The needle is vital.

When Addie noticed fresh avren lichen, white and disgusting, crawling up the side of a stringbark, that was the primal thought which crossed her mind.

The needle.

While Nayari kept up her plod, Addie stopped to rifle through her cloak's districts. She went by dint of a black key as large as her hand, a splat of leatherleaf wood, a firecracker which popped in her hand like corn in a skillet, an ant, a pair of mittens that she had never seen before but fancied, three peanuts which she set aside for later consumption, and a pig-pink swath of cloth, before at last she found the pocket concealing her needle. Around it was wound a messy pellet of what looked like hair.

"Oh, string, how could I forget you," she muttered, unfurling the pellet, then loudly: "Wait yourself, good lady! For when I own a horse or an orrock, I'll be praying for it to have half the stamina as is crammed in your legs."

Nayari did not hear to this. Rather, she did but did not listen. Or listened but did not pay heed. Her feet urged on. The honeysuckle stalk rested on her shoulder, the squished flower pegs and barbed branches dancing a jig.

In any case, Addie soon fell into step beside her, needle and gut in hand, her breathing nimble as wildfire. Her endurance was all but dwindling. Sweat seemed to be soaking into her very bones.

"You have to stop," Addie breathed, jogging to keep up.

"I have to do nothing."

"You have to get to your daughter."

"That, yes."

"And you need to get there on your own two feet, not flung over my shoulder like a sack of taters."

Nayari knitted together her brows. "What are you talking about?"

"That." Addie pointed, Nayari looked, at the gash on the latter's papery dress. Under the rising sun, which was fuming in anger having been separated from his lover 'Mooch' Aeomar, it was revealed to be deeper than the sufferer was willing to admit.

"I am fine." Her stride never broke.

"For now. Your daughter was too, at first."

"What are you saying?"

"What you are hearing. Until your daughter got infected, she was fine. Now we're here, trying to get to her in time so she can forestall a life-threatening disease."

Now Nayari did halt. "I see," she said through bitten lips. "Do what you have to, and do it quick."

"I have to do nothing."

Nayari frowned again.

Addie smiled her cheap, charming smile. "Callback. To when you said - never you mind. Hold this." She handed over the needle and gut. "Wait your feet. I would sit down if I were you."

"Where are you going?" Addie sensed some of the fear from earlier lucent in Nayari's voice.

"Nowhere."

"Says the girl walking away from me as she speaks."

"I stop here, see." And Addie did, on a slight rise of the earth before the stringbark laden in lichen that had caught her eye. She pressed her nose to the bark and sniffed. Then she crinkled it, showing Nayari a thumb of all-well.

Discreetly, she brought her knife out and chipped away at the lichen, more leafy than crusty, with milky wafers at ends. But the white mat was stuck to the 'bark with some resolve, unwilling to come off. She did not want to tear it or harm it in any way; that could cause complications. So Addie put the knife edge-first on the top of the wafer, twisting it widdershins. Inhaling, she cleared her head of junk as one clears a garden of weeds, and thought, very pointedly: Curly white smoke rising up to your chest. Turning into pure stark energy as you -

Exhalation made her feel like a wolf separated from its pack. A wolf who ends up befriending the sheep around it and dies, peacefully, of hunger.

Addie reached with the Wolf's paw - and directed her Skill towards the argonz knife.

The unorthodox thing rammed itself into the base of the mat with a lurch no human hand could have provided. A thin slice of bark crunched, and the lichen contrived.

As the garden of her brain filled itself back up again with vines, Addie grinned to herself and started sauntering over to her companion on near-prostrate legs. Any normal blade might require sharpening or oiling, but not hers. The knife disappeared into her cloak.

Halfway down the mound, a white-orange blur burst out from the sward of dead grass to her right, running hard.

Its whiskers and haunches and hackles trembled alike when its gold-glitter eyes saw Addie. Paws paused. The fox growled, a low, rumbling sound, as if it could sense the rogue behind her helpful facade.

A Skiller, those eyes scoffed. An aspiring Jen. You should surrender yourself to the House Of Ations, foolish girl, and exeunt my woods! Your likes are unwelcome here. Your likes are unwelcome everywhere. There is enough to brood about for us in the wild, anyway. So go, go, you bothersome woolheaded - !

