Chapter 12

Five days after his release from the Sandvipers, Lindon went to see Yerin. She'd spent most of her time with the Fishers helping them hunt down Remnants and sacred beasts, which seemed to be one of the primary businesses of their sect. There were many Soulsmiths in the Five Factions Alliance, and most of them got their primary supply of bindings and Remnants parts from the Fishers. Refiners paid for rare medicinal ingredients or sacred beasts as components for elixirs, and Fishers prided themselves on diving into the wilderness and emerging with whatever their customers requested.

Yerin provided something that the sect had previously found in short supply: overwhelming offensive power. Though Lindon had sunk entirely into Gesha's Soulsmith business since that first night, he and Yerin had seen each other every few days.

According to her, the Fishers were experts at tracking, navigating the wilderness, and extracting natural treasures for later sale. But they were forced to give up on some prizes simply because their madra wasn't as suited for combat.

As such, they treated Yerin like some kind of long-lost younger sister who had returned to usher in a golden age of economic prosperity. Now, when Lindon showed up at the Fisher housing to see Yerin, she had a room of her own. Previously, she'd had to share one long log cabin with twelve other women. Now, she had her own, smaller log cabin, complete with baked clay tiles for the roof and a hearth and chimney.

She opened the door blearily as Lindon knocked, swiping at her eyes with one hand. The silver sword extended out from her back, touching the invisible traps she'd Forged around the doorframe and dissolved them.

He was glad to see that all the traps were on the inside of the door this time. He'd hesitated enough just knocking, wondering what lethal tricks were lurking in the air.

“I'm sorry for waking you,” he said. “Should I come back later?” He kept moving inside as he asked; the question was a formality anyway.

She shifted that red rope she wore as a belt and stretched, yawning. “Cycling. The snoring doesn't start until about the third hour.”

He'd come at sunset, so she may well have been preparing to sleep, but she still looked better-rested than she had when they'd arrived. The Fishers had replaced her old, tattered sacred artist's robe with a new one, and the fine black fabric looked unmarred despite her days in the wilderness. Her injuries had already healed into new scars—one of the many benefits of the Iron body that everyone but Lindon enjoyed—though her hair had grown out, longer and less even than before.

In short, she looked like she'd had two weeks worth of rest and regular food to get her back into fighting shape. While Lindon himself...

She looked him up and down, growing visibly concerned. “You need to take a seat? You look like a dead dog on a bad road.”

He took that to mean he looked tired, which was true. His fingers were twitching and he couldn't seem to focus his eyes on more than one thing for more than a handful of seconds, but excitement kept him fueled.

Lindon slung his pack off, throwing off his balance and staggering for a step, then he pulled out a sheet of paper and slapped it down on her one table.

She leaned over for a closer look. “They've been making you take a lot of notes, have they?”

“These are the shift changes of every Sandviper guard working regular duty with the mining teams. I've been following them for most of the last week. I made up some of the names, but this isn't all; I know their habits, their replacements, what they like to drink, which teams they're responsible for, when they deposit their scales, everything I could think of.” She lifted the paper as though wondering how he got so much information on there, and he hurried to add, “That's not the only sheet.”

“Why?” she asked simply.

“I know where they keep the scales,” he said, passion burning away exhaustion. “It pulls in twice a day, they load up the haul for the day, and then they take it away to a secure location back in their main camp stronghold. Their guards are tired, their miners are angry, and everyone's rushing so that they can squeeze the Ruins dry before the Arelius family gets here.” His words were tripping all over one another, and he knew it, but he plowed on anyway. “They're too strong when all the Sandvipers are together, but that's almost never true.”

He waited until he had her full attention before hitting her with the selling point. “We can free the miners. All I have to do is activate one of Fisher Gesha's spider constructs, take it to camp, have it disrupt the script—”

“That sounds like a tall cliff to climb,” she interrupted. “You think you can keep it powered that long? And you know how to disable the script?”

Lindon had to clasp his hands together to keep them from shaking. Maybe he had been awake for too long. “It's easy, if you know how and where, which I do because they gave me a personal look. It's like breaking a lock.”

