Into the Peaks
      "We go into the mountains," I say.
      They're grim, my captains. But in their eyes I see what I'd hoped I would. We come here to keep peace, but we brook no insult grossly intended.
      Camp breaks with alacrity. We are soon on our way, led by trackers and those soldiers best acquainted with mountainous terrain. The possibility exists that we won't find any of our people in these cliffs, but I don't let myself long entertain it. We will search until it seems hopeless, and then we'll leave. I'd hate to lose Ragna, who has remained intriguing to me . . . but the loss of my own is insupportable. I don't need a failure this extreme in dealing with the natives so soon out of the Kingdom.
      Honeydipped bounces me at a light trot as we head around the edge of the valley, seeking the best way into the peaks. As we ride through the fragrant, sun-warmed grasses, I see a black shape whirling above us, flashing gold-striped wings.
      I signal a rider over and send for the bird-keeper. When he arrives, I point up and say, "Who released the messenger?"
      "No one, Mistress," he says, blushing from chin to ears flaps. "He released himself."
      "Well, lure him back," I say. "We can't have the Godson's birds wandering all over the provinces."
      "Yes, Mistress," he says, and takes hasty leave of me.
      I shade my eyes and squint into the sky at the circling black shape. I know it seems improbable that I might envy him, flying a sky that is as near as the spread of my own pinions . . . but he is not simply flying, that laughing corvid. He has escaped his masters. That part, I envy.
      Soon enough the trackers find us a way up the mountain's edge and we begin our arduous climb. Honeydipped surprises me by clinging to the most tenuous of trails like a sand-prickle to a hide. I remember belatedly his being chosen as one of the scouts while we were at Nadeir and am pleased . . . but soon enough, I leave him behind.
      I am the winged Mistress of this company, and when we are at war I fly.
      As the company labors beneath me, I soar into the winds and lend my eyes to the work of the scouts. I seek the end of our trails to see if we are advancing to dead ends. I look for easier ways to lead the mounts. I see water and shade and good camping grounds. Above all, I seek our quarry, the pards or Ragna or the scouts we lost, or poor young Murdinal. The winds here are angry and variable and moved by caprice, and it takes effort for me to remain aloft when a sudden cross-wind shoots from beneath me and does its best to send me tumbling away. But I am stronger than it and so I fly, and looking up my men see me and are reassured.
      So we toil, for another two days.
      Voters are given a choice between "now" and "later" and choose "now."

Frenzy
      A wing is about as sturdy as an arm . . . which is to say, more vulnerable than I prefer. I've tried the tactic of putting armor on them, but the weight becomes too much to bear. So I take risks, each time I rise above unfriendly territory. To date I've never had a serious break.
      I suppose I was about due.
      But by the Gods, a rock! Could they have chosen any more ignominous way to down me?
      I was above the rocks one moment, surveying, far forward of our scouts, and the next I was falling. Falling--
      Onto rocks, tumbling, with several lightning-bright bursts in front of my eyes. Something is broken, but I'm not sure what yet.
      I hear growling. I drag myself to my feet and draw my sword. This proves my legs are not broken. I am grateful.
      I'm also alone. Someone's coming for me.
      Many someones.
      Let them come! I am Angharad Godkin of the Sunblood Cliffs, new Governor of Shraeven and Mistress Commander of the finest company in the Kingdom!
      Let them come!
      Patrons decide that the scouts saw Angharad go down.

Lucidity
      My first lucid moment is when I meet my enemy. They crawl over the rocks, slide up the defile, worm their way through cracks as if boneless. Mongrels, all of them; I mistake some for animals, but they have thick hands on the ends of their feet and so I know these are the pards the valley-men feared. There are a lot of them. Ten. Eleven. Fifteen. More. I stop counting. All of them are bigger than normal animals. Some of them are longer than I'm tall.
      So. I can't fly--one of the wings won't work. I have myself and my sword and I'm surrounded.
      Let them come.
      Then the fugue state of battle. I don't remember how often I killed or maimed. It seemed to take forever. It didn't take long enough. They pull me down.
      Let them come.
      My next moment of lucidity is when I realize they're not trying to kill me.
      Let them come.
      I want to kill them all. I want to destroy all of them. I want to kick them away but I'm outnumbered. How does a horde this large survive on its own? Is this the pard nation? Did this swarm spawn Od Ragna with her civilized mind and arched whiskers? Did they spawn her even as they are spawning their next, on me?
      Let them come.
      I will kill them all.
      Let them come.
      When they're done.
      Let them come.
      Gods, will they ever be done?
      Rage is a welcome fire.
      "ENOUGH!" someone shouts, and it's not me. Someone is pulling the group away, and I can't see who until the last one is yanked from my body. I don't recognize the man, but he has a shepherd's crook and a knife and he could be Ragna's brother.
      The vote is a tie between Angharad controlling her rage and passing out.

Son of Beasts
      Curse it all to the skies, but my vision is fading in and out. I don't have time to faint. I force myself to focus on the shepherd boy.
      No, the shepherd man. This is no slim stick of an adolescent, but a bulky, muscled adult with a harder body than many a boxer. His creamy coat is spattered with gray and black rosettes, some so ragged they look almost like clouds. I make the mistake of looking at them too long; they seem to grow, filling half my eyes with black. I blink rapidly.
      "Children, what have you done?" the shepherd says angrily. "You've spent your seed on this?" He grits his teeth. "Home! Go home!"
      The pards left alive begin to slink away.
      "As for you," he said, "you've killed many of the village's children, but you look near enough to death yourself. I would call that even trade."
      And then he turned his back on me.
      I have been in command of people for more years than this man has lived. When I say, "Stop," in my Voice, he stops. He even turns to look at me and frown.
      "Take me to Ragna," I growl.
      "You know Ragna?" he asks, eyes widening.
      "Take me to Ragna," I say again. "NOW."
      He looks me over. "You can't walk."
      "You will carry me," I say.
      He laughs. "Surely not."
      "I am your new governor and Ragna is MINE. Take me to her NOW."
      He looks uncertain now, tail twitching in anxiety.
      "If you leave me here, my men will find you and kill you to the last man, even if it means they all die in the process," I say. Fast. I have to talk fast, my body is beginning to fail me. Gods, I have more broken parts than I dare acknowledge. "They're on their way now. Do you want them to find my twisted body and then take their revenge? Or do you want to buy your lives by patching me up and finding some way to pay for the grievous harm you've done to my person?"
      "You talk like a governor," he mutters. "We do not respect your rule here, foreigner."
      "I don't care if you respect my rule," I say. "I have overwhelming force. Respect that, son of beasts."
      He shrugs. "I don't want to die yet," he says and hauls me over his shoulder like a sack of meal. My wings, Gods, both of my wings flop at angles. Just the pain of that puts stars in my eyes, and waves of hot nausea flood my head. I don't vomit, but I'm not sure how. It only takes a few long strides of this man's walk before the bump and shift proves too much for me. Even hanging on to consciousness with all my might I can't--I can't--I can't let them have my body without me to defend it, Gods, Ragna be who I hoped you were when I met you Gods--
      I let go.
      Readers decide Ragna finds Angharad first.

Flash
      I hear water. Smell eucalyptus. Something hurts. It's attached to my body--stop that--stop. Ah. I drift away. The air feels stuffy. Where I am?
      I'm drifting. A field this time, a field of ridiculous flowers, the sun-loving flowers that grow on stalks as tall as my ribs. They don't grow in fields like this, so close together. There are people moving through the field. I move toward them. I realize abruptly that they are bad people, and I back-pedal. I don't want to be in this dream.
      It stops. I don't drift as much as flash in and out of time. Flash. The smell of night-blooming flowers and cold stone. Flash. Now a sullen, hot brown light. Flash. Something hurts. Flash. Talking, mid-sentence, fading away.
      I struggle with weakness. Gods, how I hate weakness.
      Flash
      I surprise myself by opening my eyes and making sense of my surroundings. I'm in a tent with thick canvas walls, lying flat on my back on top of a pallet of dense blankets. Someone is dipping something in a bowl of water near my head.
      "Mistress."
      "Ragna!" I exclaim, or try. What comes out is a croak of a word. My throat feels lacerated.
      "Open your mouth," she says, and I do. She wrings a towel out into my mouth. Ah, cool, sweet water, tangy and bright with minerals. It distracts me for a few blissful beats of my heart.
      Then I snap back into focus. "Why are you naked?"
      "I'm not naked," she says. "I am wearing a braid."
      I have to hunt to find it, a circlet of leather around one of her wrists. A small pebble hangs from it. It's the only thing she wears, and her heavy coat is a blessing; had I been so stripped you could have traced my every bump and groove with your eyes. Her fur makes her seem almost androgynous. Almost.
      "Which signifies what?" I ask.
      "That I am an unmated female available for child-bearing," Ragna says. Her voice is so carefully void of any inflection that when it cracks on the next words it chills my heart. "Please, Mistress. No more. Not yet."
      Not yet, Ragna, but soon. My rage is a living thing. "How damaged am I? Where am I? What's my status here?"
      "Both your wings are broken. One near the elbow, the other near your back," Ragna said. Again she dips the towel into the water, again she wrings it into my waiting mouth. "Also your arm and one of the bones in your lower left leg, the thinnest one. All of these have been set. Of the group, the arm and leg will certainly heal, but we have no experience with wings. You have more bruises than can be counted, none serious. Your . . . parts . . . bled for some time but appear to be healing now, and what cuts and scrapes you collected are closing. You have been unconscious for most of a day, and you are now in my home village, in one of my father's tents. No one knows exactly what to do with you, Mistress. We have tended people in your situation before, but never one who has killed so many of our own in defense."
      "So it's perfectly normal for a roving horde of beasts to savage a stranger?" I ask.
      And the answer I wasn't expecting: "Yes."
      I stare at her. She sits back on her heels, hands folded on her thighs. "Those beasts are our most highly prized family members, those who are closest to the freedom and innocence of animals. To serve as their shepherd is a duty given only to the most honored people in the village. If they want to hunt, we let them hunt. If they want to mate, we let them mate. If they want to kill, we let them kill." She meets my eyes, and I suddenly understand. Her demeanor is not an alien one created by the distance between our cultures. It's a mask, cultivated out of desolation and long abuse to protect herself from more harm.
      "Are we prisoners here?" I ask.
      "Yes," she says. Then, "I, certainly. You, most probably." She lets slip a brief and bitter laugh. "The raven circling over us is no doubt waiting for our carrion bones."
      "I will not rot here, Ragna, and neither will you," I say. Then something in my mind shatters. "Raven? There is an actual raven overhead?"
      She nods. "I think. Black or brown with gold wings."
      Rage and I smile, slow and sweet and terrible.
      Readers decide that Angharad must talk more with Ragna to learn more about the situation before acting.

Rage
      "These are your people, then," I say. "And the family you didn't want to discuss with me."
      "Yes," Ragna says. She lifts my head without meeting my eyes, adding another pillow under it; the whole thing only serves to inform me that my entire neck feels like a giant bruise.
      This just makes me angrier. "Ragna. All that you would not tell me before. Now you will."
      I notice her hesitation only because I'm staring at her arms as she arranges my head. Then, without noticable resignation, indeed without noticable emotion she says, "I ran away when I had my first menses. I did not want to become the broodmare to some animal. This is abnormal, you understand, for most of the women here don't mind it. They have a baby, the baby is an animal, it requires no care on their part. They drop it from their wombs and the village beast-masters care for it and they move on with their lives. They consider this a freedom. Perhaps it is." She settles beside me on her knees again, staring at the tent wall with a studied expression. "But I was not willing to go through that gate to reach the freedom to be my own woman here. To gestate an animal in my body... the notion disgusts me. And I am not willing to bow my head to my father and brothers and uncles so that they can maintain their theocracy."
      Now, finally, she looks at me, and since I'm expecting pain and sorrow, the sharp anger in her sea-green eyes surprises me. "I am a heretic, Angharad Godkin, and so I fled. And I am good at what I do, so they never caught me... until now."
      "This theocracy," I say. "Is your village the only village in it?"
      "No," she says. "There are dozens. Most of the mountain peaks have a village with a herd of wild children."
      "And never do these people release these children to the wild?" I ask. "Isn't the point that you want to breed back to the wild? To eventually be released to the mindless innocence of animals?"
      "Except our children are never animals," Ragna says. "They are savages. They are fiercer, larger and crueller than real animals, and no amount of true-breeding changes that. The rock that brought you down? They threw it. They do it with other birds and creatures. They don't even eat what falls. One can only conclude they do it out of cruelty, or boredom." She bares her teeth. "This path doesn't serve our souls. It serves our elders."
      "Dozens of villages," I say. "How many people are we talking about, Ragna? What am I fighting?"
      Her eyes gleam at my mention of fighting. "A few thousand, perhaps. No more than that. The peaks cannot support more. It's why they raid the valley villages."
      "This," I say, "This will stop. I will not support it."
      "Support is different from ignorance," Ragna says, picking her words carefully. "You could turn your face from it as the other governors have and none would ever fault you for it. It is what we have come to expect from the Godkindred's oversight."
      I stare at her, shocked. It takes me a few minutes to find words through the white anger. "Ragna," I say, biting the words off, "My body is in broken bits and your village's innocent "children" have raped me. If your words are true, I am not the first. You honestly believe I will let this menace continue?"
      "No," she says, her eyes intent on me, shining. Almost a prayer. "No."
      "Good," I say. "Because I will need your help. Call the raven messenger for me. It's time for my men to put paid to your way of life."
      Patrons decide that Angharad should get the valley villages' aid to help her "restructure" the mountain way of life.

