Sorina:

  “You can’t be serious. That’s the reason? Your own pride?”

  Pamela shakes her head. “No. Unfortunately, it is the pride of our state that constricts me.”

  I’m about to rebut her, but the flicker of annoyance that slips through her guise gives me pause. “It’s that bad?”

  She sighs into her chair once more. Pamela’s tangle of blonde spills over the wood. When we were young, people often had a hard time differentiating us. We looked like sisters. It was only the perfect, treasured gleam of her hair that made a difference. My hair, by comparison, was always dirtier: bathed in the grime of gardens and streets. I went out more. She studied more.

  I fought more. She listened more.

  Probably the second reason why I was sent away.

  “It's been like this ever since Verdan and the Dragon War. We’ve lost our pull in the game,” Pamela answers.

  “And… what? How does that justify not taking allies? If we score a victory here against Sorayvlad we—”

  “Prove nothing,” Pamela interrupts. “For a little over two decades, we’ve been on the losing side of things. Catolica and the famed Adachi clan allied themselves to fight a ‘small nuisance’ of a nation like Verdan? Well that ‘small nuisance’ destroyed us, no thanks to their Angel of Verdan. But at least we could blame that folly on the timing of the Acromner season. What about the dragons, then? We gathered the best mancers and warriors to vanquish the Dragon King Zod and his army. We held grand parades and they practically toured the whole kingdom. The great 51st legion,” she chuckles ruefully.

  “And what did they come back with?” her fist slams to the table. “Horses carrying charred corpses! I mean, we had to rely on a little girl from Adachi to save us! And then afterwards, there was the whole Galley Incident with Adachi because of how we celebrated our silver-haired savior—we…” she groans. “We have not won a war in a long, long time. And even though we are no doubt the reason that everyone speaks Common on this side of the continent, people only remember the scent of recent blood.”

  As if to bring her point home, she holds up her red-stained finger.

  She does have a point.

  “So you think we need to win this war on our own to retain some dignity?”

  “No, if we beat Sorayvlad on our own, we attain more than dignity. We establish respect once more,” Pamela says as she rubs two fingers against her eyes. “At least, that’s what my council has told me. I, on the other hand, don’t really care for it. A victory is a victory. I’d be willing to play the concession card with the Free Villages for their allyship, but my hands are tied by parliament.”

  She begins mumbling now. “If it was Arator, they wouldn’t give a damn. They’d all lick his boots and just do whatever he says. But not with me, no no no. Everyone always has something to say.”

  That leaves a cold silence between us as I mull over our political quagmire.

  Pamela still holds my dagger, spinning it about haphazardly. I open my hand out and she slides it over.

  With a deep breath, I splay my left hand on the table, fingers wide apart, and start playing fillet. My husband hated watching me do this. But it always helped me think. Plus, I got so good that eventually, people in Soryavlad would come watch me face their best fillet players.

  My dagger dances between my fingers, the steel always a hair’s breath away from kissing the skin.

  Pamela makes a disturbed face as she leans closer, watching the dagger’s motion.

  “You’ll lose,” I say as my pace increases. The cadence of metal on wood heightens.

  “How do you reckon?” she asks in a tone that suggests that she already knows the answer.

  “Their army is better. Bigger as of now, since your reinforcements are so lacking. You might have quality of mancers to your name, but they have quantity. And, their infantry would slice through yours on the pitch.” Plus you sent away your mancers on a suicide mission for heavens knows what reason. Including Raiten—the dagger comes dangerously close to my pointer finger. Pamela doesn’t notice, but I narrow my eyes and focus more on the game.

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  “Right,” she says. A flicker of something catches in her eyes. An understanding. “Exactly how much do you know of Sorayvladian tactics? How involved were you in military affairs?”

  “What do you think?” I don’t look at her as I answer. Not that it would matter. I already have her.

  I can see her brain working now, her jeweled crown gleaming in the soft orange of the lamplight. Her fingers rattle against the table as my dagger goes up and down and up and down and—

  “Alright. I can’t give you what you want. But… maybe we can come to a different understanding.”

