Parshir,

　　 I don`t know if this letter will ever reach you and I don`t know if you`ll ever bother to read it. I don`t know if you remember me and I ---`t know if I`m even spelling your name right. But you were at the fig--ing in Oxdal. They`re starting to call it the First Battle of Oxdal, did you know that? I`ll give you one guess why they`re c---ing it that - the First Battle. Not j--t the Ba--le. I don`t know if you can --- -ny--- t- h—p but please th ---

　　 They`re ra--ing in the so--h. Pe-ple go--g m--sing every d-y. My s--ter sa-s th-y`re -ll joi--ng so-e secret mi--tia. I thi-k th--`s just som---ing my f---nds to-d her to kee- her from crying ----ight. If you --n sen---lp we would greatly a---eciate it. I think t--re will be an---er at--ck soon. I`ve been tr--ng to te-l my si--er we sh-uld le--e. She do--n`t wa-t to go, lots of p---le don`t w-nt to go. "We ran a--y on-e, we ca-`t just run away again" - but what are we sup----d to do? We`re not fig----.

　　-Letter received in Etyslund in Spring of 244 YT. Letter was water-damaged on arrival but still readable. Due to its intended recipient`s death, the letter was given to the library administered by Stepan Zelenko

　　"My little one, there is a time to fight, yes, but it is never when you must ask. There is always a time to run, yes - a time to hide, yes - a time to outwit, yes - to reconcile. But the time to fight is only when the question cannot be asked. And when that time comes - and may it never come - fight without hesitation, but never without remorse. It is not for us to show weakness to the world - they`ll scorn and hate you, they`ll exploit your fear, your sympathy for the ones who hurt you, so you must master it - but never let it go completely. Let yourself be mute as dust to those who wish you ill, but never be mute within yourself."

　　-Marga`s words

　　Summer, 244 YT: Kivv

　　 "You again, is it?" The Kivv militia guard looked Aleks Zelenko up and down, eyeing him slowly. It was with a slightly suspicious step that she walked around him. "Well, you`re cleared to enter this area already, I guess. These other two, though, I don`t know -"

　　 "They`re my sisters," Aleks answered, gesturing toward Hilda and Kamila, at the same moment that the militia guard locked eyes with Kamila. Heart heavy in her chest, Kamila stared back, trying to maintain a neutral face.

　　 "Oh, right! Of course. Haha." The guard stood up stock-straight and nodded, rigidly, to Kamila. "It`s a pleasure to see you around here, Kamila. And& you must be Hilda, then?"

　　 Hilda smiled, just the slight upturning of a lip`s corner, when the guard`s gaze fell on her. "I`m Hilda, yeah." She nodded, reached up to her forehead, pulled the bill of her cap down to shield her eyes a little more. She found herself very conscious of the warm smile the guard favored her with. She could imagine what the guard must have been thinking: Oh, the hope of Etyslund, the hero of Kivv, the new Reaper who`ll protect us from the Aether-Touched, and of course from the Invictans, who couldn`t possibly stand a chance against this child -

　　 "Well, I guess if you`re with these two, then it`s fine. Just don`t go wandering off, alright, kid?"

　　 Hilda blinked. Brushed hair away from her eyes with a hand. That was& not the response she had expected. It made her smile, genuinely smile. "So then, what are we supposed to do?" She looked toward Aleks, as though he would know, and he shrugged.

　　 "Different things every time I come here."

　　 "Today you can help to clear out some of the older houses here," said the militia guard nonchalantly, gesturing over her own shoulder with her hand. "If you ask the foreman, the guy over there" - she jabbed in the direction of a man ordering several workers about - "he`ll give you a list of the places that need cleared. Some of the residents have been relocated since the last time you came and we`re going to eventually need to clear those places out so more people can move in. the actual work crew`s busy with other stuff though, and hey, I guess the foreman`s actually pretty good at predicting when you`ll show up. There goes my wine ration for the day."

　　 "Thanks," Aleks said, smiling to the guard. "We`ll go talk to him, then."

　　 As the three made their way down the hill, the sounds and smells of the camp grew. There was no scent in all that place so strong as the smell of woodsmoke. Thin wisps of it issued from the pipes that ran in crisscrossing patterns all over the outside of the prefabricated metal. They stretched as far as the eye could see.

　　 "I`ve been here a couple of times a week," Aleks said.

　　 "We know." Kamila grunted. "You`ve been telling us about it every time we talk."

