Throwing her bag over her shoulder, Sally looked at Lucy, trying to find the words to say. “See you ter, I guess?”

  Lucy immediately went in for the hug. “Good luck,” Lucy all but whispered. After some hesitation, Sally hugged back.

  Then, she went out onto the streets and, after a single look back, began her journey to the Vils. First stop? The former Vil Palters.

  29. Tomb Palters – September 6, Year 216

  She’d set off from Ancora during the night, setting the pace at a light jog. It wasn’t anything too strenuous – no sprints or anything close to it – but for anyone else, setting such a pace would’ve been suicide. The heat and its companion thirst are inarguably the most dangerous thing to anyone travelling the Grand Circuit, especially to those new to its environs. The hostile critters of the Circuits might be more explicitly dangerous, sure. They could kill you before you saw them, from up close and far away, from below and above, but they are not omnipresent. They are not always there as you wake up, when you go to sleep, when you make lunch or breakfast or dinner, when you move too fast or too slow for too long. The heat, however, is, and brother thirst is quick to follow.

  In fact, without the heat and the water necessary to combat it, the demons and animals of the Circuits would’ve been much less of a problem. Heavier armors and armaments, horses or other man-carrying animals, rger convoys with more supplies, all of these are prevented by this almighty barrier.

  And this barrier had all but vanished for Sally.

  How far can I go? Sally had pondered this question from the moment she realized the effect of her blessings, doubly so after figuring out she didn’t have to sleep anymore. For how long? How fast? Without rest, without the need to eat or drink, with a boundless well of stamina and with little to no baggage, what is there to stop her, really?

  She’d set off from Ancora halfway through the night and passed Rostgate sometime after the sun had risen, though still very much during the morning. It was a safe stretch of road, true, but it was still a journey of nearly twenty miles. Only the more experienced runners from the Runner’s Guild, the ones who travelled this route on the regur in order to rey messages or carry packages from one city to the other, could traverse this stretch of road within the day, and only then when the conditions are good for it. Cloudy skies, mild weather, comparatively low temperature and without interruptions or need to hide from any danger. In other words, doable, but rare.

  Sally had completed it in maybe four hours and wasn’t even tired.

  Before noon had even arrived, she’d reached Cardinar. Another eighteen miles, another stretch of nd that should’ve taken experienced runners the whole of the day to complete. There were ways for a letter or a package to reach from Ancora to Cardinar within a day through the use of a prohibitively expensive rey systems. Runners would be given a package from their client and run as quickly as they were able to another Runner’s Guild, one closer to the package’s ultimate destination. Once there, they would give the item to another runner, who will do the same as their predecessor and so on until the item reaches its intended recipient. It was a rey system where neither of the two runners could take much of a break, but could successfully take one item from Ancora to Cardinar within a day. Not, of course, without great cost for both client and the runners.

  Sally stopped to look at the occupied city for a moment, though taking care to put enough distance between her and it, just to be safe. The gates were still closed and she was fairly sure she could see smoke rising from somewhere within the city. It was a faint one, faint enough to make her doubt whether it belonged to the city’s industry or a still-smoldering ruin of a building burned down days ago, but the color was dark enough for her to suspect the former. What she did see for sure, however, was a set of rge fgs atop the gate. The distance was too far to see anything but the vague shape of poles and cloth waving in the wind, but she had no doubt it bore the yellow, green and purple tricolor of the League of Independent Cities.

  Sally was tempted to go the city’s gate, to see if she would either be allowed inside or could otherwise try and scale or circumvent the walls to look at what was going on. But outside of satisfying her own curiosity, there was little reason to go ahead and do so. The people she knew inside the city were vague acquaintances at best, and outside of an aunt, uncle and the head priest of the temple, Lucy had rarely mentioned anyone within its walls she cared about.

  Thus, after lingering for but a moment, she continued on.

