Sharp red lines were spreading like ivy across the girl's forehead. They were of a jagged, portentous nature, telling the approaching morrow that the horizon carried a silent thunder on its post.

Master Harl was knelt besides Aeri, examining the affliction with his phased eye.

"Is she going to be well?" a concerned mother asked.

Master Harl gave no reply. He hmmed and humphed, tilting his head for better vantage. Caressing the craggy red lines, which made Aeri flinch. Occasionally he rubbed at his stocky white beard.

"Well?" said Nayari. Addie kept a hand on her elbow to quiet her. "What? She's my daughter! Can the old man even see?"

"As a matter of fact he cannot," said Master Harl then, leaning heavily on his quarterstaff and grimacing as he stood up. "But in a much more real sense he sees more than many merchants do in their lifetimes."

Nayari stared at the half-blind man, assessing his statement. Finally, deciding either forceful coitus had ruined her sense or the sightless old man also happened to be insane, she bent and kissed her daughter on the cheeks. Aeri held her mother's hand, and the two embraced for a considerable amount of time. Master Harl, had he been born with eyeballs which obeyed him, would have deemed this moment fit to roll them.

At last Addie, who was looking at the scene with a smile hitched downward at the corners, broke the silence. "Worry not, Aeri. You're going to be right as rain before you know it."

What a wonderfully appropriate comparison to make, Addie's mageic nails spoke, in the presence of a Dassan citizen.

Nayari stared now at her, arm around Aeri, looking like a dragon from the Ytranar Era protecting its egg.

Addie's juxtaposition had, of course, been made in poor taste, because for the entirety of the southern Khad Dynasty rain was a rarity - and past several monsoons had been mysteriously absent for them altogether. As though the Quenchbringers had deliberately stolen vapors from the clouds to laugh their bellies out at them. Fortune-tellers declared this as an omen of war. But that much was obvious: war was already active in the form of scores of smaller battles, such as the one which was causing them to vacate the princedom of Dassan.

Augurs blamed the lack of clouds weeping, as they blamed it all, on pagans and heretics. And the Jen.

"It looks like a demon has infested her!" Nayari cried. "Bless the Seohrah, my little - "

"It is no demon, child," Master Harl informed her. "It is an infection."

"But it looks so horrible!"

"It is. Some infections are worse adversaries than many of the 'demons' you speak of. At least by the latter you are aware of the monstrosity you are dealing with."

Addie put in her copper scinti. "I knew a demon once who died of a small infection."

Nayari's eyes flashed with many prominent emotions. "Does this mean - does this mean my Aeri will die?"

The girl cringed in her mother's hold. Her braids shivered.

"No, child." Master Harl laughed. "Now whoever told you that?"

"You did! Just now!"

"I don't recall doing so. Pardon the senile memory. The infection is not so bad as to kill her, not unless we let it get to her neuroglia. Shren?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did you rub Sasmin on the wound?"

"Yes, master."

"Dried?"

"Yep."

"Alcohol?"

"That too."

"I thought as much."

"Why, was that wrong of me?"

"On the contrary. You have slowed the spread by leagues. Turned a wildfire into a stubble." The old man knew his words, how to juggle with them, make them perform aerobics on his tongue, unlike his pupil who it could be said was ungifted with semantics. To the mother he said: "Your daughter should remain hale as long as we are able to find her some retractable honeysuckle. It is likely a bulldreg's saliva or feces got into the wound. If that is correct, it might grow into a polyp. Glioma is a possibility."

"What's gliomet, what is that?" Nayari asked.

"Glioma. A form of tumor dangerous enough to kill. Certainly painful enough to make an individual wish for death. However, that risk doesn't factor in at the moment. We have, let us say, two hundred thousand beats to get the honeysuckle."

"Two hund - how long is that?"

"Till the morrow after the next, child. An easy approximation to make."

"But h-honeysuckle? How will that help?"

"Let's see . . ." Master Harl raised his ramrod quarterstaff to his mustache, the other hand grappling behind a strap of his dungaree. "To make you understand would require me lecturing you for half a maes or so, by which time everyone else will be past the turnpike and in Fehnia while the Ptirrens march us down. Although we might be able to complete the lesson if we commence now. Shall we?"

