“Worry. Trouble. I see it often in crater Mornae. You should come out more, to the orchards, to the vines. They feed you as much as you feed them.”

Taul sighed. “I miss it,” he confessed. “I didn’t think I did until I stood beneath Zeldra’s canopy.”

Silla’s eyes widened. “Oh, that one is ancient. Lovely and deep. But unwell?”

Taul’s eyes itched, and his jaw tightened. “It needs more hands. More capable hands.” He wouldn’t reveal to a rival just how unwell it was.

“Yours isn’t the only orchard that is suffering, Taul.”

“My steward has heard nothing.”

“None would say it openly, but there are whispers.”

Her soft, silvery eyes were full of concern as she continued imbuing the seeds. A valley Mornae’s day never ends, his grandfather had always said.

“What am I to do, matron?” he asked.

“I would think the answer is obvious.”

“I have so much work in Halkamas,” he said. “My consort expects it of me. Lor’Toshtolin has over ten vassals now. Shops. Contracts. Taxes.” The last words lurched out of him, strained and agonized.

“What use is all that if the land fails?” she asked.

Taul shook his head. He could share his concerns with Ryldia, his consort and matron, asking her opinion, but with the baby coming, he needed to prepare for their confinement. Nothing could disturb her supreme task. It would be at least ten years of confinement if it was a girl. For a people that had once lived for centuries, even millennia, they now fretted over decades. The doom of failure played out in his mind. Would they end up walking the Fringe, melted down into a Yatani clan? He wiped his watering eyes with his sleeve. He’d not meant to share his feelings with this lowly matron.

Silla shook her head. “I’ll speak with Voldin. It would dishonor the goddess to lose the orchard. We must preserve what we can.” She exhaled. “We have found some grafts do well further out from the crater.”

Taul gaped. That was a sure sign of the end. Surprisingly, the idea wounded his heart.

“What do you think we are doing out here?” Silla asked sharply. “We don’t have the luxury of crater folk, to sit on their wealth—the wealth we produce. If the harvest fails, we can’t make rent. We can't pay our tax. I don’t care two bits about this estate. I’d live in a cave to let the trees succeed. The goddess will decide, but I will do all I can, where I can. All in Lor’Vamtrin will, so long as I am matron.”

Taul tugged at his collar. He felt duly castigated by this valley priestess, her dedication a model for any Mornae. However, she was unfamiliar with the ways of power in the crater, the only power that mattered now. Silver and chits. Contracts and alliances. The orchards took precious time. Too much time. A single tree might take a hundred years to be set on the right path, and that was just the beginning. Then began the cycles of striving… just like the Mornae.

An acolyte and a young Mornae boy entered, his thin arms wrapped around another basket of seeds. He set it down by his matron and hid behind her shoulder. He was three or four, still in confinement with his mother. Silla elbowed him behind her, revealing a knife at her waist. She was ready to defend him. The acolyte, a plain young woman, stood at her right shoulder.

“The goddess doubly blesses your house, matron,” Taul said.

She nodded, glancing at her daughter proudly. Her right hand gripped the knife.

Mornae protected undeclared children deep within their compounds. Rivalries ran deep between Mornae houses in which memories reached back to the founding. One never knew if an old rival may appear to seek vengeance centuries, even cycles, later. A slight, a disrespect, even if only perceived as such, and long forgotten, remained like a specter, hidden in shadows, biding its time. Such was the War of Assassins, an unspoken, secret war. No matter how high-minded they became, there were wounds that demanded retribution. If it stayed in the shadows, a secret business, Mornae tolerated it. And then there was the goddess-court where Mornae lodged public complaints, and blood or silver was given in payment. What did it signify that after two cycles of closure, it was now open? What was Ilor’Zauhune thinking? The Mornae would soon find out.

“I’ll tell Voldin you came by,” Silla said, “and of your dilemma.” Her hands stopped moving the seeds, closing her fingers around them. “You should stay a day with us, Taul. Stand with us for the goddess-dawn. It would do you good to be amongst your own kind.”

He looked her in the eye. Even the little boy was staring at him, gray eyes wide and thrilled at the prospect of the goddess’s return. Thin strands of brown hair framed an otherwise Mornae face.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Taul said. “An honor indeed, but unfortunately, bad timing.” He flushed hard, a prickling heat building at his neck and down his back. His nostrils flared wide with each breath. “Important work to do.”

“In this age of decline,” she said, pausing her work, “you abandon the most valuable thing a Mornae could possess… goddess-favor?”

He swallowed hard, anger swelling in his throat. Who was she to educate him? The memory of his trial still haunted him even though he’d passed. He’d lived! Yes, he’d lived, but the terror of it lingered.

