Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change.

Azenkar’s East Harbor was a shade of the place Isa had known as a child. The traders and fishermen were fewer now, their voices scattered instead of forming the thick blanket of sound they once had. A tang of decay underlaid the smell of fresh fish—wood planks rotting, dead fish and bodies left too long with no one to clean them up. Gulls dominated many of the docks, squabbling over fish and stolen produce, and a pair of lappet-faced vultures perched on an abandoned boat. The spectral human-sized scavengers didn’t belong here in the city’s interior, but they scarcely seemed out of place among the scattered bones and despondent boatmen.

And this was just one of many reasons Isa had fled the City of Scholars when he fled Spensa. A Krellish harbor in disrepair was sad in an expansive, impersonal way. These Azenkari docks were where Isa had first seen a galley and marveled at its size, where he and Nazaru used to sneak out to get into trouble. Seeing it so reduced took something from inside Isa—or it would have, if there had been anything left to take. The confrontation with Spensa had left him empty, a strange being, bounded by the sting of fresh tattoos but containing nothing.

Before the plague, a boat like the Waning Ibis would have been hard to pick out among the harbor’s many great vessels. Now, the Krellish galley stood tall and immaculate among the tired scrubbed wood of so many fishing boats. A fleck of gold caught the sun as it moved back and forth along the dock-facing rail—Damored pacing the deck.

Isa had been furious with the Sazuman when he woke that morning. In the wake of his encounter with Spensa, he had nearly forgotten that rage, but it came crackling back into the emptiness when he crossed the gangplank and met Damo’s eyes.

“Hey.” She paused in her pacing to smile as though happy to see him—as though she hadn’t been lying to him since she tracked him down in Krell. “Success?”

“Define success.”

“Well, it looks like you got your tattoos fixed up?” she said with a nod to the bandages on his hands.

“I did.”

“And Captain Xabres managed to pick up a fresh crew nice and quick. Now, if Nath would just show up.” She resumed pacing, Tapia scampering at her heels. “He was supposed to be here five hours ago.”

“You’re sure you didn’t lie to me about him too?”

“What?”

“Or maybe you didn’t,” Isa said. “Maybe Nath just decided against going in on the job with an incompetent liar.”

Damo had come to a stop again. “The fuck’s your problem?”

“When were you going to tell me that you went to Nazaru first?”

“Oh…” the Sazuman’s brow furrowed as she clearly tried to discern how Isa could possibly have learned of her deceit. “How did—?”

“You answer first. When were you going to tell me?”

“Obviously, I wasn’t,” she said impatiently. “You’re clearly fragile and I didn’t think it was important.”

“Turns out to be a little important.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, we have competition for the bounty—and they’re ahead of us.”

“What?”

“Apparently, after you told Nazaru about the job, he decided he’d beat you to it. Did you realize that?”

Damo was too proud to say ‘no’ but ‘no’ was clearly the answer. “He said he had business in the Wilds and went west in the morning.”

“Alright.” Isa opted to ignore the implications attached to the words ‘in the morning.’ “Well, either he faked you out or the reason he went west was to get in touch with the mage he used to break into the Temple Inkarnam and steal sacred texts.”

“He what?”

“He and some foreign mage used weird magic to blow a hole in the Temple Inkarnam. They ran off with a bunch of vipers and our religion’s founding fucking text—this was after he unsuccessfully tried to recruit my Temple sister, Kendiri, to go with him. So, great job picking your—”

“That two-faced son of a hyena!”

Damored slammed a fist into the rail of the Waning Ibis, making Tapia start and Captain Xabres call, “Hey! Easy!”

“Where the hell does he get off? He thinks some random foreign mage is a better hunting companion than I am?”

Isa made an indignant sound. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t sympathize—you know, considering that you went to Nazaru before me.”

“Oh, grow up, Isa! He was in Azenkar when I came back upriver. I happened to find him before I found you. I’d have taken any Inkarnam.”

“Good. That demonstrates great judgment.”

“Alright, I wasn’t going to say it—and this isn’t personal—but he’s a much better tumble than you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

This was close to the bottom of the list of things Isa wanted to hear ever, but Damo fucking knew that. She’d made a colossal blunder and now she was trying to deflect by taking an easy shot at Isa’s pride.