　　 "Well, it`s just nice to be able to help, you know?" Aleks` voice rose defensively and he glanced up at Kamila. "I spent so much time locked up with the Sowers, working on the machines& you know I`ve been repairing weapons for the past season? Building rockets? We`re getting ready for a war in there, and I just& need to get away from it all sometimes." Aleks gestured with his hands down at the camp below. "Out here, it`s not the same as in there. I`m not building weapons, I`m not busy thinking about kingdoms and wars and gods and destruction, just& helping people. No politics, no hurting, and I don`t have to ask permission to reach out and do something that actually helps someone."

　　 "You had to ask permission from her," Kamila said, rolling her eyes and tilting her head in the direction of the militia guard.

　　 "Well, she can`t exactly say no`. Oh, no, you`re not allowed to help!` As if." Aleks shook his head. "But you know exactly what I mean. Look at you, Kamila. You`re always concerning yourself with the big things - coming war, violence, revenge, all that grand stuff. I don`t want anything to do with it& I just want to help people."

　　 "That attitude will put a target on your back when they come, don`t you know that?" Kamila bared her teeth, pointing straight at Aleks` chest.

　　 "I do know that, but&" Aleks shrugged. "I can hold onto the notion, for a little while longer& I know what I`ll need to do when the chips are down, don`t I? That time will come soon enough&"

　　 "Stop it." Muttering, Hilda looked down at her feet. "Just stop arguing."

　　 Hilda didn`t see Kamila dramatically rolling her eyes at that. "Alright, fine. Let`s just -"

　　 "Oh. Aleks Zelenko, right?" The foreman`s voice was low, rumbling, his words blending together at the bottom of their register. "You`re back to help out again, huh. Brought help with you?"

　　 "That`s right." Aleks nodded and his fixed smile widened a little. "These are my sisters."

　　 "Right. Great. Well you know the drill by now. We`ve got some people moved into proper apartments for now and so we`ve got to get some of these places cleared out so new people can move in from the south." The foreman grunted, half a scoff, at the end of that. "More coming every day. Feels like this city`s going to fill right up."

　　 "Things are that bad in the south, then?" Aleks asked, turning and glancing over the camp. He could see a few people moving about, but most of them seemed to be staying inside. Even at the height of summer, there was little festive atmosphere in the air today. Aleks remembered the weeks before, when there`d been the smell of Vale brew and pickling and herbs in the air. There`d been music floating through the steam, then. Now it was quiet.

　　 "Very bad," Kamila said. "More advance parties attacking villages. More scouts being spotted in the woods. It`s obvious they`re preparing a full-scale invasion."

　　 Hilda sighed. "Zil-Antonin says we`ll have to fight soon. There`ll be war in Kivv. He says it`s inevitable."

　　 The foreman scowled. "You`re probably right but can`t you see we`re worried enough as it is? Keep your talk of doom to yourselves, kids. You should learn from your brother there."

　　 Kamila started to raise a hand, to open her mouth, and Hilda knew - before Kamila probably did - that she wouldn`t contain her frustration on her own. Hilda stepped forward, placed a hand on Kamila`s wrist. Kamila flinched at that. The wrist, where Hilda gripped it - so cold. It hurt to hold on to her sister`s arm like that.

　　 Kamila, though, kept quiet.

　　 "It`s fine, sir," Aleks said between gritted teeth. "We`ll take the list, then."

　　 "Indeed you will." The foreman unfolded his arms and reached into a satchel at his side, pulling out a rolled piece of paper. He handed it over. "Marked spots only. Each dwelling is identified by a number on its side. We want you to bring any objects left behind out to this clearing and set them out to be either claimed or disposed of. It`s grunt work, but it`s needed." He gestured with a hand at the growing pile of objects in the middle of the clearing. A few other workers came and went now and then, carrying small wooden chairs, scraps of paper and fabric, abandoned tools, the rinds of fruit, little bags of tea and coffee& There was so much stuff, gathered and growing there in the middle of the clearing. "Off to work now."

　　 Aleks nodded smartly and glanced over to Hilda and Kamila. Hilda nodded, avoiding eye contact with the foreman. Aleks, holding the paper, seemed to know his way around the place. She`d simply follow him, then.