Addie could argue with her master not, so she gestured to Nayari instead. "Come now. We have flowers to hunt."

"Isn't honeysuckle water-fed? How will we find it . . . here?" Nayari gestured widely, at the road they were treading along with nearly thirty thousand other devastated souls, at the woods flanking their either side.

Master Harl would have, once again, rolled his eyes had he been able to. Addie knew well by now when he wanted to do that.

They had already travelled five miles since the reunion of mother and daughter. A bore well up ahead, supposedly another two miles away, was to be their resting base where they could lie and catch a breath and perhaps doze for a while before the guards jabbed them on. Addie and her master may not even get that trove, since they had their trunk and duffel to take mighty care of.

"We want retractable honeysuckle," Addie explained. "They're everywhere where stringbark is." She looked at her master. He had on many a day made her forage about for such devolved plants, timing, grading her. "Just rather tricky to get ahold of. Come now. We don't want the infection to flag."

Some time later, Addie was silently cursing Pedgram and more importantly his leg, courtesy of which Aeri had been endowed with the infection, to drown in shit.

Roteb in the sky was dim as a red rusted coin, and the wooden life around her permitted only a breath of his light to oil the wheels of her sight. That was the reason she walked with a folding knife in hand that cut the null of darkness always stretching one step ahead of her. The knife, an object of style, gave her comfort. Her hand around its moss-soft grip felt at home. At day in light, in front of people, she would have been loath to draw it. In the darkness it was an ordinary thing.

She blundered about until in front of her squatted a lone shrub. She had passed many copses behind and sideways and slantways, but it was the holly berries she thought she saw squatting in this particular shrub that made her stop. No two barks interrupted the moonlight track here, and it gleaned through fans of leaves to throw the shrub's blood-rimmed shadow on the earth.

Addie squinted her eyes.

Few of these berries appeared to be almost magenta under the moon's scowl, which led her to believe they must be dark blue or perhaps purple like the ink used for the Educatori's seal. Others were the more standard deep red of a lover's heart. Since both the holly berry types were of identical shape and size, and were located on the same shrub's leafy outgrowths, Addie circuited about it once and smiled. It was the smile of a child who knew more about her sibling's treasures than she is supposed to.

Bending to her knee, Addie placed the tip of her knife's blade in the soil such that it was upturned. She moved it in many directions, tracing shallow lines left and right until she found exactly the pertinent spot. Here the face of the blade caught the moon's beam, and reflected it sharply and diversely.

She was grateful no one was around to see the spine, or in fact the full body, of the knife in this sudden shine. It was a work of art, bone white despite the scarlet of the moon and pretty as a bell. A plain circular symbol with a Trident's teeth touching the perimeter ran repetitively along its length.

She tilted the face of the knife butt-first, tip buried in the perfect spot of the soil. Her eyes were that of a hungry cougar's. When the edge of the blade was introduced to the moonlight, a ray flared up to illuminate a point some four feet from her, looking . . . different from the rest of the layout before the shrub. It was hard to pinpoint what the distinction was on the nail, but it was there, all right.

"Gotcha," Addie said to nobody.

But then clouds rolled up in front of a shrinking Roteb like shapeless flying wagons, obstructing his helpful scowl. A dragos alighted down on her shoulder, trilling. Addie waited, watching the clouds pass and leave the fading moon alone.

Dawn was sleepy on the vista.

Then, careful not to disturb the angle of the knife even an iota, Addie laid down flat and stretched her leg out till her sandaled foot was over the embellished point. Sighing, she unburied the knife tip and slid the rest of her body towards the planted foot. The dragos took off, upset. It took its trill with it, the selfish bugger.

Addie cupped her hands around the foot before she lifted it, then poked with her fingers in the now-dark niche. They found the hole.

It was the size of a nose ring, but it had depth. Something slender stirred inside.

"Got you, you son of cuckoldry."

