"Can't hurt to ask," said Purna, tossing Diggelby the flask and putting a boot onto the war monk to roll him onto his back.

"Careful there, weirdborn-" Thinking of Choi's sharp smile, Maroto amended himself. "Shit, I mean wildborn, wildborn can be-"

"Maroto," said Diggelby peevishly, as if noticing him for the first time. "Maroto, where is my other shield?"

"Huh?" Maroto looked at the one shield he had left, which was no longer in any condition to be mounted in the nobleman's den once the war was won. "Oh balls, Diggelby, I totally forgot and-"

"Fucking bastard!" Purna yelped, staggering back from the prone Chainite, who had jabbed at her with a dagger. She gasped when her weight came down on her left leg.

"Told you to be careful," said Maroto, kicking the knife from the war monk's hand and snatching Diggelby's flask. "You tend that one and I'll see to Purna. Come on, girl, where'd he tag you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Purna, wobbling, trying to look at the back of her leg, and then she fell over. Maroto heard Diggelby grumbling as he drew his crystalline sword, a grunt and gurgle from the war monk, but didn't look back, his full notice on just how much red stuff was coming out of the back of Purna's thigh, leaking through the padded legging between the edge of her mail skirt and the steel cop protecting her knee. He fell to his knees beside her, rolling her on her side and slapping his hand on the narrow cut... But hot as her blood felt against his palm, ice began to spread through his chest-the pressure under his hand was bad, as bad as bad could get. She'd been stabbed, not slashed, and if her artery was nicked the girl would be dead in minutes. Maybe sooner.

"Diggelby!" he cried, trying to keep the terror out of his voice lest she catch it. "Your belt, Diggelby, right fucking now!"

"I'm fine, really," said Purna, trying to sit up on her elbow and slumping back down, blood flowing faster between Maroto's fingers. "Fucking jerk just... damn."

"Always talking me out of my belt, barbarian..." Diggelby started, but shut up as soon as he saw what had happened, stayed dead quiet as he slid down on the other side of Purna. A quiet Diggelby was not a reassuring portent. The fop fed his belt around her upper thigh with a junkie's steadiness, cinched it for all he was worth. The pressure barely lessened.

"I can get up," said Purna, voice quavering as she tried to see what they were doing. "I'm... fine."

Purna was dying fast, and there wasn't a fucking thing they could do to help.

"Hey, what's happened?" Zosia called, Choplicker having led her straight to a break in the smoke-choked valley. Given her devil's keen interest in sniffing the butt of a hurt spaniel that was inexplicably hanging out on the ruined battlefield, maybe he'd had ulterior motives. Beyond the wounded dog and the thing that pretended to be a dog, Maroto and one of his noble friends, Diggelby, kneeled over a fallen comrade. Purna, Maroto's cute, scrappy disciple-she hadn't recognized her at first, the girl too pale from all the blood covering her and her friends. "Shit, anything I can do to help?"

Maroto looked up at Zosia, obviously frightened out of his wits, and then, as though realizing this was all a nightmare and he would soon awake to find his friend unharmed, a rowdy grin lit up his dark, haunted face. Closing the last few feet of trampled grass, Zosia didn't see how the hells he could find any succor in her presence; she was worse at field surgery than he was, and the shuddering girl he held would soon be as dead as the countless unknown bodies she had stepped over in the course of getting to them.

"Zosia!" he said, sounding as close to broken as she'd ever heard him, which was saying something indeed. "Oh, thank every devil! Here, hold this, Diggelby, everything's going to be fine."

"Maroto, what the fuck!" Diggelby struggled to press his far smaller hands against Purna's slick red thigh as Maroto abandoned his post, lurching up and seizing Zosia's shoulders with his bloody hands. His face was right in hers, pupils filling his teary eyes, and he spoke with the measured composure of a bug veteran trying to convince a straitlaced stranger to lend him some silver.