  She traversed the bridge crossing the Lower Graidle at the meeting point between it and Lake Prior, around ten miles away from the occupied city. From there, but a short distance away, Sally reached the crossing between the Gold and Red Circuit roads. It was the same point where she’d found the ruins of a campsite and fought a bloodfiend, though of course there was no evidence of that anymore. The site itself had long since been cleared up, be it swept away by wind and sand, cleared out by scavengers, devoured by an entrepreneurial creature, or a combination of all three.

  The pce and the whole event held a weird space in her memory, one strangely significant and simultaneously all but forgotten. It was significant because it was her first real fight since she’d been resurrected, the first real fight she’d had since losing her arm and the first time she’d come to realize something was off about her on a fundamental level. Yet at the same time, everything that had happened since – from the battle with the Khispan Dalqa al the way to st night – had come to overshadow it so much it barely seemed to matter at all, a footnote on her journey both internal and external. It now held only the faintest of impressions, one that would fade in time much like the physical remains that had once been here.

  After a brief moment, Sally continued her journey once more. This time, it was back on the Gold Circuit, stepping on its solid road and feeling the familiar tingle under her scalp telling her to flee its bck crystalline confines. Nevertheless, she walked its road the same way she always did, keeping an eye on the Greysalt Pins to her left and the river teeming with wildlife to her right.

  She passed the frothing confluence of the Gesker and the Upper Graidle quickly after. Halfway through the afternoon, Sally arrived at the boundary between Vil territory and the rest of the Circuits, the same crossing she’d waded through what seemed a lifetime ago by now.

  It was less than two months ago, her mind informed her, and while it didn’t come as a surprise – she was very well aware of how time passed, thank you – it still felt like a tiny betrayal for her subconscious to state it as such. It might have been a short amount of time, but that belied the fact of how much she’d changed during it. Her inner voice should know that by now.

  The same could be said for the Graidle’s crossing. Not that all of it has changed, not by a long shot. The river’s sluggish-looking, ste-grey water was as strange as it ever was. But there had been changes, or rather, one big change. One she wasn’t sure she liked.

  While travelling, she’d imagined – perhaps well-reasoned, perhaps simply hoped for – that crossing it on her way back to would feel like a great reunion in some form, a sort of homecoming, even if she knew no-one was waiting for her there. After all, crossing it on her way out had felt like running away, like she was cutting herself off from her previous life, so why shouldn’t her re-entry feel like returning to her roots?

  She should’ve known better. She’d seen how much she’d changed these past seven weeks, how much Lucy had changed in a simir span of time and how the Circuits themselves had rapidly changed into a shape outside her lifelong understanding of it.

  There was a bridge over the Graidle, at the exact pce where she’d waded through in te July, and many times before that with her mentor. It wasn’t a very good bridge, very unlike those of the Circuits proper: there were no great grey pilrs buried deep in the riverbed on which a bck road rested, it wasn’t as wide nor looked as primordially sturdy as those great gifts looked.

  Instead, it was a simple, cheap and rough-looking wooden one. It was somewhere between ten and fifteen feet wide, standing on wooden pilrs wrapped in shiny metal sheets of unknown material nailed to the buried in the Graidle’s salty waters. The rest of the bridged had been smoothed over and riveted together, though it was clear it had been a rush job. Some pnks on the bridge were bent and stuck out, ready to trip anyone not paying enough attention while crossing it. There were wooden railings to prevent the unwary from tumbling into the water below, but Sally doubted it would hold up to a strong enough impact.

  The Vils would have never done such a thing. Why would they? They liked their isotion well enough and so wouldn’t have made it easier for people to come and visit them. They had enough with just the occasional trader coming by with medicine they could not make themselves, ammunition they didn’t need but liked to have in excess, and the occasional oddity, trinket or a specifically ordered item.