Well, the joke was on her yet again. Isa didn’t have any pride left to wound.

“I mean sure, he doesn’t quite have your muscle, but he’s much more open to experimentation. He does this thing with his—”

“What I want to know is how you could be so stupid!”

“Come again?” Damo raised her eyebrows at him, the first note of danger in her voice. Isa didn’t care. The devastation of the snake pits, all those bitten apprentices, Kendiri’s butchered mamba, the stolen Herpendium… all that was her fault for trusting Nazaru with sensitive information and then letting him stroll out the door.

“Did you not understand who you were dealing with at all?” Isa demanded. “Do you understand what you’ve done?”

“What was I supposed to do when he refused? Kill him?”

“Would have saved us a lot of trouble. Now I have to do it. You’re a spy, aren’t you?"

“Ex-spy.”

“Well, fuck, I’m starting to understand why!” Whatever common sense should have stopped Isa from picking a fight with a tactomancer had deserted him. What did it matter if the monster at the end of the river ate him or Damo knocked his head off? “Do you fuck up everything you touch this bad?”

Damored’s expression barely changed. Sometimes, a fighter didn’t react immediately to a mortal wound, but those words had cut deep. Isa should have pulled back then if he wanted to live. But he didn’t, particularly, so instead of withdrawing the barb, he drove it home.

“It’s no wonder your guild threw you out.”

Damo had gone very still. Her voice was low with the promise of violence when she spoke again. “What do you want from me?”

“An apology would be nice.”

“I don’t apologize. It rarely gets me anywhere.” She rolled up her sleeves. “So, if you’re that mad, take your best shot. You know what happens next.” I paint this boat with your insides, was the unspoken end of the threat.

Maybe this wouldn’t be a bad way to go, in a quick splatter of brains across the deck. It would spare Spensa the agony of hoping for another six months or however long it took her to realize he wasn’t coming back from Lothmedi. On Isa’s end, it would surely be less painful than death by krait or Krellish tradelord.

“Come on, Inkarnam. Take your shot.”

Isa’s hand curled into a fist, drew back—

when a pair of boots thudded to the deck, making both mercenaries start. As the newcomer straightened to his full height, Tapia leapt onto Damo’s shoulders and Isa felt his mouth fall open.

Nath of the Iron Valley was as the songs described him, an anachronistic, anomalous mix of the foreign and the familiar. His ragged cloak would not have looked amiss on the shoulders of a Wildermyn while his broad-brimmed hat brought to mind a Krellish cattle wrangler and his black leather tunic looked more Sazuman than anything else. The giant sword that formed the crux of Nath’s legend was mostly obscured by the strangest lute Isa had ever seen. The instrument was oversized—though not as dramatically so as the sword—with six strings as silvery as the man’s godmarks.

Isa would have firmly believed that he was dreaming, his mind conjuring a picture stitched together from many legends. But legends didn’t age, and this Nath was older than the raven-haired swordsman from the songs. Of course, he was. Isa had been hearing stories of Nath since he was a child, meaning that the man would be at least in his forties. Well, he was… and it showed. Threads of gray colored his jet-black dreadlocks and wrinkles had just begun to gather at the corners of his eyes.

“Let’s row!” the legend bellowed, his guttural voice startling a gaggle of gulls from the prow.

Captain Xabres looked up from where he had been playing cards with an oarsman. “What?”

“I said row, Sunburn! I’m here now. Let’s get this boat movin’!”

The captain’s godmarks went pale as he recognized the infamous foreign mercenary. “Is… M-Madam Damored…” he said with dawning horror, “is this the passenger you were waiting for?”

“Yeah,” Damo said with a sweet smile. “Sorry I didn’t tell you, but now that he’s aboard, you’ll probably want to do what he says. In the interest of keeping the daylight and—you know—your head.”

“You heard the lady,” Nath smiled. “If you please, Captain.”

Plainly unsure what else to do, Xabres stumbled to his feet and stammered, “U-um… Raise the anchor! Oars! Oars, everyone! We’re leaving!”

“Nice boat you scored here.” Nath ran a hand appreciatively over the burnished rail as Xabres and crew scrambled to man the oars. “She as fast as she looks?”

“Why?” Damo asked. “Are you being followed?”

“God no, Freckles. What do you take me for?”

“Just asking. You seem a little ruffled.”