The Bandage, or the Shroud
      Ragna leaves me to summon the messenger. I wish her luck of it... I hadn't introduced her to the creature, and the corvids can be capricious.
      She'd better not fail. I cannot bear the notion of being at the mercy of these people. I am a power, and Ragna, I suspect, would fight on my side, but I am greatly outnumbered and injured to boot. These people patched me up, but I have no idea why: they didn't have to. They are clearly unimpressed by any authority, or they wouldn't be raiding whatever village seems most delectable to them. Did Ragna convince them that care-taking me would be in their best interests?
      Did she have any idea how big a lie that would be?
      I am going to destroy these people. I just haven't decided how, yet. Root and branch, until there's nothing left of them on the good brown earth? Or more cruelly, by stealing their culture and ways from them, by remaking them into some other shape?
      It would feel good, very good, to sell these people into slavery.
      No, I am better than that.
      No, I'm not.
      I try to remember a time I've felt such hatred. I can't remember hating any of the people the Godson sent me to pacify before; they were simply... assignments, I suppose. Obstacles to be removed. People to be set aside. Valleys to be taken. Positions to be fortified. Some of my commanders treated war as an intellectual game, and others a holy mission... I always fell somewhere in the middle, but closer to the intellectual side. Never a game, no, not while the lives of those under me were in my care... but not something I burned for.
      I hated Silfie for a while, for vanishing. I don't remember hating her quite like this.
      Perhaps if I can intellectualize this enough, it won't hurt me. I've met soldiers who've been traumatized by the enemy. So many of them broke, and I wondered then if I would, if I were put in that situation. And now here I am, but I have no time to break. I have to destroy the pard villages first.
      Am I going insane?
      Oh Gods. Anger can be a bandage... or it can be a shroud. I can't afford to be buried in this feeling, but I have no idea how to make it go away. I need time, and time is what I haven't much of. I need to be measured in my response, when all I want to do is kill everything in my sight. I feel sick with rage. I want to vomit it from my mouth. It seems so sensible to destroy a culture that creates such abominations, that works such havoc. Isn't it? Sensible?
      Readers vote that Angharad needs help formulating a measured response, and suggest Silfie's aid.

Message on a Corvid
      Ragna pushes open the tent-flap, distracting me from my increasingly unpleasant thoughts. On her arm is the messenger, large, glossy and smug... perhaps he knows he's about to bring the cavalry. She offers him the corner of the desk, and he side-steps onto it, grasping it with sharp brown talons.
      "To whom should I address the message?" she asks, sitting at the desk and stretching a scrap of hide.
      "To Silfia," I said. As the pungent scent of ink tickles my nose, I say, "I am assuming you can write in the language of the Godkindred."
      "I can read and write almost every language pertinent to Shraeven," Ragna says. Her pen scratches on the rough hide, and her voice is just as rough as she says, "Not being able to read is another form of weakness. You can be enslaved by those who can speak and send messages you cannot decode."
      "And you would never be a slave again," I say.
      She dips the pen in the ink well--the ink makes dense, liquid gloops. Not very fine quality ink, then. "What shall I write, Mistress?"
      "Silfia," I dictate. "I am with Ragna and have found the pards." I pause, then say, "Are the others here, Ragna?"
      "The lost ones?" Ragna says, and her voice is too even. "Most of them, yes."
      "The ones that weren't killed," I guess.
      "They fought," Ragna says. "The villager, particularly."
      Ah, Gods. I hadn't intended that young man to die. Damn these pards. "I see. And what will happen if I ask the men to show up? Will the people of your village attempt to fight us, or will they hold off?"
      "You are a greater force," Ragna says. She's ignoring the raven, who is combing her ear and cheek. I begin to wonder if Ragna could remain unmoved in the face of a volley of arrows from a doubled archery regiment. "They would wait to see what you wanted."
      I try to nod, but my neck hurts too much. My eyes flutter closed as I try to decide how to compose the next words. I want Silfie here, now; I also want the solidarity of the valley villages behind me. I cannot have them both. "Continue the message: Send runners to the valley villages and ask for their elders. Tell them we will stop the pard violence and request a voice from each of their communities. Once you have them, bring the entire force here. Camp nearby, and on arrival send a messenger." I take a breath. "That's it."
      Ragna nods and rolls up the hide. She ties it to the corvid's ankle with a strip of leather; all the while, the messenger tugs on her mane or her ear, teasing, testing, something. She offers her bare wrist to the bird, who climbs on it. Does all that fur shield her from the prick of those sharp talons, or has she simply grown so inured to pain? I wonder as she turns for the tent flap--
      --which opens for a silhouette of a man. Ragna stops instantly.
      "Ragna," I say, my voice brooking no argument, "Go."
      She goes. The other pard doesn't stop her. Instead he steps further inside, and my eyes are blinded by the halo of light around him from the open flap.
      "I am the head of this village," he says.
      According to readers, Angharad sizes him up in contemptuous silence.

The Flesh of My Flesh is MY Flesh
      I stare at him. There are serpents in my bloodline, and I can borrow their cold and alien eyes.
      "We have prepared a tent for you on the women's side," he says. "You will be comfortable there."
      "You speak my language," I say, dismissing his comment completely. "Quite an accomplishment for a savage."
      "I learned it from the soldiers we killed," he says.
      "Are you as stupid as you are arrogant?" I ask, conversationally.
      "I am merely different from you," he replies.
      This exchange begins to take on a surreal quality. "Your difference is unacceptable."
      "So the high-minded Godkindred have always said. But here you are the mongrel and we are the truth, and you have no right to tell us how our lives are better lived."
      "I do when your lives intersect the lives of others," I say.
      He shrugs. "We will let you repair yourself in as much comfort as we can offer. If your tent is not to your liking, we will do what we may to make it more palatable."
      I lift a brow. "You honestly believe I wish to avail myself of your thus-far violent and despicable hospitality?"
      "No," he says. "But we cannot let you leave until we are sure you are not carrying one of our children. Your blood is impure, but your child belongs to us."
      "If I have a child," I say, surprising myself with my outrage, "That child belongs to me and you will have to kill me to raise it."
      "Then we will," he says, and steps out of the tent.
      I stare after him and try to struggle upright. I only make it to my elbows when Ragna enters, the tent flap sliding off her back.
      "Did you get the corvid off?" I ask. Pain makes me sweat. Just getting this far has slicked my entire body with it. Gods curse it, but I can't afford to be this weak!
      "The messenger is on his way," she says. She crouches next to me. "You must not rise, Mistress. You're not ready yet."
      "What's this nonsense about a tent in the "women's side"?" I ask to distract her.
      "Men and women live apart of course," Ragna says. "They come together only to produce children, as our ancestors do. We do not marry the way the Godkindred or the majority of Shraeven's cultures do. It is considered a complication of the natural order of things."
      "Your chief is under the mistaken impression that I'm staying," I say.
      "He is concerned about possible offspring," Ragna says. "That is to be expected. If nothing else, the beast-children are typically virile, though I have only noted their effect on our people, not on mix-breeds of your complexity."
      "I'll die before I give the flesh of my flesh to these people," I growl, and I realize that the outrage is still there. The notion of having a child as a result of this miserable, benighted situation would ordinarily have drowned me in horrified despair, but the need to save a baby from these barbarians is far more important than where the baby's coming from.
      Ragna glances at me. Then, "I believe you."
      An uncomfortable silence then, mostly my fault as I sort through these new feelings. They cannot be herded or categorized or ordered. They are like waves whipped to froth by storm-winds, the topmost layer of a frenzied whirlpool. Finally, I say, "It's the reason they dare not kill me, though, isn't it. They were willing to kill me after they evaluated the strength of the force I commanded... but the possibility of my having their child makes it impossible until they know, one way or the other."
      Ragna folds her hands in her lap. "You are astute, Mistress."
      "Should I move to the women's side?"
      She cants her head. "The women will take better care of you, and you may heal faster for it. You may also fall out of notice, which may give you more freedom. But women here do not have the status men do."
      Readers think Angharad should be aggressive and refuse to move to the other side.

Oceans
      "I will stay here," I say.
      "It is not wise to be obstreperous here, Mistress," Ragna says. "This is not a society that rewards defiant behavior."
      "I'd gathered that," I say, then grimace. "In sooth, Ragna, I'm not sure I want to move. Every part of me feels broken."
      The moment I say it, I feel it from my nares to my toes, the aches, the bone-deep bruises, the white pain waiting to flicker with every too-deep breath. The weakness I keep denying rushes in like a tide and I feel like I'm drowning. The worst part is there's no swimming to shore. Who can dive free of their own bodies? I have been injured worse, but never in a way that allowed me to be awake, to feel imprisoned by my own flesh.
      Ragna's hands smooth over my shoulders. "Mistress," she says, "All will be well."
      "You must be kidding," I say on the tail of a gasp. "I need my wits about me--"
      "--and you have them," Ragna says. Her eyes are steady, and in the dusk of the tent her pupils seem to swallow all but a rim of her sea-storm eyes. "You think I don't know our danger? You think I am not wary for us both?"
      "You could do nothing to protect yourself before except flee," I say. I could moderate my harsh words but now is not the time. "I am in no condition to flee."
      "Silfia and Donal are on their way," Ragna says, and I wonder when those two captains acquired names while the rest languish, unremembered. "We have only to wait for their arrival."
      "Your relatives don't need much time to wreak their destruction," I say. "The work of an hour and look at me now." The panic is cresting like a wave off the ocean. The Sunblood Cliffs withstood the constant pounding, but I am no golden rockface to stand before the might of the sea. "Oh, gods above . . . this was not in my plan!"
      "No," Ragna says, and her clipped words are like a slap. "This was in theirs. Listen to me, Angharad Godkin . . . what happened to you was wrong. But you have lived a life of privilege and freedom with nary a true tragedy to inspire a tear. All the while, people like me have been raped into submission by the ways of our people, while people like those valleyfolk have cowered in fear from the onslaught of the pards. Your presence here will change all that. Of what moment is your brief pain when contrasted against the lifetimes of injustice you will soon make right?"
      I stare at her eyes because I need to remember that fires can burn on ocean waters. She lids that fiercesome mien with long pale lashes and goes back to tidying my blanket, more to give her hands some useful work than because anything needs her care.
      "My pain is not inconsequential," I say hoarsely.
      "Your pain will pass," Ragna says, giving me no quarter. "You will return to your position of privilege and power soon enough. Consider this your education on the lives of those less fortunate than you."
      I am torn between shame and fury and a maudlin self-pity. This is not at all like me, but it is not at all like me to be taken down by a horde of beasts and broken to small griffin-shaped bits. The words choke on their way out, so I don't bother to expel them. When Ragna lies down with her back against my hips, I don't stop her, and instead I think of how pleasant her warm solidity is against my leg, and how soft is the tail and heavy that drapes over my ankles.
      Readers are tied between Angharad feeling shame at letting her feelings override her senses... and feeling an inappropriate interest in Ragna's warm body!