  Sure, Sally had witnessed the very rare discussion to build such a thing during a Vil plenary – one she and Niall had always spoke in favor of, if only to make the crossing easier for themselves – but nothing had ever come of it. Now, with neither the Palters nor the Guha around to build such a bridge, who would? The Zjevik-Ong were on the other side of the Gesker and could reach Cardinar without crossing any of the ever-flowing rivers, let alone the Graidle.

  No, the only ones to benefit were the Grandies and their Station Guha up north.

  Sally stared at the bridge with mixed feelings, though none of them positive. A part of her thought she should have expected this, and shouldn’t care. The Vils were gone and this was a practical, even necessary solution for the Grandies, who deserved what they got and thus should be allowed to build what they needed. They’d come to the aid of the Wardens during the Erling incursion, and although too te to prevent tragedy from occurring, had made a deal to aid the Vils by stationing troops at the former Guha compound, permanently. Not without thinking of how it would benefit them, of course, even if Sally couldn’t quite see the long-term benefits of it. She didn’t think it likely that they did it only to protect the Gold Circuit trade from the rare out-of-control Erling raid, so there must be something more to it. But either way, they’d answered the call for aid, struck a deal and should be allowed to build what they needed to fulfil their end of the bargain.

  The other part felt something akin to anger and regret. She hadn’t thought much about the Guha Vil or their transformation into a military compound, not at the time nor any time after. She’d been overwhelmed by the situation as it was and the seven weeks since hadn’t been any less overwhelming. Hell, the clothes she’d gotten from the soldiers stationed there, her share of the Guha’s inheritance, had been incinerated by the Silver Half-Knight not long into the pilgrimage. Her gifted knife was gone too, and she didn’t know if her pistol, her Guardsman, was from the Guha or as part of the Grandie deal to resupply visiting Warden’s. She’d been neglectful with the st Guha remnants she’d been given, and it caused a twinge in her heart. Simirly, she’d barely thought about her own home, let alone any of the nds surrounding it. So, who was she to judge what the Grandies got up to when she herself neglected it?

  But the regret of her own negligence did little to stop her from feeling angry. The bridge was a decration of intent by the Grandies, a statement that read: we are here, now and forever. And the other Vils? The Wardens? They’d given it to them, and for what? Protection? The Grandies would’ve needed to protect their newly gained territory regardless of any ‘deal’ they struck, but did the Vils care?

  She could imagine it in her mind, the way the supposed deal went. The Wardens and the other Vils, full of relief the Erlings had been dealt with and high on their victory, heard the Grandie offer and thought ‘free protection?’ before jumping to shake the Grandie’s hands. Afterall, it wasn’t their nd they were given away, just the graves of other Vils, so who cares!

  It was unfair to think of it like that, Sally knew. She’d have done the same if the roles were reversed, if the Darwesh or Ide Vils in the far west were destroyed and the Anteeri, Keringa or even the Merkahni offered ‘protection’ for free. The Vils didn’t care much for outsiders, but that didn’t mean they cared much for any other Vils outside of themselves. No, they were focused on their own prosperity, their own survival, their own peoples, traditions and surroundings. The other Vils? Who cares!

  The Wardens were better in that regard, but only in degrees. They cared for the safety of the other Vils because together they were stronger, and thus their own Vils safer. But the nds or trade or anything else of the Vils? Let alone Vils that were gone, had been destroyed so completely as to never return? No, they wouldn’t care about that. Not even the Wardens of the Community, the thirteen – were they still thirteen? – unbound Wardens that swore to protect all of the Vils cared for little besides the safety of the still-living.

  But without their knowing, blissfully unaware about the truth behind their newfound protection as they enjoyed splendid isotion, the Vils would be slowly, yet inevitably gobbled up by the greater powers pouring into the Circuits. If the rise of the Demons didn’t get to them first.

  Sally was here to prevent that from happening, unite them to face the future even if a whisper from the more hateful parts of her soul said they didn’t deserve it. But they did, and she would, with metal fist if necessary.