"Shit, Zosia, Purna's real bad, you can see that..." He licked his chapped lips, gently squeezed her shoulders. "I know it's asking a lot, a whole lot, more than me or anyone's got any right to ask, yeah, but she's going to die, Zee, she's going to fucking die right here if you don't help her..."

Zosia's stomach dropped as she understood what he was driving at; even with Maroto managing to keep his eyes on hers instead of Choplicker, there wasn't a whole lot else he could possibly want from her.

"... and I swear, I fucking swear I'll do anything to make it up to you, break my vow to the queen, help you bind another, bind twenty more if you want, Hoartrap would help, I know it, so if you'd just-"

"I wish I could," said Zosia, making her words as precise as possible. "I can't."

Just like that, he got dangerous, friendly hands on her shoulders tightening down, fake smile turning into a genuine snarl. "Zee, I know it's asking a lot, and she's just one of thousands to get got today, yes, of course, but you need to do this. Please. I'm fucking begging you."

"And I'm telling you, it's not that I won't, it's that I can't," said Zosia, trying to keep her cool in the face of the heat he was throwing off. "He won't go. I offered him a way out, a long time ago, but he turned me down. He's not like other devils, he-"

"Try again, then, try it now," said Maroto, voice cracking. "Tell him you'll set him free if he saves her. Can't hurt to try, right? Maybe he couldn't before, but now, but now..."

Wouldn't that be a joke to wake the sleeping gods of the Sunken Kingdom with her laughter, if Choplicker refused to keep Zosia and Leib safe in exchange for his freedom, but took her offer now, for the life of some saucebox Zosia had spoken to once in her life? His very suggestion was absurd; even if Choplicker accepted and carried through, the world would be richer one smart-mouthed punk who'd get herself killed again soon enough, one way or another, and Zosia would have lost the greatest power known to mortals. If used wisely, a devil's wish could change the fates of empires, and Maroto expected her to dump hers on account of one girl he fancied?

"I'm sorry, Maroto, if I could help your girlfriend-"

"Try it!" he screamed, and then, realizing he'd shaken her, let go of Zosia's shoulders, tried to brush off the blood he'd smeared on her tunic. "Please, Zosia, she's not my girl, nothing like that, she's... she's my friend. She's my only real friend."

Maroto was blubbering now, and Zosia looked at the fallen girl, the fop trying to stanch her wound, and then her wicked devil, who was now giving the lapdog a look like he might eat it, if he thought nobody was paying attention. Quietly, Zosia said, "I'm your friend, Maroto, and I know how hard it is to let go-"

"You think you're still my friend?" He sneered. "You let me throw my life away on your account. Let me think my friend had been murdered. Let me think my friend needed someone to avenge her, keep her memory warm. You were a better friend dead than you ever were alive!"

Some of that stung, and some of it was horseshit for all kinds of reasons, but before she could stop herself the words were out of her mouth. Maybe she said it because she was his friend, for all his problems, or maybe because she just wanted to prove to him that she'd been telling the truth. "Choplicker. You save Tapai Purna there, make her healthy and whole again, with no kinds of sinister twists to the deal, and I release you from your bond. Onetime offer, take it or leave it."

Choplicker glanced over, and Zosia held her breath...

And then the devil yawned, and turned back to acting all stiff and tough with the lapdog. It was an odd feeling, to be disappointed and relieved all at once, and hating yourself for your uncontrollable emotions in the bargain.

"See?" Zosia reached for Maroto's shoulder. "I wish I could-"

"What a load of shit," said Maroto, flinching away from her touch, uglier than she'd ever seen him. "You have to want it, Zee."

"Excuse me?" Now Zosia was feeling her fire, too-he was in a place, obviously, but there were limits to how much she'd let go.

"You didn't want it, so it didn't work," said Maroto. "Everyone knows you have to want it, especially the devils. So why don't you want to save her?"