And for all Isa’s anger, he was grudgingly impressed at how easily Damo not only spoke to the last metalmancer but questioned him—like they had known each other for years.

“Damored Han-Salis, how dare you!” Nath shot back in mock indignation, then shifted seamlessly to a language Isa only belatedly recognized through the metalmancer’s coarse accent as Sazuman.

The two exchanged quips in the sweetly tumbling language before Nath’s gaze slid to Isa and he switched back to Hunter’s Pidgin to say, “Speakin’a liabilities, who’s the boytoy?”

“Isa’s not a tumble.” Damo’s smile evaporated as she too looked at Isa. “He’s a mercenary—and chronic pain in the ass.”

“Somethin’ wrong with his jaw?”

Isa didn’t realize his mouth was still hanging open until Nath flicked a finger beneath his chin and his teeth clicked together.

“Ah, no, he’s fine.” The metalmancer held out a hand. “Nath Vendan, last mage of the Iron Valley.”

“I-I know who you are,” Isa stuttered.

“‘Course you do,” the outlaw beamed and clasped Isa’s forearm. Nath’s features were rougher than any Riverlander’s, as though cut straight from mountain rock, and his arm also seemed to transcend flesh, his grip like iron and his muscles unyielding stone under Isa’s fingers. “So…” He looked from Isa to Damo. “If you two ain’t goin’ at it, why do I get the distinct feelin’ I’ve just walked in on a lover’s quarrel?”

“You didn’t,” Damo glowered.

Nath raised an eyebrow. “Really? Coulda sworn one’a you was about to take a swing at the other.”

“Isa can explain, since he’s the one with the bug up his ass. I’m going to go row.” And she stalked off down the stairs. There were raised voices from below and a moment later, an Azenkari rower tumbled up the stairs to sprawl on the deck.

“You riled her,” Nath observed, sounding almost impressed. “That’s no easy thing. What’d you say your name was again?”

“Isa Inkarnam, sir.”

“Inkarnam…” Nath eyed him with new interest, taking in his braid, cassock, and bandages. “You’re a pagan mercenary?”

“Is that a problem?” Isa asked with more bravado than was probably wise, caught between the reflexive desire to defend his religion and the reality that Nath could kill him with a twitch of his fingers.

“I’ve met a few mages of your cult,” Nath said, “in Trestantia, a long time ago.”

“Really?”

“Well, met is the nice way of putting it. They were sent to kill me and I skinned them, first the scaly skin, then the not. So, what’s your thing, darlin’? You turn into a giant monitor lizard? A crocodile?”

“N-no. The Trestantian Inkarnai are the ones who specialize in lizards and crocodilians. I’m Azenkari.”

“Ah. So, let me guess your animal. Springbok… Prairie dog… somethin’ Damored wants to use as monster bait… Mongoose?”

“Reticulated python.”

The metalmancer let out a low whistle. “Sexy. And on-theme. I see why Damored’d want you along. Although, I have to ask, Mr. Python, is this awful sexual tension between you and the Sazuman gonna persist for the rest of the trip, ‘cause—”

“It’s not sexual.”

“Apologies. Is this infantile schoolyard tension gonna persist? ‘Cause I can find a camel in the next town and meet you kids there. Probably be better company.”

Isa couldn’t argue with that. Still, “You might not want to do that. Thanks to Damored, we have a bit of a time crunch.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have competition for the Lothmedi bounty, another mercenary team—well, duo, I guess, if you don’t count all the stolen snakes.”

Nath chuckled, mirth crinkling the corners of his eyes. “This job just keeps gettin’ more interesting. But you’re with me now, son. Competition ain’t a problem.”

“What if they’re too far ahead of us?” Isa asked, trying to be realistic. “They probably left Azenkar days ago. We might get there and find no bounty to collect.”

“You think I don’t know that, kiddo?” Nath laughed. “I mean, a tower-sized snake? Really? I don’t need to tell you that’s a scam.”

“Then… why are you coming with us?”

“‘Cause I owe Damored one—or two, or three, at this point—and I’ve been meanin’ to get down to that jungle for my own reasons.”

“Your own reasons?” What could a mercenary possibly want at the end of the River?

“There’s somethin’ I’m lookin’ for… somethin’ I lost. What about you, Inkarnam? What’re you lookin’ for?”