Addie feigned throwing a rock, and the animal darted, back to being a blur.

Shaking the burning image of its eyes off her head, she went to Nayari. She had always thought she could understand animals, far back as her memory went. Lately they had been acting petulant.

"Arm."

"What is that?" questioned Nayari.

"Avren lichen."

"And what is that?"

"That which will maintain your tongue wet so you can keep asking your silly questions. Hold still."

Nayari, with the hand of her unhurt arm, held the repugnant thing over the gash, setting aside the honeysuckle stalk reluctantly. Addie sewed away, intent yet casual. She did wish for a thimble, but hardly thought she'd have one. From time to time the pale-haired woman whistled from between her teeth. Once she flinched but Addie ignored it.

When this happened a second time, she said, "Might as well use that tongue of yours now. Keep your mind off the pain. This'll take some patience. And leeway."

"Patience?" the regarded tongue set to work. "My daughter is dying!"

"Glioma doesn't assure death, merely poses the threat of it." Eyes fixed on the needle cutting delicately through a film of skin, string in pursuit, Addie reconsidered. "That is not to say I don't understand your worry. But Aeri will be fine. We will reach her in time. She will not get the disease. She's a strong girl."

Nayari's face lit up marginally, but it made her look five years younger. "She is. Her father always says - said - she would make a great Ardaunt."

"Ardaunt!" Addie made a noise which could be taken as a snort or a laugh. "They're all genderless, or haven't you heard?"

"I know," Nayari said indignantly, forgetting the pain. "As a matter of fact, I saw one once. In Gard Wyvan."

"Gard Wyvan. Now what would you be doing that far from Dassan, good lady?"

"My husband had patrol duty there, during the spring festivities. You know how high farmers leap when they see a pebble to jump across."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess they do. There was a saying amongst the folk where I come from: a farmer's enthuse is like the mood of a cat. More prone to turbulence than a carriage in the Soonlands."

Nayari smiled. "Where you come from? And might that be - ow!"

"Sorry." Like the magus she was, Addie made the needle bob between her knuckles, the string pulled in waves. "How was it, the Ardaunt you saw?"

"Tall. Tall as a redwood. His arms were ropes of muscles. I didn't get to see him up close, what with the peddlers and hawkers selling cardboard Tridents and Irefin masks. But he was . . ." Nayari stopped her tongue's motion, blushing. "He could take on a hundred men alone, if need be."

"That is what the stories suggest," Addie agreed. A memory nagged at her. She tried to push it away. "And its hair?"

"What about his hair? Well, it was quite long, now that you say. Greasy buns rolling down to his hip, like a pregnant serpent."

Addie chuckled. "Pregnant serpent? And that is not an Ardaunt you saw then, Nayari. Ardaunts have not a single hair over their bodice. I should have suspected that, since they rarely travel alone. Always in packs, like wolves. You would scarcely be the first person who thought she saw one strolling about like it were on vacation from its lifelong oath."

"Say what you will! You'd have concurred had you been there!"

"It was likely a hardworking young blacksmith your eyes struck a fancy to. Otherwise tell me, good lady, what an Ardaunt was doing in Gard Wyvan. You think the King felt one of his formidable soldiers was an extra burden on the army and sent it to keep sheepherders from piling up and pillaging each other's pitchforks?"

"Speak what you will, I say. I think I know an Ardaunt when I see one, oh how mighty attractive - " Nayari balked her tongue at the right place.

"Hm. Withdraw your hand." Addie used her own other hand to plaster the lichen against the gash, gut's end in mouth. She sounded like a tot learning speech when she spoke hence. "There. You do know an Ardaunt is not a he, don't you? Born with no sex, they are. That's why they cannot reproduce, that's why they are nearly extinct, and that's why the King would not send them to Gard Wyvan on a whim."

"Accourse. Every child who has ever seen light knows. And w-what are you implying? I am married. My husband serves the Highlord Keshar. I love him deeply."

"I do not doubt that you do, Nayari. I wouldn't dare doubt for a breath. Nonetheless, you must know that it is all right for the lashes of not only men but also women to bat at anybody they find . . . attractive, as you put it."