Now all she needed was water. But the bottle was with Nayari. They hadn't planned to split, the two of them. Addie had improvised after much fruitless scouting, giving the poor woman a quick course on how to spot a retractable honeysuckle.

Still, she couldn't be far. "Hello!" Addie called. "Need some life's elixir here!"

A small animal rustled in the dark, but there was no rejoinder from Nayari herself. Deciding it was a fool's idea to shout in the woods - her voice could also carry to the main mud road, and that could attract guards, and that was bad - Addie plucked a berry and stuffed it into the hole in the soil. The thing inside pushed weakly against it. It would be too much effort to hunt for another. Addie had no clue if the berry was of a blue or a red sort, but it was doing its makeshift job passably, and that was all the matter.

For the case in which a slinkhound, raccoon, lynx or such idly consumed the cap of berry, or the thing it capped, Addie gathered misshapen nearby rocks and laid them in a circle around the cavity.

Likely to be left alone now.

These creatures may not be used to human intervention. They would be used to marked territory.

She hightailed it to the general location where she and Nayari had rifted, moved around wary not to walk headfirst into a stringbark or get caught up in brambles or sapling nutmeg, called the name out a few times with no results. Alarm fixed its stronghold inside of her.

Last time Nayari had been in the woods, she had been grabbed by two obnoxious men and it had not ended well for either. She must have clearly been off her kilter due to that incident, she shouldn't have been left alone - damnation, it would scar anyone! - and then her daughter . . . Addie displayed haste, a ghoul dodging tree trunks and branches and bulging roots.

At length she heard what could be mistaken for the noise of angry snakes, but she knew it was human or at least human-like sniffling that had pricked her ears.

Addie followed it like a spider toward its prey across its swinging lure web. For a while the sound stopped. So did Addie.

Plowing through the air, coming from the main road, was the cry of a toddler with a parched throat who was evidently getting neither drink nor teat.

But then the sniffling returned, in all its former as well as newly marshalled glory, urging Addie onward, onward through the passive woods.

Here a songbird chirruped to interfere her listening, there an orrock neighed on the road. No moisture dripped from the leaves, dry and dying. In the fullness of time Addie came upon a low weeping. She followed its faint auditory trail and saw a lugubrious shape with distinctive pale hair slumped on the flat hind of a rock.

She approached slowly, the way a hare might approach a wolf (why this would come to pass is of little relevancy and remains to be seen). She made deliberately to drag her feet on the ground, scratching them against dry and fresh leaves alike, producing an irksome sound so as to alert the slumped figure.

"Nayari?"

Sobs turned into intermittent sniffles again as the figure righted its composure. Addie bent her knee besides the flat smoothness of the rock.

"Is something the matter?" she questioned in her best comforting voice.

Nayari shook her head. Addie folded her unorthodox knife and took the woman's hands in her own. They were small and glib, unlike her own large, callused ones. Dully she conceived that the woman, a mother, a very recent victim of rape, was but a child like herself, merely a few summers older. Aching fishes swam in Addie's chest.

"You can tell me, you know," she said. "You said you owed me forever. Or something like that. Well, you have to tell me then. That will be your debt paid."

Nayari looked up, likely unable to see Addie's face in the dark, only feel it. "It's nothing," she said, snuffling wetly. "It's just . . . I was here alone. And I thought, if - if they would find me again. I mean to say, we left them lying there out in the open and they're - they're monsters. They're the real demons in skin, drinking and fucking and . . . I was scared, nothing else."

There was a small hard silence, filled single-fold by two wet sniffs.

"I hope their dicks rot off," Nayari sincerely said.

Addie nodded like she were the coinmaster of Baendol, councilling the Highlord Commander in the west. "You have the bottle?"

Although Addie could not see it, she perceived the movement in front of her to be Nayari nodding.

"Go on. Take a sip. There . . . Leave some, now. I need it. Feel better?"

Another nod, a genteel one far as Addie could tell. Like mother, like daughter.

"You know, I almost sold my body to a stranger once just so I could have a flavorsome meal."

There was a smaller, harder silence.