“Breaking a lock isn't usually easy,” she said.

“It is if you have specialized equipment, which we do. We'll have a construct. Anyway, we release enough prisoners, and we can take the wagon. So long as we strike at dawn or dusk, of course, when it's there. If I fill my pack, I expect I can walk away with a thousand scales, and I'm sure you can too.”

“And then we fade away like mist in the sun, do we?” She was still eyeing the paper, so at least she hadn't dismissed him completely, but he'd been hoping for a more enthusiastic reaction.

“Fly away on the cloud,” Lindon said, gesturing behind him to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. That was when he remembered he hadn't actually brought the cloud; he'd left it behind in Fisher Gesha's foundry.

Maybe he could leave some of his work behind today and grab a nap.

“A Thousand-Mile Cloud isn't made of dragon scales. The Fishers have three, and I've seen at least two people zipping around on Remnants. One of the Sandvipers will run us down.”

He'd been waiting for that objection. “I've thought of that!” He dug another paper out of his pack, this one a crudely drawn map, and slapped it onto the table as well. “You remember the bathhouse? It's halfway between Gesha's barn and the Ruins. We only have to fly a short distance to the bathhouses, hide there, and head back to the foundry when we're clear.”

Lindon had prepared for other objections. For one thing, if they didn't dress as Sandvipers, they would be caught upon entry to the camp. But if they did, then the prisoners would attack them when set free. If they weren't being chased, there was no need to hide at the bathhouse, and if they were then the bathhouse wouldn't help.

He had counters to these, nuances to his plans that he'd worked very hard on. He hadn't entirely counted on Yerin handing the paper back to him, smile sharper than the blade over her shoulder. “Let's burn 'em.”

He took the plan from her, a little taken aback. “You'll do it?”

She rested a hand on the hilt of her sword. “We're working for the Fishers now, and they get along with the Sandvipers like two tigers in one cage. And they kidnapped you.” Her hand tightened on the hilt. “You let an enemy take one of yours without response, and you're giving them signed permission to do it again. The Sandvipers haven't slipped out of my memory, any more than Heaven's Glory has.”

Her expression darkened further. “They think I'm not coming back to clean their whole rotten house and burn it down, then they're getting a surprise.”

She'd agreed to his plan, and even his own family had never fought for him. But some of his warm feelings cooled in the face of her vengeful oath.

He wasn't sure why he felt that way—revenge had always been part of the sacred arts, as widely celebrated in stories as honorable duels—but her whole demeanor changes when she talked about revenge. Something in the air felt dark, and heavy, and wrong.

It was his own weakness. That was what his father would have told him, and Lindon knew he was right. Yerin was wiser, stronger, more knowledgeable and more experienced. He was seeing the world as a child.

Suddenly ashamed of his own cowardice, he bowed to her. “You won't go back alone.”

She gave him a look of such gratitude that he forgot all his misgivings a moment before.

Then something crooned, high and desperate, like a mewling baby bird.

They both started, Yerin drawing her sword in a blur of motion. Another cry, and Lindon checked under the table. A third, and he realized where it was coming from: his pack.

Shoving his notes aside, he dug into the main pocket of his pack.

At first, he was looking for a trapped animal. Something that had crawled inside and gotten stuck, maybe a small bird or even a rodent. He had a temporary fantasy of finding the rare cub of a sacred beast before he dug out a glass case.

The case was big enough to hold two pairs of shoes, and entirely transparent. Inside was a miniature landscape of tiny rolling hills covered in grass, even boasting a single tiny tree. A river flowed around the sides of the case so that the land became a green island, and no matter how he turned or shook the box, the water barely sloshed and the leaves hardly shook. It was as though the glass of the case allowed him to look into a tiny, separate world.

And that world had a resident.

The Sylvan Riverseed looked something like a humanoid Remnant the size of a finger, made entirely of flowing blue waves. It didn't seem to be made of water, exactly, but rather madra imitating water, like in the bowl test that had designated him as Unsouled.

