There is no sign or marker at the border between the Wild Range and the Protectorate. For that matter, there is hardly a border to speak of in the first place. As Toania understands it, the legal relationship between the two is kept ambiguous on purpose, and the former remains nominally subordinate to the latter in some sense outsiders are not privileged to hear more about. Abbess Noor simply suffered Hygaara to declare his independence, and ignores it to this day as if it were a passing indiscretion. So the story goes, and Toania feels sure that this is one of many subjects on which she should not ask questions.

  It is nonetheless perfectly clear when she finally passes into the Protectorate, before noon on the fourth day out from Ulvetto. That is when she looks up from her brooding and out the coach’s window—her seventh or eighth, by that point—and sees a team of turned monastics, hard at work in the fields. All of them have degenerated far enough to have no need for robes; she cannot tell at a glance if they are men or women. A person with a heavy beak like a parrot’s bends over, harvesting spring greens with a knife. Its scarf, the one indispensable token of a vocation among the Sojourners, flops down into its way, and without pausing its work the creature’s long tail swings around to flick it back up. Behind it, a more doglike religious tears through the earth with its paws, tugging up radishes by their leafy tops with its mouth and dropping them in a basket borne by a kind of sloth with spines down its back. In the distance, a different crew are weeding.

  They make a curious noise as they work, a kind of low, continuous grumble in their motley voices. It is only after they have rolled past that Toania wonders if it was supposed to be some species of mantra or prayer. In truth, she has no notion if Sojourners use either; their (unBlemished) pilgrims can be found throughout Siocaea, where they are generally extended the same sort of welcome as ordinary vagrants, or stray dogs. The lone stationhall in Pasavana is better known as a focal point for trouble from the scum of the highways than as any kind of spiritual refuge. Certainly she has never heard of them doing productive work; obviously actual monks and nuns must support themselves somehow, but the thought is still startling. She wonders what she expected to see here, and finds no answer inside her mind.

  The coach drops her off at the next town, a cheery little burg with a broad marketplace around its well. Toania takes a moment to stretch her legs, and perhaps fetch a bite to eat, before continuing on her way. A few stalls are set up, one of them offering rabbit fricassee. On a whim she orders a bowl so she can question the customer already in line. This gentleman—a local landowner in his forties, who appears flattered by the interest from a woman half his age—tells her the town has always got along well with its monastics, and suggests she might stop at the nearest hall for the night if she is curious about them. This is another shock; it had not occurred to her to take advantage of the stationhall’s hospitality.

  When she asks if there are other options, he laughs. “What would we want them for? There’s a hall in every town to speak of, and they’ll take in anyone peaceable for a small donation. Your little villages, now, they won’t have one, but why would you want to go there? Say, what brings you here, anyway?”

  “I’m only passing through on my way to Marransheel,” she says.

  “From—up north?” There is only a brief hitch in his voice, but she catches it. His face and voice are still friendly, but he did not want to say ‘the Wild Range.’

  “Yes.”

  “They do things different. They never had many halls up Carbern way, and since—you know—the few they had upped stakes and left.” He shrugs. “Unpleasant business. But we’re all going somewhere, they say. Forward or back, but you can’t stay still. Maybe it was for the best, eh?”

  “Maybe.” The man gets his wooden bowl of hot fried rabbit and onions, and sets to work on it. Toania is left to contemplate in silence the prospect of several nights in buildings full of turned men or women. Nuthmi’s story of adolescent terrors has made the thought even more repugnant than it would have been already—but Toania’s good sense rebels against conforming to the prejudices of a woman so mad she caught the Blemish on purpose. Evidently many if not most of these people have spent a night or two the same way, and lived to recommend it.

  Her food is ready a moment later, and she notices that one of the hands giving her the bowl is a bird’s claw, like Szezek’s. The server’s smile falters at her expression, but she thanks him warmly and digs in with determination. If an entire limb has turned, with deeper anatomical changes below the skin, the man should be past the initial stage of transmission by simple touch alone. All the same, it takes willpower to finish the meal. Why, she wonders, is the man here and not at a stationhall, where he might contain the plague’s progress with the discipline? It does not feel polite to ask, but she resents him for imposing his presence on her. She supposes that is not very charitable, but she does.