  She crossed the Graidle.

  X

  The terrain became rougher the further she went into Vil territory. The dirt hills became rocky and harder to thread, slowly transforming into mountains both great and small the closer she got to her former home.

  It was well over ten miles from the newly constructed bridge to the Vil Palters, and it was the roughest part of the journey yet. Unlike the road from Vil Guha, where she could mostly walk through the valley carved out by the river Gesker, Vil Palters was located smack-dab in the depths of the mountains. By the time she came close, the sun hung low in the sky and the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains obscured most of their valleys in total darkness. Thankfully, this was home turf, so she knew where to go by following even the slightest of hints to her location.

  As she got closer and closer, Sally imagined what she would find. Was her home a station now, too? A Station Palters to accompany Station Guha? Another node in the expanding network, another sucker of the grasping tendrils of the Grand Central Union? Was it a broken ruin much like the Guha compound, or was it ripped out of the ground by the vicious magic of the Erling shaman? Or maybe it was whole, a complete Vil yet silent without its people filling them? And what would she find inside? A ransacked home, like what she’d always feared every raiding season? Skeletons torn apart by the skinner-wolves? Hell, had something made the Vil into its home, a nest for some horrid creature?

  The thoughts haunted her mind, flitting to and fro without rhyme or reason except to make her leave. You’re not ready for this, they seemed to say. Turn around, go to the other Vils, to the Grandies. Do not return. But if she couldn’t push through it right now, she doubted she would any other time. Hell, she wasn’t sure if there would even be another time to go and visit.

  Before the thoughts could chase her off, she saw something. Located some distance behind the mountain she was about to climb, stood another, taller mountain than those surrounding it. Immediately, she recognized it, and far more clearly than any other. It was the mountain that had always, both literally and metaphorically, loomed over the Vil Palters. A mountain people climbed to the top off to prove their toughness, one she’d climbed when she was but twelve. A mountain where people buried their family, their friends, everyone bearing the st name Palters since their founding at the Dawn. A mountain that had become the embodiment of her Ancestors and what it meant to be a Palters.

  And yes, of course the mountain’s name was Mount Palters. They took pride in their toughness, stubbornness, autonomy and self-sufficiency, not in their creativity.

  She picked up the pace and climbed the nameless mountain she stood on as quickly as she could. She didn’t know if the blessings she’d been gifted had improved after the revetions, but even this far into the journey, with this amount of exertion and the heat still bzing, she didn’t feel much. She was running hot, yes, but it was nowhere near uncomfortable. Nor had she begun to sweat or had she felt the need to take so much as a sip from the water-filled canteens she’d brought with, not now and not before. Hunger, too, stayed away despite the undoubtedly prodigious amount of energy she must’ve consumed to reach this far, energy she continued to consume as she scaled the mountain at a breakneck pace.

  Soon, Sally reached the top. Her eyes followed Mount Palters downward and into the valley. There were pockmarks here and there, patches of ground that looked darker than others. There were pces where the ground suddenly cratered or disappeared into a hole completely. Undoubtedly, they would overp with the underground tunnels and chambers of the Vil.

  And in the center of it all, lit by rays from the setting sun to the east, shining through a gap in the mountains, y Vil Palters.

  It’s not a station, was her first thought as she saw it, and she felt a brief moment of relief, sting only until her mind truly began to comprehend what she was seeing.

  Unlike the Vil Guha, where only a wall had colpsed inward and the central tower had been reduced to a nub, the Vil Palters was a complete and unrecoverable ruin. Nothing was left standing except for individual pieces of solid grey rock held up by other pieces of solid grey rock. Of the tower, the entrance, the walls and second floor of the compound, nothing could be found. All that was left was a heap of grey stone, a destruction so total it could serve as its ‘ideal form’ for Merkahni magic.

