaceful day before any of this.

"Findel's ears," Shun muttered next to him. It was a profanity that would never be heard in the Embrace.

They were staring at the carnage the Canaen sorcerer had wrecked the previous night. Thorns and branches had impaled many vien and shredded their flesh. A leafy branch had sprouted out of a dead vaela's mouth. Clots of blood dried, blackened blood stained the trampled soil. The contingents had slain many quth monsters in the dense forest, but among the bodies they found no Canaen. If this was what the Canaen were capable of, then it was little wonder that so few returned from the Mingling. Laevi tucked the pendant back under his hardened silk coat.

Their force was comprised of two contingents of the Transgressors in support of a company of veteran riders, dismounted for the assault in the tangled jungle. The entire Yene contingent of the rider's company had been massacred. Their plume lay nearby, pierced through the throat. They'd spent the early hours of the morning hacking paths through the unnatural hedges of thorns, gathering their dead and stripping them of armor and weapons for re-use. The Transgressors were forbidden from using the riders' arms and mail. They had only just found this cluster of bodies.

"Did the commander see this in his dream?" Shun asked.

"Quiet," Laevi said. He did not want trouble. Rumors had spread through the company that the commander had seen the glade in a dream, and he had led them right to it. The sharing of rumors provided one of the only pastimes for the companies in the Mingling, but such news could hardly be trusted. Laevi had not seen it yet, but they had heard that the glade was full of fruit trees and two houses, some kind of haven for the Canaen in the Mingling. The jungle around it was full of fortified thickets and quth hovels, all empty.

Even though Laevi had encountered no foes up close, the night had been horrifying. He had seen their dark forms among the branches, and the sound of the fighting was worse than he could have imagined. He had loosed many arrows, but the trees were so dense that he doubted he had struck anything. Plenty of quth lay with feathered shafts protruding from their grotesque hairy bodies, but he had not seen any with his mark upon the shaft.

"Here they come," Shun said, nodding back over Laevi's shoulder. Dismounted riders emerged, and with them one of the plumes. He was close enough to hear.

"Yes, that is Ernev. Find out who is the new plume of Piev."

One of the riders doubled back the way they had come.

The plume turned toward Laevi and the other Transgressors.

"Strip these bodies!"

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