　　 They spent the next hours clearing out small dwelling rooms. Each was furnished simply, with a few bedrolls laid in the corners, a rickety bolted-together table and a few folding chairs. The rooms were long and narrow, not much wider on either side than the rails of the old abandoned railroad outside the city. Those prefabricated structures could have been shipped along those tracks, if anyone had bothered to rebuild the train system. In the Desert`s aftermath, the structure had survived - a scar cut across the landscape - but the system fell away, without maintenance and without people to use it, to keep it alive.

　　 Those homes were much the same - homes they were, even if temporary and built of the same simple, thin sheets of metal and shaped like shipping containers.

　　 Some of the rooms were bare except for those few generic items - the same items, repeated in each room. Others, strewn with the refuse of abandoned lives, took longer to tidy. With the empty rooms the siblings merely had to rearrange things a little bit - placing the folding chairs so that their seats were just underneath the tables, laying out the bedrolls for the next residents who would come through. A few rooms had furniture beyond those basic items of prefabricated metal, and this furniture was brought out of the rooms. It was Kamila who did most of the heavy lifting - sweat shone on her forehead, but she hardly looked to be exerting herself and she didn`t breathe heavily. Her shoulders had grown broader in the past seasons, Hilda noticed - how had she barley noticed before? Kamila had always been tall and strong, as - Hilda thought - an eldest sister should be. But she was, in her youth, lanky, and her strength was all tough wire and grit and razor-sharpness, never quite the blunt instrument of massed, sloping muscle. The Kamila who would always be in Hilda`s mind - the one who`d saved her, the one who`d betrayed her - was coiled like a viper, like the viper inscribed on Hilda`s body since the winter, striking with unexpected strength. The Kamila who carried things out from these little dwellings and piled them up to be taken away or destroyed or who knew what - she was more like the bear. The bear`s strength is obvious on seeing it, but it is the speed one doesn`t expect, it is the speed which terrifies the most in that vital moment of panic and violence.

　　 Hilda couldn`t keep her eyes on Kamila for more than a few seconds. She glanced away, glanced down, rearranged the bedrolls at the end of the room.

　　 In some places they found discarded scraps of food and cleared them away. Aleks bent down to examine the fruit rinds and the bits of vegetables and bread, and more than once he reached into that which should have been detritus. In the trash he found something each time, he pinched it between his fingers and drew it out and held the seed aloft to the light of outside, the light that filtered through the slats in the prefab walls and ceilings. And then he took that seed and he placed it gingerly in the folds of his little scarf and returned the garment not to his neck, but to his pocket.

　　 The sun was beginning to decline in the sky and the crowd of workers had thinned out, leaving the camp mostly quiet. In all the time they`d spent working, Hilda realized when she glanced up at the sky, they had hardly seen a single person who actually lived here. As she and Aleks and Kamila approached the closed door of the next numbered dwelling (closed why, she wondered?) she turned to Aleks. "Where is everybody?"

　　 "What do you mean?" Aleks glanced up, eyes darting between Hilda and the ground and the door of the dwelling. His hand hovered over the makeshift door`s handle.

　　 "We`ve been here for hours and we`ve hardly seen a single soul who wasn`t one of the workers or the militia."

　　 "They`re probably all hiding from us," Kamila grunted. "Don`t want to get in our way, or think we might be less than pleasant if we saw them."

　　 "But we`re here to help, aren`t we?" Hilda chuckled nervously.

　　 Kamila rolled her eyes at that. "Yeah, but look around. People running entirely on fear aren`t exactly going to cling enthusiastically to a bunch of strangers carrying weapons, even if those strangers are the people protecting them? I guarantee every single one of those dwellings we`re not clearing out is closed and the residents are just inside, waiting till we`re gone and they can come out and get back to having a life." Kamila took a step toward the door, pushing aside Aleks` hand and wrapping her fingers around the door-handle. "Speaking of, why is this one closed anyway? It`s on the list, right? Check it`s on the list before we open the door, we don`t want to be -"

　　 "Yeah, I know, I know," muttered Aleks as he ran his finger along the paper. The dry sound of it was strangely a little comforting in Hilda`s ear. A moment later he said: "Yeah, this place is definitely on the list."

　　 There was a metallic clinking, but not a sound in Hilda`s ear. It came in like a sound, yes, but it was from the back of Hilda`s mind, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck and on her cheeks stand on end. She opened her mouth by instinct and took in a sharp breath, the breath of a runner although she stood still. The knowledge came unbidden, but she spoke with intention, knowing suddenly that danger and knowledge was just a step away:

　　 "We`re being listened to. By three children without their parents." Aleks flinched, Hilda saw in her peripheral vision. Kamila`s hand tightened around the grip of her sword. "Children who aren`t supposed to be here."