Isa shrugged and figured he may as well answer honestly. “A place to die?”

Nath considered him for a moment, then scoffed. “No, you’re not.”

“Excuse me?”

“Flirtin' with death and actually wanting her are two different things, my dear. Take it from someone who has, frankly, far too much experience with this particular courtship. This pickin' around things that'll actually kill you for things that might but probably not—that’s flirtin'. Damored, for instance… probably not gonna kill you. A giant snake that doesn’t exist… another prime example of a thing that won’t actually kill you.”

“I—”

“It’s no bad thing,” Nath added. “You’re awfully young to be sure about somethin' like death.”

“What if I am sure?”

“Oh, then I’ll help you out.”

“What?”

“As in kill you.” Nath reached back to grip the handle of his sword. “It’ll be so quick, Inkarnam. You’ll barely feel a thing. What do you say?”

For the second time that day, Isa’s mouth hung open. Someone on the deck gasped when Nath’s hand closed on the hilt and started gibbering a prayer. The words were in Krellish and for Ostia, which was the only reason Isa knew they weren't issuing from his own mouth.

“As I thought.” Nath took his hand from the sword. “You’re not really lookin’ for death, are you? You’re lookin’ for somethin’ else. A reason not to die, maybe? Just like the rest of us. Speakin’a which, have you seen a man with a metal arm?”

Isa shook his head at the non-sequitur. “A… what?”

“I ask everyone I meet. He’d be a hair shorter than you, bluish-slate Daraxean godmarks, mopiest little frown you ever saw… though you could give him a run. Do Inkarnai not smile?”

“No—I mean, no as in I don’t think I’ve seen your guy. I’ve met some people with metal teeth. That’s it.”

“That’s about what I figured,” Nath sighed and caught a passing oarsman by the arm. “What about you, darlin’? Ever seen a man with a metal arm?”

Despite standing as tall as Nath, the man absolutely blanched with terror. “No. S-sorry, Master Nath Vendan. Please… d-don’t kill me.”

“Aww,” Nath grinned with all his teeth, “since you asked so nice, I suppose I’ll keep a lid on the bloodlust just this once.” He clapped the quaking man on the shoulder and shoved him on his way. “And what about you, Captain Sunburn?”

“It—um—it’s Xabres,” stammered the captain, who had the vaguely-ill look of a man who was just coming to grips with the reality that his boat was under the control of three dangerous mercenaries.

“That’s what I said, Cap. You seem like a man of the world.”

“I do?” Xabres’ fear faded for a moment as he looked faintly pleased with himself.

“You ever seen a Daraxean with a metal arm?”

Captain Xabres managed to stammer a “no” and several stumbling apologies before Nath waved him off.

“Well, this is gonna be a fun boat ride.” Nath rolled his eyes as a pair of crewmen crossed the deck, giving him a wide berth. Like at any moment his sword might jump out of its sheath and kill them all—which Isa supposed it might.

“Are you going to do this for the rest of the trip?” Isa asked. “Just scare them into rowing all the way to Lothmedi?” If anyone could sustain the intimidation factor that long, it would be Nath, but Isa still had his doubts it would last them the weeks to the end of the River.

“Suppose I could,” Nath grimaced, “but, fuck me, that sounds boring! You want to spend a month plus on a hostage boat, Inkarnam?”

“I don’t know,” Isa said, “but is there any other option, now that they know who you are?”

“You know, my reputation really seems to get oversimplified in the tellin’, don’t it? You make your name dismemberin' fools, people get to thinkin’ that’s the only thing you’re good at.”

Isa had no idea what the northerner was talking about but retired to his cabin without pressing him further.

The Waning Ibis moved fast, but they had ultimately lost most of the daylight. The vessel barely made it out of Azenkar before they had to drop anchor for the night. Isa had just shed his boots and weapons belt when the music started. First, it was just a rippling tickle of strings, but it picked up with each measure.