  As she returns her empty bowl, she asks where she might find a ride to Pil Neng Say. The clawed cook tells her there are regular rides for pilgrims, the next of which should pass through within two hours. She thanks him, biting back the impulse to deny any intention of ever becoming a pilgrim.

  To pass the time, she wanders about the town, where she encounters several more of Noor’s spiritual children going about their business with no special notice given. Several are not visibly altered; they may be hiding their condition, or be entirely healthy. It is not as though the Blemish is an actual prerequisite for monasticism, after all.

  But then there is a monk busking for donations with a sermon outside the tinsmith’s, using the craft as an extended allegory on the repair of faults in the self. This preacher is not so far progressed as some, and still wears a habit, but betrays his condition by occasionally flicking out a scaly foot-long tongue to scratch a persistent itch on his nose. None of his listeners appear to mind.

  Another, more bestial specimen trudges down the street with a pole across its shoulders, bearing two pails brimful of water. Its tread is uneven enough to force a tiny spill of water every few steps, and its thick dragging tail rattles on the road behind it. After that she sees one resembling an enormous snake more than anything else, only with stunted arms and legs, and a frilled crest on its head. It is deep in conversation with a shopkeeper, idly swinging a canvas bag full of recent purchases as they chatter. It seems the turned and the whole get along better here than under Hygaara, but she cannot say why as yet. Perhaps because they are more visible, and so easier to adjust to? So many questions, and nobody safe to ask.

  A bell rings in the marketplace when the promised ride arrives, and Toania joins a small throng of citizens queuing to board a large covered wagon, drawn by four enormous draft horses. A basket behind the driver (who appears to be a perfectly normal and healthy man) contains coins in a variety of denominations, in addition to a bracelet of polished clay beads, a steel belt buckle, a bundle of asparagus and another of leeks. She throws in three Pasavanan goat’s-head coppers, possibly the first their next owner will have ever seen, and takes her seat between an old man and a young nursing mother.

  Too late she realizes there was space between them for a reason; the old man’s wool sweater smells as though it has not been washed since it came off the sheep. But the wagon is already setting off, and there is no better spot to move to. The young woman on her other side is about Toania’s age, or perhaps slightly younger; as soon as she is done persuading her son to latch on properly, they strike up a conversation.

  “A bit footsore, are you?” the girl asks without preamble. She is short and stocky, with abundant freckles from a life in the sun. “I can’t say as I blame you, the road being long as it is. Where are you bound?”

  “Pil Neng Say.”

  “Ah, that’s a ways. I’m on the usual rounds, showing the little man to all his aunts and uncles, now he’s old enough to budge about. Have you come far already?”

  “From Carbern,” says Toania, who doesn’t know enough local geography to lie convincingly.

  “Ah,” says the girl, and looks away.

  “I’m only passing through,” Toania adds. “I’m from Pasavana.”

  “Hmm.” The girl turns to salute the local stationhall as they pass it. It is a small building, barely large enough to hold twenty monks at a guess. “That’s a ways, it is. On pilgrimage?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The girl stares suspiciously. “Not one of us, then?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The stare hardens to a scowl. “These carts are for pilgrims who can’t make it afoot.”

  “I did give a donation when I came aboard,” Toania protests. Several of the other passengers are giving her unfriendly looks.

  “Hmph. Mind you get off, and any more deserving come along in want of a seat.”

  “I’m open to learning more about Sojourners,” she offers, truthfully enough. When this doesn’t improve matters, she adds, “The Protectorate seems a much happier place than … up north.”

  At that the man at the end of the row in front of her spits fiercely out the window. “A’ course we are,” he barks. “Them’s quitters, up north. All lost heart and left the Way. Or tried. Damn fools don’t know there ain’t no stopping.”

  “How do you mean? Do you mean that they have to continue the discipline, whether they stay or go?”

  Several heads turn to give her patronizing looks, and the nursing mother explains with a tiny smile, “Everyone and everything is moving. Don’t you know that, at your age? Some go back, and some go forward, but there’s no stopping in one place. It’s not in nature.”