He'd all but forgotten about the Riverseed in the weeks since taking it from the Heaven's Glory School. He took it originally because it was supposed to be valuable, but he'd never given it much thought since then, the more useful treasures he'd stolen taking up most of his attention. He'd glanced at it every once in a while as he dug through his pack, but since the Sylvan was usually spritely and energetic, he'd usually just waved to it and left it hidden. It was expensive and he didn't know what to do with it, so he kept it tucked away.

This time, the Sylvan itself had collapsed against the landscape as though dying. Its substance was faded and pale, and it raised its head to let out one more delicate peep.

Yerin whistled. “Well, that's a storm out of clear skies. You're killing it.”

“I should bring it to Fisher Gesha,” Lindon said, placing his finger against the edge of the glass. The Sylvan Riverseed raised one featureless arm, like a doll's arm, in response. “She'll know what to do with it.”

Yerin gave him a sidelong glance. “If you contend that you want to share blood with the Fishers, then I won't be the one to tell you no. But don't think you can hand a treasure to someone and they'll hand it back out of the sweetness of their soul.”

“If you know what's wrong with it, by all means tell me.”

“It looks hungry,” she said, with no basis that he could tell. “What have you been feeding it?”

“I'm not even sure how to open the case,” he said, “but I can look into it.” Which meant that he could try and smash it open later, hoping that the Sylvan wouldn't run off.

“It came with a label, true?”

It had, though Lindon hadn't taken it. He said as much, adding, “It didn't say much. Sylvan Riverseed, they thought it had some sort of water aspect, and they planned to give it to someone with pure madra.” That was why he'd noticed it in the first place.

She spread both hands as though presenting the answer. “There it is, then. Feed it madra.”

“Are you sure that'll work?” It was worth a try, he knew, but he had squeezed a lot out of his spirit already, and he hadn't even Forged his scales yet.

“I'm sure that my sword is sharp and the sun will come up tomorrow,” she said. “Everything else is a roll of the dice.” She'd crossed her arms and leaned in to watch the Sylvan, so she was obviously expecting a show.

With a sigh, he placed both hands against the side of the case and concentrated.

After almost two weeks under Fisher Gesha, his spirit almost felt like it didn't belong to him. The madra responded too easily, moved too quickly, responded to his will too well. While Forging scales was still a chore, he could condense madra now in only a fraction of the time.

A few seconds after he'd begun, a drop of transparent blue liquid materialized in the box. It dropped straight onto the Sylvan Riverseed...

...who animated as though it had only pretended to be dying all along. Its featureless head split into a mouth, and it gulped down the drop of pure madra like a snake snapping up a mouse.

Immediately energized, the Sylvan ran around, cheeping and crooning intermittently so that it sounded like a song. Once again, Lindon Forged another drop of madra, and this time the Riverseed's color deepened.

“It's like a Remnant,” he mused aloud. Maybe it was a Remnant, though it seemed both smaller and more substantial than most he'd seen. Remnants gained in power and intelligence by taking in human madra, the purer the better, which was where the legends of Remnants abducting children came from. He'd used his madra as a bargaining chip with Remnants in the past.

But if he treated this being as a Remnant in a cage rather than a stolen treasure...what was it going to become? What was he growing in his pack?

“If it eases you any,” Yerin said, “now the scales are even better for you. You're hungry for them, and so is your little baby chick here.”

Lindon refocused back on the task at hand. The Sylvan Riverseed was an interesting problem to consider later, but for now, they needed to hit the Sandviper mining operation soon. His information was less valuable by the day, as the guard habits changed, and the Arelius family could arrive any time to put an end to it all.

“I'd suggest you get ready,” Lindon said. “We need to go as soon as we can.”

Yerin tapped her fingers on her sword, and Lindon felt as though a blade had passed through the air just in front of his nose. His eyes widened, sure that she'd just used a technique.

Then strands of her hair drifted down. It was razor-straight again, hanging down as though it had been measured to end exactly at her eyes in the front and exactly at her shoulders in the back.

“Straight and clean again,” she said in a satisfied tone. “Now I'm ready.” She eyed his head. “I can have a try at yours too, now that it's getting a little overgrown.”

