EMMA

  The late-afternoon sun was done beaming down at full strength, but the steps of the sparring pit were still warm where Emma sat, taking a break that even Mirri had said was well-deserved.

  The priestess had also mentioned something about overtraining, but Emma had caught the dragoness turning herself to better catch the retreating sun on her wings more than once as their 'break' had stretched longer and longer.

  Not that she was complaining, the opportunity to 'just talk' after she had met some standard of approval from Mirri was exactly what she had been hoping for when she had thrown herself into the martial drills.

  "He can be a bit of a challenge, sometimes," Emma walked the idea past her host in a way that wouldn't completely sink Calen's credibility. Waiting for Mirri to ask on her own had paid off. "He gets hostile if he feels like he's being trapped into a bad situation. Verbally hostile, he's not actually dangerous."

  It had only taken one headlock in middle school and a week of detention for doing it on top of a lunch table to ensure her brother never saw the inside of a locker again, but there was only so much Emma could do about the things people *said*.

  Calen had developed the talent for verbally dragging people down to his level and driving them crazy on his own. It didn't make him a whole lot of friends, but it had kept him, and the collection of oddballs he *did* eventually make friends with, from being anyone's persistent victim.

  And Calen was feeling trapped right now, magic lessons or not. Trapped enough to try to lean on Emma to back him up. The signs weren't hard to read, he had all but yelled his suspicions out loud.

  It was finding a way to reassure him that he was *wrong* that was the hard part right now. Mostly because Emma didn't have any proof Calen couldn't already see.

  So she was improvising, trying to offset the consequences before he got himself into real trouble, and Mirri even seemed to be listening.

  "I suspect that's half the reason things didn't go worse than they already did, yesterday, but there are some circumstances where tolerating it will harm him. Or the rest of us," Mirri's tone was thick with meaning. "Do you think he'll be able to follow orders under pressure?"

  Emma mostly kept a straight face, but the question was pointed at an ugly truth.

  Calen was great with plans, but struggled with following instructions. There was no predicting his behavior if he got a 'better idea' into his head halfway through something, and whether that happened mostly depended on whether he respected whoever was giving the orders.

  "He does better when he knows why he's doing things. I think the odds are better under pressure, because the problem will be obvious, he just needs time to adjust," Mirri still looked a bit skeptical, so Emma asked the first question that came to mind instead of digging the hole deeper. "What do you mean about yesterday going better because he gets hostile?"

  She couldn't think of anything Calen had said up at the tower that had made anyone *less* annoyed and likely to leave them behind, and she doubted he had trash talked a magic arrow into the dirt, which left... the possibility of him arguing Mirri into something that had worked out?

  Either way, getting Mirri to think about it might buy them a little more goodwill for Calen to burn.

  "I meant when we were down below, working our way back to you," Mirri's head turned aside, and her nostrils closed. That was a new one, so it told Emma nothing about what the odd note in the priestess's voice meant as she continued. "One of my... less friendly peers was waiting in the Stubs, with a group of their own fighters."

  "And Calen got them mad enough to chase you two into the field, which saved me when you bolted the Warlord so this would work." Emma guessed, tapping at the heavy steel plate behind her shoulder, but Mirri was shaking her head side to side.

  "He told them he would be right back with me, then came back and warned me right away, because they had refused his request to charge across an open field into two hostile Immortals to save you," Mirri was definitely smirking now as she gave an amused exhale, shaking her head in a way Emma definitely couldn't copy, more of a rotation than an actual shake up and down or side to side. If her curled horns had been much longer, she might have jabbed herself under the chin. "Then he asked me what the new plan was, and contributed his channels to it. So he's earned a touch more leniency from me, as long as his frustrations stay harmless."

  "He didn't tell me that part," Emma's next breath was steadier than her thoughts. "Is it going to cause issues with your... peer?"

  It would be just her luck if Calen had managed to be a jerk to *two* regional powers.

  "Depends on who the archer hit after our distraction, and how firmly," Mirri's half-folded wings bobbed up and down with her shoulders as she shrugged. "My hopes are on a name that would cause your brother the greatest amount of trouble, which I suspect is half the reason my mother is so intent on recruiting you two directly. A village council couldn't justify the risk of keeping even you around if your brother got Saah's heir skewered. Healing only works on the living."