　　 With no hesitation Kamila pulled open the door - so swiftly it nearly knocked Aleks over. The middle child of the Zelenkos scrambled back, falling onto the heels of his hands. By the time Aleks was back on his feet and Hilda had gotten into the doorway, Kamila was already inside, her sword partially-drawn and the shining steel of it glinting in the faint light filtering through the ceiling-slats. With the sword she menaced three youths.

　　 The one closest to Kamila was a boy of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years, with earth-brown eyes and blotched skin, clad in a tattered coat of denim and with an old bandana tied roughly around his arm. His mouth was a downturned line of stubborn disappointment and simmering rage as he faced down Kamila, though he didn`t appear to have any weapon on him. One hand was out, a fist clenched against the sword that could easily spill his life`s blood in an instant, and the other hand was held in a pocket of the tattered coat.

　　 Standing next to the boy was another boy - tall, lanky, with a mop of platinum-blonde hair and his hands, open, held up. He wore an incongruously goofy grin on his face and an oversized hooded jacket on his body. The hood was partially pulled up over the top of his head, but it looked about to fall off. His eyes, green and gleaming with nervousness, darted between Kamila and Hilda and Aleks. Even then, the other boy`s earth-brown eyes stayed fixed on Kamila`s hand and face.

　　 Behind them, crouching on the floor, there was a girl - younger than the others, or at least she looked younger. She stared up nervously at Kamila, her hands poised over something - Hilda didn`t know what it was, some assemblage of metal components. Perhaps Aleks would recognize it, or perhaps it was merely scrap. The room was strewn with scrap, after all - it looked like the place had been ransacked, with the table shoved into a corner and the chairs stacked and -

　　 Aleks, walking past Hilda and into the doorway, groused toward Kamila: "Well, this place is on the list, but that doesn`t mean you have to -" when he saw the three kids, the confrontation, Aleks drew in a sharp gasp and stopped. "Kamila, relax," he said. "There`s& there`s no need for violence here. Clearly there`s just been some mistake. You`re scaring them."This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

　　 "You heard Hilda, didn`t you?" Kamila hissed. "We were being listened to. By children who aren`t supposed to be here. Is Reaper precognition wrong?"

　　 "Well, sometimes it -" Hilda began, but she never finished her sentence.

　　 "Hey, braidy bitch," the boy with the earth-brown eyes said, "we have just as much right to be here as anyone else. Probably more than some. You should put that sword away, unless you think you`re going to cut up three children and walk away without a care in the world?"

　　 "Kamila," Hilda said, stepping into the dwelling, "put away the sword."

　　 Kamila glanced over her shoulder, teeth gritted. "You said yourself they`re not supposed to be here. Who do you think they are, then? Spies? How did they get here? Why are they here?"

　　 "Woah, woah," said the tall one, moving one hand to brush hair out of his face before returning it to the position in front of him, held up with palms out. "We`re not spies. We`re just refugees, same as everyone else here."

　　 "Refugees from where, exactly?" Kamila growled. "When did you get here?"

　　 "Second Battle of Oxdal, I think they`re calling it," muttered the boy with the earth-brown eyes. "That good enough for you?"

　　 The girl behind them yelped quietly and covered her ears and bowed her head.

　　 "Wait, wait." Hilda glanced at the boy, glanced at Kamila, at the gleam of the steel sword that still remained partially unsheathed and the tremor in Kamila`s hands that held the power of death in them even now. "The second battle of Oxdal?"

　　 Kamila turned, and the single braid of her hair settled along the center of her back and she straightened and drew the sword a little more. The rasp stung at Hilda`s ears and she flinched, then took a step toward Kamila, starting to speak before Kamila said -

　　 "nobody knows about that except -"

　　 "- except the people who were there, of course," said the tall one, rubbing the back of his head nervously.

　　 "And that`s us!" the girl said suddenly, standing up. Kamila`s gaze shifted to the girl for a moment, and the sword slipped a little further out of its scabbard. "We`re just hiding here, okay? This is our secret hideout. Cause, I mean, you know&"

　　 "We technically aren`t supposed to be here," the tall one said.