He held up his hands, hoping she wouldn't start blasting invisible sword madra at his head. “I could use some more time.” For one thing, he could get some sleep.

She shrugged and walked back to the corner of her cabin, where she knelt on a cushion for cycling. “Pop in when you're ready. If I'm not here, I'm out hunting.”

He left her to it, walking back through the dark, though he almost fell asleep on his feet before he made it back to Fisher Gesha's barn.

***

At first, the plan worked flawlessly.

They crept in just before dawn, in Sandviper sect outfits that Lindon had made himself. The furs came cheap from the Fishers, who would never deign to wear the same clothing as their rivals, and their Goldsigns were faked through pieces of green dead matter he'd scavenged from Gesha's supply.

He was proud of himself for that, actually. The little Remnant-creatures attached to every real Sandviper's arm couldn't be duplicated, but he had buckets full of pieces from Sandviper Remnants. Four green legs and a serpentine tube sewn onto a sleeve, and he had something that—from a distance—would pass as a Sandviper's Goldsign.

Yerin's was harder to hide. She couldn't control the bladed arm on her back as well as he thought she should, so it had taken them almost an hour of bending and folding to get it stuck between her furs and her pack. But with the bear-like head of a dreadbeast over her hair, hide concealing the red rope around her waist, and her sword-arm hidden, even Lindon had trouble recognizing her.

He had to admit, it was satisfying when these all-powerful Golds scurried away at a single sight of his Sandviper uniform and an angry scowl.

They'd positioned the Thousand-Mile Cloud behind a tent, close enough to be summoned but not so close that it would give them away. His usual pack was waiting with the Cloud, in case he needed anything from within, and the one he was carrying now contained only the spider-construct.

Everything slid smoothly along, even up to the point where they reached the cages.

He'd worried that he might not be able to find his old cage, but he did so almost instantly. This would be his test case, and ideally a way to survive the prisoner uprising.

Glancing around assured him that everything was in place. Yerin was loitering across the lane, close enough to help if needed. The wagon backed into place almost exactly as he arrived, giving him the fleeting joy of seeing elements of a plan slide neatly into place.

Reaching into his pack, he slowly—and with many a glance around—extracted one of Gesha's spider constructs. The spider was inert, curled up into a ball, and though it stored enough energy for independent action, the crystal chalice would be swiftly depleted and its actions would be limited. It would be best to control this one directly, before guiding it to cages down the line.

The cage was mostly empty space, with only three dirty figures huddled inside. He ducked to get a glimpse at each one, but the one-eyed woman wasn't there.

He'd known that was a possibility. Gesha put the miners' survival rate frighteningly low, and the last he'd seen the nameless woman, she was being beaten with a sword.

Too easily, the image came to mind of himself, tucked in a filthy blanket just like the rest and sent day after day into the waiting horrors of the Ruins. The pyramid overhead seemed ominous now, like a monster looming over the corpse of its prey.

With a flicker of his madra, the spider surged to life, slicing across two points in the script according to his instruction. The scrape of spider's leg against iron was surprisingly soft and quick, leading him to wonder what the construct was made of. If it cut iron so easily, he could think of a number of other uses for it.

Finally, he directed the spider up the bars and to the roof, where the final loop of the script-circle was located. This had taken him three days of observation to realize; though he was only an amateur scriptor, he could tell that cutting two of the loops wouldn't be enough. Leaving the final link on the roof made sense from the Sandvipers' perspective, given the risk that one of the prisoners knew some sacred art that could cut iron even with their spirits suppressed by collars.

A scripted key would have simplified this process, but he'd never found one unguarded, and stealing it could have risked everything.

Seconds later, a soft whisk came from overhead as the spider sliced through the last of the protective script. Lindon pushed the door open, wincing at the squeal of hinges, and directed the spider back into his pack.

Even that paltry few seconds of action had drained one of his cores almost completely, and he would need to cycle according to the Path of Twin Stars to restore his madra. In the meantime, he drew power from his second core.