"I do want it," said Zosia, hoping she meant it but not so sure anymore-what if Choplicker had sensed her reservations and taken that into consideration? What if he'd seen into her selfish heart, and knew this wasn't her one true wish? What if when she'd asked him to watch over her husband he had sensed some similar doubt? What if this was all her fault, instead of his?

"Liar. You fucking liar." Maroto shook his head, snot and tears on his grubby face, and he poked her in the chest, his eyes black as Gates and just as warm. "We're fucking done, you and me. I gave up my life to help you, and you won't give up a fucking dog to help my friend? Fair enough, Cold Zosia, but after I bury Purna I'm coming for you, and not even that devil of yours will be able to help. You're a fucking dead woman."

Maroto wasn't in his right mind, and he'd made some fair points, shitty as it was to admit, but the day some asshole talked to her that way after she'd tried loosing her devil to help him was the day she was fit for the grave. She bit her lip, nodded like she was considering his threat, then hurled herself forward, headbutting him in the chin. He stumbled backward and nearly tripped over his dying friend, then launched himself back at Zosia-only to be swept off his feet by a figure who came barreling out of the smoke, one of the few people to make the Flintlander look modestly proportioned. Hoartrap actually lifted Maroto, clenching him in a bear hug, and, looking at Zosia, called: "I'll help him back to camp, you mind the children here."

"Fuckingfuckbastard!" Maroto thrashed to no avail as Hoartrap clumsily carried him off into the smoke. Zosia scowled at Choplicker; now that Maroto was but an angry echo in the miasma, she realized she had never seen him that unhinged before, and all her wrath fled, leaving her as hollow as she'd ever felt. All she could do for her old friend was watch someone he cared about bleed to death in the dirt for no good reason at all, so that was what she did.

What she tried to do, anyway, but looking back at Purna's blanched body, she saw that Diggelby had turned away, his red hands stroking his lapdog rather than fighting the inevitable. The blood still trickled out from Purna's thigh, and her chest fluttered, but she was going fast. Then Diggelby jerked his hands back with a little scream, falling backward on his ass as his dog started having a fit. Choplicker licked Zosia's hand, then plopped down at her feet with a whine, watching Diggelby's lapdog shake and shudder.

"What the fuck did you do to his mutt?" Zosia demanded, about at the end of her patience with her devil, but then Diggelby yelped again, and the worst stench imaginable overpowered the perfume of blood, metal, shit, and incense that permeated the ghostly battlefield. The fop's lapdog burst into green flames, and as it shook, burning hair came loose in stinking clumps, floating in the air like foul embers. What Zosia had thought was the poor animal squealing was its blackened skin roasting from the inside out, its boiling vitals whistling like a teakettle, and then the whole dreadful mass melted into the earth, giving off fluorescent vapors... vapors that snaked through the air, and plunged into Purna's nostril and mouth.

The effect was instantaneous, Purna's back arching and an earsplitting shriek blasting from her mouth, her eyes rolling back in her head. The blood on her leg began to sizzle, and black ichors bubbled up from the ground beneath her, climbing her thigh in serpentine streams and plugging the wound. No, not plugging it shut-flowing into it, the current increasing as she bucked on the ground. The stench of burned hair now mingled with that of wet dog, and as Purna screamed again it turned into a howl, an impossibly long, black tongue curling out of her mouth.

Then she went limp, shivering, but her chest was rising and falling in orderly fashion, the color had returned to her skin, and when Diggelby cautiously approached her to remove his makeshift tourniquet, they saw that the wound had healed, and instead of a scab or scar there blossomed a patch of snow-white fur.

"You saved her," said Zosia, hardly believing it even having seen it. "That dog of yours was a devil?"

"I guess so," said Diggelby sadly, looking at the toxic stain on the flattened grass where it had disappeared from the world of mortals, back to the First Dark. "My father, he bought Prince for me. He always said he was a devil, but I never really believed it; Prince was such an angel! And Baba is easily taken in by bold claims, so I just thought... But when I heard you two fighting about devils and wishes, I thought why not give it a go and-say!" He brightened, pointed at Choplicker. "Will you sell me yours? I'll give you a more than fair price, and since I suddenly find myself on the market..."