  "So you're hoping someone was hurt? Someone specific." Emma corrected herself when Mirri's gaze sharpened.

  "Not strictly. Dead or unharmed are both better outcomes," Emma's pulse spiked at the callous words, but Mirri wasn't done. "Only hurt is the worst of both worlds, it would leave them stirred up and needing to respond. But yes, I'd sleep better with that one on a pyre instead of looking prove he's worthy of inheriting a *dynasty*."

  Mirri practically sneered the last word, only seeming to remember Emma was even there once she was done replying.

  "Got it." Emma shifted where she sat, unsure of what else to say.

  "Not that the dynasty is the problem there," Mirri's hurried correction sounded almost like an apology. "Viran is trying to keep his own inheritance from being snatched away, but that's getting into the politics of Wardenship."

  "Not you?" The words slipped out almost automatically as Emma tried to place what had piqued her interest about the statement.

  "Not me what?" Mirri sounded genuinely confused.

  "I mean you're not... the next Warden here, when your mom retires?" Emma asked. "Or if something bad happened to her, I guess."

  Mirri's tail stilled where it hung over the sparring pit, ceasing its languid waving. The priestess examined her claws intently for so long that Emma was just about apologize for asking when she got a roundabout reply.

  "Do you see those clouds?" Mirri asked. "The ones that are just... building to the south, over the ocean?"

  The roiling cumulus clouds had stacked higher and higher on the horizon since their return from a quiet midday meal, and now they were starting to stain orange and purple with the sun slipping below the horizon to the west, but there was something out of place about them.

  "They haven't moved all day!" Emma realized out loud. "They're not acting like a normal pressure system at all."

  "The Warden is making sure the fields will have the perfect amount of rain right after the planting is done, but not before," Mirri lifted her chin and blew a tiny puff of approval in Emma's direction. "Everybody knows why that prosperity comes to them, decade after decade. Typhoons will blunt far before they reach the shores, and the very skies will crackle their displeasure if marauders decide to make the work of the valley their spoils."

  Emma thought she might have caught a whiff of ozone on the wind, but it was just her imagination. She dismissed the sensation, because Mirri wasn't done, she had only paused to splay a hand and wave it at the sky, painting an imaginary line across the sunset with a single claw.

  "Safety is wherever you can see the sky. No village councilor that refused her patronage would keep their position long, because her leverage is absolute, devastatingly precise, and a light burden," An almost melancholy note had crept into Mirri's voice, by the time she finished. "Loving her is easy, so people do."

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  "But you can't make it rain." Emma fit the last piece into the puzzle.

  Mirri snapped her fingers, and a flame sprang to life at the tip of one of her claws, dancing in the air with no wick Emma could see.

  "The best uses for fire are keeping warm, and killing monsters. Being a threat is how I keep people safe, but that's not the kind of power that makes for a good Warden," Mirri sighed. "So no. Gods willing, things will never get bad enough I have to take that mantle."

  The silence hovered thickly between them for half a moment.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"

  "It's fine. I learned all this a long time ago," Mirri brushed sand off her skirts and finished standing. "Come on, let's go get you a real weapon. You're not going to kill any monsters with that lump of wood in your belt."

  A tiny voice at the back of Emma's head noted that Mirri might have hesitated before saying 'monsters', but she clamped down on it. The priestess had reacted when Emma had accidentally asked if she had been hoping for general death, instead of someone specific, and just given a speech about protecting people with the tools she had.

  There were lines these people wouldn't cross. They were just giving Emma tools to defend herself, not asking her to butcher anyone.

  "How do I learn to use these better?" Emma help up her hands, hoping Mirri understood what she was asking. "Not that I'm ignoring the weapon, I still want a weapon, but I want to be able to fix it, if... if something bad happens."

  "There are exercises you can do for better mana control, but healing takes an astounding amount of knowledge to do well, and is only taught after mana control for a *reason*," Mirri stressed the last word. "You should avoid actively healing dragonborn until you've studied our anatomy extensively, or you risk twisting things wrong."

  Emma's understanding of what was going on fell off a cliff.