Nayari checked Addie's face to see if this was a lie, could see darkness alone, and determined from her tone that it must be true.

And it was. Stars above, it was.

"I haven't told that to anyone except master since . . ." Addie smiled lamentably. "Not a slice of my past I look back fondly on. Not exactly chest-puff proud of it."

Another space of quiet slid into the conversation like gristle between teeth, but Nayari's sobbing did reduce. Addie ascended the rock, its surface cooler than she'd anticipated, patting the woman's hand.

"Tell me," said a solemn Nayari.

So Addie did. It wasn't a difficult enterprise at all, albeit painful in its remembrance.

"So I'm twelve, and there is this entourage of bodyguards and charlatans in our slum," she began. "The prestigious Tilva Sati has come to escort the young prince. He wants to see how us poor people of Rivate live. How badly we stink. Whether we have six toes instead of five . . ."

Addie had been a measly, delicate thing then, smock over flesh over bones. Unaware of the power hidden beneath the grime of her forefinger nails. Seeing proud seafoam banners and argonz parasols had lit a candle of hope in her heart. If anyone could, would, help her, it'd be the royalty, right? The band who ruled, the fair 'uns, the nobles who bought and brought justice. The Hicks were plainly jealous of their clothing and jewelry and grace, that was why they made demeaning comments and told hair-curling stories in undertone about them. That had to be the sole reason.

"I slip past the throng," Addie continued, recounting the episode, "slick little thing that I am. That's how I get by. Pickpocketing scintis and waffle crumbs. Digging trash for a treasure of thumbtacks. But the guards are stupid strict. They won't let me near the metal umbrellas where the prince is seated. Then Highlord Thonwak with his silver-lined cape gestures and suddenly I'm standing in front of him, surrounded by all these people in wonderful, colorful robes."

His face had been so kind. After all these years, the thing which still stuck with Addie, which haunted her, was that Thonwak had looked so kind. She didn't remember the features of his face, only that it had been the face of a proper dandy fella, a righteous fair 'un. Altruistic, unselfish, benevolent, the Prince Charming who rescues the lass from the pirates of the Slithering Loch and the Shadneer. Only Prince Charmings in these stories are usually in their fifteenth or sixteenth summer, whereas Highlord Thonwak had looked to be savoring his thirties. Already a central streak running through his sandy hair was thinning, his side locks combed and laced in a silver grey. But that was irrelevant. The Hicks had all been wrong, after all. This man was a gentleman, they were all gentle -men and -women here. They would help her. Employ her, feed her, change her. She was tired of stealing, and these people were good. Young Addie had been so sure they were good. That he was good.

"He sits me down on his lap. Says he doesn't mind my filthy clothing, my unkempt hair. Tells me I'm a beauty. He waves his hand and lookee ho! Peeled grapes and cottage cheese are served. It's like mageic to me, fling a finger and have it done. It's all oh so delicious. The kind of delicious you cannot say you've experienced if you have not gone on a stale loaf of sweetbread for four consecutive days, you know? Thonwak feeds me by hand. Teases me by holding a grape over my mouth, squeezing it, watching the juice dribble on my lips. And I have never been happier because it tastes so good. It tastes sweet as the bite of a stolen fruit and . . . I don't know. I have never been happier. Not even when my mother had been alive, no, I could hardly remember her face. Not even when I hadn't been a bloody street urchin."

It went without saying that some of the grape juice had sidled down to her budding bosoms, running down from between them. Purely accidental, of course, but enough liquid to make the shoddy material of her smock stick unpleasantly to her skin. Enough juice to make her nipples obtrude, enough for him to try to clean it with the back of his hand. Gently, like the gentleman he was.

"He says he wants to take me to the Green Hall for dinner. I look at the prince sitting maybe ten, maybe fifteen feet from us. His eyes are a shade of blue I've never seen. I'll always remember those eyes, watching me snuggled up on the Highlord's lap. He looks the same age as me, the prince, but I think he knows a lot more about what is going on."

"Is he the one who was banished last winter?"

Addie made a noncommittal noise.

"What after the bastard asks you for dinner?"