“It was hard, was it?” she asked, undeterred. “Yes, yes… I see it in your face. Terrifying.”

She trembled as if recalling her own priestess trial. The temple’s chamber of trials wasn’t open to valley priestesses, and he doubted they’d let her enter given her questionable lineage. Valley Mornae must have a version of the trial out here, far from the high council’s view. The acolyte, a girl of only thirty years, gave no hint of concern about the trial she’d one day face. The dread left Silla, and, humming a tune, she continued working the seed.

Lor’Vamtrin had everything it needed to succeed: an heiress and a boy to return to Voldin’s birth house. Without that blood-mortar, Mornae houses weakened.

The nomad boy appeared at the door.

“Your pony is ready, jabun,” he whispered, as if in the presence of a noble lady.

Silla’s young son squirmed behind her, peeking over her shoulder.

Taul softened, smiling at him.

“Thank you, Matron Lor’Vamtrin, for your wise counsel,” he said. “May the goddess continue to favor this house.”

Silla nodded once without looking up from her work.

She had dismissed him.

2

Ren crept along a dark tunnel, one of six that ran beneath Halkamas. It was a tunnel system used by houses beholden to Ilor’Hosmyr to move about their city and outer city unseen. There were other tunnels of course, but he wouldn’t risk them, or the deeper ones, the ones people whispered about. The ones that crossed city boundaries or pierced the depths of the crater. He grimaced. People disappeared forever down those tunnels. And then there were the holes and crevices that fell away into the void, the heart of the crater, the center of the world, where demons and foul creatures awaited.

He shook away the thought of demons. It did no good to worry about what he couldn’t see for himself. Darklight danced on the tunnel walls, and he used it to guide him to the underground market entrance. Other servants needed globes and lamps to guide them, but he had gifts, talents… he was a cut above. He twirled a black-stained dagger in his right hand. His favors made him braver, willing to risk being in the crater, though technically beneath it.

He searched a boulder for a marker and found a carved glyph. Across from the marker was a slim opening hidden by deep shadows. He crouched down and slid into it. The void-like veil was a low-level illusion. Only servants used this entrance anyway, and none of them had powers.

Except for him, of course.

He’d first used the tunnel as a boy and been afraid, but his mentor had taught him how trivial the illusion was and how he should embrace that fear, even pursue it. Embracing what had produced that trembling, creaking fear would make him great.

He descended feet first through the narrow tunnel—more a chute than a tunnel, but perfectly sized for servants and other lesser Mornae. The chute dumped him at the end of another tunnel. It went to a place Ilor’Hosmyr, and other important people, didn’t admit existed, though they all used it. At the end of the hundred-yard tunnel, yellow lights flickered. The air was warm and stale, with the hint of acrid fumes. The faint drip of water competed with his halting breath.

He shimmied through a narrow section of the tunnel, dusted himself off, and tossed back his hood. His lord and master, Maunyn Ilor’Hosmyr, may rule the marble and kith houses above, but this was Ren’s world. Down here, it paid to be less imposing. Down here, no one expected long hair touched by goddess-light, twinkling eyes, and seven feet of muscle. Down here, other arts and talents prevailed, and he’d been well-taught.

He sauntered past merchant stalls. Traders were eager to showcase their wares. There were nomads of all kinds: Kuxul, Yatani, Voydo, Makar, and lesser-known ones. There were even merchants from faraway places called the Kolas and the Wings. They wore marks of their people to tell each other apart, but also the common brown garb of those that lived on Vaidolin’s borders. Somehow, these sellers resisted the crater’s poison. The Mornae living a hundred feet above their heads thought themselves the only ones who could live so close to kith, the blackrock, but truth was, other people could do it too. There were tribes that had been here long before the Mornae, or so his mentor taught. Don’t look down on them, boy, he’d say, but Ren found that hard to do when darklight played upon his fingertips at will.

Baubles and trinkets from every corner of Vailassa and every region of Vaidolin were on display. Servants manned the Vaidolin stalls. No respectable Mornae would show his face here. Certainly, no priestess would lower herself to sell down here.

Carved bone fragments said to prolong life glowed with sickly light, glass pellets raging with the sea god’s might pulsed on a bed of a black velvet, pastes and stains to cover up flaws in Mornae dignity, chunks of rock from far away bearing glyphs of unknown origin, cloth woven in the pattern of well-known houses, fake badges to bend the security of an estate to one’s will, a paint for diviners to fake glyphs on their heads and arms, if they were bold. The paint irritated the skin into ridges. He shivered at the thought. That kind of disguise took commitment. Those that used it were desperate.

He stopped at a table and inspected three kithaun slugs sitting on gray velvet.

Three ruffians stood behind the seller. They all stared at Ren.

“What do they do?” Ren asked.