  If being able to fix people was why she was valuable to Isha, but she couldn't even actually heal dragonborn, then was Calen right? Was something else going on?

  Pushing past the rising panic took some effort.

  "Oh," She could *hear* her voice climb an octave, there was no way Mirri hadn't noticed her reaction after the too-long silence. "So I can't even help yet, if you're hurt."

  Framing it as a matter of time helped. Isha was Immortal, after all. That had to reflect in her decision making somehow, so as long as Emma was *eventually* useful, things still fit together.

  "Or Viran. And not with your bare hands. A patch will work to filter your intent, if you can avoid overloading it this time," Mirri didn't let Emma wallow for long before she presented the solution, and of course, its accompanying challenge. "They're sewn with copper threads and small reservoirs because most people can't manage to fill even that with the proper bias, but with your efficiency, you'll have to be careful about breaking the tool."

  "Got it." Emma nodded and relaxed her shoulders, happy to avoid complete uselessness.

  One of them had to. Calen and Viran didn't sound like they were doing a whole lot of weapons training in the other sparring pit. They weren't arguing either, which was a small mercy. Instead, it sounded like they were discussing... theology? Or mana. Maybe both

  The discussion had become more intelligible, and more confusing, as they had drawn closer and Emma had started paying more attention to the sounds.

  "Hey Em," Calen was the one clapping her on the shoulder from behind, thank god. "Magic comes from god bones, by the way. Like, specific, discrete, physical god bones that you can go visit and watch get weathered down and stuff."

  Viran was nodding by the lake shore, but Mirri took issue with the claim.

  "No you can't. Not yet anyway," Mirri corrected herself. "The chill in the Northern Circle alone would kill you long before you arrived at the Gravecrown, and it wouldn't be the weather that found you first."

  Mirri's confirmation meant that Calen had dug up whatever mythos these people used to explain magic, and it was tied to a location. Probably a geological formation of some kind, but it sounded like it was somewhere dangerous.

  With visitation out of the picture, and no library she knew of nearby, that really left Emma only one option for getting an answer to her most pressing question about all this.

  "How do you know they're god bones?" She directed the question at Mirri, but it wasn't Mirri who answered.

  "None of them have looked like bones for at least a millennia and a half," Dovin joined the conversation from ten meters away, plodding his way down the steps onto the beach with a long wooden crate hefted over one of his shoulders. "But you can still see the way they laid down for the last time, and feel the power on your scales. Or skin. If you don't have frostbite by then."

  The golden-scaled dragonborn had come to a full stop at the bottom of the steps instead of approaching, and both Mirri and Viran had set out to join Isha's second in command. Emma checked that Calen was still beside her, grinning like an idiot at his triumph, and followed their lead.

  She waited until he had taken his hand off her shoulder to tighten the strap around her torso, properly re-seating the Seraph Steel high enough on her back that the bottom of the shield didn't bump her legs with every step.

  "You've been to the Gravecrown?" Viran was asking Dovin as they both came back into earshot.

  "I've been lots of places, but not many of them recently," Dovin brushed off the question in favor of giving Mirri a hard stare. "I see everyone was done training diligently for the day."

  The priestess straightened herself, even raising her wings, though she didn't unfold them as the met Dovin's gaze.

  "I gave them the lessons in mana I had time to prepare, and we revisited the morning's martials until exhaustion would have done more harm than good." Mirri's defense was clinical, and possibly a jab at the way Dovin had disappeared halfway through the day.

  "Including strikes," Viran added, backing her up. "Calen knows to swing at the enemy with his sword first, not his face."

  The look of chagrin that crossed Calen's face when Emma turned to shut him up meant that the rumbling declaration had at least a seed of truth to it.

  Her brother still had the audacity to shake his head a little when she gave him a questioning look, wobbling a leveled hand to indicate that he disagreed with at least a little of what Viran was saying, but that was all the time they had.

  "Astounding progress. We're going to go get him something sharp now." Dovin deadpanned.

  He was already on the move towards the strange collection of buildings abutting the rest of the mountain, having never set down the long wooden box.

  Emma fell in behind Mirri, and she wasn't the only one who had to stretch her stride to keep up with Dovin. Only Viran had time to meander by the lakeshore without falling behind too much.

