Our horns sounded again as the Hume approached. The herald I had glimpsed from a distance led the way, his lantern held out before him, his lips working over and around the words of his spell like fingers on a strand of memory beads. What magic was this that quickened their horses, that allowed the herald sway over space and time?

  Two figures held close behind the herald, becoming clearer as they neared. The first wore gleaming silver armor with the red hammer of the baron emblazoned across his chest. “Sheriff Calvert,” Uncle murmured to me, the name rippling along our ranks and with it, the sour tinge of fear sharpened in the air.

  In the aftermath of my parents’ rebellion, Calvert had been a lieutenant in the baron’s armies. He’d risen in the ranks as he helped to hunt down the few rebel leaders who had managed to flee the initial onslaught. The stories about him from that time held that the sound of buzzing flies warned of his approach—the flies had hung in a cloud about his head from the bloody necklace of Lifkin ears he’d carved from the many corpses he’d created trying to restore the king’s control across the land in the baron’s name.

  His instatement as sheriff meant he held the highest rank in the baron’s military. The presence of such a Hume, here, couldn’t bode well for us.

  On the herald’s other side, just behind his horse’s flanks rode his adjudicator, the holy knight sworn to the herald’s protection. He wore a few patches of plate over his chainmail armor, and the sign of the Order, a shining lantern, had been stitched onto the chest of his gambeson.

  The line of horses, thirty in number, trotted out of the border of the forest and approached the gate. “Halt there!” the lead archer shouted.

  The sheriff raised his hand by his shoulder, calling the horses to a stop. The two lines stared at one another—archers on the walls above, calvary with shoulder-tucked pikes below. My fingertips grazed the string of my bow, the fletching of my arrows, waiting to see how this encounter would go.

  “By your leave,” the herald called up to us, opening his palm. His voice was low with a slight gravely rasp.

  “Step forward and deliver your message,” the chief answered. He held a prominent position at the center of our ramparts, standing atop a crate to be easily seen over the wall.

  The herald, sheriff, and adjudicator nudged their horses forward and formed a line in front of the gate, staring up at us. Beyond them, the remaining mounted knights kept a close watch on our line. A half dozen archers at the rear of their formation held arrows loosely to bows but hadn’t yet nocked them in place.

  Sheriff Calvert and the adjudicator removed their helmets—whether that was a sign of respect, nonaggression, or something else I didn’t know. The herald wore no helm. Dark brows shaded his narrowed eyes. The adjudicator and sheriff joined the herald in scanning our ranks, and the adjudicator’s gaze fell upon me. Ice pricked my spine as I remembered who had taken Iredella—Hume dressed exactly like this one.

  The wind picked up, tugging back my hair. I brushed the beads and feathers back, tucking some of the stray strands behind my ears.

  As the Hume kept watching me, the ice melted. There was a curiosity behind his gaze, as though I was a puzzle he couldn’t work out.

  Before I could make out his intentions, the herald nodded to the sheriff who raised his chin to being his address, “On behalf of His Majesty King Aenulf and the Honorable Holdrid, Baron of Dust, we present ourselves to the Twisted River Clan and their Chief. Are you he?”

  “I am,” the chief answered.

  The adjudicator hadn’t marked any of this back and forth. I turned from his superiors to watch him in turn. He immediately shifted his gaze away but, throughout the exchange that followed, I found his attention drifting back to me. He was younger than the other adjudicators I’d seen—still a few years older than myself, but somewhere in his early twenties I guessed. It can be difficult to place ages upon Hume.

  “Gathered before you, I present Herald Devrim of Grimcross and his adjudicator, Sir Cranwyn, the lantern-bearers of the Order of Ilona sent to bring the light into these dark lands. And speaking on behalf of Baron Holdrid, the Hammer, I am Sheriff Calvert, exactor of the baron’s justice.”

  The sheriff’s tone shifted from pride in himself and his baron to disdain as he addressed us and feigned polite recognition of the chief’s rank. His address took particular care to remind us of our exile to the Twisted River, “under the grace of his majesty and beneath the hammer of the baron.”

  Unlike the sheriff and the baron’s soldiers, the adjudicator’s expression never twisted into a sneer. Instead, his gaze was almost thoughtful. The herald was harder to read, his mouth holding firm in a line indicating disapproval, but whether we were the cause or if he was simply irritated at having to leave his church was difficult to discern.

  Along the wall, bodies were tense, jaws set firm. How many beyond myself we re-living the after-effects of the rebellion, the storming of the soldiers into the streets, adjudicators and knights slashing down at Lifkin running back toward their homes or fleeing in panic. The deep red stains in the street, the scent of burning skin and hair mingling with the char of tar as they torched our homes.

  The memories coated my skin, covering me in a cloak of goose-pimples that made me shiver. This meeting was a change from the king’s tactics before. How long such a shift would last, we did not know, but the question hung heavy upon all of us, a second aggressive front gathered at our rear, pinning us in.

  After announcing the reason for their visit, Sheriff Calvert spurred his horse forward two paces. He unfurled a parchment scroll and read the missive from the king that Alfonse had warned us about, the proclamation that had brought them to our door.

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  As King Aenulf the Wise is the rightful ruler of Breoland,

  As Breoland is daily harangued by the scourge of the Shroud,

  As the Lady of Light Ilona, her Church, and the Word of Broccus are the methods by which Breoland stands strong against the night,

  It is hereby decreed that in the lands of King Aenulf falling below the fifty-sixth meridian, all subjects shall henceforth also be subject to the Lady, her Church, and the Word.

  The decree is to be executed forthwith by King Arnulf’s loyal vassal, Holdrid the Hammer, Baron of Dust. Show mercy on yourselves and heed these words.