Nayari shifted uncomfortably on the rock, glancing at the stalk's chartreuse leaves. Addie made a whinny through her teeth trapping the string.

"I love my husband. He is fighting back there, for all of Dassan. So that we, you and me, can escape."

They both knew he wasn't going to live. The battle against Ptirre was a lost cause, a delay so the civilians could survive.

"I respect that. I was making another point, which I fear I made poorly." Oration came hard with tight teeth, but this seemed to calm Nayari a little.

"I see you are something of a fighter yourself," the woman said. "Back with those . . . animals. I saw. You moved like lightening."

"Don't demean all of animal-kind by comparing them to those two," Addie said, hoping that would put a stop to this lane of conversation.

Evidently not. "I have never seen anyone - anything - move as fast as you did then. You were like a - a viper. Perhaps it was just my imagination. But I could swear on Aeri . . . I suppose I wish to thank you again, is all."

"I believe you have already thanked me amply, Nayari. Any more, and I shall grow fat with gratitude. Up your arm. Yes, like that."

"I've seen my husband practice swordsmanship. I have seen wrestling tourneys. But I have never seen someone your age and size do what you did. When I saw you coming, I thought you were a dead girl walking. That they would ravage you same as me, and we'd suffer a parallel fate. Y-you turned out to be an angel."

"You need to learn not to dwell on the blights of your past," said Addie. "I did. The strongest bridge may shatter under that pressure."

Nayari nodded ruefully. "You are right, accourse. You've not spoken a word else than the truth since we met. Even now you help me. How will I ever be able to repay you?"

"For starters, down your arm."

"How ever?" Nayari murmured, more to herself. She appeared not to have listened to Addie at all, but her arm lowered itself just the same.

"Stop thinking nonsense," hinted Addie. "It makes your skin blanch and your cut swell in pride."

"Can I be honest, madam?"

"Call me Addie. Or Adeline. I prefer the former. Holder be my witness, I'm younger than you."

"And yet far wiser."

"Go on now . . . there, just a breath. Yes. If your honesty is flattering as well, I'll know you to be a liar."

"It's not, as it happens. I was about to say you really do have a bitter feud with words. 'Makes your cut swell in pride.' Whoever talks like that?"

Addie chuckled a more earnest chuckle than before at this. She crossed her legs beneath her thighs on the earth now, knee complaining of bend. Under one elbow she squeezed the duffel slung around her neck, in case something other than a fox happened to show the desire of joining their exchange. "Suppose that's correct. There was never much need for talk, in the slums."

Noticeably Nayari was looking for topics to discuss. She did not want to focus on the sting which no doubt Addie's needle was imparting. "So, what do you do? Like, as an occupation?"

"I'm a brick merchant."

Nayari blinked.

"I'm a small brick merchant."

"Sooo, who taught you how to fight?"

"Life, mostly. People, some."

"And the old man, I expect?"

Addie grunted, cutting the string from her mouth and spitting the leftover pellet. Her hands worked as deftly as those of one knighted in duel.

"Tell me, Adeline. How was the old man able to tell of the infection if he is half-blind, as you say he is?"

"Master Harl," Addie told her, "is a man of the world. He has been places, and he has lived more lives in his than all of the evacuees here put together."

"Sounds like an interesting character. From his age and attire . . . "

But a section of Addie's brain emptied itself in this tirade, and went on a familiar chant. Curly white smoke rising up to your chest as you inhale-

". . . no offense, I am sure he must be a great person for you to be his disciple."

-turning into pure stark energy as you exhale.

The needle fenced from between a pair of callused fingers in one hand to those in another, propelled as though by an invisible pad, completing a messy crisscross of black string over blanched skin, blood and lichen. Quills of sunlight made Nayari's arm look an abomination. It was as good a job as could've been done, and that in such hurry.

"Come to that," Nayari was saying, a stranger to pain, "I was wondering how much of a character you yourself are. From slums in Rivate to Dassan? A fighter so good as to lay waste to two trained Dassan guards in the blink of an eye?"

"It is done," blazoned Addie in a high note, sternly.