The three figures in the cage all moaned and backed away from him, but as the spider clambered into the pack behind him, Lindon sank to his knees. “Look at me,” he whispered. “We don't have much time.”

Even less than he'd imagined, as he found out immediately when Jai Long stepped out from beside the scale wagon.

The sight of the tall spearman in the mask of red cloth scrambled Lindon's thoughts for a second. He'd already cast his mind forward, to the next steps of the plan, to the things that could go wrong. Jai Long stayed in his tent in the mornings, Lindon had observed that for five mornings in a row, and idle comments from some of the other Sandvipers suggested he'd done the same thing for as long as he'd known them.

But there was still the possibility that he wouldn't notice anything. If he'd just decided to stretch his legs and get a lungful of morning air, he would just brush past two “Sandvipers” going about their ordinary chores with hardly a glance.

That hope died when Jai Long turned his head to look straight at Lindon.

“To save face for the Fishers, I will keep you as miners instead of killing you as intruders. You have my word.”

Lindon's head was still spinning. They hadn't even done anything yet. Where had he gone wrong? Was there an alarm attached to the script-circle on the cage?

No, he was certain there wasn't. The script connected to nothing, it was all self-contained around the cage. It couldn't have activated an alarm, or he would have found it. What, then?

Yerin, meanwhile, had immediately drawn her white sword against young chief Kral. He wore black furs, finer than those of his subordinates, and he still gave off the air of unimpeachable dignity even while holding an awl in each hand.

Jai Long didn't even look to the side, where his young chief faced Yerin. He remained focused on Lindon, spear propped against his shoulder.

“You want to know why?” he asked.

Lindon didn't dare to nod. In his experience, questions like that didn't really need a response.

“Do you know how many Coppers there are in the Five Factions Alliance above the age of six?” Jai Long went on. “There's one. One of my men happened to notice a Copper days ago, when you were sneaking around the camp, and reported you. I knew you could only be the newly adopted Fisher.”

Lindon could put the rest together for himself. Jai Long had assumed he'd come here because this was where he'd been held captive. Then all he had to do was set a watch with Lindon's description...

That didn't hold up. Even though Lindon had run into the Sandvipers more than once, it wasn't as though he'd been in camp long. He wasn't famous. Jai Long had seen him before, but there was no reason he should remember.

“How did you recognize me?” Lindon asked, then belatedly added, “If I may ask, honored Jai Long.”

The spearman studied him from behind the red wrappings as though unsure how to answer. “I had them sense your spirit,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Lindon had been blind. In Sacred Valley, once a person reached Jade, they could use their spirit to sense things they couldn’t possibly see or hear. They couldn't sense a person's level of advancement without personally witnessing their sacred arts. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that sacred artists on the outside could.

It was an idiot's mistake. He'd let his own ignorance lead both him and Yerin into an ambush.

Yerin knew what was possible, of course, but he couldn't fault her for not pointing it out—to her, it was common knowledge. She'd have assumed that he would take steps to disguise himself as a Copper, or prevent himself from being sensed.

If those were possibilities—he didn't even know that much.

Something tugged at his spirit, and he opened his Copper senses. The aura around Yerin bloomed into a razor-edged dome, like a thicket of swords surrounding her, and the pale blade in her hand gathered sword aura along the edges. She hadn't said a word, but her body was turned half to the side, her weapon held high and her eyes fixed on Kral.

For his part, the Sandviper heir held his awls to his sides, completely relaxed. He didn't seem to be drawing up aura at all. “You're not even a Fisher, are you? Are you sure you want to be buried for them?”

The colorless blades around her sharpened, but she didn't respond.

“Your choice,” he said, lazily lifting a spike to point at her. Green light gathered on the tip, like poison about to drip off. “I am Kral, young chief of the Sandviper sect, and I will instruct you.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a line of venomous green light blasted toward her. She ducked, drawing aura behind her sword like a wave as she swung it upward.

Kral had already reached her, the sword almost at his ribs, but he drove his awl down and pushed Yerin's blade into the ground.

