How ordinary the passing weeks after àstin vanished from Esor’s life. The weather cleared for a last gust of autumn weather before long winter Nights truly descended. The xilcadis was lively with celebration, the church hosted its first esbat, and the harbor filled with swoops attempting one last trade.

  Dak interrupted Esor while he was performing his toilette in the staff baths. “You are needed at the docks,” the footman said.

  Esor hurried to don a jacket. “Is something the matter?”

  “The Lord Mayor is waiting for you.” Dak herded Esor into a carriage and slammed the door behind him. Esor was so rushed to meet the summons that he wasn’t wearing suspenders under his vest.

  Fear of trouble faded into confusion when the carriage took him down the muddy streets of the village to the harbor. Outside of holidays, the crowds were dirtier, more hurried, and overwhelmingly more masculine. The Dokàlvare stopped to scowl at their passage. These were laborers performing the grimy work storms at Night would not permit, and the carriage was clearly from the Kovenor. Esor closed the windows until it was time to exit again.

  A swoop waited at the docks. Its belly hung a handsbreadth above the surface of calm waters, bulkhead scaled with black. At the calm center of a storm of servants stood Corvin and Ilare. They were dressed in overrobes for travel.

  “There you are. At last!” Ilare said, brightening at the sight of Esor. Her hair was pulled from her face with silver clips echoing the shape of her brother’s antlers. “We’ve been waiting on this dreadful dock for far too long. You know I hate waiting.”

  He bowed and apologized for his tardiness. “It’s busy here.” Esor stepped out of the way so servants could carry luggage onto the swoop. He swept the bangs out of his face when the wind blew them awry.

  “Moods have been grim of late and cooling weather does no favors,” said Corvin. The Lord Mayor took Ilare’s hand to help her step onto the swoop. He offered his gloved hand to Esor next. “The three of us shall henceforth be taking a vacation.”

  “Three of us?” Esor looked around the dock, but the newly wedded Lady Vaseri was nowhere in sight. Corvin was leaving his bride. Esor wavered, rubbing his palms upon the hips of his jacket. The dock felt stable under his feet. The vessel looked untrustworthy. “Vacation to where, exactly? How long? I’ve prepared nothing.”

  “Dak and Kuper have seen to all our needs.” Corvin’s outstretched hand remained steady.

  At last, Esor stepped onto the swoop himself, declining to take the Lord Mayor’s hand. A gust of wind rocked the deck under him and he reached out with a gasp. Corvin steadied Esor with an arm looped briefly around his waist.

  “Thank you,” said Esor, blushing furiously.

  Ilare had already found her way to the level above the cabins, where a grumpy-looking captain and his crew pretended to ignore her. Scarves danced serpentine around her shoulders as she gazed across the bay. “A perfect day for sailing, I’d wager,” she called to them.

  “Oh, as if you could know.” Corvin dismissed her with a flip of his hand. “You haven’t been out of bed in vetone.”

  She glowed at him with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks. “I’m out of bed now.”

  Esor wobbled when the swoop set off. It swayed more than he would have expected, given that none of their vessels dared touch water. Even the ocean nearest the shore was tainted with enough Chaos to eat through hull, given time.

  It wasn’t until they were sailing past the Se Guidehouse, where Dolik?n Bay opened into the ocean, that the ship steadied and Esor stopped feeling so green.

  “We sail south for the Aslas Barrens and shall return after the first light of spring,” said Corvin.

  “After the winter?” exclaimed Esor.

  “After the winter!” exclaimed Ilare.

  The vessel was packed for a journey to the western coast of the Aslas Barrens. They would vacation near the hazy, poorly defined border of territory walked by Men. A dry forested island chain had served as military outposts when the Empire drove the Taproot àlvare out of the Barrens, but it had since become a retreat from the torrid winters of the northwest.