  The man at the food-stall said something similar. Toania ransacks her memory for what little she ever learned of Sojourner doctrine. “Meaning they can go on to a better world in their next life, or back to a worse. But they won’t come back to this one?”

  “Not just that,” huffs the girl, only slightly appeased. “All the world’s in motion. They do tell us it spins, ever so fast, and runs through the stars, quicker than any wind. And everything in it moves too, always and forever.”

  “So how do they stop what they started?” the man at the end of the row demands. “How’s that help, to leave the Way?”

  Toania holds up her hand to stay further lectures. “I think I understand you now. A little better, at least,” she adds, before they can correct her. “Thank you.” She has no desire to take sides in a theological argument, nor to defend the Wild Range more than she is being forced to already. Her fellow passengers remain disgruntled, but don’t press the issue further, condemning Toania to reflect on her situation.

  She has had more than forty waking hours to do that already, and once her initial rage passed the results were not promising. In fact, her circumstances are very nearly desperate. She sifts through her interview notes, once again, for clues she knows are not there:

  My mother always wanted the best for me. We were never wealthy, or even as comfortable as your family here. Our house was burned down by looters when I was two, so we took on a traveling life—me, my mother, and my two brothers.

  And your father?

  We lost him with the house, I think. I never knew him, and Mother didn’t like to talk about it. She was a washerwoman, and sometimes a house-cleaner. She did other things too, whatever would get us food or a roof for the night. But she wanted better for us, especially for me. She knew what it was like for a woman on the road. So she taught me my catechism very carefully, and as soon as I was old enough to serve—and to be in danger from men—she brought me to the stationhall, to offer me as a servant girl.

  All this is romantic enough, and Toania was annoyed to find, even as she was transcribing it, that as stories went the core of it was rather good. Eminently marketable, in fact, if she were allowed to tell it as she pleased. Nuthmi’s account of course had far too much angst in it for a life that was really no worse, and often much better, than thousands of other lives on the road in the early days of the Blemish. Much of her account will have to be cut, and blamed on the editor and limited page space.

  She skims on. Several pages lost to maundering over the terror of life as a young girl suddenly removed from her mother and forced to live among the turned for the first time. It seems even Noor’s famous Discipline did not render them totally safe, and from time to time they would lose their tempers and snap or swing at her for being too slow. Which is fair enough, but the completely wrong tone for a story meant to present the Wild Range as sympathetic. Nuthmi understood as much—eventually—but insisted on leaving at least some of this in, because it was what “really happened.”

  It is doubly appalling to be so completely and unjustly in the power of an utter naif.

  Up to that point, however, the story was salvageable. Toania could see a way to thread the needle, using Nuthmi’s mental and emotional journey as a symbol for the reader’s, from fear to acceptance. That is exactly what a Pasavanan industrialist wants to read: forward-thinking, challenging yet ultimately reassuring, and promising opportunities for growth. A friendly Wild Range might well buy imported coal, or finished goods. Sadly, all that was not to be.

  I knew he would change my life as soon as I saw him. Just the way he moved, he was so brave, so confident. He was turned himself, of course, and only fourteen, just a messenger from the men’s hall across the courtyard. Hai Gahn Ra, they called him. He spoke with me on his way out the door. Only a few words. It took me a moment to realize he was actually flirting with me, but it was so natural that I didn’t realize till much later how strange it was, that I didn’t mind at all.

  Horrid schoolgirl drivel, unusable, except by comparison to the utter disaster which followed a few minutes later:

  Our courtship, it lasted years. I took a while to accept it. But I was used to turned people by then. It wasn’t so scary. And whenever he was with me, I couldn’t feel unsafe. He could never frighten me. Never. It wasn’t him that frightened me, but his ideas. They were so different. I wasn’t used to being my own person. He taught me myself. In the end, I believed in him completely. So completely that I broke down the last barrier between us of my own free will, and gave him my love.