　　 "Yeah, I noticed." Kamila took a step toward them. The boy with the earth-brown eyes didn`t flinch, didn`t step back, but didn`t move forward either. Hilda closed the gap between herself and Kamila, and let the Reaper`s gift fall over her - no, she reached out and pulled it forcefully over herself.

　　 "Kamila, please, don`t do anything rash," Hilda said, reaching out toward her sister`s arm. She couldn`t bring herself to touch it. she couldn`t look at her for too long - like looking at the sun. She focused on the hands, the sword, the braid, but never the arm, never the face.

　　 "Listen to your buddy," said the boy with the earth-brown eyes. "Everybody`s fine with us being here. Nobody bothers us."

　　 "Clearly someone isn`t fine with it," Aleks said, holding up the paper. "If you`re going to stay here you`re going to need to come up with a way to trick the people running this camp."

　　 "Oh yeah, well maybe you can help us with that, bright boy." The earth-brown eyes turned to Aleks, leaving the sword for the first time. "Since you`ve got so many great ideas."

　　 Aleks`s jaw dropped a little and he stepped back. "Uh&" he started to stammer a little, started to say something, but Hilda cut in and interrupted him.

　　 "Kamila, what do you mean nobody knows`? The second battle of Oxdal? I thought the militia was -"

　　 "—Hilda, you know as well as anyone here the Invictans are on their way to Kivv, you think they wouldn`t stop along the way for a little recreation?"

　　 For the first time, Hilda saw the earth-brown eyes well up with tears. At the word: recreation.

　　 "But you knew about it," Hilda said, pushing. "Why would you know and I wouldn`t know?"

　　 "I don`t know why you wouldn`t know!" Kamila snapped, turning over her shoulder to look at Hilda. "Maybe if you paid a little more attention to the world outside your own head and outside Kivv`s walls you would have known! You should have known! But no one does! No one cares! Oxdal`s not far from Etyslund! They might go there next, did you think of that?" Kamila`s hand shook on the hilt of the half-drawn sword, shaking the blade in its sheath. The rasp of metal and metal was quiet under Kamila`s ranting voice. "Dad`s out there - all our old friends - everyone - and you didn`t know? Some protector you are, Hilda. But how can I complain. Nobody knows except the people who were there, right?"

　　 "I& didn`t know," Aleks said.

　　 "You -" Kamila`s eyes snapped to Aleks, but she didn`t get another word out. The familiar twitch of danger pulled at the hairs on the back of Hilda`s neck and Kamila stumbled, her hand coming from the hilt of the sword to flail toward the ground as she unexpectedly lost her footing. The sword was drawn from its sheath and Kamila caught herself against the floor. She scrambled up, turning even as she fell, reacting at least. The heels of Kamila`s hands pushed against the metal floor and the whole room shook as she kicked up, starting to rise. Graceful movements like a dancer, quick and snakelike. The muscles in her arms rippled as she moved.

　　 And she stopped, with the point of her own sword at her throat. The boy`s earth-brown eyes were fixed on Kamila`s iron-grey. Wide with sudden knowledge. Recognition. Fear of his own power. "What is this&" he muttered. Hilda, under her breath, muttered Words to open the Veil. Aleks held his arms up, his eyes and mouth going blank of emotion. Hilda could feel the charge in the air around Aleks, she could hear the chains within and all around, and the weave of the Aether, it was so close. The red glow beyond awaited her& it began to form at her fingertips, and there was Kamila, and the boy, and the other one, the tall one, his mouth was wide but his eyes turned away, sad eyes, resigned, and the girl was ducking away, covering her head with her hands, and she was afraid, and the tall boy was afraid, and Kamila was afraid and Aleks was afraid and no one was more afraid than the boy with the earth-brown eyes who held Kamila`s sword in his hand, who held Hilda`s sister at his mercy, who held memory and the burden of strength and generations, generations of war and pain and fear and violence and brutality and quickly-punished naivete, who held all that in his hands and looked down at Kamila while the room still lightly shook around them - it shook! The metal walls! The light bounced side to side, up to down, little slits of light through shoddy construction, the low quality of the prefabricated structures that were the entire world in this corner of the city, and

　　 Kamila surged up to her feet, like a dancer coming up from a deliberate fall, and like a dancer she stepped into the boy`s reach, her arms out wide, and her hand dove for his throat, and -

　　 The blade scored along her arm and the boy with expert speed and strength raised his foot and kicked Kamila square in the chest and she stumbled back over the table and into the wall and shook the whole place harder than ever. The light danced in Hilda`s eyes, bright and sharp and painful like a vague memory of the unwanted old-world life nestled inside her brain.