Isa knew he had heard the tune before his mind called up the words. It was the Ballad of Corrath. The song had been banned in Krell and subsequently in Azenkar when Isa was young, so the notes brought him back to his childhood, when bounty hunting had been a tantalizing dream. He could only hear the melody, twanging on strange strings, but memory made words from every measure:

The child was born, of love, amid people who lived off the land
Until a bonelord of Krell vowed he’d have that land and make it all his own
And took that little village, took the child’s father, and took his mother too,
Made the child a slave for the killers of his kin and the destroyers of his town,
The destroyers of his town…

’Twas then, for love, that the child vowed, to one day have that bonelord’s blood.
Ten years in Krell’s pits made him master of the axe, a killer without peer.
Skill brought him an axe of magic mammoth bone, to cleave men as he willed.
He trained with the bonelords and served at their heels for ten long years,
In silent patience, for ten long years…

Until at last, for love, he had grown great enough to make his return.
To that town, where he butchered those who’d held his kin in bondage all those years,
And when the bonelords came to staunch the slaughter, he butchered them as well.
Red with victory, he turned to face his people, but they hid from him in fear
Ostia pity the gentle souls, they hid from him in fear…

Corrath, for love, had become a creature that no one could love in return.
So bloodied, he turned from the town for which he had given flesh and pain,
Turned and faded into the Wilds, too hard to live and too hard to die,
He wanders still, never to love nor cry freedom to Krell once again.
Never to love nor cry freedom to Krell once again…

So, brother bards, for love and Corrath’s sake, sing of the axe that was Krell’s bane.
And, brother bards, for love and Corrath’s sake, cry freedom to Krell once again!

Then, out on the deck, Nath of the Iron Valley began to sing.

Isa knew it was Nath from the first note. If Riverlanders, Wildermyn, and Sazumans sang like water, this was stone—husky and low in the throat, in places smooth, in places ragged, as layered and varied as a mountain range.

Like water drawn into a valley, Isa found himself pulled out of his cabin toward the sound. Captain Xabres and a few of the oarsmen stood on the deck, similarly entranced, though none seemed willing to approach the metalmancer. They stood still and tense, like wildebeest eyeing a watering hole stitched with the backs of crocodiles. Isa was miles past fearing teeth of bone or metal, so he crossed the deck and sat on a crate by the metalmancer.

Nath wasn’t singing the lyrics in Krellish, Azenkari, or any language Isa understood. The scraping throaty sounds also ruled out Sazuman or any Wilder dialect he knew of…

“I’ve never heard that language before,” Isa said as Nath lapsed into an interlude.

“You wouldn’t have,” Nath smiled, lightning fingers never stumbling on the strings. “No one speaks it anymore.”

Isa understood then that the language was Garanese, Nath’s native tongue.

“Truth be told, I’m fudgin’ a lotta the lyrics… but who’s gonna know?” Nath gave Isa a wink and lay into the next verse.

Night had changed the metalmancer’s godmarks. They didn’t glow in the dark like a Sazuman’s, but they caught glimmers of flame and moonlight like the flat of a blade. Those subtle lights moved like phantom tears on his cheeks.

Isa had been a child when the Valley of Garan had fallen to Daraxes—barely old enough to know that nations existed beyond the Riverlands—but he remembered the event causing chilled eddies of chatter among the adults. That thick soup of voices at the harbor had been flavored with whispers.

“Did you hear what those crazy northerners have done? Daraxes went and destroyed its nearest neighbors… Zemida, Preis, and Garan, all wiped off the map!”

Affairs from beyond the mountains usually didn’t concern the people of the Riverlands. It was such a far-off place that to most, it would only ever exist in fanciful songs. But the sheer number of deaths had prompted somber discussion, grounding fantasy with dread.

“One prays to Ostia that it isn’t true… Two million people dead in a war that lasted one year.”

“Don’t know that it was much of a war. That’s what I’d call a massacre. Plus, I heard it was three million dead.”

Isa remembered asking Elder Thrask multiple times about the claims he had overheard because he could barely wrap his little head around a number like a hundred—let alone a million, which was not even a word he had heard before.

“A million is this.” Elder Thrask had taken zir teaching chalk and scratched the number in Daraxean numerals—Riverland numerals didn’t count higher than nine hundred and ninety-nine—“In terms of deaths… a million deaths is every war ever fought between Riverlanders, Sazumans, and all the tribes of the Wilds. Combined, all these wars come to about a million deaths.”

“But two million?” Isa had asked in a small voice.

Elder Thrask had shaken zir head. “We’ve never seen violence on that scale on this side of the mountains.”