"I agree, of course, what else is there to say? The man is about to turn my life around. But he wants me to take a bath before I visit the castle grounds. Tells me he can arrange for me to go to the top of the Tall Tower."

If you spit from up there, Highlord Thonwak Danir had said, the wind carries it to the Shadneer.

No way!

On my honor, yes way.

How's the view?

It's quite honestly to die for, Adeline.

"But cleaning up first," Addie remembered. "That is imperative for him, like without that cog the sand clock won't run. Sorry. I'm no good with words."

"Not at all," urged Nayari. "Your similes are pretty as rainbows."

Despite herself, Addie smiled, fighting the lump in her throat. "You don't have to stick up to me just because I saved your life, you know."

Nayari shrugged. "Maybe I want to. What happened then?"

"He takes me to this bathing house, but when we go inside there's naked women everywhere. Some are semi-naked. Some have glitter and powder on. Some are playing with poles, some are rubbing against men's crotches. Rings in their nipples and spurt in their hair. Even a twelve year old knows this is no bathing house. Besides, you grow up fast in the slums. It's either that or starve to death. I wonder how old Thonwak thought I was. He might have thought I was older. Never did ask. I think not he cared.

"And he's pointing out women after women, whispering their hefty salaries into my ear. He selects two of the prostitutes, tells one to smack the other's ass with a cosh. Hands them a whole silver squall. Another pair he tells to eat each other out, another to play in frosting, and so on. I stand there frozen, musing my fate in the folds of the velvet curtains behind which he has settled without clothes."

Nayari nodded, sniffed and scoffed at the a together time. "So did he . . . ?"

"Put it in me? No. I scrammed."

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to - "

"You didn't. What's in the past is in the past."

"You are very strong."

Addie smiled. "Not strong enough."

Nayari fleeced her hand. "I'm sorry for acting a mess. Is Aeri really going to be okay?"

"Yes." Addie cleared her throat, shook off the seafoam banners and blue eyes and velvet curtains from her mind. "Yes, she is. I found the honeysuckle."

If not for the night putting its resources - or rather, the lack of them - to use in enveloping Nayari's face, Addie was certain she'd have seen visible relief pasted on it. She did feel it, though. A subtle, possibly imaginary, heating of the rock's cool surface. Like the woman had expelled a warm wave of abatement.

"Follow me. And try not to bump into anything."

They fairly flew their way past trees and their jutting branches. Red moonlight tried to fool their sight. Roots tried to trip them over. Brambles tried, and did, snag at their feet. They passed also a bunch of fireflies, mother's hand breaking a child's fall, but afterwards that only caused the shadows to thicken in their perspective. Addie in the lead, Nayari struggling to keep up. But the woman had been instilled with an abstruse sense of power from listening to the former's story.

Her pale hair rose to fly in a pennon behind her rushing bodice.

Once during her process of navigation Addie realized she was in a patch of woods she hadn't been in earlier, thus she turned to reiterate her steps to where she had deviated from her route. Doing this she noticed a slash on the arm of Nayari's dress, plaited in blood, but the woman said, "It's nothing. Thorny son of a bitch got me."

Thence Addie grinned and budged on.

By the time they reached the site where the circle of stones still rested intact, Roteb had taken his departure. The skyline lightened up in glee, relieved that the scarlet rider was gone.

Songbirds sang.

Addie kicked aside a stone, crouched, signaled for Nayari to do the same. The berry in the hole was dark blue after all, and shuddering mildly as the thing inside kept up its struggle. Maybe it had taken a break, but sensed them come and resumed its solitary scuffle.

What strange stairways wobble beneath your feet, Addie's swordhand forefinger nail spoke, for your imagination to waver and wander in the manner it does.

What strange stairways indeed, the other concurred. Have you a name for it? I call it, she has a bad case of sailor's legs.

"Have no worry, it isn't a demon," Addie said, reading the expression on Nayari's face like a storybook and ignoring the nails' voices like tawdry illustrations of the same book. "Hand me the bottle."