  It was at this point Toania had to interrupt the interview to solemnly inform her subject that the Obelisk was a respectable newspaper and absolutely would not print, under any circumstances, that an underaged girl had given anyone “her love.” Especially not when the recipient of said love was a monk sworn to celibacy, and the entire point of the act was to deliberately contract the Blemish. Nuthmi did not care to hear it.

  The rest of it is mostly public knowledge, and what is not is not surprising: a predictable pregnancy got the shameless trollop banished from the stationhall. Her lover followed her out in protest—Toania supposes this counts as honorable behavior, under the circumstances—Hai Gahn Ra became Hygaara, and so on. Nuthmi had no further role beyond deliberately bearing him several more tainted children. By that point Toania knew better than to suggest to her that her readers might find this behavior objectionable …

  She snaps the notebook shut.

  The story, considered alone, is still salvageable. That does not much concern her anymore. The ignorant servant girl and her seducer will be lonely, intelligent adolescents, inclined to question religious dogma under the influence of young, passionate love. Their unwarranted seizure of territory from a recognized state (and their mutual benefactor), only the quintessentially human pursuit of liberty and self-determination. The children will be more difficult, but she thinks she can make Nuthmi out to be an ordinary mother who cannot help her children’s deformity. There has been a fashionable mania for parenthood and the family in Pasavana of late, as in many other parts of Siocaea, and the need to protect children will excuse a great many sins. Defending this could, at the very least, be peddled as “provocative” or “courageous,” as opposed to “scandalous” or “shameless.”

  This is hardly the first time Toania has been cynical about her profession; the work itself invites it, if one has any sense at all. To be compelled into it is of course nauseating, and she silently swore she would bleed Hygaara white for the shame of it, somehow, even as she wrote down his woman’s words. There will be consequences for such trash appearing under her name. Very likely some of her sources will refuse to have anything further to deal with her. At worst, ages to come may remember her as a traitor to the human race. But even that does not trouble her nearly so much as it did as Papa drove her away from Brownwater, scattering a stingy handful of farewells behind them.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She can do this once, twice, thrice, maybe more. She might even be able to furnish them with some useful information for a time. But not indefinitely. Hygaara has no reason to ever let her go, or to consider her limitations. She will perform as he wishes, or the Lenlaias will suffer for it. Nor can she think of any way to extract them from the Wild Range; she might as well propose moving Brownwater stone by stone.

  What is she to do, then? Continue publishing his lies and spying for him until she no longer meets his standards of usefulness, or is caught and punished by someone else? She is at best an expendable asset from his perspective, to be used up and thrown out. If she is fortunate, she will be utterly discredited in some fashion that Hygaara or his demented slattern can believe is not her fault, and be left alone with the ruins of a career. She might move back in with the family, who will arrange her marriage to some third cousin who will mind a shop while she minds his children. She might show them the little book of cuttings, so they can see how their mother used to be someone anyone cared about.

  If she is very, very lucky—if she is not hanged for espionage, or sent to some workhouse prison to expunge her crimes with the prostitutes and sellers of stolen laundry—if Hygaara is merciful.

  There is only one other alternative. The Lenlaias cannot be moved to safety, and she cannot trust that she will succeed as a spy and propagandist indefinitely. But her family will be free again if Hygaara’s regime no longer exists to threaten them. If Toania can somehow, without being detected, engineer the destruction of the Wild Range, she will be free to live as she pleases once more. The thought is intensely appealing—to her pride, and to her sense of justice. But it would be exceedingly dangerous, and she has, as yet, no idea how it might be managed. Is it better to gamble all on one enormous stake, or wager a thousand times until she loses?

  “Hey. Stranger. Are you alright?”

  Toania blinks, and looks into the frowning freckled face of the nursing mother, who has just been to visit her family with no consequence worse than tired feet, and feels confident that one way or another, in this life or the next or the one after that, she will be in another, better, more decent world.

  But it hardly feels fair to hold her simplicity against her, and she seems sincere. So Toania answers her honestly: “I don’t know.”