"Hah?"

"It is done," she repeated, not feeling the part to elaborate. Suddenly she felt incredibly woozy. Her head was swimming.

The reason, Addie suspected, was the rigorous training with Master Harl. They hadn't been anticipating the Ptirrens to march in on Dassan so promptly. Using her Skill always made her feel exhausted. Usually after such trainings she relaxed and slept. This time, she had been hauled by guards behind the city walls. Highlord Keshar must have been really desperate to have all his citizens unscathed. Either that or he was a loggerheaded idiot. For the guards to scourge even their remote training place in the Sire Block by the Baffling Brook, they must really have been seeking out every single commoner they could put their hands on.

Weakly she realized she hadn't slept in half a maes. A day and then a fraction more. A long time, when you have been practicing your Skill and walking nonstop.

"It is done," Addie said again without knowledge, her voice soft as the whisper of dew on blossoming flowers.

Belraed, as the sun, climbed towards midday. Light beamed at their path. The two of them trudged on, on the mud road now. A few lagging civilians traipsed with them, and a solitary guard on his tall horse followed, hooves beating against the ground behind a constant reminder that they were not alone. It was meant to be comforting, having guards as escorts - a promise that they were safe, that they would reach Fehnia untouched by the enemies of the southern crown. But to Addie, and to Nayari more, the sound was the sound of trouble.

They shared the three peanuts Addie had found prejudicially, Nayari getting two whole. Even the anxious mother was growing tired, so tired it was all she could do to not collapse with the next step. Addie sensed this, and offered her some apple ale. It was a mistake, for Nayari drank it all despite many recriminations from her companion.

When the swig was emptied, the woman with radishes in her cheeks said, "Well, that was fine."

Addie upturned the dirty flask over her open mouth, but only a single tasteless drop entered the cave. She took the stalk in her own hands, just in case. Death's scent hung high in the air. She doubted anyone else could smell the battlefield from miles and miles away.

Master Harl's ruby Relic glowed green inside her head.

Nayari was clearly not used to drinking. "Why didn' the chubby scullion kill his daughter then?" ranted she, making up a story as it came to her. "The stars read she couldn' be married. But then they got another teller and he said she'd be married to the greatest lancer in the history of lancers! Aren' that funny?"

"Most hilarious," said Addie amiably. Her throat felt like a drainpipe which had been left exposed in a sandstorm.

"It isn' funny, dummy. It's tragic. What's more tragic is that my belly is empty. Why couldn' we have taken the pots darn berries?"

"Because those berries were poisonous."

Nayari pouted. "Or so you say."

Addie was grateful it was only two miles or so before the bore well came to sight. Not the well, exactly; rather the cluster of people and horses and guards - even an orrock or two, if her eyes were any reliable - jamming the curving, descending road ahead. She could swear she heard the tendons in her leg sigh in relief.

Two miles or quarter, it had not been a lady's morning stroll.

She asked the guard behind them if and what they had for food at the well (he was an agreeable-looking person; then again, so was the King's mother). He told her that yes, indeed they had a meal for them, yes ma'am: flatbread and sauce, and dry pork with burning pepper, and obviously water. Limit to what each could have, because supplies were limited.

Addie thanked the guard and resisted the urge to ask him "what sauce?" She was hungry enough as it were, made hungrier still by hearing this listing of items. If everyone did get their share, that was, and nobody got too greedy.

It took all she had to not run towards the cluster up ahead, probably enjoying their meal. Worried irrationally the sauce would all be finished by the time she got there, she would never get to know what flavor it was except by Aeri and Master's mouth. She would run, if she had strength enough left. She was solely operating on residues, though, scraping the pan for charred meat.

Her stomach thundered as the fox in the clearing had. Those golden eyes, what message they had seemed to convey . . . at least an intoxicated Nayari helped keep her mind off of that.

Not that her thoughts ended up in a better place. They were still within the same vault, only the walls had been painted a vibrant cyan.

". . . how'd you 'scape him, by the by?"

"How'd I escape whom?"

Nayari frowned deeply, laid a hand on Addie's forehead. "You don' have the fever," she decided after much deliberation.

"Astute judgment, m'lady."