The Quality of Her Silence
      She is warm. And her fur is silky . . . I find that out by running a hand over her side. I expect the spots to feel different in texture from the white areas, but they don't, and I am intrigued. She smells mysterious. The Godkindred interbreed so whole-heartedly that they become chimerical creations; predator, prey, mammal and non-mammal. Ragna smells like a hunter. Like an animal.
      When she doesn't object, I grow a little bolder. It is one thing to touch another idly. Another to stroke from shoulder to hip, surprising oneself with another's curves and dips and bumps, the weight of fur, the heat of skin. It is not a touch that arouses; it is a touch that learns. Silfie and I spent much time learning one another, just for the pleasure of being 'the person who knows.' She knows how the muscles of my neck tire, and how peculiar they are for their length. I know that her tail is not merely a fox's brush, but more akin to a mare's tail; something she disguises by careful barbering.
      Halfway through my fourth stroke, Ragna abruptly asks, "Do you require service?"
      I stop as if shot.
      She is silent, waiting without tension. I should have noticed that she didn't press herself against me in response to my liberties; that she fitted herself to me so tightly was probably an act of comfort, not an advance. I am letting my heart lead me here, there, willy-nilly, rather than thinking of my responsibilites, of the consequences of my acts.
      I stop petting her but I leave my hand on her hip. "Do you believe me to be the kind of person who would compel you?"
      Ragna is silent. I wait. I outwait her.
      "No," Ragna says. "I don't think so. But these are not usual times, and you are not your usual self."
      "I haven't taken complete leave of my senses," I say wryly. "One brief incident isn't going to turn me into a monster."
      "This is a brief incident?" Ragna asks.
      "As you so acidly pointed out," I say. "Without, I might add, considering that I may not have lived the life of perfect ease you accuse me of. I a Mistress Commander, Ragna... that puts me in charge of men, men who die because of my decisions. I have not always made good decisions."
      "That is pain on behalf of others," Ragna says. "Pain on behalf of yourself is of a different caliber altogether. Have you personally suffered so much that you can brush this away as a brief incident?"
      At least she's asking now instead of declaring. Still, I don't feel up to confessing how much Silfie's vanishing hurt me, or how much the health of my parents weighs on me, or how worried I am about the succession, or how upset I am at having to leave the Sunblood Cliffs behind. "Can anyone truly say whether one person's personal suffering is greater than another's?"
      "I suppose not," Ragna says. After a moment, lower, "I am being unfair. I am sorry, Mistress. You do not deserve my vitriol."
      "Not always," I say. "But sometimes I need someone to tell me what I don't want to hear."
      "That is what you have Silfia for," Ragna says.
      "As much as I love her, Silfie doesn't own the world's wisdom," I say. "The more sources I have to advise me, the better off I am."
      Again, that considering silence. I love Ragna's silences, I realize--I love the weight of them. I love them as evidence of her willingness to listen and deeply consider what is said to her. Would that all silences were like hers.
      "Silfia would not appreciate your taking comfort with me," Ragna says after a moment.
      "As much as I love her, Silfie and I are not pledged to one another now," I say. "And whether we will be in the future is an uncertainty. We have responsibilities to Godson and country." I sigh. "I will not compel you. And since you continue to point out good sense, I won't even excuse my desires as seeking comfort. But there are more ways to be given heart's ease than through "giving me service." Would you be willing to consider one of those?"
      No reply.
      Gently, I say, "Ragna. I know in the past you were forced to do things you didn't want to do. If you truly don't want to, say so and I won't bear a grudge."
      Then, "What would you have me do?"
      "Come up here a little higher," I say. "I'll turn on my side and curl around you. We'll fall asleep. That will be the extent of it."
      "Like sisters," Ragna says. She is not quite good enough with her voice to conceal her relief. If I wasn't so busy trying to make her feel better, I'd be hurt that she doesn't seem to find me attractive.
      "Just so," I say.
      She wiggles up, I turn on my side--slowly, very slowly--and we end up pressed to one another like spiral shells. I bring a wing over to drape us like a blanket.
      "Doesn't it hurt?" she asks after a while. "Me resting on your wing. I'm not light."
      "No more than it hurts to have someone rest on your arm," I say. "Your neck curves inward where my wing curves upward. It's hard to explain, but you're not hurting me." I wince. "No more than my body is hurting, certainly."
      Readers vote for this talk to continue!

Oh My!
      "I had wondered how you sleep," Ragna says. Her voice is soft and furry, that timbre that belongs only to very late nights. "Then I saw you on your cot. It does not seem comfortable."
      I flex the shelves of feathers that embrace us both, searching for a comfortable position; the lack of mobility forced by the splint gives me a choice between 'fully extended' and 'mostly fully extended', which is tiresome. Still, the whisper-soft re-arrangement of my feathers inspires a surprised look from Ragna and I suppress a chuckle. "The man who carved my bed used to complain that the gods were cruel for giving us arms, because no matter how we settled ourselves for sleep, inevitably an arm would find cause to complain. He advocated the cutting off of all arms so that we would all achieve better rest."
      Now her stare is on me, and I have a chance to enjoy all that sea-green loveliness. "You made that story whole-cloth!"
      "I didn't," I say with a grin. "I assure you I could never come up with something so outlandish. But truly, the wings are no different from arms. When it comes to sleep, anyway."
      "The feathers... do they... how do you?"
      "They molt," I say. "It's an uncomfortable process, but it replaces the broken and damaged feathers admirably."
      She's looking at that wing arm again. I see her hand rise and then fall against her breast before she manages the courage to say, "May I . . . ."
      "Of course," I say. "They're not going to break."
      Ragna flats her ears, and I don't blame her; no doubt she wants to tip-toe around my injuries. But I refuse. My light bones mend quickly, and I have work to do; there's no time for me to mope about being an invalid. There's only barely time for me to be an invalid, at that.
      Her fingers tickle on the edge of my wing arm, then lightly brush against the tiny feathers there. "I didn't know you could bring your wing this far forward," she says, entranced. My feathers capture light, even in dim surroundings like these... sometimes they glimmer, and they're glimmering now, just for Ragna. Lovely Ragna with all that heavy fur and solid body, who no doubt cannot imagine flying anymore than I can imagine being rooted to the earth.
      "It's not actually that far forward," I say. "My shoulder is tilted into you so I can extend my arm a little further than usual."
      "You had much practice sleeping with others," Ragna says, low.
      "With one person," I say. "Yes. Some things you learn and don't forget." That the body I'm leaning against is shorter, harder, heavier. That the fur is thicker, more like a cushion. The smell is different. The fit is different. It's been eighteen years and I can still remember how Silfie was supposed to fit.
      Ah, gods.
      "It's not unpleasant," Ragna says, surprising me. I'd thought from her long silence that we were done for the evening. "The women here often cleave to one another for companionship, which they say men are incapable of understanding or giving properly."
      Surprised, I say, "Men are altogether capable of giving such pleasures to women. Being of the same sex as your partner is not a prerequisite to learning that art."
      "And yet you have never been with a man," Ragna says, still petting my wing feathers.
      "I have not yet loved a man that much," I say. The words tumble out because I am too startled to stop them. "And there are consequences to loving a man that must be controlled."
      "Like heirs," Ragna says. "Or must you wed the man you lie with in your kingdom?"
      "Yes," I say. "No. But you should. It's wise."
      "Is everything you do wise, Mistress Godkin?" Ragna asks.
      "I'm not sure this conversation is wise," I say wryly. "But we are having it anyway."
      "You should be sleeping," she agrees. "Not dreaming of doing to me what you do to Silfia, or what other pard women do with one another."
      "Od Ragna!" I exclaim.
      "I have half a mind to let you teach me these things," she continues, not even noticing my distress. Dear Gods! "As I have never experienced them for myself and you would seem to be a good teacher. But I doubt I need to give Silfia another reason to distrust me." She wriggles against me--oh my--and then settles down with an seeming inevitability, like a rock sinking into soft earth. "You should sleep, Mistress."
      Readers decide that this is so distracting Angharad can't calm down enough to sleep!

The Quietest Hour of Night
      Why is it that when I need sleep, I am emphatically not thinking of sleep at all?
      Why is it that when I'm injured and not able to fully enjoy myself with wrenching or breaking something splinted, my body still insists?
      And why, oh why, does Ragna fall asleep so quickly?
      *sigh*
      In response to the enigmatic question, readers vote: "Later!" instead of "Now!"

A Shadow on the Wall
      So I sleep. As with every time I've been seriously injured, the sleep is more like falling unconscious. My light bones heal quickly, but I pay dearly for that healing; too dearly, some say, for to be so utterly beyond waking for so long is to invite disaster.
      I wake to sunlight on the western side of the tent and a weight on the dip below my hip-bone: Ragna's head. Her arm is draped over my thighs. I can't imagine that my sharply-planed hips make a fine pillow, but then that's probably why she has a bit of blanket mounded over the hard bits.
      I smell clean--someone must have washed me. There's new incense on the table, still burning, sweet and resinous. There's also a tray with something I can't see; I hope it's food because I'm hungrier than I can describe. And I feel better . . . not well, of course, but on my way back to my old self. I'm familiar with my pattern of recovery, enough to judge when I'll be on my feet again. Except, of course, the part I've never had to heal from. But how can I feel angry or unsafe when there's Ragna with her fierce teeth on my belly and one muscled arm blocking anyone's access?
      I hear the cry of the messenger and my chest tightens. Have they arrived already?
      A shadow on the tent walls!
      Readers cry: It's Donal!

Planning the Death of a Culture
      The corvid messenger swoops in through the tent flap first, lighting somewhere behind me--I hear feathers rustling as it folds its wings. On its tail-feathers comes horn and stripe and worry, and before I can say a word Donal is on one knee at my side. He usually looks like he's going to run into everything in his path, but this... this is the mark of a gesture done a thousand times until ease gives it form and meaning.
      He takes my hand before I can say a word and kisses the palm. I spread my fingers over his nose and face, not because I'm used to returning archaic shows of fealty, but because I can do nothing else in response to his ardor.
      "Mistress," he says, and I notice flecks of gold in his dark eyes, for he doesn't blink. "We thought we'd lost you, and I see we weren't far from the truth."
      On my lap, I feel Ragna's weight shift from unconscious slump to tense stillness.
      "I'm alive, Donal," I say. "And we have work to do."
      "Only direct us, Mistress, and we will be the arrows from your bow," he says. Gods, it's like dialogue from some poorly-scripted morality play, but he says it with such candor it feels real.
      I am no goddess to accept such things and wry humor is often my shield against them. Even so, I feel my voice grow gentle as I say, "Do all Neshanti demand such rigorous formality, Donal? Or are all of you such gentlemen?"
      His eyes lighten a little. His cheeks crinkle. But it's a shallow expression and even as I see it I know how quickly it will pass. "You're kind, ma'am. I give you only your due. What shall we do?"
      "We have an issue," I say. "The pard clans must be . . . re-structured into something more civilized."
      "I'm assuming they're going to resist," Donal says.
      "That's probably a safe assumption," I say. "Did you bring the native forces as I asked?"
      "Yes, ma'am. They're not quite done gathering."
      "When they're done gathering, send a litter for me. After that, we're going to gather up the clan chiefs and have a talk with them... and if they don't agree with our plans, we'll have to teach them manners."
      His eyes glint. "Aye, ma'am. Shall I send a detail to guard your tent?"
      "Please," I say. I'm feeling better and better by the moment. "Don't kill anyone yet. If they get in your way, take prisoners."
      "But the killing will come later," he says, almost mildly.
      Almost mildly, I say, "Yes."
      He presses my knuckles to his forehead--he hadn't released my hand during our talk--and says, "I'll send the detail straightaway, Mistress."
      "Dismissed," I say.
      He leaves me there with Ragna, and I am well pleased. But I have not forgotten the weight on my hips and so I'm not at all surprised when Ragna asks, "What will you ask of the chiefs? What will you make them do to change?"
      Readers suggest several changes the pards are required to do.

A Storehouse for Hate
      "Will you like my answer?" I wonder aloud. I don't expect an answer, much less the answer she gives:
      "No." She pauses, as if to say something else, but doesn't.
      "No?" I prompt. "At least that's an honest response, if not the one I expected."
      "I hate them. But I was born here. I can't imagine it not being around for me to hate." She is looking away from my face now, across my belly . . . and tracing a finger near one of my hip-bones. Her whiskers tickle terribly, but nothing bothers me as much as that very distracting fingertip. "You want to remove my hate depository, Mistress. Where then shall I store my hate?"
      "Perhaps you will no longer have hate to store, with the pards re-arranged," I say.
      "Ah, no," Ragna says. "Nothing will take away the hate of what they did to me. Not after I've seen how others live. How others grow up." She shakes her head slightly, dragging her cheek against my belly. "No. Nothing."
      "That's committing to quite a bit of hate, Od Ragna," I say quietly. "A lifetime's worth of it."
      "Do you mean to tell me that you will not hate them forever?"
      I stiffen.
      "Even if they have abducted your womb and used it to feed their bloodline instead of the one you intend?"
      Rage is not red, not the color of blood. Rage is white, the color of too much sunlight, of swarming spots before you faint. I am gripped so strongly in it I feel bleached to the bones by rage. And all the while, her voice continues.
      "Perhaps you haven't thought of it that way yet. But I have known enough Godkindred subjects to know something of the importance of blood-line. You are not young, Mistress. Perhaps you have only a single chance to create your heir. To create the heir you choose, with the male you know is perfection. And here the pards have stolen your body and put their seed in it, and now they will use your body for the next seven months. They will take a tithe of every morsel you eat. They will sup of your strength until you can no longer move as much as you like, and you will sleep the rest of the time. They will drink your blood and use it to make a baby in their image. And you will be powerless to prevent it."
      "I--" I say, beginning to tremble, "am never powerless."
      She shrugs, a motion that presses against my side. "You could clean it out of your womb with herbs, I suppose. But that may be your last chance."
      "Assuming I'm even pregnant," I say.
      She shrugs again, and I hate the feel of it... but stating the obvious helps me re-focus, and the anger begins to subside. It doesn't leave--oh no--but it subsides. I can see again. I can feel again. I stop shaking. Pregnancy is only a possibility, not assured.
      "I'm sorry, Mistress," Ragna says. "I was born to see things clearly, but sometimes I speak out of turn."
      "I'm glad you do," I say. "I'd rather let words prepare me for reality than to face reality unguarded."
      She eyes me then, one green eye with giant black pupil. "Truly? Against everything?"
      I nod.
      "Even love?" she asks.
      "Some things words are powerless to describe," I say. "And sometimes I'm glad of it."
      Readers want this conversation to continue!