　　 "Back off," the boy with the earth-brown eyes said.

　　 "Melik!" shouted the other boy, surprise in his tone and his hands held up high still. He shook, though he tried not to move, and his tremor was all fear and all readiness to run. Hilda knew without even looking him square in the eyes, this taller boy would not fight. The red light grew hard in Hilda`s hand and she felt the familiar, light weight of her glaive. Its shaft nearly filled the space - not a very practical weapon in such close quarters. But its menace couldn`t be denied - even Melik was given pause.

　　 "Don`t hurt anyone," Melik said, still holding Kamila at the tip of Kamila`s sword. Red ran down Kamila`s arm, red ran down from the tip of the sword. A light wound, but a painful one, by the way Kamila stood. "We don`t mean you any harm but this is our place. I`ll give you the sword back. This& whatever this thing is, I don`t want it. It`s like I can remember myself dying a million times just by holding it."

　　 "Let`s start over," the older boy said, trying to smile. "I`m Badem. This is Melik, my friend, and his little sister Avishag. We got here a couple of weeks ago, after Oxdal." Badem turned to Hilda. "You`re technically right - we aren`t supposed to be here. There`s only so much room, right? But when we were camping outside the city we crossed the path of a group of people leaving, and they said we could use their dwelling. They said it wasn`t safe here, though. Or that it wouldn`t be forever. They wanted to head back to their village in the east because they figured that if the army passed them by on the way to Kivv, it would be better to slip back unnoticed than to get caught in the fighting here." Badem gave a smile, an oddly reassuring smile, to Hilda. Although Hilda could see that his eyes were fixed on the glaive she carried. "And any chance you could put that fancy magic weapon thing back wherever you got it? Melik, you give that sword back to the scary lady - slowly - and you, hat girl, get rid of your big red spear thing. And short boy&" Badem glanced up at the ceiling of the dwelling. "I assume that`s you doing& whatever you`re doing to our roof." Above him, the metal was beginning to warp, shifting, a mass of it spiraling down toward Melik. "Please stop. We don`t want to fight."

　　 "You could have fooled me," Aleks murmured, but the metal ceased to shift and the room stopped shaking. Melik turned the tip of the sword away from Kamila, and Kamila placed her hand on the scabbard, holding it out expectantly. Melik nodded slowly.

　　 Finally Avishag, the girl in the corner, stood up. "So& you`re with the militia, right?" She stepped forward, holding out a hand, glancing over at Melik as her brother slowly eased the blade back into the scabbard at Kamila`s hip. "The Kivv militia? Listen, we don`t want any trouble, but can you just write down that this place is occupied? It`s our special place, our hideout. We aren`t trying to cause any problems but&"

　　 "Somebody else could be using this place," Kamila said. "More people are coming every day. We don`t have space for everyone."

　　 "Hey, hey, relax." Badem chuckled quietly, an obviously forced laugh. "It`s like we said, nobody has a problem with us being here. Except maybe you guys, but& you shouldn`t! We`re fine! Everything`s fine! Okay, just& move along and&"

　　 "It`s unlikely anyone will notice if we mark the place down as occupied," Aleks said. "That`s all we have to do - and I come here pretty regularly. I can&" Nervously Aleks glanced between Kaimla and Melik. "I can keep coming back here just to check in, to make sure everything`s okay, and I promise I`ll keep it between just us, so&"

　　 "Fine," Melik said. "Just know that if you rat us out there`s going to be trouble. Nobody here has a problem with us being here. Trying to force us out wouldn`t go over well with the others."

　　 Aleks just nodded. Kamila, gritting her teeth, turned toward Aleks and Hilda, started to say something, but there was something in Aleks`s eyes - something dangerous, intense, something Kamila had never seen there before. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded.

　　 "Fine." Kamila stalked toward the exit. "But I`m going to have my eye on you three."

　　 "Wouldn`t expect anything less!" Badem said, still smiling nervously.

　　 At the doorway, Kamila glanced through the door. There was still that guard standing near the top of the hill, but the foreman was nowhere in sight. Kamila stepped outside, sighed, and turned toward Aleks. "So how are we going to make sure they don`t move somebody in here?"