"Then why didn' you listen to what I said?"

Addie smiled wearily. "There is a lot of dirt floating around in Rivate ghettos. Some got into my ear."

Nayari humphed like Master Harl. "Reckon I can forgive you for that. Are you listenin' now?"

"With both my ears, and my grandmother's in Vaven."

That seemed to satisfy the pale-haired drunk. "The Thornwank asslord. How'd you get 'way from him?"

The mispronounced name put a rock in Addie's stomach, which wasn't what she had hoped to fill it with at all. She saw black-red pork in her mind's canvas, then a gold eye was piercing through it, then velvet curtains were covering the eye. Only she knew it wasn't just the eye deployed behind those curtains, it was also him.

Thonwak's dead, her forefinger-mageic nails spoke. He can hurt you no longer.

Was he? Truly dead?

Young Addie had felt his blood spritz her in the face as he died. But that was five years in the past now. It seemed like the ghost of a memory.

They said your first kill stayed with you, that it stayed with you and haunted you forever. That was not the plight with her. She saw no dead man rising from his bier and accosting her in her dreams.

Oh, she remembered, all right, but remembrance was not the same as being haunted.

The memory of killing Thonwak was like a distant relative. It visited when invited, which it seldom was. On the other hand, the memory of the Skill flowing through her veins in torrents for the first time was like a close friend. It frequented her as it willed.

Whenever she wielded the Skill, she was reminded of that first time she had involuntarily fallen into that vast, rapturous reservoir inside of her.

Come on in, child, Thonwak had been gesturing, stroking his mangled member. Come on in and I'll shower you in gold scintis and silver qualls. You'll be set for life.

And Addie had started towards him, a flimsy creature of twelve, fear and anger and a thousand different emotions jostling under her skin. Two guards, in breastplates and steel caps, watching impassively. Her heart, pounding against her ribcage. Each boom screaming what are you doing, you clot, he'll kill you right after: each louder than the last.

"Summore wax in your ear?"

Her fingers curling into a fist. Her hair prickling. Every instinct, every muscle in her body telling her to run, but the gaze of the guards walled those instincts. The smell of perfume, of the brothel itself, overwhelming her senses.

And then Thonwak had touched her thigh from below the hem of her dress.

Young Addie saw white smoke.

The sconce candlestick ripped itself off the wall and sank into the nude Highlord's bare throat. Red and warm liquid sprayed at her face, a lonely droplet tumbling down her chin.

A moment of void.

Then the guards drawing swords, rushing in. The pounding against her cage deafening. White smoke rising to her chest. The fell beeswax candle passing its torch to the purple velvet curtains. One of the guards, screaming as his own breastplate dented in and crushed his chest. The other swinging his blade even as his steel cap squeezed his soggy brains out, feeding fragments to the building flame. The steel getting a bite of her shin as the man died, its bite measly and cold and cruel.

But she had had eyes for Thonwak, and Thonwak alone. Heartbeats decorating the din of shrill screams and shrieks and shouts from workers and clients of the pleasurehouse alike. White smoke infiltrated by actual fumes. Flesh crawling, in thrill and panic and wonder. The reservoir of Skill in her turning into pure stark energy as she exhaled.

The sconce had its sharp quillons embedded in the Highlord's bloodied neck. His hand drooped down the edge of the bed, below the hem of her dress. His head lolled down. His cock discontent, for ever. Yet she could pledge in the name of the Trident that she had seen his feet twitch and his head raise, overly aware of the smell of fire and blood, as she turned to jump over corpses and fire to escape, escape and learn what in Heim was wrong with her, how she had done what she had done . . .

He can hurt you no more, her nails spoke. He is gone.

Was he? Weren't there countless other nobles like him, whoring and killing their pleasure mare after? And he had looked so fair, so kind, Thonwak had looked so -

You are strong. You have the Skill.

"Not strong enough," Addie muttered.

"Want me to clean your ear," Nayari asked presently, "or are you tellin'?"

Addie forced a smile. "You know brothels. Lousy security. It was a cakewalk."

Nayari sagged her shoulders, as though she had been anticipating a better story.

I'm so happy that you're reading this. Thank you <3