"Not a bad idea, actually," said Zosia, earning a reproachful glance from Choplicker. "But I'd get the better end of the deal-in case you didn't notice, he's defective. Now, let's get miracle girl here back to camp before Maroto goes any crazier."

It wasn't like any of the songs Ji-hyeon's second father would sing. It was like something out of her first father's sutras on the many kinds of hells. Intense and bizarre as it had gotten during the combat, after the explosive or whatever it was had gone off across the valley everything had taken on an ethereal sheen, and if not for her aching back and hand, she might have been able to pretend it was all a nightmare, if only for a few moments at a time. Might have been able to let herself pretend this wasn't all her fault.

They had been close enough to the perimeter that when the bomb or trick or spell went off, she had heard the sudden termination of thousands of raging voices, the quiet that followed even weirder than their early shouting, wailing, and chanting. As Choi led them steadily onward, the Crimson soldiers who appeared through the smoke became less frequent, until they only encountered Cobalt troops. It made little difference, though, the fight having left both armies, and that in and of itself was unnerving-if the mysterious weapon hadn't been detonated by either side, what had caused it? And if it was an explosion, why hadn't she heard anything more than a distant pop?

Hoartrap's meddling was still the only explanation that made some kind of sense, but before she confronted him about experimenting on her battlefield without her say-so, she wanted something to drink. Maybe a ten-year-long nap. Looking at her battered guards, though, she felt the opening murmurs of her guilty conscience. Upright though they were, Ji-hyeon could see that their wounds were grave enough that both Keun-ju and Choi might never walk out of the barber's tent. Even Fellwing had used the last of her strength to find Ji-hyeon's friends in the fray, guiding the wildborn to their mistress, and now lay softly hooting in the crook of Ji-hyeon's injured arm, too weak to fly. And what had it cost Ji-hyeon? A couple of fingers of her off hand.

As they hobbled through the ruined pickets and started up the rise toward camp, Ji-hyeon looked back at where the fighting had been worst. A break in the smoke revealed that a new topography had formed in the Lark's Tongue vale, the piled dead creating wide hill and dales as far as the haze let her see. There was more red than blue on the ground, and more blue than red upright, mechanically trying to line up all the Imperials who had surrendered after their command and the bulk of their army had vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Ji-hyeon, was this..." Keun-ju began, following her gaze across the fume-filled valley. "Is this something you've seen before, campaigning with the Cobalts?"

Ji-hyeon shook her head, but then that wasn't quite true. The random people wandering around in shock, too scared to think anymore... that she had seen in the citizens of many of the towns they had sacked. And the smoke burning everyone's eyes and lungs, she'd delivered that at Geminides, when they'd sapped the wall of the castle to bust in the back. Then in Myura, Hoartrap had used deviltry and black magic to make the enemy officers go missing, although there had only been a few of them that time. And of course, of all the elements at work in this tapestry Ji-hyeon had helped weave, the one constant everywhere was death: dead friends, dead foes, dead animals, a dead land soaked in dead blood spilled with dead metal. So yes, she had seen this before, just never like this, never all at once... And if she had planned better, if she had listened to Fennec and had them pull out instead of making a stand, none of this would have happened. What the hells was she doing out here in the heart of the Star, anyway, running around playing soldier with real people for her toys? Dismissing the counsel of her advisors and throwing herself down on the front line, where most of her bodyguard could be massacred to protect their child general? She hadn't seen Chevaleresse Sasamaso since her idiotic charge into the thick of it, nor the rest of her retinue...

"This is not your shame alone," said Choi, looking carefully at Ji-hyeon, as though she could really peer into her ward's thoughts just like Fennec always said. "Someone did this. Not you. We will hunt the truth."