Terrible Love
      "So this love you have for Silfia," Ragna begins.
      "Did I say I had love for Silfie?" I ask.
      Ragna looks at me. "You don't need to say it aloud. Your body says it for you each time she's near."
      "Ah," I say, and suppress a sigh. I hope this is Ragna's too-clear sight and not that I'm woefully bad at keeping my feelings to myself. "Go on, then."
      "It was something you were not prepared for," Ragna finishes.
      "Of course not," I say. "Who's ever prepared for love?"
      "And you still love her," Ragna says.
      "Didn't you just say that I did?"
      "Ah, but you didn't admit it," Ragna says, and she arches her whiskers, which tickles abominably. I wriggle my hips and regret it. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
      "Ah, ah, I am sorry," Ragna says, smoothing my body down with her hands. Which does not make me feel more comfortable. Rather the opposite. Can this be any more awkward? "Be still, Mistress."
      " 'Be still,' she says, though she asks about terrible topics and has her hand on places more intimate than friendship," I say (did I say that aloud? Oh I did). "I am weak and you are taking great advantage of me, Ragna."
      "Yes," she says, without visible regret. "Why is love terrible?"
      "Because the love is seventeen years old, and we have other responsibilities now. I do, anyway. I need a child."
      "Perhaps you have one," Ragna says. "And so the pards have done you a great service by freeing you to continue loving Silfia."
      My entire body trembles. "Don't say such things!" And then calmer, "I need an heir, as all families do. And I will keep the man I choose to be the father of that child, as is proper."
      "Why?" Ragna asks. "Is blood-line so important?"
      "Blood-line," I say, "is everything."
      "How barbaric," she says.
      "And your people are so much more civilized," I say acidly.
      This is perhaps not the best moment for the chief to step back into my tent, flanked by three burly pard men. I'm too angry with Ragna, which is probably why I don't even pause for a breath before I say, "OUT OF MY TENT."
      "We have come to move you to the women's side," the pard chief says.
      "I am moving nowhere, particularly not at your behest," I growl. "Get out of my tent before I run you through!"
      "With what, mixbreed? Your sword? Do you even have the strength to draw it?"
      "I don't need to draw a sword," I say. "I've got one lying across my lap, and on my word she'll rip through you with gladness at the command."
      Ragna stiffens against my legs as the pards turn their gimlet stares on her. Oh gods, please tell me I didn't read her wrong. She's with me, isn't she? She'd do it... wouldn't she?
      Readers decide that Ragna's on Angharad's side because of her hatred of the pards.

Teeth
      The pard chief looks disdainfully at Ragna, then motions to his three fellows.
      "Don't," I say. "This is your only warning. I'll kill you if you try it."
      For a moment, I think they believe...then the chief laughs. The men advance.
      "Go, Ragna," I say, and Ragna leaps. The remaining two men scatter around her and head for me. They make the mistake I was hoping for. Both mistakes.
      Mistake one. One of them gets there before the second.
      Mistake two. They assume that just because I'm injured from the neck down, I'm helpless. But I don't have their stubby, short necks. I don't have their flat heads, short muzzles and ineffectual teeth. I have a spear on the end of my face, and when the first one reaches for my body I stab him through the eye with it.
      He doesn't even gurgle. I flip him to the side, turn my gore-streaked beak to Pard Number Two and get him through his open mouth. His face slides toward mine--he was about to scream or gasp. Getting him off my face takes more effort, and once I'm done I realize I've twisted all the muscles in my neck and my eyes are watering from the bright pain of it.
      Ragna is staring at me. Her pard is unconscious but still alive. I can't say the same for my two.
      The pard chief stares at the bodies in disbelief and then he lunges for me. His thick hand grips me by my throat and bears me to the ground. I surprise him with the strength of my neck, but he pins me down and positions himself. Positions himself. I feel the heat of his body on mine.
      "Don't even dare," I say, tasting blood and flesh. Rage can also be black and cold, colder than caves forgotten by sunlight. All the earth's dark chill is in my voice and body, repelling his heat. "I may grow teeth in places you least expect."
      Readers decide Ragna bowls the chief over!

My Ragna
      He hesitates, but only long enough for his eyes to flick to my gory beak. I know in that moment I'm lost and anger lurches up to choke me.
      Ragna flying body rips through the air and takes the chief's with it. The world is moving fast. I know this quickness, the timelessness of battle that takes away the moments between actions so they seem to collide, each one building on the next without room to breathe. I try to move with this, my old friend, but pain screams through all my limbs, trapping me, slowing me down.
      I can only watch as Ragna's claws and teeth search for a vulnerable spot through the thick fur of the chief.
      I can only watch him curse her and push her face down into the dirt.
      I can only watch them tumble again, and again come to a halt with the pard chief holding her down.
      "You dare," he breathes to her.
      "You will not touch her, Father," Ragna hisses.
      "Apparently I was wrong to leave you with her," he says, hauling her up with her arms twisted behind her back.
      "Let her go," I say, finding my voice now that we are all moving through the same time.
      The pard chief laughs. "I think not, mixbreed. You have done enough damage for the day. Indeed, you've done enough damage entirely. I will be glad to be quit of you, once the babe is born."
      "You have no idea what's going on," I say. "You honestly believe you can hold the Governor of Shraeven hostage in a tent. You honestly believe I'm going to have your child."
      A flare of a grin, all grimy fang. "Yes. And if you do not yet have a babe within you... the creation of one can still be arranged." He drags Ragna out, leaving me staring, fists clenched, at the tent flap.
      I cannot leave this hole fast enough. I can't raze this village fast enough. Where are Donal's soldiers? And by the gods, they've taken Ragna, my Ragna!
      I did not miss the look on her face as she left, the brief slip as defiance and panic danced a roundabout in glazed green eyes. Father. Did she say 'father'? Did she tell me he was her father while I was sick, and did I forget it? My gods. What will the beast do to her?
      Readers want Angharad to send Donal's soldiers to find out where Ragna's being kept when they arrive!

The Nature of Ragna's Danger
      By the time my guard contingent arrives, I am ready to shred my blanket . . . but arrive they do, and Donal (bless his head!) sent not just two but eight lean, hard fellows, a mix of his own sturdy farmer-stock and my own battle-tested soldiers. I don't give their head time to linger over my condition; he says, "Reporting for duty, Mistress!" and I immediately say, "I need the two best stalkers in your party to find out where they've taken Ragna."
      "Mistress?" he asks, but not confusion that--a request for more information.
      "The pard chief has taken Ragna away," I say. "I need to know where she is and what condition she's in, and how difficult it's going to be to break her out. And I need that information quickly--before dawn, because I plan to be out of here by then."
      "Aye, Mistress," he says and ducks back out of the tent.
      A few minutes later a different man enters. "The scouts have been dispatched," he says.
      "Good," I say. "You can help me search for my gear, if it's in this tent. I want to be ready to move out the moment the scouts return unless they bring me good cause to stay."
      "Aye, Mistress."
      It is so good to be obeyed.
      He and a fellow spend a fruitless time ransacking my tent; my weapons, my armor, everything I fell with is missing. Even my clothing--besides these bandages, I'm nude and the pards were not good enough to leave me a set of clothing. One of the soldiers passes me a cloak clip, and I improvise a tunic from the blanket. It hurts to sit up, but not so much that I'll be difficult to handle. I'm a light burden when carried, and I am very ready to be carried out of his cesspit.
      My scouts return, grim-faced. I narrow my eyes at their expressions and say, "Well? Can she be freed?"
      "Not easily, ma'am," the first says. "She's held good and tight in the compound of the chief, surrounded by a fence of angry mongrels."
      "Not with them," I say, my voice harder than I intend. The mere thought of Ragna abused by the mongrels--by her family!--is enough to make me want to strangle something.
      "No," the scout says. "Around her."
      "We couldn't watch long," the second says. "But they seem to have decided to do something with her. Something involving messengers."
      "Messengers," I murmur. "What did they say?"
      Red blushes now. "We can't understand their tongue, Mistress."
      Damn the pards! Damn the language barrier! "I can't stay here," I say. "Get me back to camp."
      "Aye, Mistress," the first scout says. And to their credit, not a single one of them stares inappropriately or blushes when they pick me up and tramp out of the tent. The rest of the contingent falls in around me.
      How am I going to find out what they're going to do with Ragna?

The Governor's Coalition
      I'm so busy deciding how to help Ragna that I've forgotten that only Donal knows my state. When the soldiers carry me into camp, I find all my captains awaiting me, and Magwen's horns are in evidence behind their ranks, and the looks in their eyes... Ah, by the path to Heaven, I don't have time for this now.
      "To my tent," I tell the shoulders under me. They turn and march that way, past my people. It takes my captains a moment to stop staring, but by the time I'm deposited in my own cot they're all crowding in behind me and Magwen's making tea.
      "Find me the locals," I say before they can ask all the questions they want to ask.
      What can they do? They scatter.
      "Clothes," I say to Magwen, and he helps me carefully into pants--is it just me or did he hesitate over my damaged hips? Fortunately almost all of my blouses are in parts clipped together at shoulders or laced at the sides, so getting them over my broken extremities takes little time. I'm still sweating with pain when we're done, but I say, "Take me outside to wait."
      When our native allies arrive I am propped up on cushions outside my tent, holding a steeping cup of tea and looking as composed as I possibly can with my wings forced open behind me like decorations. Our allies are led by a man and a woman, both robust and of an age with me, and one hunched grandfather leaning on a knobbed staff.
      And now a soldier must remember to be a diplomat. "Thank you for joining us," I say. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you properly, but I was indisposed."
      "No need to apologize," says the woman. "We know just how indisposed the pards can make a body. We're given to understand you'll be doing something about their mischief?"
      "I plan to destroy them," I say. "When we're done here, there will either be no pard villages as they know them... or there will be no pards."
      Their eyes glow. The young man says, "We are proud to be a part of your effort, Governor."
      Ah. Ah. The sound of that single word, freely offered... perhaps there's hope for this crazed mission after all.
      "I need your help," I say. "One of our own is captive in the center of the chief's compound, and they're planning something with her. Something that requires them to send messengers. We can't understand their tongue. Do you know why they might be keeping her guarded by their wild beasts?"
      The eldest says, "I was only a boy when the pards took me. But I saw them send more than one messenger out only once: when the pard chief was ready to offer a sacrifice to the beasts of all the villages, as a gift to sew them together. They are preparing to unite against us."
      Curse it all! "And the sacrifice?"
      "The beast children of all the surrounding villages will make free with her, and the leader of this particular battle will be chosen based on which pard pack gets the most out of her while beating off the rest. The strongest children indicate the strongest leader," the eldest says.
      "And all the villages will come together for this," I say.
      "All the fighters, the able-bodied men and the beasts," says the eldest.
      I think of the numbers. Not more than two thousand, Ragna said, a total that included women, children, beasts and men. How many of those are fighters? To have them all in one place is a great convenience... but it presumes that we can take them. Picking them off village by village might be safer, but there's a symbolic value to destroying them all during one of their high rituals. At least I can assume Ragna will be left relatively unharmed until they use her for the intended purpose.
      Voters think the villages should be taken all at once!

War Conference
      The natives leave me and the second wave arrives: my captains, grim of face and stiff in gait. My gaze rises and falls as I look from one pair of eyes to the next, and despite their varied colors and heights they have the same stern cold.
      "Take me inside," I say to Magwen, and he helps me back into the tent. My captains follow me. I wait until my steward leaves before I say, "We have an opportunity to destroy all the strength of the pard villages at once."
      "Numbers?" Colblain asks.
      "Ragna estimates the total pard population at 2000," I say. "Women don't fight, but at the very worst case, two thousand against us. Somewhat worst case is one thousand. More probable is about eight hundred."
      Now they are grim indeed. We have faced worse odds, but not often and not with frequent success.
      "I'm a little behind," Gavan says. "I didn't know we were set on destroying the pards, Mistress." He glances at Donal. "Donal told us you were wounded and the scouts report you falling, but not much more than that."
      I remember now how cryptic my corvid-flown message was, a precaution against enemy interception. Ordinarily I'd have no issues simply stating my reasons... but I have never been such a direct victim of what I am aiming to destroy. It embarrasses me. I flex my fingers and say, "They're responsible for the constant raids on the valley-folk, and they think it mete and honorable for their half-wild children to rape, hunt, maim and kill whomever they set eyes on. They oppress their women and enslave the less fortunate. This will not continue under my rule."
      "So we're just going to . . . stop them. Without asking them to change first," Gavan says. When the other captains glare at him, he says, "The Mistress has said we're not to treat Shraeven as an enemy to be destroyed, but an ally to be tamed. I'm trying to make the transition, but this act doesn't seem to live harmoniously with our mission."
      He's right. Not only that, but I'd said that I would give the pards a chance to reform and attacking them unexpectedly at one of their high rituals wasn't going to allow them the opportunity to negotiate. I am still thinking like a Mistress Commander, not like the Provincial Governor of Shraeven.
      Too bad for the pards, that.
      "You're right, Gavan," I say. "I appreciate you bringing up your concerns. Under normal circumstances, I'd agree with you completely; our place would be to negotiate and pacify, not destroy. But we can only negotiate with civilized people. Anyone who thinks it a fine day's work for their mongrel children to hunt and kill village children is no civilized person. Negotiation is pointless with such people; the only thing they understand and respect is strength."
      Gavan nods. He looks puzzled but not upset, so I turn to the others. "We need more information and unfortunately the pard chief has Ragna and is planning to use her as the centerpiece for their grand ritual. I need scouts to find out where the ritual's held. I need locals to team up with scouts to find out what's going on. If we can follow the messengers to the other villages and listen in on the resulting conversations, or follow them with messenger birds, we should. Only after we know more can we decide whether we can make this all-out assault work. Get the intelligence and bring it back."
      "Aye, ma'am!"
      "Go," I say.
      They go.
      Voters decide that Silfie and Donal and Gavan all hang back.