　　 When she turned and saw him, he was already on the floor of the small hideout, pencil in hand, marking on the paper he`d been given. "I just have to make it look like this place wasn`t marked for clearing in the first place," he said. "We`ll be here for a while longer, we`ll be the last people to hand our sheet back to the foreman for the evening, and he won`t suspect a thing. We`ve still got, like, a dozen of these places to clean out - what`s one?"

　　 "They`ll find out where these kids are eventually." Kamila`s eyes darted to the three in the back of the room, then to the paper on which Aleks was writing. He held the pencil over a small rectangle with a number over it, representing the structure in which they currently stood. In the middle of that rectangle, in pencil, there was a mark, an X. Several surrounding buildings, the ones they`d already visited, were marked with an X circled, while others still had only the X.

　　 "Not necessarily," Aleks said as he rubbed at the point with the side of the pencil. After a moment of this, he took his finger and pressed it onto the paper, rubbing away the graphite. "You`re assuming that this place is a tight ship, but I`ve been coming here for a while. Multiple times that foreman has assigned me to the same task twice. A lot of the places we cleaned out today were already basically cleaned out when we got there. I don`t think anybody even knows exactly how many people are living here right now." Soon the pencil-mark was smudged diffusely over the surrounding parts of the paper, a mere blemish.

　　 Hilda leaned forward and peered down at the paper. "Um, couldn`t you have just used a -"

　　 "I didn`t have an eraser with me, alright?" Aleks snapped, and stood up, rolling up the paper and stepping outside. "Anyway, we ought to get out of here." He turned over his shoulder to Melik, Avishag and Badem. The three teenagers each waved their fingers in a sort of greeting-goodbye.

　　 Kamila, still standing at the door, scoffed, pointed at her own eyes and then at the three kids. Then, to Aleks, "I still can`t believe you didn`t know about the battle."

　　 Aleks scoffed. "You said nobody knows about that`, and you`re surprised I didn`t know about it."

　　 "Well, aren`t you paying attention? Aren`t you working on communications? Nobody` is&" Kamila shrugged. "Most people wouldn`t know. No ordinary person has any reason to know unless they`ve been listening to rumors or they were there. I only heard about it recently. The battle wasn`t that long ago." She stepped outside. "I`m kind of amazed these kids managed to get here so fast and were already squatting long enough that people knew about them& unless they were lying to us about that, which& they might have been." She closed the door. "But either way, you should have been one of the first to know."

　　 "Kamila, I`ve been busy with my work. Yeah, I work on communications - sometimes! But honestly, things haven`t exactly been harmonious between us and the Adma lately, and I don`t think they would know everything about the battles in the south."

　　 Kamila glanced up the hill, to where the militia sentry still stood, facing away. She led her siblings through narrow corridors between prefab buildings, adjusting her shoulder-cloak and muttering as she went: "shouldn`t they? They`re supposed to be harrying the soldiers down there. That`s what my contacts had to say."

　　 Hilda, keeping pace with the taller and swifter Kamila, reached up to her head and adjusted her cap, sighed, pulled the fold of her coat closed a little more. "You mean to tell me that the Adma is disorganized, chaotic, striking out without knowing what they`re doing? Oh, say it ain`t so."

　　 Kamila stopped and blinked. "What`s got you so sassy&"

　　 "Stress," Hilda quickly replied, pulling the brim of her cap lower over her eyes. Louder: "Hey, Alex, where`s the next one?"

　　 "Oh, it`s not far&"

　　 "Stress? What`s got you stressed, Hilda?" Kamila crossed her arms and stood in place, looking at her sister from the corners of her eyes. "Is it work? Training? Something to do with -"

　　 Hilda waved her hands in front of her and shook her head. "Didn`t you say yourself we have to be ready for a battle soon? Well, clearly the Adma aren`t helping as much as you think they should. You put your faith in them but what`s that got us? Anyway, when we`re done here there`s someone I need to talk to - you might have heard a Wypsie man arrived here, injured and blind?"

　　 Kamila tilted her head. "I didn`t hear anything about that."

　　 "Well, Lucian and I found him stumbling through the woods, half-dead. And apparently, he just woke up this morning. He said some things before he passed out that made me think he might know something, something that might help us defend the city. I don`t know if it`ll let us turn the Invictans away, but it`s something -"

　　 "So you`ll put your trust in strangers before friends?" Kamila scoffed.