"Of course we will," said Ji-hyeon, standing a little straighter and feeling it all the way from the goose egg coming up on her back down to the oozing rag Keun-ju had tied around her bitten hand. "First we discover where Fennec hid, since he didn't manage to keep up during our charge, and then... then..."

Ji-hyeon stared up at the blue tents arrayed on the hillside above her, tried to remember what was important and what was not, tried to consider everything that had just happened and how to proceed, but all she could think about was the look of feral abandon in the Imperial woman's eyes as she'd chewed off her fingers... That was something to focus on, anyway, and Ji-hyeon gestured with her crippled hand at the nearest white pavilion. "First thing we do is get tended by the barbers. Once we're there we'll have the officers brought in, figure out what happened, how many we lost, what our options are, with that other Imperial regiment no more than a few days out. Send sorties over to the Crimson camp and confiscate their supplies. Fennec can bide."

"Too well," said Choi, and they limped toward the busy sawbones, Ji-hyeon looking again over the murky field, wondering how many of the people who had trusted her when dawn broke that morning would never emerge from the smoke.

CHAPTER.

27.

Hoartrap, you fucking piece of fuck shit, put me the fuck down right now or I'm going to devote my life to fucking you up, too! I'm not fucking crazy anymore!"

"What a reassuring statement," said Hoartrap, tightening his grip on Maroto. "Definitely not the sort of thing a raving madman would tell his captor."

"Who captured who?" Maroto said slyly, unable to keep from shaking with silent laughter. The bugs were definitely still in him, but even with their aid he was too exhausted to fight Hoartrap, straight bushed from lugging those two shields all over, running game for Purna's unappreciative arse, but then that thought brought him back around to what had happened to her, and he started squirming again. "Just let me see her! Just let me see her before you murder my only friend!"

"Nobody's murdering anybody. Not yet, anyway." Hoartrap muttered the last.

"This is 'cause she found out, isn't it?" And there it was, the blazing insight into Zosia's evil heart. "She found out I killed her husband, so she's revenging on me."

"Husband, you say," said Hoartrap, though he didn't sound interested, didn't sound like he believed a word, was just trying to pass the time as he lugged his heavy cargo through the spectral landscape of dead folk and broken weapons and arrows sticking up from the dirt, everything beyond their immediate vicinity cloaked in the rank black air. Normally, scavengers would be all over a field this ripe, the humans coming for gear and maybe parts to sell to medical students, the animals and devils coming for a meal, but not so much as a fly buzzed in the dismal wasteland. "Whose husband was it you killed, Maroto?"

"I didn't kill him," Maroto moaned, sick with remorse and anger and a whole lot of bad bugs. "I didn't mean to, I didn't, but you know how they are, they'll take what you say and they'll mess it all up, they'll take a good thing and make it bad, they'll find a way to get back at you, when all you did was set them free!"

"Mmmm," said Hoartrap, slowing his pace. "Crumbsnatcher, that's who did it?"

"Who else!" Maroto missed his rat so much, especially now; if he'd held on to him, he could have saved Purna. "I just wanted to see her again, that's all, I didn't know he'd make it happen so bad. And I was going to tell her, I was, that's why I came looking for her, but she already knows, she has to, why else would she be so cold? Why else would she murder my friend? It's payback, and I deserve it, but not Purna! Not her!"

"My my," said Hoartrap, coming to a stop and looking around, as if even he couldn't orient himself in this infernal valley. "That's quite the story. You're sure it's all true, not a nightmare some bug laid in your brain?"

"Call me a fucking liar, Hoartrap, call me a liar and see what happens!" Maroto tensed, then gave what Hoartrap had asked some serious consideration. Through the mists of the battlefield and the worms and the sting and everything else, he had to wonder, now that the question had been posed... "I'm sure about it being my fault, from what I asked Crumbsnatcher to do. Not sure about Zee knowing it was me, because I wanted to tell her, want to tell her, 'cause she's got to know it wasn't the queen or the Chain or nobody but her old friend Maroto, but I didn't get a chance, and now... now Purna's dead, isn't she?"