  Toania arrives at Pil Neng Say at sundown two days later, utterly weary of the road, pilgrims, wagons, theological discussions, and strained metaphors for life as a journey. Five hundred miles still separate her from Marransheel, at least fifty from the port at Vomacia; she had not reckoned on the miserable slowness and discomfort of old-fashioned land travel when she decided on this detour.

  She can appreciate the remarkable accomplishments of Abbess Noor and her brothers and sisters—it was no trivial task to persuade such a substantial portion of the country to accept the leadership of turned men and women so soon after it descended into barbarism. She can respect the combination of relative poverty, limited access to coal, and religious scruples that kept them from building a proper rail network. None of that makes the road any shorter.

  The hall at Pil Neng Say is almost two centuries old, arrayed along traditional lines with a great paved courtyard, a set of facilities for monks on one side, for nuns on the other, and common productive property—barns, granaries, workshops—on the side opposite the entrance. The thriving town that has grown up to serve and profit from it it still keeps a respectful distance, a quarter-mile down the road.

  After her previous night’s quest, Toania knows better than to search its streets for an inn. Entertaining guests is not a courtesy but a sacred obligation for Sojourners, and nobody else in the Protectorate would dream of competing with the monks and nuns for the privilege—or with the wretched pilgrimage carts. One of yesterday’s was actually pulled by two gigantic monks, both completely turned and little more than animals in form and reason. This, evidently, was a spiritual exercise as well, and she was careful to hide her unease from her awestruck fellow-travelers.

  Toania feels a desperate homesickness, verging on panic.

  Another donation at the door gets her a clean cot in a bare room that smells only slightly of Blemish. Before turning in she kneels and offers a prayer to Neisu, watcher of the roads. She is not normally very pious, but at present she will accept any help she can get, and she trusts the gods who brought her fathers to this land over any belief system that produced the likes of Nuthmi and Hygaara.

  She closes her eyes, but sleep comes slowly. Every time she drifts away, a distant noise, real or imagined, wakes her again. The cell feels like a cage. After losing some unfathomed time turning about in her cot, she gets up to walk the halls, in the hope that total exhaustion will bring relief in the end. The corridor outside is cold, dark, and silent; Toania props her own door open, so the light from her window will mark the way back. She treads carefully, fearing to wake anything ill-tempered. Five minutes pass in this timid creeping before she spies a thin streak of moonlight. Another open door—another sleepless traveler? It is worth investigating.

  Her heart falls at the sound of clacking beads, audible from three doors down. She continues on anyway, and sees the prodigious outline of a nun sitting on the floor of her cell, counting off the beads for her discipline. This one is too far progressed to bear a habit, only a scarf twining around her furry shoulders. She is mostly like a bear, but with peculiar hard plates here and there—forehead, shoulders, the backs of her forepaws—something like a turtle’s shell.

  “May I help you?” The sister’s voice is something like a heavy chair being pulled across a hard floor. Toania jumps at the sound of it.

  “I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to stare, or disturb your meditation. I’m only taking a walk, is all. Can’t sleep.”

  “I am undisturbed,” the beast-nun assures her, and slides another bead through her fingers. “My name is Nan Sen Far. How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you,” she replies automatically, then adds, “Toania Lenlaia.” She doubts whether any of these monastics read foreign papers, and Sister Far does not comment on the name.

  “I am pleased to meet you. I cannot sleep either, so I engage in personal discipline. It helps me to sleep. But conversation with strangers is pleasant as well. I have not left this hall in some months. What is your business here?”

  “I’m only passing through, on my way to Marransheel. From the Wild Range,” she says, before Sister Far can ask. “I was visiting family there.”

  “But your speech does not match.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You do not have the accent of Marransheel, or the northeast coasts. You are from Pasavana.”

  “More or less, as it happens. Have you had Pasavanans here before?”

  “No. But I traveled widely, before I was Blemished. I visited Pasavana several times. The accent is quite distinctive.”

  “Ah. How long have you been here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Five years this autumn. We were mendicant performers, my husband and I and our friend. They played the pipe and drum, while I sang and danced. We were attacked by highwaymen outside Antantur. Our friend was killed outright, trying to resist, and I caught the Blemish from one of the bandits. My husband forsook me when he learned, and I came here.”