A Worrisome Wrath
      They go... mostly. Gavan even hangs in the tent flap a moment before gathering himself and striding out.
      Donal and Silfie remain stubbornly rooted to the ground. The surprised and wary look they exchange is funny behind price. Neither one moves; neither one speaks. Finally, I start to laugh. "For the sake of divinity," I say. "Are your separate topics so manifestly private that you can't speak them in front of one another? Or am I going to have to send one of you to wait outside?"
      "I wanted to know how you were feeling, ma'am," Donal says, giving me a curt bow from the waist. "I wasn't sure you'd want to talk about it."
      "I want to know what they did to you," Silfie says, eyeing Donal. "And I wasn't sure you'd want to tell him."
      "Somehow I doubt the particulars of my injuries are going to remain private long," I say. "They knocked me from the sky. I killed many of them, but they got the better of me. You see the results." I shrug. "I will heal, as I always do."
      "The natives tell stories," Silfie says.
      I have known Silfie many a year, but the anger that shapes those words, blunt as a hammer, is new to me. She looks uncomfortable in her own skin... in fact, I catch her shifting her weight from foot to foot, as if she's standing on golden coals.
      "And what stories are those?" I ask, more concerned about her than my privacy.
      When Silfie doesn't immediately respond, Donal says, "Respectfully, Mistress, but the stories are about how the pards get new pards."
      "One would presume they get new pards on other pards," I say. "Otherwise, they would not have inbred to their current, bestial state. Wouldn't you suppose?"
      "I guess one would," Donal says in that so-charming country accent. It doesn't suit his next words. "Except the natives say that beasts can lack discrimination in choosing their mates."
      "Did they?" Silfie asks abruptly. "Did they defile you?" Her hands are clenched. "I'll skin every one of them and serve their organs on a platter to you if they even thought of you the wrong way."
      I glance at Donal, who looks tense and grim but controlled. Silfie's towering anger worries me. I need my Second to be a voice of calm, not a mindless crusader for vengeance. We have too many pards to kill to go about this without careful planning.
      "They hardly think at all, Silfie," I say. "But they'll all be dead soon enough."
      I think she takes this for confirmation, because she leaves as suddenly as a summer storm over the ocean. She drags her anger behind her like scouring winds.
      "That doesn't bode well," I murmur.
      "If it pleases you, ma'am, I'll do my best to quell the rumors," Donal says.
      "That pleases me much," I say. "We have work to do, and we need clear heads to do it."
      He glances at me, briefly, furtively, but I catch the golden glimmer in his dark eyes anyway. He is a handsome sort, when he's not in motion--movement tends to reveal his lack of grace.
      "Mistress," he says. "It would help me greatly to know if I am lying when I tell them the rumors are untrue."
      I am taken aback by this request, and I wonder if he is maneuvering to be placed in my confidence, above and beyond my Second. But no, there's no slyness to his face... only a trembling candor. He can recite the most trite lines and make them sound real. Now it appears that he cares whether he's lying or not. Are all the Neshanti country-boys this painfully earnest? Gods above, I thought such old-fashioned notions had died long ago. I have the cynicism of a city-woman... I feel, just for a moment, ashamed.
      Readers decide Angharad should find out what Donal would say first.

A Job for Knives
      "And what will you say," I ask, "if I tell you either way?"
      I must look too much the canny political creature, because the flash of sadness in his eyes is otherwise inexplicable. I flush at my ears.
      "Controlling our men's outrage may be like penning a bull with the frothing, ma'am. You know how serious a crime this is," Donal says. "Particularly in the Godkindred Kingdom's heart-land."
      Oh, do I. We punish very severely for those who seek pleasures in other people's bodies without their permission... but that is only a fraction of the punishment we exact for those who appropriate another person's womb without her consent. Blood-line is not just important. Blood-line is everything, and to further your own through violence... let us simply say that bastardy for us is not simply a shameful matter, but a criminal one.
      "Let them be outraged, then," I say. "As long as you and your fellow captains can keep them in hand, their anger will serve them."
      "Then the rumors are true," Donal says. He's handling this with a delicacy I honestly hadn't expected of him.
      "The rumors..." I pause, then sigh and continue. "They're true."
      His hand touches the handle of his knife. Not his sword, a weapon of honor and military duty, but his knife, the tool you gut carcasses with.
      "Not just true," I say, "but true in the most heinous of ways. I was overwhelmed not by a single person, but by an unchecked horde of half-mad beasts, and their shepherd did not stop them from their multiple crimes." Gods, this is hard to say out loud. My limbs are trembling with what I believe is anger. "And their chief would have forced himself on me when I was bound and too injured to resist."
      "Would have," Donal says. I've passed my trembling on to him. "What stopped him?"
      "Good Ragna," I say. "She attacked him at great risk to herself. Realized risk, for now she is bound for sacrifice because of what she did to protect the integrity of my family chain."
      "This is monstrous," Donal says. "The impossible task you give us is not to destroy two thousand pards, Mistress, but to keep us from destroying them."
      "Then I hope the intelligence our spies retrieve will make that opportunity for us," I say. "Go do my work, Donal. Only when we have rent this culture limb from limb will I be able to rest again."
      "Aye, Mistress," he says, hard as folded metal. He takes himself outside.
      And now something unexpected happens, according to the poll!

The Gods and the Winds Are On Our Side
      "Mistress! Come outside, please!"
      I appreciate the scout's urgency, but I am not going to be moving quickly any time soon. Still, I find that this morning I feel much better than I did yesterday. With Magwen's help I hobble outside my tent to see what the fuss is about.
      On one of the rocky slopes I see a blanket of people. They're flying a succession of colors from a pole: not flags, but strips of colored ribbon. As I stare, squinting, Colblain arrives, flanked by two people, and I feel like laughing.
      "Headman Pedeel, Shaman Negrat," I say. "You are a long way from home."
      Negrat says, "The wind told us some time ago that we would be wise to march here. We brought fellows from the cliffs. It seems as if every time we stopped to make camp, more people joined us . . . strange how that happened."
      "And how many stragglers have you brought me, wise priest and gentle headman?" I ask.
      Pedeel says, "Seven hundred, crazed Godkin woman." He glances with great nonchalance at Negrat. "Oddly enough, each one seems to be an able-bodied man. We deem this convenient, since our valley fellows have told us we are needed to fight the pards."
      I shake my head, torn between laughing, a deep affection and a little fear. Weeks past, I left Negrat and his headman and his village behind after my unsettling evening vigil on the topmost bluffs in the mountains between Shraeven and the Kingdom. I honestly hadn't thought of that night since... and yet, here they are, adding the numbers to my force I'll need to dominate the pards. I had no idea I had earned their allegiance.
      "Thank you," I say at last. "You will help me to tame the mountains for those who live here and those who travel them. I greatly appreciate your... strangely... timely arrival."
      Negrat studies me. His gaze snags on my belly, and I know that among all my more obvious injuries he has noted the invisible one. "I came because I was needed. The others came because they trusted me. You will fight for us, and we are glad to help you."
      And so I have my sufficiency of allies.

Dawn Before the Battle
      Four days to the ritual.
      Three.
      Two--they fly.
      I lie awkwardly on my cot, trying to sleep and failing. Shraeven is changing me already. I don't feel ready for it. I am of the Kingdom--but the Kingdom has cut me loose.
      Who am I? Where do my allegiances belong? I would have said the Sunblood Cliffs and the Godkindred Kingdom, but the Godson does not seem to care whether we live or die... whether any of us do in the process of extending his empire. But I cannot say Shraeven, for all that the people seem to find me worthy. Sometimes.
      I am used to dealing with violence as a soldier, not as a diplomat. I don't think I'm doing a very good job with the pards. But I simply can't allow them to exist as they do today.
      What would the winds counsel me if I stepped outside? Would they whisper out of the clear dark to tangle my long hair and cool even the crannies between my feathers? Or would they be silent, watchful, judging?
      What if I'm going to be a mother?
      A mother without a husband?
      Oh gods.
      All I can do is kill these people, kill them and kill them until they never rise up against another person, or in my memories or nightmares ever again. I have to turn soldier. Doesn't every governor have to resort to force sometimes?
      Why am I weeping?
      Ragna, are you safe tonight?
      Readers decide Ragna's in trouble, but that she's tough and handling it.

Sunset Before the Battle
      "I'd forgotten how quickly you heal."
      I look over my shoulder--not hard, given the length of my neck--and find Silfie at the tent's opening, framed by the flap and Magwen's antlers. The steward is lacing me into my leather armor; he's being very careful, but masking it with his deliberation, as if he doesn't want me to realize he's trying to figure out how fragile I am. But I kid no one when I say I heal quickly... and while I don't want to move very quickly, and I still have bandages on my arms and legs, if my bones don't knit within a week they don't knit at all. Some have whispered that it's the coatl in my blood that brings such supernatural ability. I just think it's luck. Luck and good breeding.
      "It's useful," I say, realizing that Silfie is just standing there, looking gloriously martial but extremely stiff. "Are the men in position?"
      "They're ready," she says. "Runners report seeing the first of the pards accumulating in the crevice."
      "Good," I say. "What's the weather like?"
      "Some ugly clouds, but I think they'll pass before we make our attack."
      "Even better," I say. "I hate the notion of rain making the rocks slippery." I turn, run my hands over the stiff white leather over my ribs. My wings are folded and carefully bound since (unlike my limbs) they need more time and less give to heal properly. I won't be flying for another two weeks, maybe three. Magwen buckles my sword and knife at my waist as I hold my arms above his head. He's lucky I'm this tall--his antlers would be an inconvenience for anyone shorter.
      "Are you sure you want to do this?" Silfie asks.
      "Of course I'm sure," I say.
      Her ears dip downward and back forward so quickly I almost miss it. "Angharad, you're moving too slowly," she says. "You're a target."
      "That's why I'll be on Honeydipped directing the action, instead of in the fray disemboweling pards," I say.
      Her copper eyes fasten on mine. "But that's where you want to be. Which means that's where you're going to end up. And then what will I do?"
      "Protect me," I say. "It is part of your duty. Convenient, yes?"
      "Angharad--," she begins.
      "Save your strength for the fight," I say. "We're not stopping until there's enough blood to feed our messenger bird and all of its kin."
      She watches me as I watch Magwen bring me my cloak. No, not me. Her gaze traces my injuries, snags at my navel. "Did they--"
      "It doesn't matter," I interrupt. "What you see would be cause enough for what we're about to do."
      Her eyes are fiercer than lightning. "But if they did do it--"
      "Later," I say. "We have work to do."
      "Angharad!"
      "Silfia," I say, then sigh. This is not at all decorous. Poor Magwen, to have to ignore this kind of conversation. "Silfia, I am but one of their victims. Let's keep these things in perspective."
      "You might be only one of their many victims," Silfie says, "but you're the one I care about."
      My ears almost flush peach, but we're beyond that, aren't we two? Instead I say to Magwen, "Thank you." And to Silfie, "It's time."
      I exit my tent to find Honeydipped waiting for me without a handler, saddled and bridled. Also waiting is the final contingent of soldiers and natives I'm leading to cut off the passage to the crevice after the pards have filled it. When I stop in front of them, dressed for battle and standing unaided on my own feet, they cheer. They don't stop, either. The wind is high, the sky is ruddy and my ears feel heavy with their accolade. My skin is tight beneath the barrage of their ferocity, their blood-anger. The breeze tries to chase the heat off my cheeks and brow, but still I feel that I'm radiating with power and fury and a feral joy.
      I let them cheer. And then I thrust my fist into the sky, little caring at the complaint of my abused and healing muscles. "DEATH TO THE PARDS!"
      "DEATH TO THE PARDS!"
      Readers want the battle to be described in some detail.