"Did you tell her-Purna, I mean, or anyone else-about the terms of Crumbsnatcher's freedom? Someone else in camp Zosia could have heard it from?" Good old Hoartrap always knew the surest way to talk Maroto down when he'd worked himself up way too high; you just had to look at all the angles, and then sometimes you saw there was nothing to fret over.

"You're the first one I've told, ever," said Maroto, feeling relieved that Zosia couldn't know, and then shame at his relief. "No way she could know. Which means she didn't let Purna die as revenge, she let her bleed out because she's just a selfish old fucker who don't care about nobody but herself. I've got half a mind not to tell her at all, now, let her go barmy trying to figure out who sent the assassins, when all along it was-woof, what's the hurry?"

"Something I found over here that I want to show you," grunted Hoartrap, trotting off in a new direction. Through a gap in the smoke, Maroto saw the Lark's Tongue straight behind them, but when he tried to correct the old wizard's course he was reminded that they had something to see, at the center of the vale. Whatever it was, he doubted it was worth the bother; he was starting to crash pretty hard, but when they reached Hoartrap's destination he sobered up in one devil's breath of a hurry.

Hoartrap set him down on his own feet just as they stepped out of the smoke, and Maroto's knees almost went out on him as he surveyed the manifest impossibility. The miasma wouldn't cross the border of the enormous circular clearing, so here in the bull's-eye of what had been the battlefield was a perfect circle of fresh air, and beneath it, where crushed grass and kicked-up earth and a goodly many corpses ought to be, stretched a Gate. There were only six Gates on the Star, one for each Arm and the last in Diadem, everyone knew that... but here was a seventh, and it was wider than all the other six put together.

"This wasn't fucking here this morning," breathed Maroto, taking a step back from the edge where the flattened field gave way to absolutely fucking nothing. Made him feel ill, being this close to one, and he felt a powerful itch on his ankle. Looking down, he saw that the scorpion sting had started oozing grey slime down the side of his foot. Droplets peeled away from his skin and blew sideways into the Gate. "Where'd it come from?"

"I have a theory as to that," said Hoartrap, cracking his knuckles. "But I don't think you'll like it."

"Then you know what, don't even tell me. I've given myself enough black eyes, trying to see too far. If you think it's bad, I definitely don't-"

But then Hoartrap bum-rushed Maroto for the second time that day, carrying them both over the lip of the Gate.

It felt wrong, not having Grandfather's comforting weight on his shoulders, but then wrong was something Sullen would have to get used to. He slowed to a fast walk as he neared the edge of camp, not wanting to risk startling another kid into shooting his arse now that more and more roughed-up soldiers were moving between the tents. More than one of the grunts gave Sullen the iron eye, and he checked the cobalt handkerchiefs he'd tied on his bandolier, making sure his allegiances were right out there for everyone to see. There was a whole lot less singing and drinking than he'd expect out of returning victors, and given how idly they were all coming up the hill, they must have won, or come close enough-the fighting had stopped and they weren't being overrun by Imperials, so that seemed like it'd inspire a smile somewhere, anywhere... not a one. As he broke from the tight cluster of the camp and headed down past the white pavilions where most of the screaming was coming from, he saw the whole floor of the vale still blanketed in smoke, rising too high for him to see the far hills where the Crimsons had come in from the plains. He wondered if things were as grim on their side of the valley.

"Sullen!" Ji-hyeon. Fast as the relief bloomed at hearing her voice it wilted again, as he turned and saw how harmed she was. She looked like she'd been dunked in the giant bucket of chum from the Ballad of Count Raven and the Sea King, blood and bits of meat clinging to her from boots to forehead. The horned woman carried Ji-hyeon's helm for her, looking even more torn up than her mistress, and helping the general along was Keun-ju, the pretty boy's veil missing and his face caked in blood, a few shafts sprouting from his armor. They'd all made it out was what mattered, and Sullen sprinted over to meet the trio under the awning of a barber's tent. "Sullen, I'm so glad you're okay!"