Nayari did. She was not afraid, there was just lesser devolved botanical life in Dassan prairies. Addie knew women like her rarely went ten miles from their households at that, so many commonplace units of the world were intriguing to them. Nayari craned her neck as Addie plucked the berry out, along with bits of the earth, since she had stuffed it as one puts corks into casks filled with wine.

Yes, they could see it now, cowering, cringing into the earth.

Addie unscrewed the top of the vessel, held it over the hole, and, like a faithful student of the chemical sciences, let measured drops of water fall on the hole and the surrounding soil. They were consumed eagerly, and she could only wonder how these woods would react if they were showered with precipitation as she waited.

And waited.

And frowned. It should have come out by now.

Was it in fact a scent-induced retractable and not water-? Would she really have to dig so much turf just to get her hands on a damn -

The stem sprang out of its cavity like a mole attacking its burrow invaders, giving Nayari a good start. She squealed, recoiled. This was a good laugh for Addie, and after the settling of her heart for Nayari as well.

They watched as the stalk yawned and tiny, barbed branches started flattening out from its body. It was like watching an ice fountain that was unfrozen mid-air. Oddly hypnotic, mystifying as the birth of a babe. More so as leaves attached to the branches started to unwrap themselves like adorable little scrolls.

"Wow," said Nayari.

"Wow," agreed Addie. "First time?"

"First in a long time." Nayari leant towards the plant, half of its stem still inside its scinti-sized hole. She reached forward, felt the scales on the chartreuse leaves. It barely looked like a honeysuckle plant at all. Flowers were little more than squished pink-brown pegs. "This will help get rid of the de - infection?"

Addie shook her head no. She looked up at the striated daybreak clouds, now that Joe had sent that fiery fireball of sun to mount the sky. After a moment of thoughtful consideration, she said, "Let's just take the whole thing."

"Huh?"

"I . . . am rather lousy when it comes to extraction," Addie confessed. "Master is quick with this kind of thing. And it's already forenoon."

"We still have time, do we not? The old man said we had till morn after today."

"I know, and we do. But they can't exactly stop to wait for us, can they? The guards will keep nudging them on. What if it takes me hours to extract the nectar? Then the tincture is in my trunk - "

"You left it back there?" Nayari screamed.

"Well, I wasn't quite expecting this to take so much time."

"B-but she's back there!" Nayari punted at a stone. It flew like a stiff lizard, then crashed somewhere esoterically with a splintering sound. "She's waiting on us!"

"Don't panic," Addie advised.

"How can you say that? What right do you have to say tha - "

"Don't panic, Nayari. We have time aplenty. Listen to what we're going to do. Are your ears mine to tell?"

Nayari cursed under her breath.

"We are going to take this whole stem with us right now. We are going to take it to the well. You know of it?"

A begrudging nod, accompanied by sundry cussing.

"Even if we stop to recline - "

"We will not!"

"- we will reach the well with time to spare. Master Harl can exercise the remedy in no time, I've seen him do it on numerous occasions before. Your daughter will be fit as a flea."

"You really are no good with words. I don't trust the old man."

"Do you trust me?"

Nayari's lips twitched, as though they wanted the tongue behind them to argue. They failed.

"I do."

Addie's hand vanished straight into one of the many pockets of her strange brown cloak. When it reappeared, there was an ornate bolster in its grasp. It shone like a star under the trekking sun's glare. Nayari found a suitable length of grass that was not devolved and set herself down on the ground, chewing on it as she watched her savior industriously at work.

Addie was very conscious of her watch. She flicked open the bolster, her precious knife blade out singing songs of chaffing against the honeysuckle stem. Nayari could not notice at any cost. Nor did she; in fact, by the time Addie held the free stalk in her hand, its leaves and flowers hanging like inferior components of an expensive chandelier, with the knife properly concealed, the woman was nodding in drowse against her chest. She embodied the part of a snoring skeleton well in a world of death and decay. Her open mouth was filled with warm sunlight. It killed Addie to have to wake her up, but she had to and she did.

Whatever be said, they were short on time. And the road to Fehnia swept far and away.

Thoughts?

Bear with me.

Thanks for reading <3