  Sally slowly, if not particurly carefully, half-stumbled and half-walked down the mountain, keeping the ruin in her field of vision at all times. Even when she was tripping over loose rocks or sliding down unstable ground, her eyes remained fixed. Her mind was empty, her thoughts absent, though her heart was beating faster than it had when she’d scaled the mountain or at any other point of the journey.

  Eventually, inevitably, she stood before the ruin. A single sb of grey rock had been set aside, a slice of the wall about a hand thick and Sally’s height in both length and width, pced on its thin side and embedded in the earth. Whether it’d had been the Grandies, the Wardens or people from other Vils had lifted it from the ruin, they had chiseled something into the stone.

  Here lies the remnant of the Palters’ st stand.

  May the mountains remember their bravery,

  The sun embrace them into her arms,

  And the Light of Grace allow their passing in full.

  The mountains, Sally thought numbly, and the sun and grace. The Grandies, then. Though the Wardens and Vils might have mentioned the mountains and even the sun, Sally felt they would’ve worded it differently. More damningly, the stone made no mention of Ancestors, the one thing any memorial script would mention. Of course, most damning of all was that it contained the word grace, a word so far removed from the Vils as to be insulting.

  Sally clenched her fists, bones cracking in one as metal creaked into the other.

  No matter how kind their thoughts might’ve been, she doubted the Grandies had put much effort into it. Likely, they’d come here to check whether another station here would be correct, or the surroundings nds were particurly fertile (they weren’t), or the mountains particurly full of metal and mineral wealth (they were). The ck of mention of the Palters Ancestors betrayed their ck of care as much the Vils absence of a memorial did theirs; no doubt the Grandies knew something of their culture and practices, whether it be from prior cooperation or due to those whose origin y in the Vils, rare as they were. By all rights, even the dumbest Grandie officer would write something about Ancestors if this were a genuine mission to erect a gravestone, and would definitely have avoided the word grace. No, they were here for something else, and incidentally made her former home into a tomb in a Grandie style.

  And yet, they still care more than my own people! She was almost apoplectic with rage at the thought. If there was no stone at all, fine, whatever. Who cares when people so far removed from their lives died, even if they were in some vague form ‘of their people’? Who cares that all that remained of the Palters was ruin and a story parents tell their children about the dangers of the Circuits? Or a history old people tell when discussing how thing were ‘back in their day’?

  No, if there was no stone at all, Sally wouldn’t have spared it a single thought. But there was a stone, simple and perfunctory as it was. One not pced by other Vils or Wardens, but by the Grandies. Outsiders cared more about her family than the people she shared an – apparently completely imaginary – bond with!

  Sally forcefully breathed through her nose, shaking in anger while repressing a desperate need to shout and scream. She wanted to pulverize the monument and stomp on its remains, punch the Grandies who put it there and most of all, beat the other Vils senseless.

  Was this what her people amounted to? Was this how far their ties, their shared heritage carried? They’d married into each other families and even if the Palters mostly did so with the Guha or Zjevik-Ong, Sally was sure she still had retives alive in the other Vils, no matter how far they might be removed. And yet, this how far it goes?!

  Never before had she felt such shame to call herself a woman of the Vils, a woman of the Palters. Her eyes burned with it as tears tried to force themselves out.

  No wonder I don’t know the names of long-gone Vils, Sally thought, only stories about how they died. That seemed to be the crux of the Vils as they were now. They didn’t care if the other died, didn’t even care to remember their names; they only remembered it so they wouldn’t die the same way.

  When will the name Palters be forgotten? Sally wondered, the idea cooling her anger and solidifying her resolve. I’ll make sure they’ll never forget.

  Sally went to the ruin and carried another sb, forced it into the ground next to the Grandie one. Facilitated by the mechanical precision of her metal arm, Sally began inscribing her own memorial.

  And with it, a promise.

  Vil Palters

  Year 0 to 216

  From the Graidle to this grave

  Let the nd bear the name Palters

  While the Ancestors remind us of their deeds