  She says it all very calmly. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Toania tells her. “Were you Sojourners already, then?”

  “Yes and no. The folk of the roads believe many things, and do not trouble over contradictions. I prayed to the Peyanni gods to lead me to a better world when I died, and consulted with soothsayers to tell me what was Nehm, when I met them.”

  “I’ve known many people to do the same,” Toania says.

  “But not many Blemished,” observes Sister Far. “I smell your fear.”

  She refuses to apologize. “There aren’t many Blemished in the west. I’m trying to get used to it.”

  “You are brave, and you love your family, to come in spite of fear. That will serve you well.”

  “I hope so,” she says. “Thank you. Do you usually meditate with the door open?”

  “You are not the first visitor I have attracted this way. I like to meet new people.”

  “So I see.” There is something disarming about the beast-woman’s calm, simple, direct speech. It is possible she is one of Szezek’s spies, but unlikely. Toania decides to take a modest risk. “Would you be upset if I asked you about your condition? I’ve never spoken at length with anyone like you.”

  “I have had four years to grow accustomed to it. I would be foolish to try and forget it. Ask what you please.”

  “How much time passed, between your catching it and your arrival here?”

  “I believe it was three months.”

  Toania does a quick calculation. “So you caught it in the summer of 380, more or less.”

  “Correct. My progression has been swift, in spite of the discipline. Its rate of progress can vary widely from person to person.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you touched?”

  “What? Oh, no, nothing like that.”

  “We can help you, if you have contracted the Blemish. My life is a good one. I do not regret coming here.”

  “You are very kind, but really, I am free of the Blemish as far as I know.”

  “But someone you know is not. You would not be asking such questions otherwise, I think.”

  “You are observant, aren’t you?” Cleverer than her blunt speech suggested, anyway. “It’s more that I am a naturally curious person in general.”

  “But not naturally forthcoming with strangers.”

  She smiles. “No. I suppose I’m not. But we in Pasavana don’t know much about the Blemish, you see, given our … approach to managing it.”

  “Please do not dissemble. It is not honest. If you do not wish to tell me your concerns in full, I will take no offense. I am a stranger to you.”

  “I suppose that’s fair. My apologies, Sister Far.”

  “Accepted.”

  “Don’t you get uncomfortable, sitting on the cold hard floor?” she asks, for lack of anything better to say, and because it is bothering her.

  “No. Fur is good padding, and a good insulator, and I have more fat about my body than I used to. It works well, since I no longer need to dance.”

  “You don’t need to, you say. But wouldn’t you like to, still?”

  “I used to. The desire has faded with the years, as my tastes shifted with my condition. Have you ever known a dog or a cat to dance?”

  “No.”

  “I have other pleasures now. When the urge takes me, I will ask the Abbess for personal leave, and set out on a pilgrimage. My body will bear me for miles at a run, and I can visit all my friends about the Protectorate. It is a good life.”

  “I suppose I would enjoy that too, if I could exercise so vigorously.” If Sister Far is a spy, she plays a very canny and patient game, staying up at night on the off-chance someone will approach her. It is worth the risk of another question. “May I ask you your thoughts on the Wild Range?”

  “You may, but I have never been there, and have little to say of it. It would be impolitic to go so far; they are not friendly to monks or nuns.”

  “But they say they are still part of the Protectorate.”

  “They say, and they are. They pay a regular tithe. That is sufficient for the Abbess, and so for me.”

  “A tithe?”

  “Yes. I have seen it. Nuthmi comes to deliver it in person, every month.”

  “Really.”

  “This interests you?”

  “I didn’t realize your relationship with the Wild Range was so … convivial. They have a poor reputation with the ordinary people of the Protectorate.”

  “It is not a secret, that they still pay tithe,” says Sister Far. “I do not inquire about the details, but some of the others talk. Prior Pao has told us it is a matter between the Abbess, Hygaara, and Nuthmi. If she chooses to give them lenient treatment, it is not our concern.”

  “And you are not concerned yourself?”

  “I am not. My life is my own. I have no reason to care for two people who left this stationhall almost ten years ago. I have never met Hygaara, or spoken to his woman.”