A Griffin's Mercy
      Around this time in a battle, I'm usually airborne, scouting, evaluating, planning.
      This is no usual battle.
      Standing at Honeydipped's side with one arm draped over his saddled back, I watch the stream of pards flow past narrow walls splashed with the last red rays of the failing sun. Some of them are bringing torches, splotches of light that smolder as twilight creeps into the shadowed blue nooks of the crevice. It's strange how fire seems more intense in the in-between times at dusk and dawn.
      I think about Ragna and her blood-written notes, and as if summoned the corvid messenger lands on the pommel of my saddle with a theatrical flap of his pointed wings.
      "You will eat well tonight," I say to him. He gapes his beak as if grinning. Who knows? Maybe he is.
      We watch, my silent contingent and I, as the pards fill and fill and fill their sacred space. There's no altar in the center, as civilized people would have, but a pen. A pen you would trap an animal in. And as I watch this is where Ragna is thrown.
      Of course I can see her. Do you think I have so many sharp-sighted birds in my lineage for nothing?
      I also see the pard children, the beasts that these villagers hold up so proudly as examples of what we are meant to become through the wonders of true-breeding. They are held back by leashes, these snarling, snapping beasts, twice the size of real animals but without a thought in their combined heads to restrain them. This, then, is the pinnacle that the pards would bring us to, this rabid, frothing mindlessness. Fierce devotion toward the Godkindred goal of interbreeding to godhead swells in me, and my feathers ache to spread against their bandages.
      But I am not an animal, and I control myself.
      Beside me, a man holding a pennant waits for my signal. Not patiently. But with discipline despite the tension that holds him so rigidly at my side. This is sacred. This is what we seek, we Godkin. This discipline. This nobility.
      This is worth fighting for.
      This is worth crushing Shraeven for, if Shraeven gets in my way . . . and Gods save anyone who does what these pards have done to me, ever again.
      The pards begin their celebration, and with each moment that they sing and dance and laugh, I coil more and more tightly. With each moment that Ragna slumps a little more, I tremble a little more. With each moment that passes, each moment that they're free, I strain to hold back. But I do hold back, until I judge that we have waited long enough.
      "Go," I say to the flag man, who lifts his pennant and waves it. And then the hail of arrows begins... and I watch as the pards die.
      Readers want Angharad to gallop into the fray--for a good reason, of course!

Wild Ride
      Scores of pards die in those first volleys. They have thick fur, but my archers aren't using sport bows. They're using war bows that require a year's training to draw, aim and shoot. Arrows shot from these bows can pierce plate armor. Mere hair is nothing.
      I observe the splash of blood, glowing as if lit from within. I feel a fierce pleasure when the pards begin to mill in panic, stepping over one another, tripping on dead bodies. I can't hear them screaming, but I can imagine it and it sounds like music. The killing goes on and on. I begin to think we won't even have to draw our swords--we can just finish this off from above.
      And then my sharp eyes catch on the pard chief as he shoves his way to the center of the crevice and into the pen. He grabs Ragna, holds her up against his body, and presses a knife against her neck, up under the jaw. There is something horrible about that line right beneath the jaw, where the blood is so close you can watch the skin flutter.
      The pard chief is scanning the cliff tops. I'm not there, but I know he's looking for me. I know this is now a private conversation between the two of us.
      "Call off the killing," he says in the silence, through the rain of blood and arrows, his mouth unmoving. "Call them off, or I will kill her."
      "How do I know that you will keep your promise?" I imagine the conversation going. "How do I know that if I stop the killing, you won't open her and let her heart pulse out all the life in her body through the slit in her neck?"
      "You don't know. But you know that I certainly will kill her if you don't stop."
      I stare at his rigid form, at Ragna's hands on his arm. I can see the blood trickling from the claw-hold she has on him, but he doesn't release her. The screams are real now, rather than music, and it's because I'm on Honeydipped and riding for the opening. The messenger bird's shadow is flowing cold on my shoulder. My contingent of the combined army is following me because they think this is the signal for us to cut off the pard retreat. I guess it is, because I'm not about to let Ragna die.
      Oh gods, I wish I could fly. I would pluck her from his arms. We would laugh because she's scared of flying. I would promise her, honestly promise her, that the very next time I take her for a ride it won't be in a killing thunderstorm or to deliver her from a maddened battle. It will be through a glorious summer-blue sky with warm, flower-dusted winds.
      I'm coming, Ragna. Stay alive, just a little longer, stay alive.
      Readers think Silfie was expecting this.

Convergence
      My charge is the signal for the rest of the force to jump into the fray--they can see me from the high ground, though I won't be visible to the pards until far too late. I can see the chief, but he is still searching for me on the bluffs, amid the men now sliding down ropes with spears aimed at those waiting for them on the ground. The battle is complete chaos, and as with all battles, it starts slowing.
      Will I make it before he sees me coming and slits her throat?
      Will my headlong charge make him push her away to defend himself?
      Will she die?
      Will I?
      Honeydipped crashes into the fray and time starts again, as if I am passing through an ocean wave as it shatters against the coast. I need to get to Ragna before it's too late. I am killing someone who's in my way--someone else--my body hurts. If I had magic, I would have healed myself completely before doing something this ill-advised.
      I wonder where Silfie is.
      Blood smells like food, sometimes. I wonder if that's the coatl. Maybe just all the hungry beasts in my lineage combined. Angharad the predator--ha!--
      In Glendallia, there's a fountain carved in my likeness. My sword is dripping water. I think it's macabre. The Glendallians don't remember anything else about me, except that my sword never stopped dripping. I think they were being melodramatic. My sword stops dripping within minutes. There's too much gore on it. It gets sticky.
      More death. More screaming. I've done this before. It's old. I want to retire.
      Ragna.
      RAGNA!
      The chief spots me. Her own father. His muscles tense. Honeydipped leaps--I had no idea he could jump like this. I feel like I'm flying. I know what that feels like.
      My sword disconnects his knife arm from his body. Someone else's appears in his belly. I stare at Silfie across the pard chief's sagging body as Ragna staggers free.
      "I told you you wouldn't stay out of the battle," Silfie growls.
      "I told you you would protect me," I say. I grab Ragna and pull her onto the saddle--well, no, I guide her onto the saddle. She gets on herself, which is very good, because she's too heavy for my suddenly-very-tired arm. "Let's finish this off."
      "How many do you want left?" Silfie asks. She's gorgeous when she's dripping blood and sweat. Her curls scream copper, over-burnished, like metal fire.
      "No more than a score," I say. "But kill all the beasts." Then I turn Honeydipped and we slam back into the passage of time and this dance that is our vengeance, and death.
      Readers are disappointed... this is too easy! They vote for complication!

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over
      I have work to do and I do it, and with only one free arm--the other is wrapped around Ragna, keeping her steady in the saddle in front of me. I assume that I'm working so hard at this because she's not accustomed to riding. It's only when I look around and find no more pards to kill that I realize it's because she's trying to get my attention.
      "What is it?" I ask.
      She gesticulates, looking frustrated. I only notice the tears in her eyes because the torchlight glitters on them.
      "Angharad!" Silfie jogs up to me. "There are about thirty pards left; some of the natives are tying them down. Everyone else is dead."
      "Good," I say. "Finish the clean-up and take care of our wounded. Get me a tally as soon as you can."
      "Right," she says, and as she walks away Ragna is tugging at my arm.
      "What, what?" I ask. And then I feel a sudden terror. "Did they hurt you? Why can't you talk?"
      She licks her lips, and I notice--I smell--the blood in her saliva.
      "Open your mouth," I say... no, I command. And when she does, I see her tongue's still in her mouth, but it's been sliced four times, in a pattern that looks like ritual. It'll heal... it had better heal. "If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him again!"
      She throws up her hands in exasperation, grabs my face and turns it toward the bluffs. I look up, confused.
      "Angharad?"
      "Not now, Silfie," I say, confused.
      "No, this is important. We can't find their mongrels."
      "Oh my gods," I whisper as a bristling, howling mass breasts the cliffs... and then hundreds on hundreds of beasts pour over the rocks.
      Donal and Oweir's units were savaged to allow this horrible turn in fortunes, voters decide.

Re-grouping
      "FORM UP!" I cry.
      The pards keep pouring over the walls.
      "TO YOUR CAPTAINS!"
      We're not moving fast enough.
      "RE-GROUP!"
      We have got to get out of here. We're not going to make it. They're going to trap us in here.
      "RE-GROUP!"
      I have had, in passing, thoughts of death on the battlefield. We have faced devastating odds before. This is the first time I think we might all be slaughtered. Not slain, like men and women of honor. Slaughtered, like beasts, like dumb animals. Killed without meaning or honor.
      In front of me, Ragna whimpers, frustration, horror, anger.
      I untie myself from the saddle. I can't flare my wings, but I am good in the saddle. My tail works twice as hard to balance me as I stand on Honeydipped's back and thrust my grisly sword into the air.
      "DEATH TO THE PARDS!"
      My flagging force stares at me, at the blood-red pennant of my hair, of my spattered body and indomitable spirit, the spirit that holds me upright, that makes me not care if I fall because pride is stronger than weakness and fiercer than fear.
      "DEATH TO THE PARDS!" I yell again, and the yell bruises my throat on the way out, and I am not big enough to contain it. On the third cry, I get an echoed roar, and once again my army is with me.
      "DEATH TO THE PARDS!"
      According to voters, the rest of the battle's mood should be surreal and dream-like.

Killing 'Til Your Arm Can't Lift a Sword
      "Remember they're just animals."
      But they're animals that throw rocks.
      "Remember that they're smarter than beasts."
      But when they wound you, they leave fang gouges and claw rips.
      Honeydipped saves my life twice before a rip over his hindquarters puts him down. Everywhere I look, flesh is writhing. Battles are supposed to be fought on your feet, not on the ground, wrestling with a four-footed cat the length of your body.
      The corvid's shadow passes over me. My sword separates arm from shoulder. Head from body. Life from flesh.
      They leap for me, but they die. I may stagger, I may bleed, but they... they die.
      They die. They keep dying. Where are they coming from?
      In a lull, Ragna catches my eyes. She's not just panting, but heaving, and the gore on her body makes her a blood pard, white body with rosettes that stink of iron.
      And then the next wave engulfs us.
      There is no question now. We will take no prisoners. All who attack us will die, or we will fall beneath them. And they call this civilization? Gods, take me home. Take me back to the Sunblood Cliffs. Take me back to balmy nights, wind-touched with the scent of rock salt. Make it all the way it was. Except for Ragna. I'll take her home with me. She'll be a learned scholar. We'll plumb the mysteries of the origins of thinking life. We'll forget this culture ever spawned her. We'll leave no evidence.
      Pride is useful when you're exhausted. Pride is invaluable when you're wounded.
      I hear the wind. Oh, gods. The Winds of Shraeven.
      Which wind? The sweet and vicious wind!

Casus Belli
      This is what you really wanted all along, the sweet and vicious wind whispers. It tries to sough past my ears and through my hair, but the blood's caked my locks to my body. To see us all dead. To raise the standard of your Godkindred beliefs over the mass graves.
      "No!" I say, even as some part of me snarls, Yes! I make a convincing proponent here, with a sword through some-beast's neck. I yank it out. It's not your beliefs that bother me. It's when your beliefs result in a complete lack of civilization.
      How convenient, the wind purrs. Our people attack your dignity, you destroy them and call it "the triumph of civilization."
      I begin to argue that the wind is wrong, the wind is misinterpreting me, the wind is crazy. But then I realize the wind is right. And furthermore, I don't think what I'm doing is a bad thing. Else why would I be doing it?
      You're right, I say instead. These people rape and kill for pleasure and out of arrogance, because no one will stop them. I think that's wrong. They don't agree. Therefore, I kill them. And I don't care what you think of it, or any of the Shraevenese. As long as the pards or anyone like them believe it doesn't matter how much pain, suffering and death they cause others, I will oppose them... to the opening of their throats, if necessary. That's why I'm the Godson's Mistress Commander and Governor over Shraeven!
      The wind begins to die.
      I lift my head, and anger transfigures my exhaustion. Well? Stop me if you disagree!
      And then the air stops moving altogether. No motion, no breeze, nothing. In this sudden stillness, I feel as if time has truly absented itself.
      And then the battle crashes back into motion, and I find myself at the neck of the gorge and behind me the mounds of the dead. We have won. Somehow, we have won. And now the only wind that tickles my body, my sweat-matted, gore-streaked body, is mute. Approval? Or is it just biding its time? I don't care.
      "Silfie!" I cry, but my voice cracks halfway through the word. I clear my throat, and this time I have thunder. "SILFIE!"
      From the other side of the crevice, I hear, "Coming!"
      I hunt for Ragna and find her not far from me. Studying me. Still more red than gray, my pard guide, and some of that her own. Sometime during the battle the leather bracelet came off. I glance at it, and she notes me glancing at it, and when she meets my eyes she flashes me a grim but merry grin, and I have no idea how it manages to be both but it is.
      I grin back. We will count the cost before this night is done, but we're still standing.
      And now, romance!