　　 "Hey," Aleks said, stepping between Hilda and Kamila, "I think maybe we should just move on to the -"

　　 "Friends? Are the Adma our friends?" Hilda spoke over Aleks` head, glaring daggers up at Kamila. "Or do you only think they`re our friends because it makes you feel good to think that we can just kill all our problems and make them go away?"

　　 "Would you rather keep waiting here until the next time they come?" Kamila, standing far taller than Hilda, loomed over Aleks. He felt the sudden escalation, the heat of anger in the air, and he was afraid. Aleks stepped back.

　　 "Come on, let`s not do this&" Aleks said. "We can disagree about these things but we`re all -"

　　 He didn`t get to finish his sentence, as Kamila kept talking and something in the way she spoke commanded silence from the others. She seemed suddenly even taller than she really was, like a giant dwarfing Aleks. "Let`s say we win this time. We fight them off. They`ll come back, and we`re going to lose eventually, and then where are we going to go, Hilda? You want to stay here, don`t you, forever? You want to set down roots in this city - you already have! - and then stay here forever, damn the outside!"

　　 Incredulous, Hilda lifted the brim of her hat up, ruffling her own hair in the process, fists bunching up. "You - I can`t believe you`d& I want to hold on to the one measly thing I have!"

　　 "And so you`ll give up on the Vale?" Kamila shot back. "On rebuilding what we lost?"

　　 Aleks reached for the Sower`s Gift, that cloak of calm always there, and by a child`s instinct he wrapped it around himself, shutting out the anger in the voices and the fear in the voices and the resentment and the worry and the love that could only express itself as indistinguishable from hate, the painful love, the pained love and all of it locked out from his mind so he only heard the words and felt none of their sting but there, still, there were the shining dancing twisting fires tongues of his sisters and there was so much thought so much memory emanating and what could he do if not reach out and -

　　 Hilda stomped the ground, heat rising in her face. "You don`t want to rebuild shit, Kamila! You want to kill, and kill, and kill until the pain goes away!" She couldn`t keep her eyes from the hilt of the sword her sister wore.

　　 "No, I want to make things better for us, for everyone -"

　　 "Then why do you think of nothing but revenge?"

　　 Next to them, Aleks had retreated, hands clutched to his head, muttering quietly to himself. His knees shook like they were about to buckle. A part of Hilda, a part of Kamila, said that they should stop their argument and turn to Aleks and make sure he was alright (was that even a question?). But&

　　 Kamila, against all judgment, couldn`t leave the implied insult unanswered. Not even from her own sister, whom she couldn`t even blame for hating her (does she hate me? The question, always there, constricted around Kamila`s heart tight even as she raised her voice in rage). "I think of it because there`s a bullet out there with my name on it, Hilda! And there`s one with your name, too! Remember back in Etyslund, the first day they came? The soldier who chased us, shot us? Zoe Bari, that`s her name. I see her in my dreams, Hilda." A tear, hot and bitter, blurred Kamila`s vision. "She shot us, Hilda, she shot you in the back. Don`t you still have the scar? And you were lucky and I was lucky, but next time she takes aim at you she`s putting one in your head and no magical healing bear tattoo is going to save you from that!" Kamila laughed, a laugh with no amusement in it at all, and she dug her nails into her own palms, so hard and so tight they drew up blood and curled away the skin.

　　 And she continued: "You think I don`t hate myself for being this way. You think I want to be thinking of destruction every damn day? I`m doing what I have to do. I`m becoming what I have to become. To keep you safe. To keep everyone safe."

　　 "And do you think," Hilda said, "that I don`t know there`s a bullet out there for me somewhere? I know, Kamila, but I`m not jumping at the chance to run off and fight and die because of some idiotic martyr complex - I have to fight as it is, I`m a Reaper, I have the power and the responsibility and they`re coming for us either way, but I don`t want to go running off into the wilderness and hasten the day when some Invictan soldier gets me -"

　　 "I have no intention of dying," Kamila spat. "We`re both strong. You`re the one with a martyr complex if you think you can just sit here and let things happen out there in the world!"

　　 Silence for a moment. From behind, Kamila heard a slight shuffling, the scraping of metal against metal - movement from inside one of the other structures. Sighing, silent, she put her hand up to her forehead, thumb and index finger pressed against her temples.

　　 "Kamila, I&" Hilda started.

　　 She reached up and pulled the brim of her cap down over her eyes. "Don`t you ever get tired of people telling you what to think?"

　　 Kamila nodded. "Yeah. So I started thinking myself. And I realized they were right."