“Fuck you. I won, and you know it. This alliance is the start of One Nation.”

Edeard turned and started to leave the tent.

“Owain won,” the Gilmorn shouted after him. “You’re nothing more than his puppet. That’s all. Do you hear me, Waterwalker? Puppet to the dead, puppet to the man you murdered. You are my soul twin. I salute you. I salute my final victory. Family blood will govern this world. They say you can see souls. Can you see the soul of Mistress Florrel laughing? Can you?”

Edeard hardened the shield his third hand created, blotting out the vicious shouting as he walked away.

Edeard wanted to travel on alone, but Dinlay wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t argue; he just said nothing while Edeard shouted hotly at him, maintaining his quiet stubborn self. In the end Edeard gave in, as they both knew he would, and ordered the regiment’s cavalry master to saddle two horses. The pair of them rode off together toward Ashwell.

The landscape hadn’t altered, only the use it had once been put to. Half a day’s ride from his destination, Edeard began to recognize the features that had dominated his childhood. Shapes on the horizon started to register. They were cloaked in different colors now as the vegetation had changed, crops giving way to a surge of wilder plants. The road was completely overgrown, hard to distinguish, though the buried stony surface was still perceptible to farsight. The fields around the village, once rich and fertile, had long reverted to grassland and bushes, with their old neatly layed hedges sprouting up into small trees. Drainage ditches were clotted with leaves and silt, swelling out into curiously long pools.

It was a warm day, with few clouds in the bright azure sky. Sitting in his saddle, Edeard could see for miles in every direction. The cliff was the first thing he identified. That hadn’t changed at all. It set off a peculiar feeling of trepidation in his heart. He had truly never expected to come back here. On the day after the attack, he’d left with the posse from Thorpe-by-Water and had glanced back only once, seeing blackened ruins chuffing a thin smoke into the open sky, and even that image was blurred by tears and anguish. It had been too painful to attempt another look; he and Salrana had ridden away together, holding hands and bravely staring ahead.

Now nature had completed what Owain and the Gilmorn had started. Years of rain and wind and insects and tenacious creepers had accelerated the decay begun by the fires. All the village council’s halfhearted repairs along the rampart walls had finally started to give way, leaving the broad defenses sagging and uneven. The outer gates had gone, their charcoal remnants rotting to a thin mulch where tough weeds infiltrated their roots. Their absence exposed the short tunnel under the ramparts, a dank uninviting passage of gloomy fungus-coated brick. Above them, the stone watchtowers sagged; their thick walls held fast, though the slate and timber roofs under which so many sentries had sheltered across the decades were gone.

Edeard dismounted and tethered his skittish horse to the iron rings just outside the arching portal. The sturdy metal at least remained untouched.

“You okay?” Dinlay queried cautiously.

“Yes,” Edeard assured him, and walked through the dripping tunnel, sweeping aside the curtain of trailing vines. As soon as he emerged into the village, birds took flight, great swirls of them shrieking as they flapped their way into the sky. Small creatures scampered away over the rough mounds of debris.

Edeard was prepared for ruins, but the size of the village caught him by surprise. Ashwell was so small. He’d never considered it in such terms before. But really, the whole area between the cliff and the rampart walls could fit easily into Myco or Neph, the smallest city districts.

The basic layout of the village remained. Most of the stone walls survived in some form or another, though collapsing roofs had demolished a lot of them. Streets were easy to make out, and his memory filled in the lines wherever slides of rubble obscured the obvious routes. The big guild halls had withstood the fires well enough to retain their shapes, though they were nothing more than empty shells without roofs or internal walls. Edeard sent his farsight sweeping out to examine them, then immediately halted. Lying just below the thin coating of dirt and ash and weeds that had engulfed the village were the bones of the inhabitants. They were everywhere. “Lady!”

“What?” Dinlay asked.

“There was no burial,” Edeard explained. “We just left. It was too … enormous to deal with.”

“The Lady will understand. And the souls of your friends certainly will.”

“Maybe.” He looked around the desolation and shuddered again.

“Edeard? Do any linger?”

Edeard let out a long reluctant sigh. “I don’t know.” Once again he reached out, pushing his farsight to the limit of resolution, striving to catch any sign of spectral figures. “No,” he said eventually. “There’s nobody here.”

“That’s good, then.”

“Yes.” Edeard led the way toward the carcass of the Eggshaper Guild’s hall.

“This is where you grew up?” Dinlay asked with interest as he scanned around the nine sides of the broken courtyard.

“Yes.” Somehow Edeard had expected to find some trace of Akeem. But now, actually standing beside the listing stables and unsafe hall, he knew he never would. There were bones aplenty, even whole skeletons, but it would take days of careful examination to try to identify any of them. And ultimately, for what purpose? Who am I trying to appease and satisfy here? Would the souls of the dead villagers care that he was here? Would Akeem want him grubbing through the dirt to find some pieces of his long-dead body? I bury all of them or I bury none.

Of course, there was one other thing Edeard could do. His recollection of that night was perfect: himself and the other apprentices meeting up in the cave for an evening of fun and kestric. Even as he thought it, he looked up at the cliff; seeing the small dark cleft that they had wriggled through to find the cavern that offered privacy from their masters.

That simple recollection triggered a whole wave of memory. He could see the village as it had been that last fine summer. People striding along the streets, talking and laughing. Market stalls being set up, farmers bringing their produce in on big wagons. Apprentices hurrying about their duties. Village elders in their finer clothes. Children scampering about, chasing one another with shrieks of laughter.

I can do it. I can go back to that moment. I can defeat the bandits that night. I can give them all a life again.

He shook his head as if to clear it. Tears began to roll down his cheeks. This was far worse than any temptation Ranalee had ever offered.

I would have to go to Makkathran, this time with Akeem’s letter of sponsorship. I would be an apprentice at the Blue Tower. But Owain would still be there, and Buate and Tannarl and Mistress Florrel and Bise. I would have to dispose of them once more.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do that again.”

“Edeard?” Dinlay asked gently. His hand squeezed Edeard’s shoulder.

Edeard wiped the tears away, banishing forever the sight of the village as it had been. Standing in the cracked doorway arch to the Eggshaper Guild hall, Akeem regarded Edeard with sad eyes.

Edeard knew that look so well, a rebuke that had been directed at him a thousand times as an apprentice. Don’t let me down.

“I won’t,” he promised.

Dinlay frowned. “Won’t what?”

Edeard breathed in deeply, calming his rampaging emotions. He stared at the broken doorway. Akeem wasn’t there. A smile touched his lips. “Fail them,” he told Dinlay. “I won’t fail the people who died so I might ultimately wind up where I am today, where we all are. It doesn’t always apply, you know.”