Zhaleh gasped, lurching up and reaching with a phantom limb for her teacher's slackening hand.

  Neither her right arm or he was there. Visions of him against the well, chest leaking blood from the sword that took out a lung, burned in the back of her eyes anyway. The end of the battle against the Master of Masks happened so fast, or she'd lost so much blood, that she barely saw any of it. One moment she'd been on the ground, the next her teacher helped her toward the well. Not a single masked monster had been in sight, but she heard their rampage and fires burning.

  She gasped in more air. There wasn't smoke. She didn't think there was any smoke. It had to be that nightmare. The same one that kept waking her up, stretching out of dreams and into the world of light, but this time the entire memory crawled away.

  She didn't have to relive him telling her how to escape as he suddenly collapsed against the well.

  She felt ill.

  The world shook and rattled all around her as daylight and the unfamiliar surroundings overwhelmed her senses. Nothing made sense. She wasn't in one of the disciple halls or huts, or her favorite trees to rest in.

  But why would she be? They all burned.

  Lightheaded, weak, and cold, she sluggishly looked about to chase away the visions.

  Everything was a blur, but she knew she had solitude. Just as she knew the nightmares were memories of days before instead of fevered imaginings.

  Her shaky left hand rested on her beak instead of the stitches. The sensation of blade slicing her bone still haunted her, returning when she least expected it.

  Zhaleh, wavering dangerously, focused on nothing but breathing.

  That always cleared the fog in her sight.

  After far too long, she recognized the back of the covered wagon. A space had been cleared for her between tied down chests, caged glowstones rattling above. The smell of burning homes and spilled blood still stung her nostrils, but she knew it to be a phantom. Unlike the scents of people, pack beasts, unfamiliar herbs, and the shifting grasses outside flourishing with qi.

  For five days she'd woken in this wagon. The caravan it belonged to traveled from near dawn to dusk. No one bothered her, aside from a thin limbed young man, Titus, who was a healer and one of her saviors. The old mothers he brought to assist him obeyed his every word, knowing less about medicine than such a young man and being remarkably accepting of it.

  To Zhaleh's shame, she'd been too weak to eat without help or even speak on the first day she woke into their care, which led to her strange situation.

  Nobody thought she could understand their languages. From the Istillian spoken by Titus with somebody riding in the front of the wagon, to the dialects of Tpocic-tal and Zunna, even the trade language of the herding clans, they'd tried everything while she could barely keep her eyelids open. Then they'd given up that evening, settling on a few simple hand signals and pointing as if she were a child.

  'Perhaps I am, hiding like this. Not speaking for days.'

  Dark thoughts crossed her mind.

  Zhaleh couldn't resist it any longer and touched the stitches sealing up her stump.

  A ragged sigh interrupted her measured breathing.

  Her right arm really was gone. She'd wanted to hope that, at least, had been a nightmare. That her shoulder was just badly wounded instead.

  She'd silently cried the last four days whenever the realization first settled over her.

  Today she refused to shed a tear, even as her eyes stung and watered. There had been enough mourning for herself.

  It wasn't only the loss of her limb that ached. The sword arm her teacher had guided, corrected, and even praised was gone, slain with those she considered family.

  Eyes burning, she swallowed to keep a sob from breaking through.

  'We start with breathing, Zhaleh,' her teacher had said on the same day he gave her, a lost orphan of the plains, a name. 'In through our nose, we let the peace of this wonderful world seep from our lungs to all throughout the body. Then breathe out, pushing the bitterness we have within away, over our tongues, so it leaves through the mouth lest we forget the taste.'

  Eyes wet, she shifted into a meditative position. She was limber enough to sit cross-legged without her right arm, but she still felt unbalanced in the back of the creaking, rumbling wagon.

  Not everything from her teacher had been stolen. Despite how horrible it felt, Zhaleh could envision his hands on her back, beneath her wings, guiding the breathing exercises that laid the foundation of The Art of Ngnun within her.

  She could keep the embers of her sect alive, but did they even have a name anymore? Could it even be called a sect when only she'd been in the hidden tunnels?

  In and out.

  Zhaleh tasted salty tears, but she kept breathing. Seeking peace, finding only more pain, and breathing out a bitterness with no end.

  Gradually she felt the qi move through her, circulating on a rhythm akin to her heartbeat. Everything was in disarray, the vessel within her abdomen still recovering and paths through her polluted from her wounds. Thanks to Titus, with his many potions and poultices, she escaped the edge of death when she'd first woken up. What he said to the mothers often helping, he hadn't expected her to wake for at least four more days.

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  Yet here she was, flesh healing. And little else.

  Today was the first time she'd succeeded in cultivating The Art while the cart moved. Not that she went deep, for fear of deviations undoing all of Titus' efforts to save her.

  Zhaleh, breathing steady, gently corrected the flow of qi throughout her body.

  It helped her feel lighter. Not healthier, but more complete. Qi was within everything, said to be the very essence the gods used to craft the world, and eternal. Never lost. Only changed. Building a vessel for qi was the first lesson of every path of The Art, and hers still remained.

  Unlike her right arm. The qi pathways there had nearly ruptured and her spirit was in disarray. Her arm felt so wrong, missing, yet still there. The contradiction left her unbalanced in every possible way.

