“No shit? How do they reproduce?”

“That, I cannot tell you. Membership in the order runs in bloodlines, it’s how they keep their secrets close.”

“I thought the Scolate was a meritocracy. I thought there were no hereditary ranks.”

“There aren’t. The Sons of Kur belong to the Hakam, it lends them out at its discretion to carry messages and scout.”

Havec shook his head, wondering how anyone could possibly keep track.

“Did he ever tell you the story? Of where they come from?”

“What?”

“Dragons.”

He wanted badly to hear the tale, but every admission of ignorance was a confession of need and worse: an opening of a new debt. She was offering to tell him, though, he hadn’t asked. He had seen renderings of the creatures in Xar’s books, mule-sized and fearsome, looking like some hideous middle stage of transmutation from dog into snake. Unable to resist, he said, “No.”

Without further prompting, Qanath launched into the tale of Adaba, goddess of chaos, who was the beginning and ending of all things. She gave birth to reality and time and also the First Gods, who existed to no real purpose and mostly just tried to keep out of their mother’s way. Over time, the First Gods became increasingly impatient with this state of affairs, because they wanted to build and create, and yet everything they made, she immediately ate.

He got confused at this point, because there were a lot of gods even way back then, none of whom he had ever heard of. Qanath wasn’t the best storyteller, either; she wanted to relate every little detail, and it was easy to lose sight of the plot. Still, he got the gist. Chief among the rebels was the goddess Sut, who rallied her siblings to war. The campaign was a stalemate: they couldn’t defeat their mother but managed to pin her to the sky with their spears. Then Adaba poured down from the heavens in a torrent that created an endless flood from which was born the first dragon, Kur, and it tore the gods apart.

Once it had eaten all of her brothers and sisters, Sut stepped in with a javelin made of lightening and stuck it down the dragon’s throat. It was the final move in a terrible battle, and at the end, she fell down on the drying, new-made firmament and died. Where chunks of her flesh were torn by Kur, they melded with the dirt and became new gods, and where her blood rained down, it hit the dust and bloomed into mortal life.

She stopped talking at this point, but it was another minute before Havec realized she was done. “And?”

“What?”

“What about Adaba? Your story left her pinned to the sky.”

“…because that’s how the story ends?” she said slowly, like she couldn’t see his point.

“So, at the dawn of time, the first gods, who are all dead now, went to war and lost.”

“If it hadn’t been a draw, the world would be a different place.” She gestured at the deeply blue dome above them. “If she had won, we wouldn’t be here. If they had, there would be no death.”

“But can’t she get loose?”

“One day she will. Then she’ll take apart everything she ever made, including substance and time.”

Havec glanced uneasily at the sky. He didn’t believe any of it and yet… Searching after a less unsettling subject of conversation, he suggested, “Maybe they have a piece of the original dragon and that’s how they make more.”

The girl shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She made a face. “A piece of million-year-old carrion, that would be really gross.”

He laughed, relieved that they had moved on to lighter things. It startled him when, a moment later, she stood up. It looked like it hurt. “What are you doing?”

She gestured back down the road. “I can’t stay here. Not all night. I’ve been sitting here for the last twenty minutes failing to convince myself I’ll be able to close my eyes.”

Her chin went up as she said it, like she thought he would make fun of her for being afraid. Havec had only suggested they stop in an effort to husband her health; he didn’t care to linger in the area either. He didn’t want to be within fifty miles of that stream bed and reached for his boots at once.

Once he had them tied, they set off down the hill to regain the road. “What do your people believe?”

He frowned into the nearby woods. “There was a… time a long time ago when… the gods followed a white stag they were hunting down from their palace in the clouds…”

He trailed off, at a loss. He was aware of the girl’s gaze but didn’t take offense at the expression on her face. He was wondering the same thing: how could he possibly have forgotten? He had been kidnapped as a teenager, a young adult. Not a small child. Yet he could no longer recall where his people thought they came from or where their world came from itself.

When she never said anything, he demanded, “Not going to take this stellar opportunity to make fun of me, Carries-Around-Her-Degree?”

“I guess I feel like an Avatethura Master already has more than enough on his plate.”

They continued along the highway now descended back onto that largely featureless plain, Havec alone with his thoughts. He found himself wondering just how hard it was going to be to fit in back home. He wasn’t about to tell anyone how he’d passed the last six years, but he realized now that he didn’t have to discuss his story in detail for people to grasp that he had changed. As a boy, he had been bookish, respectful, inclined to be quiet especially in a crowd. He had loved to go hunting with his father, but that was as martial as he got. In other words, he had been nothing like himself. And what about Kebbal, could you tell from the outside it was there?

First, he reminded himself, we make someone suffer for selling us to the bonding-broker. Then, we can worry about everything else.

A Crash Course in the Necromantic Arts

Two days after their brush with the siren, they came upon something Havec had never seen before: a city. Perched at the height of the last approach as the sun set, they gazed down upon it while they argued their next move. Havec gave the conversation only half his mind, too invested in admiring the view. The settlement below them was vast, sitting in the lap of a broad river valley. Between here and there, the gently-sloping land was covered in a checkerboard of farmland, the plants still small at this season so the soil beneath was everywhere visible amidst the new green shoots. He caught the occasional flash of dying daylight off the river, a slow silty flow in no rush to reach the sea.

The city was a mosaic of sepia, broken intermittently by a tree’s green head. There must be banners flying the Empire’s colors, but he couldn’t make them out from here. It was surprisingly quiet, even accounting for the distance, and he didn’t understand why there weren’t more people on the road. “Why are there no people? Is there a curfew?”

“Dareh is mostly deserted, it has been for hundreds of years.” The barely-patient way she said it made him suspect she had already said it more than once.

“But it’s…” Right there, large as life.

“Most of that,” she gestured down into the valley, “is empty. The people left, but houses don’t fit in a cart.”

“They had to leave them behind. But why?”

Qanath scratched at her shoulder, frowning at the horizon thoughtfully. “Something happened, I can’t remember what. Something to do with money, it always is. Taxes got too high, crops failed. There was a big boom elsewhere.”

“You don’t mean this has happened before?”

“You were commenting on how empty the Old Country is. Nizerh managed to hold on because there are still people and resources here and it’s the fastest way to get those people and resources to busier places.” She was silent for a moment, then added, “It’s filling back up. The Old Country. Fa says there’s been over-fishing in Lake Plestine and troubles on the border in Ay. There are always troubles on the border with Ay, but anyway.”

Havec shrugged, unsure how to articulate the nature of his surprise.

“So?” she demanded, impatient with the conversation. “I want to sleep in a bed and eat a hot meal.”

“Me too. Can your sorcery turn my hair dark red and darken my skin by several shades?”

She gave him a look before slinging her bag off her shoulder. She knelt over it, rummaging, and when she stood up again, she handed him something. Havec turned it about in his hands, examining the broad-brimmed, floppy hat of dark blue felt. “You jest.”

“Are you seriously going to demand we sleep rough when we don’t have to because you’re afraid of looking frumpy?”

Choosing to answer with action, he put the hat on. Then he spread his arms. “Just another Tabbi?”

Qanath snorted. “It hides your hair, anyway.”

They set off down the hill without further debate as the sun sank into the west. Havec mostly had his eyes on the approaching city, but he did glance at the girl beside him once or twice. He was wondering if he was jealous of her; he had been bookish as a child, back before the world turned upside down. It was strange to remember, recollections of another person he could scarcely envision who had little in common with the him he was now.