  “That’s a very practical way of looking at it.” She yawns. “But now I think I might finally be be ready to sleep. Would it be all right if I came to see you again, some day? You’re a fascinating person to talk to.”

  “If the Abbess allows it, I have no objection. I wish you well with whatever is troubling you. Good night, Toania Lenlaia.” She is already hoisting her beads to resume the discipline.

  “Good night, Sister Far. And thank you.”

  She returns to her cell, and sleeps with a smile on her face.

  Toania wakes with the morning tocsin, reluctantly but with no regrets for her lost hours. She can sleep on the road. She asks the Prior of the Roads how she might get to Vomacia; the sister—a tall woman with a delicate pair of horns on her forehead and a tail swishing out the back of her habit—tells her she will make arrangements. While she is waiting Toania makes inquiries for the College with the librarian, who has no technical manuals of any age, and no interest in selling anything beyond common devotional literature. Toania is not surprised.

  She is, however, surprised when the Prior calls her to the front gate and sees a modest two-wheeled hand-cart, suitable for gathering baskets of fruit, stuffed with pillows and cushions. Standing by at the handle is a shaggy figure eight feet tall and four across the shoulders, covered in dark brown fur, with black armor plates across forehead and shoulders and down her back. Even by daylight her full stature is terrifying, and not till she rumbles, “Good morning, Miss Toania,” does she recognize Sister Nan Sen Far.

  Toania looks at once to the Prior of the Roads, who explains, “We do not expect another transport to Vomacia until tomorrow. Fortunately, Sister Far has decided to start another of her personal pilgrimages today, and is willing to begin it with the stationhall there.”

  “That is very fortunate,” Toania agrees, keeping her face and voice cheerful. It beggars belief that they do not have daily traffic between the capital of the Protectorate and its nearest and largest port. But it is equally absurd to suggest that they would need such a ruse to do her harm if they wanted to.

  “I felt the desire for the roads move in me again, after our conversation last night,” Sister Far explains.

  “Then I am glad to have taken the time to talk with you,” Toania says, then turns to the Prior and says, “Thank you very much, both of you, for so thoughtfully arranging this.” She reaches inside her coat for her purse, and is not surprised to see the offer of a donation waved down. “Very well then, let’s be off, Sister Far.”

  She takes care to secure herself and her bag in the cushions as Sister Far grips the long loop of rope attached to the front handlebar. The acceleration, as expected, is astonishing, and she very nearly falls out the back as they start off. She is most thankful for the cushions, which do little enough to compensate for the utter lack of a suspension as the cart rattles and bounces out the gate, through the town, and down the hillside on the main road to Vomacia. Sister Far was not boasting; she keeps up a steady gallop on her wide hooves for the better part of an hour by Toania’s reckoning, before pausing for a rest and a drink at a convenient pond.

  As there are only a few straying sheep at the poolside with them, Toania makes free to ask, “What would you have done if I’d declined, and seen the regular wagon drive up two hours later?”

  “We would have admitted a mistake, and sent you on,” Sister Far answers unabashed, before dipping her snout back in the water.

  “Very well. You know who I am, then?”

  The nun finishes her undignified gulping, sits up, and wipes her chin before answering, “You are Toania Lenlaia, a Pasavanan traveling to Marransheel. Are you anything more?”

  “I’m a journalist for The Obelisk.” It is nothing a spy would fault her for confessing. “And you?”

  “A nun. You are a curious person. We are also curious. You can go places we cannot, and find answers.”

  Oh no. “And why should I give any answers to you?”

  “Because we have wondered the same things. And we can answer some of your questions as well.”

  “Such as?”

  Sister Far cocks her enormous head. “Trust is a difficult thing to establish.”

  “So it is,” says Toania, not budging.

  Far’s snout wrinkles. “Do you know that Abbess Noor is failing?”

  “Failing how? Is the Blemish claiming her at last?” It would hardly be surprising if it had, after somewhere close to forty years.

  “No. Bodily, she is the same as ever. But her mind is weaker than it was. Not from the Blemish, but from age. She is seventy-four. She grows forgetful and confused.”