“No survivors,” was a phrase that had floated around the city. “Every man, woman, and child slaughtered.”

“I heard there were survivors, but they’ve all been made to renounce their god and their language. They’re citizens of Daraxes now.”

“I heard they were all put to death.”

“No, stupid, just the metalmancers. The metalmancers were all put to death.”

All except Nath Vendan.

The thought seized Isa’s throat with strange sorrow, and perhaps the encounter with Spensa hadn’t left him quite as empty as he had hoped; as Nath sang, he went to the rail on the pretense of looking out into the darkness—so that no one would see him cry.

He didn’t, in the end, though it took several slow breaths.

The music hadn’t stopped, which was why Isa didn’t notice Nath sliding up beside him. He only realized the metalmancer was there when that guttural voice said, “I talked to Damored.”

Isa started and looked over his shoulder to find Captain Xabres tentatively strumming Nath’s lute, trying to find the chords he wanted.

“She tells me you lost a daughter to the plague.”

Unable to speak, Isa turned away from the Nath, afraid that if he met that sharp gaze, it would slide into him like blades and peel back the skin.

At their backs, the oarsmen had broken out a drum and flute and raised a river shanty:

Upon a gray and colder morrow,
As I walked ‘long Belzadon Bay,
I met a silver gull in sorrow,
Moaning a song too sad to play.

Sang he, “my love dwells ‘yond the Middle Sea,
On shores no ship can ever reach,
But if I were these waves to fly,
Ere landing I would surely die.”

“I had a daughter once…” Nath said and Isa looked up in surprise. He wouldn’t have thought that Nath could have any children, given what the rumors claimed… “Headstrong, insufferable brat. Just like her dad.”

“I’m sorr—”

“Don’t,” Nath said and for just a second, something like pain flickered through his easy expression. “Don’t be. It was my doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything the songs claim I am—a heretic, a butcher, a traitor, a monster… I am all of those things, Inkarnam, in the most damning ways you can imagine. If you have pity in that little heart of yours, it’s not for me.”

That threw Isa. When he thought of becoming a monster, he thought of a slide into reptilian apathy, ceasing to feel all things, but Nath clearly hadn’t. No unfeeling creature could joke, and smile, and sing as this man did.

“You said that the songs about you were reductive.”

“Of my skills, Inkarnam, not my misdeeds. God Ascended, if the bards only knew half of those…”

“On the subject of bards,” Isa said, desperate to change the topic of conversation, “I’ve never heard one mention your magic lute.”

“It’s called a guitar, kiddo, and it ain’t magic. That’s called talent. Only magic I do is this...” Nath pointed to the empty air before him and a line of silver rose to hover there— a needle a little longer than the metalmancer’s index finger. It vaguely resembled the tattoo needles the Inkarnai used, though its handle was intricately carved with foreign animal shapes one didn’t see in Riverland crafts.

As the needle turned slowly at Nath’s fingertip, Isa noted a tag rune—a Daraxean numeral fifty—carved into the end of the handle. That must have been how Nath controlled the little piece of steel; somewhere in the complex language of some spell, that tag rune was connected to his synaptic map, allowing him to move it with his mind. Isa knew that there were many metal pieces written into Nath’s spell but… his eyes tracked back to the little numeral glinting in the moonlight. Fifty?

One mind couldn’t master that many objects at once, could it? Isa imagined that would be like shape-shifting his human mind into a creature with fifty limbs… virtually impossible. Then again, there had to be a reason Nath had lived when all the other Garanese metalmancers had been hunted down…

Upon a gray and colder morrow,
As I walked the banks of Tisadne,
I met a fisherman in sorrow,
Moaning a song too sad to play.

Lifting a hand, Nath gently flicked the end of the needle. It spun in place like the needle of a compass.

“The things the bards sing about the metalmancers,” Isa said, “about your people… Is it true that the Daraxeans killed them all?”

“All the dumb ones,” Nath grinned.

Sang he “my love is married off
To a lord of the towers above,
But if the tradelord she denies,
Ere sunup he will see her die.”

“Tell me how you do that,” Isa whispered as the spinning needle slowed.

“How I do what? Metalmancy?”

“Tell me how you smile. After all of it… how do you still laugh?”