  “Our captain takes a route that shall never test the armor on the vessel nor the wherewithal of the keroterase,” said Corvin. “This is a pleasure cruise for you, my dear sister—a respite from your respite.” Ilare could not have been more delighted, particularly when she asked after Xeta’s permission and got a dismissive shrug from Corvin. “He’s declared your Wasting cured. You’re my ward. Why should I ask permission from him for such a short trip?”

  Hence they were to be freed from ?elasdur for three of its cruelest, darkest months of the year, and the doctor could not reach any of them.

  ~

  A FORTNIGHT ON A SWOOP was nothing to an àlvar as ancient as Corvin. For those young as Esor and Ilare, it was adventure. Every morning, Light revealed a new, unfamiliar coast. They navigated near enough the shore to pick out the individual trees, though there were few south of the Edsha Mountains, and it quickly became rocky. Just as quickly, they navigated away from the shore to hop between islands.

  Esor and Ilare spent much of their time simply watching land pass. They elapsed endless hours speculating about the source of distant fire smoke. The single village of Men they saw at great distance got them so excited they forgot themselves and danced. The keroterase ensured that didn’t get out of hand.

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  “Remember, I brought you to continue Ilare’s education,” said Corvin with dreadful seriousness, though the amethysts of his eyes sparkled with amusement.

  After another week, the vessel docked on a small island that grew dusky gold grass straight into the water. Dokàlvare played lutes and strings to welcome them. Children handed Ilare a bouquet overflowing with bellflowers and gentian. She smiled far too much for a proper lady and bounced upon the balls of her feet, which Esor found so charming as to be infectious. He barely worried about àstin at all.

  A foreign steward led them up a rope bridge into mujan built among spreadroot trees. The local lord awaited them there—handsome, sturdy, and tanned. Patrician Melio? was one of the Kovenor.

  “My cousin,” said Ilare warmly.

  “And this is my employee, Esor an Amen,” said the Lord Mayor, stepping aside to reveal him with a flurry of cloak.

  “Quite so?” Melio? surveyed Esor critically. Esor surveyed him in return. Melio?’s hair concealed antlers, although his were a pair of shorter nubs that showed only a finger’s length from his curls.

  “He is my teacher, and fabulous at his job,” said Ilare. She spoke proudly toward the bouquet in the crook of her arm. Her finger dipped between the blossoms, providing a bridge for one tiny beetle to crawl out.

  “Then he is an honored guest,” said Melio?. “It’s my honor to host all three of you for winter. Come along.”

  Melio? talked animatedly with Lord Mayor Corvin as they progressed through the mujan. There was no division between village and city on Amezuz; it was too small for more than a single cozy settlement. Grand cottages lined the paths with servant huts tucked against their gardens. They were quite attractive for such modest homes. Roofs of golden grass surely kept them cool on the hottest Lights, and children seemed contented to play in their open doorways.

  Esor paced Ilare an arm’s length to her left. “Is Melio? another Marked by Tosvodos?” he asked.

  “The presentation for Melio? is more common,” said Ilare, pointing one of her fingers into her hair like an antler. “Nobody’s ever seen the likes of Corvin...in more ways than one.”

  A hunting lodge stood atop a stand of spreadroot trees, each twice as thick around as any tree in Sibíko. Their stubby branches supported more than enough weight for the manse. Wide-open windows gazed out across scrubby plains into wetlands grown thick under the warmth of sunlight. The roof was daub and wattle, the walls sung tightly, and it was much cooler inside than on the mujan.

  Ilare marveled at a display of bones assembled in the grand foyer. “What kind of animal could have left behind such a skeleton?” It was a four-legged creature which would have dwarfed all of them in life. Its long scooped jaw was held open as if to bite.

  “Grangeri,” said Corvin.

  “Our many-times great grandfather felled the beast you see before you, Cousin Ila,” said Melio?. “Do you see the chipped bone here...? That was his first failed strike, and nearly his only strike. The grangeri were a furious prey. It tore down the tree upon which he stood to trample him.”

  The Lord Mayor traced his fingers over the bone chip. “Had the grangeri succeeded, there would be no lodge and no Amalen to father us. A death that would have changed history.”