  And up. I lean my chair back and let the dagger hang for a moment before turning it towards the ceiling and lobbing it. It spins before hitting the upper plywood. A rain of dust trickles down.

  Setting my chair down again, I smile at Pamela.

  “I’m all ears.”

  …

  Raiten:

  “We were five. Kiren had discovered his affinity for shields early on. I still hadn’t learned of my proclivity for spirit taming, nor vision-magicks. Yet, we were happy. Mother and Father both saw in us a bright future beyond our village,” Zyla begins.

  I wonder if this is a way for her to stall—beginning so far back in her tale that the time limit of the serum runs out. It's a tactic I’ll have to keep in mind.

  Zyla’s eyes are engulfed by the reflection of the fire, its leaping sparks giving color to her dullness. She sees something in them that we can’t. I know that feeling. That look.

  “Father was a former warrior monk from some clan that got annexed by Sorayvlad. Mother was a hunter. So… from early on, we knew how to fight. But they were always fair. Always kind to us. They wanted us to follow a different path—always told us that war is for the poor.”

  My eyes drift over to Kiren. He seems to be slowly regretting asking the question.

  Saegor is unusually somber as well.

  “One night, when we were eight, Mother went out for a hunt with a pack from our village. Only one scrawny scout of theirs returned. I remember how frightened he was of Father. How, anytime he passed Father in the village, he would shrink away. I think it was because he liked Mother. Thought that Father would catch on or something.”

  She shakes her head. “But the bravest I’ve ever seen that scrawny scout, was when he told us honestly and fully of how the dragon came and cleaved her body in two. Just one swipe of the wing!” Zyla demonstrates it with a hand slash through the top of the fire. She cuts through the orange, but it blazes back up in mere moments.

  Time should be up. But she keeps going. I straighten and look at Saegor, but he just shakes his head.

  Is this of her own volition then?

  “The dragons merely grazed our village. But Father wanted his vengeance away. So… he left us. All alone. Not a word—just some shit letter with his shitty handwriting and shitty spelling cause he never truly learned Common writing. We had to live on our own for a few months—beg for help from neighbors. Then, then the dragons came back. And this time, they didn’t just graze us. No, they razed us.

  “Razed us down to the last house, to the last children: us. And one of their number… some fat bronzie named Aragor, took great pleasure in trying to burn through Kiren’s shields. And it was in that moment, when I felt the sweat slick down my spine, when I held Kiren’s head close and I whispered some prayers—when the fire was all that we could see, for the blast of it circled around Kiren’s shields as it bore upon them, burning little holes one by one. It was then, that I thought, what the hell was Father’s revenge good for? It didn’t do nothing. That stupid bastard just left us. And he probably died somewhere out there, all alone, with nothing gained or ventured. The fucking idiot.”

  She looks away from the fire to me now.

  And for the first time in this entire three week venture, I understand her.

  Even she has a calmer look. For she’s let it all out. No longer does it twist in her stomach like some rotten, patient disease.

  The pieces fall into play.

  “And then Saegor saved you,” I say.

  She nods.

  “Zyla I—I’m not your—” I sigh, gathering myself. “Look: you don’t know me. And I don’t know you. But I am sorry.”

  She blinks in surprise. Opens her mouth. Hesitates.

  Then, she looks between Kiren and me, and just nods. “Alright.”

  “Alright?”

  “Yes. Alright.”

  Kiren leans over to her and tries whispering something in her ear, but she shoves him off.

  “Let's just keep playing,” she mutters.

  “That’s the spirit!” Saegor bellows, injecting some very forcible jubilance into his tone. “It's a game my fellow mancers. Let’s make it fun right? We don’t always have to ask such hard questions. Right, Raiten?”

  I just shake my dice cup and stare at him.

  His eye twitches. But the grin grows sickeningly broad. I remember the way his teeth looked after chewing on my flesh and spitting it out for the worms.

  If he thinks he can distract me, well…

  He’s going to have a harder time of it then Zyla.