Prying Off Armor
      The aftermath of battle is a bitter thing, and chaotic to boot. It took me several years to decide how to handle it correctly. I believed at first that mingling with the foot-soldiers, bodily helping with the wounded and giving orders to all my seconds and captains would make for a swifter resolution and a happier company; what I discovered is that there's a reason I'm at a remove from basic activities, and the time and place for the Mistress Commander to mingle with her people is after they're done clearing the field, counting the honored dead, and dealing with our wounded and any prisoners. Otherwise I am too conspicuous, and they feel self-conscious and far-too-overseen.
      So I act as has been my custom for many, many years and retire to my tent, carefully unbowed. This takes some effort--I'm limping. I'm sure Magwen will be pleased with that.
      Fortunately for me on arriving with my bad leg, the only evidence of Magwen in my tent is a bath. The tub's already been dragged into place when I get to the tent. Seeing it there in front of the brazier I suddenly feel all the hours we've been fighting. It might be close to dawn now, and I don't remember any of the hours between sunset and now. This is typical, but it still irritates me.
      I don't wait for him to help me, because I want out of this sticky armor right now. That's probably why he finds me tangled in my laces with one panel of my armor trapped between my body, one of my bound wings and the floor. The other panel is caked on. I'm pretty sure the laces are stuck to my back, too. I'm too frustrated to be embarrassed--usually a sign that the battle was too near a defeat for my tastes--so when he comes around behind me I say, "Just cut the thing off. We can get new laces."
      "You might need them," he says. "Though these look beyond simple repair." His fingers tug at them and my entire body jerks back toward him. I start to doubt they'll ever come off.
      "Gods!" I exclaim. "Cut them off, cut them off. I can't stand it anymore."
      "Patience, Mistress," Magwen says in that rumble of a bass of his.
      I don't feel like being patient, but I stand there, leaning against the tub, while the water gets colder and my muscles get stiffer. My arm feels like someone's trying to slide a poker up it. Did I break it again? It's entirely possible. I rarely notice those things when I'm fighting for my life. And while I'm cataloguing my complaints, my hip and leg aren't so happy either, and my wings would like it just fine if I could get someone to gently stretch them. The longer I'm standing, the more I throb. I suppose I should have someone bandage some of these bites and claw-scrapes. Later, after I've washed them.
      Finally--finally!--the leather comes off. While I strip out of my dirty underthings, Magwen refreshes the water. It's not until I'm sliding into the basin that I notice that he's avoiding my eyes. On purpose. Not the casual "invisible servant" routine he's so good at, but with discomfort.
      "What is it?" I ask, teasing a little. "Do I really smell that much more offensive than other people you've served?"
      "Of course not, Mistress," he says.
      That's it. No gentle teasing in return. No solemn dignity. No grace. Nothing. My Magwen's gone, cached away behind shuttered eyes. And I have no idea why.
      Voters say: Ask him what's wrong, but gently.

Prejudice From Unexpected Quarters
      Straight out of one battle and into another. I suppress a sigh. "Magwen, please, speak freely. Tell me what's wrong."
      He's putting my armor aside for cleaning, his broad back to me. "They say horrible things about you, Mistress, things that surely can't be true."
      "People are always saying horrible things about their officers," I say dryly. "What's the rumor this time?"
      He turns to face me. He's really quite tall, my steward. "They say you were defiled by the beasts, Mistress. That your sacred blood and their mongrel taint mingled."
      "They're correct," I say. "Insofar as the defilement. I'm not entirely sure about the mingling. The gods would not allow their efforts to take root in me, but even if the gods allowed it, it's a little soon to tell."
      It takes me a few moments to figure out how I know Magwen is seriously disturbed: he's not moving. He's usually doing something... cleaning, cooking, tidying, mending. To have him standing so still in front of me is alarming.
      "The rumors are true?" he says at last. "The story circulating is heinous."
      I find a bristle brush and start on my own body, since he's obviously too busy with his own problems to assist me. I can't help my irritation--I'm taking my own "defilement" better than he is. "Yes, well, it was heinous to live through."
      "My apologies, Mistress," Magwen says. "I know you must be mourning enough without additional burdens."
      I stop with the brush. "Mourning?"
      He steps behind me and begins lifting my hair away from my wings, presumably to wash my back. "That you are no longer acceptable marriage material, Mistress. I am... I am so sorry."
      "WHAT?"
      He jumps away from me, but I manage to splash him anyway as I leap to my feet in the tub. I point my brush at him. "I am not suddenly un-weddable just because I couldn't fend off thirty pards who wanted to rape me!"
      "Mistress," Magwen says, "I know you are tired--"
      "--TIRED!" I shout.
      "--but you know as do I that custom dictates that no woman defiled is a good match for one of the Godkin!" he finishes.
      "CURSE YOU!" I yell. "GET OUT!"
      He gets out. Quickly. A direct order from your Mistress Commander before the gods will do that. I slump back into the basin of soap and cover my eyes in my hands... not in misery, but in an anger so intense I'm shocked I don't boil the water. How dare he! How dare any of them! I'm not pregnant. I was felled by an enemy that would have put down any man--and now they want to tell me I'm too tainted to carry on my lineage? I'll punch anyone in the stomach who suggests it!
      They'd better not be right.
      A lance of pale orange light crosses my basin. I look up and find Ragna at the tent flap.
      Yay, a welcome interruption, voters declare!

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub
      I am dripping bubbles. Ragna is still naked. We're surely an entertaining sight. "I may not be in the best of moods, Od Ragna."
      "I noted," she says. "Even if your bellow did not split your tent walls, Magwen's hasty departure would be warning eough."
      I slump back into the water. "Was it that loud?"
      "Loud enough," she says. "Shall I wash your back?"
      "Would you?" I say with a sigh. In answer she comes up behind me and fishes around in the basin near my leg until she finds the discarded brush. I can't decide whether I don't mind her being so close or if I find it disconcerting. I opt for diversion. "You're clean. And damp, too."
      "I dunked myself in a stream before coming here," she says. "I couldn't stand the grime."
      I wince. "You bathed in a mountain stream?"
      She arches her whiskers forward and fans them in high amusement. "You cannot tell me that the illustrious Mistress Commander of so many campaigns has always had hot water and a steward to scrub her limp?"
      "Well, no," I say. "But it's because I've spent so much time in mountain streams that I want nothing to do with them again. Bathing in icy water is for the young."
      Ragna applies the brush to my back. I do my part by not melting. After a while, she speaks, and her voice over my shoulder is low and solemn. "I want to thank you for saving us." A breath. "There will be women and children left--real children, not beasts--and though they are lost and angry now, you have saved them from a terrible life. They will not be grateful to you, so I thank you on their behalf and mine."
      To that, I can only say, "You are welcome."
      She resumes scrubbing and I resume doing my best not to purr.
      "So what was your altercation with Magwen about?"
      "You are forward, aren't you?" I ask.
      "I am bathing you," she says with arched whiskers. "Negrat may be guarding our virtue, but if someone walked in on us right now I hardly think my words would seem more forward than my actions."
      I am silent. Then, "He is only a product of the Godkindred Kingdom. It isn't his fault."
      "What isn't?" she asks, groping the basin for the soap.
      "That bloodline is more important than the individual's worth as a person," I say.
      She stops hunting to look at me.
      "I know," I say. "You think this is barbarism. But our quest is godhead, Ragna, and the only path is interbreeding. We have a goal. We cannot allow personal inconveniences to way-lay us."
      "I was not actually thinking that," she says.
      I fold my dripping arms. "What were you thinking, then?"
      Ragna grins, all teeth. "That you're very handsome and that petting you is fun, brush and all."
      Readers think Angharad should be surprised and proceed with caution.

Bubble Bath Fight!
      Is it her eyes? Like jade in this light, a cloudy blue-green rimmed with black. I don't know. I wouldn't call her beautiful, but she's arresting. I know, I'm not doing a good enough job of intellectualizing. If I don't start doing better, I will fall into those eyes and have to swim for shore.
      I'm making little sense. This can't be right. We had opportunities in the tent that we didn't take. I didn't want to force her then... I certainly don't want to force her now, even if she sounds willing.
      "Are you trying to make me feel better?" I ask. "Because it's working."
      She grins broadly, her whiskers a fan so extreme some of them are pointing straight up. I've never seen her laughing so hard. "You are worried that later I may regret what we might do together in that tub, yes?"
      "If you want another bath, you're welcome to squeeze in here with me," I say, affecting innocence. "But if you think I have the energy for anything more than cleaning up so soon after spending an entire night hacking up bodies, you'd be wrong."
      "You tempt and then frustrate me," Ragna says, but I can hear her grin in her voice. She's behind me again and has reapplied herself to my back. "I should slide into this tub and take advantage of your limp exhaustion just to punish you."
      My ears are turning red, but I laugh because it's ridiculous and yet I find the idea... well, blush-worthy. "I hardly think I deserve punishment after freeing you from your dire estate," I say. "As a point of fact, in the Godkindred Kingdom's knight-time tales, I would be well within my rights to claim you as a prize for saving you!"
      "But you won't," Ragna says, all sauce.
      "I already have," I say.
      "Words, words," Ragna says and reaches into the tub to tickle my sides.
      I squawk--yes, I'm afraid I really do--and grab her, and so it is that Silfie catches us tangled together, half in the tub and half out of it, covered in bubbles and bandages and nothing else, fighting with sliding brushes and a bar of soap.
      Voters think Silfie should climb in the tub and demand her share!

Mystery, with Soap
      "So many questions, and I'm not sure which to lead with," Silfie says with a casual exhaustion. She unclips her cloak, dropping it behind her, and says, "Make room for me. I think the dried blood is the only thing keeping me standing."
      Ragna's whiskers twist in a snicker. I'm not sure how we're going to fit three of us in one tub... I'm thin, but not that thin. Nevertheless, Silfie's soon wearing nothing but her gods-given ruddy pelt and has an arm in the water.
      "How's the field looking?" I ask, noting the spiral crusts of blood and sweat framing the knob of one of her hips.
      "Dirty. Bloody. Stinks," she says. "It's going to take them a while to finish counting the dead and tending the wounded. Our allies fared badly... far worse than we did."
      To be expected, I suppose: we're a regiment, trained to work together in battle, and they were only villagers. I'm not looking forward to my next meeting with my allies.
      "They'll think it's worth it," Ragna says.
      "Let's let them finish counting before we get too grim." I hand a brush to Silfie who wedges herself into the tub next to me. I don't know how... probably only because Ragna's not in the tub. Instead, the pard goes back to washing my back. I have no idea how she can stare past that tuft of foam on her nose without going cross-eyed.
      "It'll be good to get off this Gods-accursed mountain," Silfie continues. "What is it with mountain people?"
      "I suppose the territory encourages isolation," I say, all too aware that the woman behind me is one of those "mountain people." "When the land itself bars your way, it's easy to become insular."
      Silfie looks good in soap. Silfie just looks good, in fact. The years have been very kind to her body: enough lines and softness to nod to passing age, but with all the hard strength of constant exercise. I know I've said this before, but she was wearing clothes the first time I said it.
      Oh my, oh my.
      Ragna is laughing at me, I know it. Stubbornly, I press on. "What questions?"
      "Well, what happened to Magwen, for one?" Silfie asks. "And for two: why is a foreign shaman guarding your tent flap?" She glances at Ragna. "Why isn't she clothed would be a third, I guess."
      "Magwen," I start, then sigh. "Magwen will need talking-to. I just don't have the energy to discipline him now. Ragna's not clothed because she just came from bathing in a mountain stream and as far as I know the pard clans weren't exactly in a position to return her clothing when we left them last. And there's a foreign shaman guarding my tent flap?"
      "I told you so when I entered," Ragna says with an air of great innocence. The brush digs into my mid-back.
      "I thought you were making light!" I exclaimed.
      "Why would I make light of something like that?" Silfie asks.
      I glance at her, frowning. "I meant that for Ragna."
      Silfie chuckles and soaps up her chest. "In response to what... her innocent look?"
      "No," I say, distracted by Silfie, entirely too distracted. "In response to her answer."
      "But she hasn't said anything since I walked in," Silfie says, glancing at the pard with lifted brows.
      Suddenly I remember Ragna's tongue. I turn slowly to look at the pard.
      Readers decide that Ragna's tongue's still a mess... it's just that Angharad's reading her mind.