“At a certain point, the sheer volume becomes a kind of fucked-up inside joke between you and God—or in your case Goddess—or no!” Nath snapped his fingers. “Yours is the religion with the ten imaginary friends!”

“Seven,” Isa said, “and they’re not im—”

“Point is, you gotta laugh at a good inside joke.”

There were Inkarnai who laughed with Aer, Theid, Alkem, even Ever, Spirit of Death… Naturally, they tended to be those that were comfortable laughing at themselves. That had never been Isa.

Upon a gray and colder morrow,
When off the Wilder road I’d strayed,
I met a wanderer in sorrow,
Moaning a song too sad to play.

Sang he, “my love dwells ‘yond the Sands,
‘Mid the barrows of a distant land,
But if I were the Veldt to ride,
Ere sundown I would surely die.”

“The real trick,” Nath said finally, “is understandin' that the world is big without lettin' that throw you off the small things. The worst mistake a man can make is gettin' himself so distracted by the huge and insurmountable that he forgets that even the biggest things are made of small pieces. That was Corrath’s mistake… It was mine. You wanna know how I do it?”

He caught the spinning needle and held it between his middle and index fingers. “Narrow your world to a few small, small things. A few pieces of metal. Six little steel strings. That’s the secret, Inkarnam. To the metalmancy and the smile.”

“I don’t understand,” Isa said.

“Simply put, Danger Noodle, if the only thing in your hands is your guitar, you bind the world in its strings and play until the tune is done… and you can move on to the next song.”

When set he out, I asked him “why?”
Sang the gull, “I’ve nowhere else to fly.”

“Here,” Nath said as the river shanty wrapped up, “I’ll show you.”

Crossing the deck, he reclaimed his guitar from Captain Xabres and took a seat between the drummer and flutist. Both men started, looking like they wanted to bolt. Then Nath touched the strings and they went still.

That first chord was so haunting and so utterly strange, that they had no choice but to stop and listen. Unlike the Ballad of Corrath, a Krellish tune that Nath had adapted to his native tongue, this song was fully foreign, the deep lilt and burn of its melody something Isa couldn’t anticipate from one measure to the next.

One thing was clear: this was no ballad or shanty. It was a lament.

Isa had never seen mountains. He saw them now, in their rolling magnitude. He saw Nath’s city, nestled there in the gray arms of giants. A rough place. A precious place. Alive with the ring of hammers and the swell of forge fire. Isa saw little children with Nath’s coarse braids, who looked up at their parents like Taniri had once looked at him.

Riverlanders generally cared little for northerners, finding their accents grating and their religious ideas abhorrent. But as that song floated over the River, its spell drew more oarsmen from below deck. Damored emerged from her cabin with the two—no, three—rowers she had invited in for the night’s tumble, and all stood bound in the spell of Nath’s voice.

The last voice of the Iron Valley.

The weight of that distinction had never settled on Isa when he was a child. How could it when he had no concept of loss? Back then, the title of Last Metalmancer had seemed like one more titillating addition to the mercenary’s legend. But the reality of that legend was that Nath could never go home—and not in the childish way that Isa and Damored couldn’t face what remained of their families. He was a fugitive of Daraxes, facing certain death if he ever strayed north of the Riverlands. The notes straining through the night here on a river so far from the Iron Valley were all that Nath had left of his home and they were all he would ever have.

By the first interlude, both Krellish and Azenkari oarsmen had tears in their eyes, which was a magic stranger than metalmancy.

The song pulled at the void in Isa, echoed it, until it resounded on far mountain walls one hundred, one thousand, one million times over. He saw Taniri in his arms—one small, bright-eyed girl gone from this impossibly big world—and thought how no one was here to cry for the hundreds of thousands of children slaughtered in the Iron Valley.

But someone was here who remembered Taniri. Someone could cry for her.

So many of the oarsmen were openly weeping at that point that Isa felt no shame when he finally put his face in his hands and cried. Hard. As he hadn’t the day Taniri died, as he hadn’t since he himself was a tiny thing, left on the steps of the Temple Inkarnam by parents he didn’t remember.

It was quiet on the water when Nath finished. His fingers had cradled the crew’s sobs as a ravine cradled a river, running until every drop was spent.

“Come now.” Nath broke the silence and nudged the flutist, who had buried his head in his arms. “There’s no need for that.” With that God and logic-defying smile, he touched the strings again.

