Bryan ended up wrapping Iaondrin in his arms to try to comfort her much like they had done on their earlier trips. Despite the late night, he had them up by late morning to start resetting their sleeping patterns.

After they had eaten, he asked Iaondrin to start on her sketch of Veanna’s place while he went out to see Ginko the Sly about what he knew of the woman and her House.

The summer heat was somewhat less sweltering on the waterfront, especially in the morning, though Ginko has positioned his table outside the Broken Hagfish to take advantage of the shade offered by the overhead awning, and the taller building next door. Business had not yet started bustling for him, and he sat at his table alone, with a frosted ceramic pitcher containing some unknown cool drink and a bowl of fresh summer fruit – this time, the figs were a fresh and ripe golden yellow, and they were nestled among plump blackberries and raspberries.

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The brindle tom did come again, every morning, and then again in the evening, for whatever scraps Iaondrin saw fit to set out. She grumbled about it each time, but the plate was set out each time, without fail. The cat growled over the meal each time, as if he thought she might try to snatch it away (which sometimes it seemed she might do, when she began to have doubts about the wisdom of continuing to feed him), but he came each time, without fail.

“Mean-tempered thing,” Kaz remarked. He stood by the open kitchen window, leaning against the door-jamb while Vermillion double-checked their supplies, watching Iaondrin while she pretended not to watch the cat. “Knows how to use its teeth and claws, too.” He looked back to Vermillion. “You met Beatris yet? New girl? He scratched her all to hell.” His voice and expression carried no sympathy – it was just the misfortune of being a junior student, to be given shit detail like catching a feral cat and hustling it back to the Guild Hall so someone else could make sure it really was a feral cat.

Vermillion eyed his mentor for several long moments. “You know, that’s pretty fuckin’ paranoid.”

“So’s the fuckin’ cat.” His grin was quick, there and gone. " Heroz said to take it serious like. Considering she’s likely got mages after her, and what mages can do …" He shrugged. ‘Pissed him off something fierce, though. Gotta give it to Beatris, she bagged him up and brought back. I wouldn’t’ve wanted to be on the end of that sack when she opened it up after the return trip."

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As he worked his way towards Azpiri’s shop, Vermillion reflected on whether he understood Safford‘s words correctly. A master key for all gates? Could someone really have that? Or was there something else going on with the Helve-Bense-Wyndham and back connection the mad mage mentioned. Iaondrin’s father seemed to know about these things – did he figure out something like that could be done and that’s why the Vershrikking was sent? He would have to get a copy of his treatise and find out. He snorted to himself. He would have to get a copy to Azpiri or Ellinden So and they would have to find out.

The mage’s shop was comparatively busy this afternoon – when Vermillion arrived, he found two customers ahead of him, one searching through the shelves with Azpiri’s apprentice trailing behind and another at the counter negotiating the price of a ring with Azpiri himself. Azpiri finished up the negotiations with a “I am sorry, I am not interested in those terms,” and a polite brush-off, before turning to Vermillion. A glance was enough to tell him that the conversation to follow was one best conducted in private, and with a gesture to his apprentice to mind the shop, he turned to lead the way upstairs to his study where he waved his visitor to a chair.

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This is the fire.

He crouched by the campfire, forearms braced on his knees, hands folded together, and studied the flames. They were low, a curling dance of orange and red, and the smell of the woodsmoke was strong in his nose. This the life and the breath. If he were to unfold his hands, turn his wrists, the threads would come to him. Slowly though, reluctantly, for even those unwoven could taste the taint in his blood, could feel the cold that had sunk into his bones. The effort of weaving them together would be difficult, because his patterns were broken and had been for many years. Or, the mage could crouch here for hours, held still in the space between heart-beats, and listen for the hum of unmaking. For he could also pull his hands apart, and a ribbon of grey could stretch between them in a thin sliver that would gape, a maw hungry for what had been woven.

Like the woman who sat to his right and ten feet away, eating her stew and trying to pretend she was not uneasy. She was always uneasy, and not just because of the message they had picked up in Chade, or the thought of returning to Tarrish. Though she could not hear or see the threads (she was blind to half the world around her, like so many were), even she was left uneasy by the taint and the cold. As if she knew, could sense, had dreamed, that the grey ribbon hungered to open up around her and swallow her whole, that it whispered to him in a way the threads used to whisper to him, of what it wanted. Her name, weave her name. But he did not, would not even speak it. He thought of her only as the woman with scars, for that might keep her safe from the thing that left her uneasy.

The other man, though … He stood, quiet and contained within himself, looking outward from the camp, feet braced apart. That one could hear the threads, and even weave them some, and he knew what the woman did not recognize. The silver chains both men wore around their necks bound them together, and was, they both realized, all that held the mage on this side of of the maw. When the mage could not hold back against the whispers any longer, that bond would pull them both into the void.