No Magic! None! Not here! Not at all! Don't Believe!
      I can't stand the intensity of Ragna's look, so knowing, a challenge delivered with the mildly fanned whiskers of a smile. I turn back around. "Her body language is so obvious. I just hear the dialogue in my head."
      "Even when your back is turned to her?" Silfie asks.
      Suddenly I'm done with this entire conversation, this entire situation. I pull myself out of the tub, dripping soap and bubbles, and start toweling myself off. My body complains, but I ignore it.
      "Angharad?" they both ask, seem to ask, whatever.
      "I have things to do," I say, jerking on a clean blouse and a pair of pants. With difficulty, given my wet pelt, but I do it anyway. Hopefully they haven't developed mystical powers of intuition--that way they won't catch how much it hurts to do this without seeming to need help.
      They don't stop me as I leave.
      The camp is still empty. It will be for hours yet. It takes a while to clean up from battles, and not all my impatience to be done with the mountains, the pards and everything associated with them will make that process any faster.
      "You have cause to be unsettled, Godkin," a voice at my back says.
      "I thought you were guarding my tent flap," I say, turning to face Negrat.
      He grins, but his eyes are not laughing. "I was, Godkin. You left your tent with such determination you did not notice me following."
      "Are you sure I didn't notice you, or is this another magic trick?" I ask. I'm getting grumpier. My hair is dripping down my back--I hate that.
      "In magic there are no tricks," the shaman says, unperturbed. "Only the real made malleable."
      I stare at him.
      "You will learn these things the deeper into Shraeven you go," he says. "That is why I am going with you. To teach you."
      Voters think Angharad should be pleased the shaman will come along to shed some light on 'this magic thing.'

Speaker of Enigmas
      "What about your village?" I ask. "Won't they miss your guidance?"
      "The village will find a new shaman... though your concern does you credit," Negrat says. "However your development is far more important to my village, and my country, than any individual's spiritual counsel."
      "Your country is a province now," I say, pulling my hair over my shoulder and twisting it. Water spurts around my fingers, splotching the ground black.
      "So you say now," Negrat says. "We shall see what happens by the time you finish your trek in-country."
      My trek in-country will not change the Godson's choke-hold on any of his properties... but it's no use arguing that with someone who thinks magic is real. Speaking of which. "So you are going to oversee my magical education, is that it?"
      "You will thank me for the teaching before we're done," he says.
      I laugh. "Is that prophecy or a threat?"
      He grins, dark eyes twinkling from between the folds of skin and fur. "You shall see."
      "How will I learn anything if you're continually this cryptic?" I ask, continuing to squeeze the water from my mane.
      "How will you learn anything if I tell you all the answers?"
      I sigh. "Spoken like a priest."
      "And so I am one. All is well," Negrat says.
      I glance back toward the cliffs and think of the tally of the dead and wounded. We'll be busy tonight. What will we do with the remaining pards? And will my allies still be as firm in their support after they count their lost? "Is it well, really?"
      "Yes, Godkin woman. It truly is."
      And for some reason, hearing him say it, I believe it.
      "The leaders should be free to speak with you, Godkin woman," he says as he digs into a pouch at his waist.
      "Then I should speak with them," I say. "Are you coming?"
      "Of course. I'm one of them." He leans down and places a pebble next to the splotches on the ground as I watch, perplexed. When he straightens, he grins at my expression and says, "You will want to know this spot when you see it next."
      I shrug. "As you say."
      Readers pick a symbolic theme: Rebirth.

Mighty, Honored War Leader
      "They say you are mighty."
      I stare at the handful of Shraevenese leaders who shared the pard battle with us. The one who spoke has a bandage over his cheek up to his forehead, but his eyes are steady.
      "Now we know it's true," he says. "You will be Shraeven's new head of state."
      I get the feeling there's more to being Shraeven's "head of state" than the Godson would like. But it's not my place to tell these people so. They like me--fine. I like them too. I especially like them for choosing to ally with me against one of their own in the name of righteousness. That takes courage and steel bones.
      "I've had easier victories," I say, and they grin or chuff or laugh, and I'm glad I read their mood right. We're sitting in the tent erected for conferences, out of the wind with its carrion breath. "But I'm glad of this one. We shed shared blood and no bond is stronger."
      "Truth, truth," they murmur. The valley leader says, "What will you do now with the pards that remain?"
      "I thought I'd give them to you," I say. "To all of you. There aren't very many left."
      "To execute?" one of them muses.
      "No," I say. "While I am governor here there will be no executions without trials." Except on the battlefield. "You may try the pards if you can bring a crime against them. But I suggest you integrate what remains of them into your villages and towns. Surely you have some mercy for women and children."
      "For women and children, yes," the man says. "For men and beasts--none at all."
      "If there are men and beasts left, then we can discuss what to do with them," I say. "But I doubt, highly, that there are any men and beasts left."
      An approving growl this time.
      "You will continue on, then, Godkin Woman?" the valley leader says. "Out of the mountains? We will be glad to finish the remaining tasks here. You are needed at the seat."
      "Not just needed, but overdue if I don't keep moving," I say. "Yes, I'll move on. But if you will see my Second, she'll have a document for you to sign. When we meet a common foe on a battlefield with friends, we like to have a record of the alliance for ourselves and for our allies. As a sign of victory and friendship. I'd be honored if you would put your marks to it."
      "It is we who are honored," the valley leader says.

Back on Track
      At last, there is organization... among my men, at least. I put myself to work checking on them, visiting the wounded and conferring with my captains. Here I learn the grim news about Oweir and Donal--their units were in charge of the area broken through by the beasts. Oweir barely has a unit left at all... and Donal's is down a third of his people. I need to have a full conference, but not here where the natives can listen. I trust them, but only as far as they believe in my strength. I don't need them listening to a report of my army's weaknesses.
      So I pass the word: "Pack up. We're leaving as soon as we can." And my people are relieved.
      Magwen stays out of my way--good tactics, since I'm still in the mood to eviscerate him. Silfie and Ragna seem no worse for having shared my tub... in fact, they seem friendlier now, making me wonder what conversation transpired in my absence. Negrat is my new bodyguard, or at least so it seems--he follows me anywhere I go once I leave my tent and camps outside any tent I enter to wait for my return.
      I'm used to people following me, so I let him. At least he's not in the way.
      I want to get off this mountain.
      A few days later, we finally band together to start back down the mountain-side, toward the valleys and the road further inland. I'm relieved to find Honeydipped mending, though not well enough yet to ride... so I have my old beast waiting for me, and on the saddle pommel one extremely sated corvid messenger.
      "Glut yourself, did you?" I ask.
      The raven beams. Sleepily. Despite knowing how it got such a smug expression, I can't help a chuckle as I pull myself gracelessly into the saddle.
      "I'm glad someone had a good time," I say, and turn the beast toward the path for the slow clamber down to civilization.
      Voters want Angharad to deal with Magwen now.

The Mystic Symbols Part
      A train of soldiers takes a while to file out of a valley. The last of my people is just exiting beneath my watchful eye when Negrat rides up. I feel like I should be surprised that he's on a squat, sturdy mount with ram's horns, but I'm not. Can you imagine a shaman on a normal beast? Me neither.
      "There's a thing for you to see before you follow them," he says. "Come with me."
      I shrug--gingerly--and turn my mount after his.
      He leads me to a nondescript place--without our camp to mark the place, it recedes back into the countryside, just another jumble of rocks and flat places.
      "What should I be looking at?" I ask.
      He points down.
      There's a pebble there. Also a flower. A flower? A pebbl--oh.
      "I told you we would want the spot marked."
      "Why is there a flower growing from solid rock here?" I ask.
      "Because you shed water there, and it grew," the shaman says cheerfully. His legs stick out over the plump barrel of his riding sheep. The whole conversation seems to match the ridiculousness of the image.
      I dismount, which makes the messenger ruffle his feathers on my saddle, and carefully crouch next to this flower. When I brush the dirt layer away from the ground near it, I feel beneath my fingers a thick crack. "This flower didn't just split the rock overnight. Did it?"
      "Sometimes they do that," he says, eyes twinkling.
      I eye the flower. "You're about to tell me this has great meaning."
      "Of course," he says. "That is a baby's-bed blossom. Named because it mimicks the color of the afterbirth. Such flowers are good luck, and are said to presage a rebirth when spotted in the highlands... where they are rare."
      I cover my eyes. "The water I squeezed from my hair dropped on solid rock and sprouted a portentous flower."
      "Why, yes, I suppose you could say it that way," Negrat says, beaming.
      I get back onto my mount. "Let me guess. I'm getting better with the mystic symbols part of magic."
      "It's not hard to be better at something you were terrible at before," Negrat offers.
      "Augh!" says the corvid messenger, echoing my feelings. Negrat laughs. I admit it--so do I.
      Readers think it's just like a raven not to talk, except to laugh.

Prostrate
      "Mistress, I beg your indulgence."
      Yes, he'd better. I don't even look at him until his voice comes again, muffled, "Please, Mistress."
      He's lying flat on the ground with his limbs stretched and his face in the dirt.
      "Oh, for the sake of the gods, Magwen," I say. "Get up before my mount decides to step sideways onto your head."
      He draws himself up to his knees but no further. The train is squeezing through a narrow passage between a long drop and a cranky cliffside that hurls rocks at intervals. It's a slow process, and I'm at the back, watching. Which means Magwen has plenty of time to make his abject apologies to me before I get my turn down the trail.
      "Mistress, please. I was out of line."
      "Yes, you were," I say. "Tell me, Magwen. Did it occur to you that as a nineblood you weren't even worthy of someone of my position even before I got mobbed by animals?"
      "I have always known that, Mistress," he says, eyes downcast.
      "So it was just your tongue running ahead of your mouth," I say.
      "Yes, Mistress," he says.
      I like it when they're succinct... unless I don't understand why they made the mistake. "I'd come to expect better of you, Magwen. You seemed so discreet. Now I'm not so certain."
      "I am sorry, Mistress," he says. "I was simply overcome by thoughts of your future welfare."
      "Your job is take care of my current welfare, Magwen. I'll worry about my own future."
      "Yes, Mistress," he says, still looking at the ground.
      My mount shifts under me, sensing my irritation. I sigh and say, "I'll forgive you."
      "Thank you, Mistress--"
      "--later," I say. "Until then, you will put your extraordinary cooking skills to use feeding the company. When I decide I'm ready to look at your face again, I'll have someone get you for me. And until then, you are free to tell anyone who asks that you wound up cooking in the mess tent because you failed me. Because you do realize that you failed me, don't you?"
      "Yes, Mistress," he says.
      "Get out of here," I say, and he lifts himself to his feet and quickly takes himself away.
      I sigh.
      Readers think that was a good balance of harshness and justice for Magwen.

Full Circle
      The green of the valley is below us, some distance still, but at last we can see it. It seems like ages since I sat astride Honeydipped in that verdant field, wondering where Ragna had gone... or been taken.
      Sometimes it is good to come full circle.
      In keeping with the day, Ragna is missing again. This time I offer my thin wrist to the messenger, who hops onto it after a moment's teasing disobedience.
      "My pard," I tell the messenger gravely, "is missing. Yet again. Can you find her for me?"
      A disdainful stare. Of course he can.
      "Would you find her for me?" I ask. "Please."
      That's what he was waiting to hear. With a hissing shuffle of feathers, the messenger is in the air. I am content and go back to supervising the train's passage as it continues down trails that are growing broader and easier. The men are of greater cheer now that the valley's in sight. A few more days and we'll have passed through the valley and continued from where we stopped off.
      The messenger returns shortly thereafter and turns his beak to one side. I follow the line from eye up the black bill and spot a pale figure on a promontory. At the beginning of our full-circle journey, I could have glided up to speak with her. Now I have to do it the hard way... or as hard as a climb up a slope in a beautiful, sunlit spring day can be. The wind tickles my body, as if it too is delighted by the light and the wildflower perfumes it gets to carry on its back. The raven circles overhead, gold points a-glow. I'm also fairly certain I'm being followed... but I get to the top of the rise first.
      Ragna is standing, looking back toward the mountains. I stop beside and a little behind her.
      "I hope you're not too sorry to leave it," I say after a moment.
      She shakes her head, but I read regret in her carriage anyway.
      "It is not a thing you can understand, Godkin woman," Negrat says from behind me.
      "What's not?" I ask, looking down at Ragna's face, at the backward-slicked whiskers, at the hanging ears.
      "That you can hate the life you lived and still mourn the destruction of your childhood, the context in which you grew," Negrat says, leaning on a staff.
      Put that way, I am stunned.
      "Yes," Negrat says. "You did a good and necessary thing. But there is always wreckage, Godkin."
      "I'm sorry," I say to Ragna.
      She shakes her head and lifts a hand, turning a little from me. I move to wipe her eyes, only to find them dry... and finally, there's a slim amusement in her face as she reads my confusion.
      "Tears were a gift your gods gave to the Godkin," Negrat says. "Animals cannot cry."
      I'm beginning to feel like Negrat is our interpreter. I wonder whether Ragna stopped sending or I stopped understanding . . . but maybe it doesn't matter. "Do you still think it was worthwhile?"
      Ragna grins, all teeth. I laugh.
      So now what? she seems to ask. From here we can see past the mountain valley's fastness, into the growing verdure and the gold squares of the plains that surround the capital like a broad skirt. I should have been able to fly back down to resume our journey, but my wings are still bound... but it doesn't matter. My soul flies over the mountain, and I look to the west.