And this was a tune they all knew, a Riverland festival dance, a prayer for a good haul and good harvest, for the Water and all the blessings she might bring. Nath didn’t play quite like a Riverlander, his steel-stringed instrument didn’t sound quite like an Azenkari lute, but what he lacked in authenticity, he made up for in enthusiasm, his boot thumping a counter rhythm too infectious to ignore.

Loosened by tears, the oarsmen, at last, let go of fear and danced, their boots and bare feet pulsing new life into the melody. In ceremony, a man usually danced this song with his wife, but it wasn’t an explicitly romantic dance. More than anything, it was an expression of community and camaraderie. Disparate pieces pulled together. The oarsmen paired off randomly, Krellish with Azenkari, Torrens with Sapiam; all knew these steps like they knew the tilt of a deck.

Moved by something he didn’t quite understand, Isa went to where Damo stood against the door of her cabin.

“Dance with me,” he said.

She eyed him suspiciously, even as her lovers peeled from her side to join the dancing. Her freckles effectively broke up any tear tracks the lantern light might have illuminated on her cheeks, but a swipe of her thumb beneath one eye gave away that she had been crying with everyone else.

“I swear to the Roots, if this is an attempt to get close enough to shank me—”

“Sabers are in my cabin.” Isa lifted his arms to reveal the absence of his weapons belt. “Come on.” He extended his hand, palm up.

He was still bandaged over his raw tattoos, meaning that Damored’s skin wouldn’t touch his. If it came to violence between them, it would end in an embrace to the death. But for the first time in… Aer, he didn’t know how long, Isa wasn’t thinking of death. He was thinking of the music and the rolling of the River.

“Is this an apology?” Damo raised her golden brows.

“If it gets us anywhere.”

Slowly, she smiled and took his hand. Two little pieces of the world slid together as they drifted onto the deck.

Isa was at home here in the arms of the River and an Azenkari melody, but Damo was a startling good dancer. You make your name dismembering fools, people get to thinking that’s the only thing you’re good at, but they were all of them a bit more complicated than that. Isa realized that, as a spy, Damo wouldn’t have just learned combat and high-level tactomancy; she would have learned the dances of high-society Sazumans and the raucous jigs of the peasants. She matched Isa’s steps, carefully at first, picking them up as the music went, only faintly unbalanced by the rocking of the deck. By the time the musicians broke into the first interlude, she was dancing like a native Riverlander.

“I saw Spensa at the Temple…” Isa said as the dancers circled one another with their palms together.

“No…” Damo’s eyes widened. Then she winced. “She tried to keep you from leaving? Or worse”—The wince turned to a full grimace—“She didn’t try to keep you from leaving?”

“The second one.”

“Ouch, Isa,” Damo whispered as though she could feel the sting through Isa's bandages. “Ouch. I guess, I forgive you for the shit-slinging earlier.”

It was the closest thing Isa would get to an apology. “Spensa is… a complicated person,” he said. “She seems to think that this job is something I need to do.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know,” but now that Isa thought about it, Kendiri had said something similar— about Isa needing to wind his way to his solutions like a python instead of springing straight there like a viper.

Just because you’ve decided that everything good in your life is over doesn’t mean that it is, Aer brought Kendiri’s words back to him. You’ve been wrong about a lot of things. Why not this too?

“She expects me to find some kind of truth on this hunt.”

Damo let out a low chuckle.

“What?”

“It’s just that that’s what the Rama of Spies said when she first sent me to work in the Riverlands: you need to learn a few things about yourself before you come back to us. I did learn a few things, but I think she just assumed the things I learned would take me back to Sazuma one day. Guess even Ramas can be wrong.”

“Or maybe…” Isa hardly dared finish the thought. The Gray was still dimmed with Theid’s shadows, but Aer spoke again, softly, in Nath’s words:

You’re not really looking for death. You’re looking for something else… A reason not to die, maybe?

“Maybe the journey isn’t over yet."

Maybe they could all stand to wind a bit with the River. Isa still suspected he would die—still wanted to die—when he reached the end of it. But for now, what was the harm in winding? On Nath’s strings, he spun Damored and watched her skirts and curls flare like flame in the moonlight.

Yes, Aer, he thought, Alkem take me, I can wind a little longer.

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