  "You're back sooner than expected," Mirri huffed air, with just the slightest turn of her head giving away that she was keeping an eye on how close Emma was to stepping on her tail. "How was downstairs?"

  "I tossed some training weapons in a dueling circle during the afternoon guard change, told them to do whatever they wanted, right then, under supervision. Or they could wait and see, like adults charged with the defense of Eastwatch under Warden Isha." Dovin's answer was opaque to Emma, but seemed entirely comprehensible to Mirri.

  Who was fighting? Over what? How common was dueling here?

  Calen almost stepped on Emma's heel trying to keep up and even Viran had looked over from his wandering by the shore to hear Dovin's answer.

  "Did it work? How many of them—"

  "I did it next to the pyre, and made them wait while I picked out a properly charred log to mark the circle," Dovin interrupted Mirri's questioning. "It worked."

  "Ah. That would do it." The priestess didn't sound too upset at the mention of her dead mentor, but it did slow her stride enough that Emma had to place her next step carefully.

  "What exactly were people dueling over? Or, not-dueling?" Calen had also been listening intently.

  "Whether you two might somehow end up as a worthy trade for the Venatrix," Dovin answered with a bluntness Emma was starting to see as characteristic.

  The layer of familiarity soothed the screeching voice in her brain that tried to get her to stare at the inside of his mouth whenever he spoke.

  "So you need to give us real weapons, or they might start to suspect we have no idea what we're doing." Calen's thoughts were turned to a more practical end than Emma's.

  "In part," Dovin allowed, thankfully not choosing to take issue with the *tone* of Calen's thoughts. "The two of you also each have a piece of Seraph Steel that needs some attention."

  "Yarrun can do that, and it takes different channels than a normal smith needs. It's why he can't leave the plateau." Viran ducked under archway formed by the open wall of the squat stone building Dovin had led them to.

  He had gotten better and better at hiding his teeth while he spoke throughout the day, and a pang that had nothing to do with the dagger at her waist ran through Emma's stomach. Well, nothing physically.

  She really needed to get it together enough to have a real conversation with him, before he started to take things persona—

  "No visitors. Forge is closed." A deep voice echoed from the back of the room as Dovin loudly walked his burden past the semicircular protrusion that dominated half the room.

  Emma jumped, and a pair of tongs bounced off the beaten and weathered cube of stone next to her leg to clatter to the floor. Calen retrieved the tool, smudging his palms with soot by the time he had set it back in its resting place.

  "Not for Sanctum's youngest, it isn't." Dovin dropped the crate in the middle of the floor with a thud that rattled like metal, kicking up soot and sand in equal measure.

  Something approximating a huff of frustration was layered over the growl that emanated from behind a curtained doorway sized for an Immortal.

  "Tell the firefly I'm not fixing those for her while the real ones still work," The voice that must be Yarrun replied cryptically. "It would only make things worse."

  "Come out and tell me yourself, you coward. And they're not for me, you have new guests," Mirri lifted her chin, practically shouting through the cloth. "You'll have to come learn their names."

  Mirri's challenge finally saw the soot-covered curtain at the back of the room grasped by a clawed hand, and draw back to reveal a hunched figure.

  The low-burning orange light emanating from the oven-like structure illuminated burgundy scales and a scorched leather apron as the figure hunched lower to fit through the enormous doorway.

  Yarrun only even bothered training one eye on her, but he had only moved a step or two before Emma found herself uncomfortably close to a half-open maw on a face playing host to a rancorous glare.

  Her breathing slowed as she tried to counteract the rapid change in her heart rate, and avoid reaching for her knife.

  Something told her it wouldn't do any good to reach for a weapon right now, even if the smith *was* intent on hurting her.

  "This is a human null, and she's already got too much steel to fly," Yarrun cocked his head sideways, keeping his other eye pointed at Dovin as he ran his gaze up and down Emma's posture. "Do you need her fingers broken or something?"

  Ramayana and the Hebrew Bible (notably the tale of David and Goliath), and The Iliad are other early examples.

  single combat usually focus on personal gain, the actual practice across history was usually to some greater benefit.