"Oi," said Sullen, wanting to hug her, but reckoning that would've been low form even without her lover in the way, looking Sullen up and down like he was a butcher dubious if the animal before him was fit for consumption. Sullen wanted to tell Ji-hyeon straightaway about Grandfather, but with these two unfriendly strangers watching him, he just couldn't do it, and instead said, "You, um, you all right? All of you? Just missed you setting out, I guess. Sorry I couldn't help."

"We would have benefited from your presence," said Choi, not angry or mean about it, just telling it for what it was.

"Missed the whole engagement, did you?" said Keun-ju, and, not knowing if the barb he felt in the words was intentional or not, Sullen treated it as an honest question.

"Nah, she, uh, Zosia had us run up the mountain, to the hump up there? These... Myurans, they said, this regiment from Myura, they'd snuck around the back, and were trying to get us from behind, so we, you know. Stopped 'em."

"Must have been quite the clash," said Keun-ju, and Sullen finally kenned what this guy was driving at; unlike everyone else he'd passed coming down here, he didn't have a scrape on him, his clothes free of the blood, dirt, and the smoky stench that coated the rest of the Cobalts. That explained the looks he'd been getting from the soldiers he'd passed. "Were there many casualties?"

Sullen felt the straps of Grandfather's harness tighten across his chest, even though he'd taken them off and left them with the remains, and he took the first of three steps that would carry him to this smart-mouthed arsehole.

"Enough, Keun-ju," said Ji-hyeon, smiling wearily at Sullen. Her eyes were glassy, and she had the shakes even worse than most of the other troops he'd passed on the way down here. "That's great, Sullen. I wondered where the Myurans got to, since they weren't with the Fifteenth. I'll have Captain Zosia give me a full report, so don't worry about it now. I've got... I've got some other stuff to do first."

She lifted a bandaged hand, and he saw that the cloth was dark and sopping. Fellwing lay cradled in her elbow, the charcoal black owlbat now turned grey, and diminished somehow, but the devil would be fine, in time. It was feeding on something intangible that Ji-hyeon was giving off, he could tell somehow, and once it had enough strength to return to the air it would find plenty more nourishment in this place.

"Yeah, definitely, get yourself looked after," said Sullen. "Anything I can do? Not here, right, but just... anything?"

"Oh sure, lots," said Ji-hyeon, but then she just stared past Sullen at nothing at all, lips pursed.

"No one from Purna's squad arrived at command this morning," said Choi. "The general orders any able officers to report here, so if you know where she or your uncle is, you could tell them that."

Did he know where his uncle was? The eternal question. Whenever Sullen thought about how his uncle had abandoned the clan but not tried to help him and Grandfather, he would get a sad, sour stirring in his stomach, and his heartbeat would quicken unpleasantly. He felt the old symptoms now, but ignored them-he hadn't met Ji-hyeon and her people at the command tent in time, either, and big as the camp was, big as the fight had been, Maroto had probably just missed them, same as Sullen. He was around here somewhere, he wouldn't just disappear as soon as the threat of violence revealed itself... He wouldn't do that to Sullen again, not now that he'd finally tracked him down, and they were going to hear his explanation, just like Grandfather had always wanted. The old man had died for something after all, then: to give Sullen this opportunity.

"I'll find him. I'm good at that."

Keun-ju muttered something about what Sullen was good at, and he was glad he'd missed it, because Ji-hyeon looked to be having a tough enough day without Sullen beating her boyfriend's arse.

"Yeah, that would be helpful," said Ji-hyeon, sagging a little in Keun-ju's arms. "Thanks, Sullen."