The air roared as her technique sheared a hole through the grass, sending dirt and roots blasting skyward. As though following the steps of a dance, Kral moved forward and drove his second awl at her neck. Sword aura tore at his hand, but they didn't stop him, and Yerin had to throw herself back.

The young chief laughed, shaking off his wounded hand. He wasn't even bleeding. There were red lines, but nothing worse than Lindon might get if he brushed against a briar bush.

Kral gestured, and the aura around Yerin surged. She moved out of the way just as a cloud of toxic gas manifested behind her.

But he was toying with her, moving her like a puppet where he wanted. The awl flashed forward again, this time with four green echoes of itself moving along with it—a Forger trick to duplicate the weapon. She smashed them all, but took a scrape along the shoulder for it.

Her Goldsign burst out then, a flashing arm of steel, blurring as it shot straight for Kral's eye.

Before Lindon could register joy that Yerin might have turned the fight around, Kral's own Goldsign scurried into action. The legged serpent ran down the man's forearm, running onto Yerin's shoulder, and opening its jaws to bite down on her neck.

It froze that way, its tail wrapped around Kral's arm and its teeth on Yerin, as her bladed arm came to a quivering stop a foot from the Sandviper's nose.

“If you draw a blade on a Highgold, you should be prepared for the consequences,” Kral said, in a tone haughty enough for a king. His expression, on the other hand, said he was enjoying himself.

Lindon ran at the open cage door, on the chance he might be able to do something, but Jai Long looked at him.

Just looked.

The man hadn't moved, but somehow his spear had become more prominent, as though his relaxed stance was a half-second away from becoming a thrust that put the weapon through Lindon's heart.

Like a coward, Lindon slowed to a stop. He should throw himself forward, he knew. He should challenge the impossible odds to save his own, even before certain death.

But he would die. At best, Jai Long would simply hold him down and send him into the mines anyway. He could do nothing, and he hated himself for it.

Kral raised his voice without turning from Yerin. “Are the Fishers coming?”

“At least one of them is.”

Hope trickled back into Lindon's heart.

“Good,” Kral said, and the tiny Remnant on his arm bit down.

Blood oozed from Yerin's neck, but that didn't even cause her to make a sound. She simply glared at the Sandviper, even as the tiny green spirit ran back up to nest on his arm.

A second later, her jaw visibly tightened as she gritted her teeth.

Another second, and she'd fallen to her knees, chest heaving.

Then she dropped her sword and screamed.

With Yerin's screams washing over him, Lindon closed his eyes. He couldn't do anything, but he distracted himself by thinking of options—what did he have? There was still a spider in the pack on his back. What about the Cloud?

At a deeper level, he knew he was helpless. He'd always been helpless. He just had to wait for rescue, and that was the most he could do. He had been a fool to expect otherwise.

“You like it noisy in your camps, do you? Hm?” Fisher Gesha said, and Lindon's eyes snapped open. She looked the same as ever, her bun tightly in place, spider legs jutting out from where her feet should be. Her hands were clasped behind her in the small of her back, her absurdly wrinkled face disapproving. Lindon had never seen anyone more beautiful; he could breathe again.

If only she could help Yerin.

“You don't enjoy the screams of your enemies?” Kral asked, sidling over to stand by Jai Long. “I'm sure you do.”

Gesha was giving nothing away. “Enemies? I see none of your enemies here.”

It was Jai Long's turn to speak. “Do you not? Two new Fishers sneaking into our camp, dutifully assigned to us according to the Alliance. If they were working for you, then that's an unprovoked act of aggression on your part.”

Gesha's gaze flicked to Yerin. Not to Lindon.

“Are children supposed to be placid and well-behaved now? I made mistakes when I was young.”

“If they're not yours,” Jai Long continued, “I'll work them in the mines. If they are, then I've captured them as the result of honorable combat, and they will still work in the mines. But in that case, you were the ones who worked to undermine us. Only days before the Arelius arrive.”

Fisher Gesha didn't respond, and he let out a heavy breath from behind his mask. “We cannot allow this, elder Gesha. You know that.”

When the old Soulsmith spoke again, it looked as though her lips had been pried apart with an iron bar. “There has been a misunderstanding between us, hasn't there?”