  The seal of the king hung heavy in black wax from the center of the parchment with the sign and seal of the baron on the right in blood red wax and, on the left in white, the sign of a lantern for the church and a signature.

  I clutched the wooden planks along the top of the wall as the sheriff read out the proclamation. A dismissal and a warning lingered beneath the words—Surrender your identity and the motes of independence you have retained and give them over to us in exchange for keeping the outland post we removed you to. Or take your chance with the north. May the winter kill you.

  I had said as much the night before but, staring down at the soldiers, I felt the truth of it more keenly than I had then. In asking us to bow down to their limited version of the goddess who lived in all, who had created and was these lands, who had created us, this same goddess who, as our legends held, had brought the Hume over from another world, wishing to shelter them from cruelty, they were asking us to agree to their version of history. Their version of creation itself. To abandon the Cycle and all we knew to be true.

  To them, we were outcasts of a goddess who made sharp judgements and kept strict accounts, a goddess of vengeance and tribulation, who asked her people to suffer so they might win her favor. The Hume’s Ilona had turned her back upon the Lifkin and made it a badge of righteousness that they treat us in this way. I knew from Aveela and the horrors of our records that the Hume were not wrong to visit upon the Lifkin the same cruelties their overlords had placed upon them. Among the Lifkin accounts where someone bothered to attempt to justify their actions, they did so by claiming superiority. I didn’t blame the Hume from the time of the fall for wishing to overthrow their oppressors, but I could not understand why, with their newfound freedom, they wished to do the same as those they’d overcome.

  “Should you have any questions about the king’s words,” the herald called up after Sheriff Calvert had finished reading the message and tossed it up to us upon the wall, “we will hear them.”

  A herd of questions tumbled forward in my mind—Are you planning to attack us the moment we open the gate or to hunt us down as we travel north? Is there something within our walls that you desire so you’ve decided to remove us altogether?

  Was I the only one among us thinking of the Seed?

  While I waited for the chief to speak, I studied the war-priest sent on behalf of the Order. The herald was nearly as broad-chested as the sheriff, sitting proud and erect upon his large stallion. I’d only glimpsed a few heralds before this one. They had been well enough able to cleanse and bless a field, but this herald carried himself more like a warrior than a priest.

  A moment of quiet passed after the herald’s invitation before the chief spoke. His question was simple. “How long?” He kept his voice low, steady as rainfall across a roof.

  The shadows shifted in the herald’s expression, but not enough for me to make out his reaction to the chief beyond a shift in the set of his shoulders. “One week.”

  Cries of dismay erupted around the camp, rippling backward as the scouts called back the conversation, alerting the rest of the clan to what was being discussed along the wall.

  “That is a short time,” the chief answered. He seemed unsurprised by the lack of generosity on the Hume’s part. Fourteen years we’d been here, and we were to leave in under a week.

  “Other questions,” the herald called.

  Very like the night before, I was speaking before I had fully realized it. “Why now?”

  The adjudicator had already been watching me. The herald, sheriff, and the soldiers did now as well.

  “Speak up, girl,” the sheriff called back.

  I repeated my question. “It seems as though you are in a hurry to either gain converts or to access our land.” I thought of the scouts already deep in the forest, having removed the Seed in the night. They would protect it until an advanced guard could be prepared to take it to the north, preceding our people. “Such haste would indicate a shortage of funds or some other motive of desperation on behalf of the king or, failing that, the baron.” It was the baron’s sheriff and soldiers who bore the message from the king after all. Hume politics in this regard were always more complicated than they appeared, but I knew little of the particulars of the relationship between the king and the baron outside the baron’s official capacity as steward of this region.

  The sheriff and herald looked at one another and laughed. “The king makes his own timing, little girl,” the herald called back. “Other questions?”

  Their mockery did not bother me—I had no regard for either of their opinions, and they had no reason to care for mine, apprentice spiritspeaker or no. It was the casual disdain they held for us. The humor they found in our situation and the lack of care they themselves felt at delivering such an ultimatum.

  Convert or go north. Convert or go north.

  We would debate, but I knew the answer already. We all did. We’d made a decision in kind before, though the terms of the earlier choice were more akin to “betray your people or abandon the remains of your home.” Surrender or survive. Surrender or survive.

  When no other spoke, the herald nodded to the sheriff who backed his horse away from the wall and went to join his men. Though the adjudicator watched me still, I betrayed no notice of his attention. Beside me, Uncle opened his arms wide. I fell into his embrace.

  “I’m sorry if I should not have said anything, if I—”

  “Stop.” Uncle’s voice was soft. It rumbled in his chest where I’d placed my head. “Do not apologize to me. You have done nothing wrong, Draeza. You were right to speak.” He smoothed the back of my hair. “Do not let them frighten you. We will find a way forward, together.”

  The Hume made camp outside our walls with two soldiers waiting at the edge of their outpost should any of us elect to step beyond the modest safety of our wall and accept their means of conversion. In the center of their camp, the herald and adjudicator had placed a small table with a book upon it, I assumed their holy text. The herald passed inside his tent and didn’t emerge for hours, but the adjudicator remained visible, stationed outside the tent and by the table.

  The Lifkin records did not speak of the tedium of oppression, though there were several accounts from those who supervised Hume more directly. What passed through the Hume’s minds as they waited to see if we would emerge? Were they thinking of families at home back in Dust? Had they feared a conflict? Or were they disappointed blood had not yet been shed?

  During my watch upon the wall, I couldn’t help but wonder at the ruse of the required conversion. Was the offering of swearing fealty to the Order for their benefit or did they truly believe it was in ours? Any thinking person had to know such conversion was a farce.

  What the king wanted was surrender. To break us further. And we were not going to comply.