  It would take weeks, if not seasons, for her to properly adjust to the loss. The healer's work to seal the wound, somehow, didn't interfere like she'd feared on the first day, but she still needed to untangle and cleanse all her qi pathways.

  The wagon jolted on a stone, breath dangerously catching in her throat as she tilted over.

  She flung her hands out, kept falling despite grabbing the wooden arch holding the stretched covering, and realized her mistake. Zhaleh's left hand stung against the wagon's boards, catching her just shy of her beak smacking the woven rug used for her bedding.

  'When will I accept it's gone?'

  Elbow shaking, head light as a cottonwood tuft on water, she untangled her still crossed legs and sat on her knees.

  That could've been worse than an embarrassing fall.

  No, if she'd gone into a trance to speed up the healing of her injuries, as she did at night after running out of tears, then the wagon's jolt could've killed her. Disturbed pathways could rupture surrounding veins or cause her qi to reverse the direction it flowed. That could damage organs, destroy her vessel, or shatter her mind. She scarcely had the blood to spare, even with the generous meals Titus brought her, to risk such wounds.

  Thoughts of the healer brought not so bad memories to her.

  "Drink slowly," he had insisted when she'd been able to sit up on her own, the young man mimicking the act of lightly tipping a bowl to his lips. He'd then tapped the clay jug he always brought, his smile trying to reassure her, as he talked slowly. "There's more. Don't rush."

  'Slowly,' she'd thought. 'Yes. Teacher would've said the same.'

  A new pang settled in her ribs.

  Zhaleh knew exactly what her teacher would've said about her bad manners of staying silent while cared for by that kind healer.

  'Is that how a Disciple of Ngnun shows the honor of her sect?'

  It didn't matter how much she hurt or wanted to curl up into tears, Zhaleh owed a debt of gratitude to Titus and whoever else saved her from beneath that karr tree. All she remembered in that haze of her escape from the mountain was killing hyenas and meeting someone, another human, with unforgettably green eyes.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if that encounter had been a delusion from blood loss.

  The only way she'd learn was by clearing up the misunderstanding she'd allowed to fester. If she could trust them.

  The followers and slaves of that dreadful Master of Masks could be anywhere, even if her direct saviors weren't manipulated, for under their masks they seemed normal people. She had to be careful. Especially on the plains. If Titus and her saviors' kindness went no farther than their own well being, as was common of the clans and plainsmen, telling them about the Blood-Drinkers could have her betrayed.

  But Titus, if he was a kind healer like she thought, deserved to know even if it put her in danger. Right?

  If it was only her life in danger, she would have told him right away. But if there were Blood-Drinkers watching, and they hadn't made a move, then they'd use anyone and everything against her. They killed, and worse, to keep their secrets.

  More than that, Zhaleh bore the life of her sect upon her back.

  The chances were thin, but the young disciples might have escaped through the secret tunnels she'd defended. She'd seen no one in her own flight through the hidden passages, but after all that happened in the village, she couldn't imagine any other disciples surviving. Only her teacher's cunning and final sacrifice had kept Zhaleh alive.

  'One foot after the other,' she told herself. 'I get my strength back and see what I can learn in Tpocic-tal. If anyone escaped, they'd head there. To the city's sect. The leader knew my teacher, didn't he?'

  Heart tattered instead of settled, Zhaleh reached for her teacher's sash left on her sheathed sword - with her left hand this time. Slowly, to avoid making mistakes, she pulled the silky cloth from the scabbard.

  The ends were ripped and frayed, worse than when her teacher wore it. It had turned a deeper red from his blood and hers, defying everything she knew about cloth and remaining a bright crimson instead of fading to a dead brownish-red. As if to remind her of that moment his dying hand pushed it into her palm, his fatherly smile telling her to flee.

  'One foot after the other.'

  Zhaleh had to keep moving. She had to heal and find out about her saviors, then she could make the painful decisions.

  Patience tested by the bumping wagon that seemed to look for every rock and stone in the plains, she tied her teacher's sash onto her waist above the annoyingly long skirt gifted to her. The old mothers had tried to turn her blood stained sash into rags along with the rest of her ruined waistcloth. Fortunately for them all, Titus got the sash away from the old women before Zhaleh had to rip someone's throat out, the healer understanding whatever pathetic look had been in her eyes along with the weak groan that came out of her.

  "If she cannot forgive you for what you've already destroyed, you will answer to me. Understand?"

  A young man able to make so many old women cower, without a single threat or show of force, was remarkable on the plains. It might have been her fever, but Titus appeared to glare sharper than her sword at that moment. He tied her sash onto her sword after that, reminding her of the tassels given out by Tpocic-tal's sect as marks of identity, then left her blade within easy reach of her remaining arm.

  Titus seemed like a good man. Zhaleh liked to believe she had a sense of that. She didn't want to hurt him, and she certainly owed him the truth.

  Eventually. When she was sure she could set out alone or trust her saviors.

  Zhaleh cinched a one handed knot in her sash and got her sword stuck through the cloth. Tying the scabbard on tested her patience up to its breaking point. After too many tries, her fingers shaking with self-loathing anger, she succeeded.

  She vowed to practice one handed knots instead of stupidly meditating whenever the wagon was moving.

  Weapon tied to her side at last, she weakly shuffled towards the front of the covered wagon, lifting a tied down flap and sticking her beak through.