“It seems there has,” Jai Long said.

“I don't see any Fishers here,” she said, and Lindon let his eyes fall shut again.

“Only you, honored elder,” Kral said, with his respectable expression back on.

“Then I will return.” Without the slightest glance in Lindon's direction, she drifted off on a spider's legs.

Yerin's screams continued.

***

Eithan watched, sipping from a bottle of what tasted like distilled poison, as the old Fisher departed. The drama had largely faded at that point, but he stayed to see the night shift of miners arrive. They dropped off their scales, headed to their cages, and switched for the day crew.

Lindon and Yerin were bundled among them. Yerin wore a collar, but not Lindon. Why waste a collar? If a Copper trundled off alone in the mines, he might as well slit his own wrists.

They had given Yerin the antidote to the Sandviper venom only minutes after her bite, but she still shambled along like an animated corpse. A natural sandviper would have been much less painful; the Remnant madra attacked the soul as much as the body, and she would have a difficult time recovering with the scripted collar around her neck. He should know; he'd been in similar situations, once or twice.

Handled correctly, this excursion into the Ruins could end up being a valuable lesson for her. Even an adventure, if framed properly.

Eithan took another sip of poison. In his experience, practically anything became an adventure if framed properly.

Her spirit was still flawless, her foundation solid. The Sage of the Endless Sword had done a wonderful job with her, as was expected. There was the problematic matter of her past—as some of the Sandvipers had learned when they tried to unravel the 'rope' around her waist—but even that could be turned to her advantage. Like adventure, advantage was so often just a matter of perspective.

It was her character that he was interested in now. If she had the strength of will to go along with her powers, as he suspected she did, she would be perfect.

Which brought him to Lindon, who was simultaneously more puzzling and more intriguing.

Someone had meddled with Lindon, in a way that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Maybe it would occur to him later. Either way, the boy was still a featureless ball of clay just waiting to be shaped.

Would he work out for Eithan's purposes? Probably not. But the shaping process was fun, and if nothing else, it would be something to occupy Eithan's attention for a few years.

And if there was fun to be had, why not start immediately?

He downed the last of the bottle, which he suspected really was poison, and tossed the empty container aside. His expensive clothes, made of creamy sky blue and imported from the Nine Clouds Court, would suffer in this next part. But those were the sacrifices one made to stave off boredom.

Just as the procession of miners was about to enter the gaping maw of the Ruins, Eithan hopped over to stand beside Jai Long.

“THEY'LL KILL US ALL!” Eithan shouted into Jai Long's ear.

The spearman's reaction was gratifying. He spun with a sweeping, glowing arc of his spear that would have taken Eithan's head off if he were anyone else. He ducked beneath it, then straightened again.

Jai Long leveled his spear again, though Eithan was just standing there. Sandvipers started to boil out of their surroundings, clutching weapons.

The man in the red mask studied him for a moment before speaking. “What are you doing here?”

Eithan raised his hands. “Surrendering myself into your custody, good sir.”

Jai Long’s spear wavered. “And why is that?”

“As just punishment for my many sins and imperfections. I am a cursed man, wracked by guilt.”

He smiled.

Slowly, Jai Long lifted his spear, then gestured for a Sandviper to come forward. A short man in furs scurried out, carrying a collar.

“I will be placing a restrictive collar on you,” Jai Long said, holding out the iron loop. “It is scripted to inhibit your madra.”

“A wise and prudent decision,” Eithan said, bowing forward to present his neck.

As though fearing a trap, Jai Long crept forward step by deliberate step, collar in one hand and spear in the other. Eithan sighed, but waited with all the patience he could muster.

Finally, cold iron snapped around his throat. “Adroitly done,” Eithan said, straightening up and clapping his hands together. “Now, the previous group is already in the Ruins. I’ll go on and catch up—we’re wasting valuable mining time.”

Jai Long stood over him, spearhead glowing with madra. The young man had a decision to make. And Eithan smiled pleasantly at him until he made it.

Jai Long took one step to the side, the light in his spear fading.

Wise decision.