  Nobody hunted grangeri at the lodge anymore. The ocean no longer fell back in the summer so they could migrate from Disunam? to the islands.

  Still, there was other hunting to occupy Melio? and Corvin’s time, and the lords provided ample meat for cooks to prepare. One afternoon away from the lodge could produce duck, dove, and fish aplenty. They feasted upon auroch rump so often that Esor developed a preference for its preparation. “Slow-turned upon the spit keeps it juicier than grilled,” Esor said, and Corvin commanded that was how the cooks were to prepare auroch moving forward.

  Prey far deadlier than auroch had drawn Corvin to Amezuz Island for the winter.

  “My responsibilities as Lord Mayor prevent me from engaging in battles directly against the Dwarrow enemy in the Mountainhomes,” Corvin said. “I am still a trained paladin.” For him, this seemed to dictate a need to hunt beasts which presented a real threat to his life, and the island was said to have ivenmu. “Ivenmu are naturally adapted to similar environments. A thin, long fur to shade them from burn—amazing sinuses to cool the brain—and quite a dissection to perform if you can take one down.”

  The “if” seemed to be a significant factor.

  The first ivenmu Esor ever saw was dead, mounted in the lodge whole. Bones had been replaced with wood and the hide was stretched over wire to create the appearance of life.

  This creature looked like both cave bear and dire wolf, though rangier than either, with fangs long as Esor’s hand. It was enormous. Big enough to bite him in half. He struggled to imagine anything taking one down.

  “They aren’t native to this place,” said Ilare when she caught him looking worriedly over the ivenmu.

  “I know,” said Esor.

  She reached out her hand. “Not that. These.” A flurry of movement exploded from the dead ivenmu. Esor leaped back with a shout, but they were only moths, seeking to swirl to Ilare’s fingertips. The dust drifting in their wake sparkled in sunbeams. “What are you doing here, little ones, nitemure? Such moths belong in the coldest places.”

  The moths nestled in Ilare’s hair while she investigated the body of the ivenmu. Even she gave a little cry of surprise when she peered inside the hide and found it seething with fat, white, dusty moth larvae. Ilare covered it again.

  “Strange,” she said. “It was hotter inside the belly than outside, yet they thrive.”

  Esor had barely glimpsed the larvae, but the writhing bodies were imprinted upon his vision when he closed his eyes. “Once these islands were connected by sand bars, but now they stand alone. Many things change here. It’s an untamed, savage sort of place, isn’t it?”

  The Light and heat were savage, the sturdy trees upon which they stood were steadfast, and the wildlife below the mujan were certainly untamed. Even in winter, Lights on Amezuz were hot enough that Esor sweated through his vests and jackets.

  He soon yielded to the servants’ suggestions to wear linen. Ilare had taken to wearing little more than slips, which sent keroterase chasing with parasols to keep her shaded, and made Samej especially hostile to approaching bucks.

  But the food was wonderful. The hunting lodge had every amenity, provided by servants even more dedicated than those in ?elasdur. Ilare was no more distracted from lessons than at home. And Esor forgot, sometimes, exactly what they had left behind.

  ~

  FOR MONTHS, àSTIN AN Galefar languished in the gaol, watched over by Drakalban. He ate root vegetables twice a day and had one pitcher of Chaos-stinking water to meet his washing and drinking needs daily.

  The gaol was in the village near the square, and àstin’s window well saw enough sky for him to tell the passage of time. When it rained, as it often did, filthy runoff from the street cascaded through the well. He pressed himself against the corner to stay as dry as possible. It drained under his door, vanishing elsewhere in the gaol. Somewhere that made other prisoners wail.

  They took him out of the cell sometimes. He had several trials before a village judge. An Inquisitor came from Kusw? for an interview, then left.

  One time, àstin an Galefar was tied to the pillory in the center of the square, where everyone ignored him as they went about their days. He watched the Low buy their fish and exchange their crafts and knew that he was lower than the lowest of them, impure, perverse, sinful, for the crime of loving beyond caste.