  “I see.” Tal Tem Noor is one of a very small group of people—she might be rivaled by Murregamua in the Republic, Eyanna Vogh in the mountains, and perhaps Mayor Vinieri for Pasavana—who could be honestly said to have founded new nations out of the chaos in the wake of the Blemish. If she is losing her wits, that would be far more impressive news than an interview with Hygaara’s trull. “How long has this been happening?”

  “For several years. But it is worsening faster lately. It cannot be concealed for much longer. Already the Priors decide in her name.”

  “But … you say Nuthmi pays her tithe in person, every month? How does Nuthmi not realize this?”

  “She must. But she keeps silent.”

  “As you do not.” Sister Far does not challenge the statement. “Why? Why do you share this with me? Because I asked a few questions last night?”

  “There is little danger in telling you. The truth will come out soon regardless.”

  “But why me? It cannot be chance that I happened to speak with you, and you happened to be the one person ready to tell your prior this.”

  “I told you, I have kept my door open for some time. I, and some others among my sisters. I do enjoy speaking with new people. Sometimes there is benefit for the hall, as well.”

  “Is that all?”

  “You are not the first we have asked for help in this way. Most are flattered, and happy to cooperate. You are frightened. You were frightened even before you spoke to me last night. I do not know why, and I do not ask. But I do ask if you will tell us when you find answers to your questions.”

  “That depends on what it is you would like to know.”

  “Nuthmi and Hygaara. You are concerned about them. They frighten you, you tense at their names. And they frighten us. Why do they buy our toleration in this way? Why do they not betray us?”

  “I had wondered that myself. Your … priors don’t know?”

  “I do not know what the priors know. They ask me to ask you. For a reason, I assume.”

  Toania looks at the brutish face. It is friendly, as a dog’s face might be friendly. But that means nothing, where trust is concerned. But she cannot think of a reason why Nuthmi would concoct such a convoluted story to trap her. And she cannot hope to accomplish anything on her own. “I will consider it,” she says.

  “That is enough. Let us continue on our way, Miss Toania.”

  They arrive at Vomacia, fifty miles from the capital, in late afternoon. Nan Sen Far wishes her a safe journey and leaves her at the door to the local hall, giving no sign for the world to see that they are any more than casual acquaintances. Toania, for all that she has several new bruises, is delighted with the speed of her ride, and limps down to the harbor in high hopes.

  There are several sailing ships at anchor, all no doubt very respectable. She ignores them all in favor of a small and dirty tramp steamer, whose captain affirms its next port will be Marransheel, and that he would be delighted to take on a paying passenger. Toania glances at the flag—Rafadian. A common ruse for smugglers daring the Union’s embargo on trade with the Wild Range; the joke goes that one in ten Rafadian ships on the sea knows the way to Amrafada. They all hope the Union will hesitate to attack its patron. The flag is just enough to force them to board, rather than sink on sight.

  Toania would never dream of taking this boat north, but a trip to Marransheel will be safe enough; whatever they have on board will be stamped Vomacian, and the Union cutters will not bother. A smugglers’ boat will be fast. She is ready to be anywhere that does not smell like Blemish.

  Two uneventful days later, she steps ashore at Marransheel, so glad to be back to civilization that she almost welcomes the renewed indignity of personal inspection. Her first move is to wire the office that she is alive, has spoken with the effective Queen of the Wild Range, and has obtained a lengthy interview. Then she retreats to the cafe across the road from the station, to enjoy her first cup of proper Dundanite coffee in a very long time.

  A boy comes running out of the station with her reply in less than fifteen minutes, just as she is draining her mug and thinking about spending a bit extra on first-class tickets back to Pasavana tomorrow. The boy thrusts a slip into her hands, takes the bit of copper she gives him with a tip of his cap, and retreats. It is quite short, and she reads it in an instant, feeling surprised and more than a little indignant when it makes no mention of the Wild Range at all:

  EMERGENCY SESSION CONVENTION TOMORROW RE: TEFEIA RAID. ATTEND & REPORT.