He still retained enough of himself (though less and less every year) for the thought of it to pain him.

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Part II can be found here.

Broc woke the next morning to the smell of fresh bacon and biscuits, and the sound of women’s voices. As he walked through his parents’ home, ducking low through the doorways, he could see that his father was gone from his parents’ bed. Entering the main living area, he found himself confronted by a small child, no more than a year old, with a head full of golden curls. The boy, holding onto the edge of a rough-hewn wooden table, looked up at him, blue eyes widening, then grinned a smile with only one or two teeth and babbled at him, as if trying to impart some bit of important information. It was Hanne Magnusdottir’s babe, whether girl or boy he did not know.

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Boeden gave his father a big hug when he finally came home from the docks. After dinner, they spoke for an hour or two in the study, in front of the fireplace, catching up. Boeden asked his father about the current war situation, and what exactly had the ships been encountering, and damage they had been sustaining.

Draedon the senior stretched his legs out and wrapped his hands around a mug of warm brandy, and was silent for a long time before answering. “The Jiand have called the tursa and traig mor. The attacks have been here, there, quick and over with. But the number of ships damaged …” He trailed off and shook his head. “More than half the fleet is either in the harbor for repairs, or just outside, awaiting them.”

“Einmar, the Jiand are using the tursa and the traig mor? I wonder why the Jiand have stepped-up the attack so?” Boeden took a deep breath, “I will stay, and help you and Dreadon as much as I can, for as long as you need me. I will go with you tomorrow morning, to work at the docks. Well, I better get some rest, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow, and we will be starting early.”

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As Boeden walked along slowly behind the caravan of wagons, his eyes drank in the beautiful sight that was Farolan, the large light grey stone buildings with tiled roofs, built to withstand any storm that Einmar herself, could whip up. The city looked as if Einmar carved it from the very mountain of granite that was the city’s backdrop. To the west side of the city, lay the largest and most grand harbor in the world, with its massive docks and floating harbor town. Housing the Daughters of Einmar when in port, Farolan’s docks were also the safest in the world.

Finally. a proper sized city, with proper size holmes, streets, and people, Boeden thought. It will be nice not to have to bend over to have conversations with someone, or to worry about accidentally hurting them, by bumping into or stepping on them. Until that moment of coming over the rise, Boeden had not realized just how much he had missed his home. I’m almost there Mom, he thought. He could not wait to hug his mother, and shake his father’s hand. He was proud of what he and his companions had done in the southlands, it was far more important than he had thought possible to be involved in.

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Things had already started to change for Athron. The Order of the Dawn had granted him the title of Pater, putting him on the same standing as his mentor, Pater Alphonse Orrick. It wasn’t the only change for the cleric. Members of the Storico pushed over each other to help him with his research on both successful and failed negotiations. Even in his own utilitarian Order, brothers and sisters gave way to him with a short bow of the head or quick salute. Although it had felt strange to him, Athron had been given the charge of taking two acolytes from the Order of the Dawn on his mission to the Middle Redding. He still had no idea who, or even how, he would choose. How had Pater Orrick chosen him? Duran, of course, had quickly suggested that he take Joy with him to the Middle Redding. Despite the horseman’s own reasons for bringing the young acolyte, Athron had to admit there were several advantages to having her along. It was something to consider.

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A few days of sailing and they were home again. “I imagine you are ready for a bath,” Bryan smiled at Iaondrin. Iaondrin nodded, but with little enthusiasm. Daily conversations with Morgan, held even while they were sailing, had allowed her to update him on what they knew; unfortunately, as she had expected, he had little information to add, and no sudden insight about the meaning of the snippet of text McCluskey and her friend had uncovered. It had been difficult for her to think of anything else on the trip back. The weeks of just living, without having to think of much except how many more times she could read the books they had bought, or her next lesson with Azpiri, seemed very far away. This interruption, that upset everything she had thought she knew … standing there in their living room again, everything felt just a little unreal.

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By the time the caravan began climbing again into the mountains, they were down to six merchants’ wagons and the mood was one of those on the final slog of a long march, though one that passed through lush countryside. In the high Fifth Redding, there were occasional encounters with less savory characters, most of which Boyle was able to smooth over with some calming conversation (it was not unusual for him to know someone’s mother, or brother, or cousin) and payment of additional “fees” for passage through or near a community. The merchants’ representatives still with them at that point seemed to be seasoned enough to understand this was nothing more than a less organized, and less armed, version of the League’s collection of tariffs, and accepted it as part of the cost of doing business.

The road narrowed as it passed into the mountains and led up to Sutton, the fortress held by Ellinden So that guarded over the high, rolling valleys of her holdings. “So five years or so since you came through here?” Blythe asked Boeden, as they saw the walls rising before them.

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