Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change. Also, I consider the first quarter of this chapter to be something of a recap of the plot and direction of the story thus far. I figured that might be nice, given the month-long gap between chapters, but you can skip it without missing much.

Kendiri hadn’t been joking about the plague hitting the Temple hard. The only elders Isa remembered from his childhood were Darres, Gani, Quazari, and doddering old Zeyan, who had to be pushing ninety. Elder Thrask and the other ten had been replaced by younger Inkarnai like Kendiri. All fourteen council members gathered to hear Isa’s plan to retrieve the Herpendium, seven and seven, seated in a pair of curving fangs around him.

As a child, Isa hadn’t found anything strange about the Temple’s architecture. How could he? It was all he had known. Now, having walked the halls of lovingly ostentatious churches of Ostia and even modestly decorated homes and businesses of the greater Riverlands, he found the deliberate bareness of Temple Inkarnam striking. The public hall, with its statues of the Seven Spirits, was the only chamber containing visual representations of faith. The interior was austere and utilitarian to its last scrubbed stone inch. Even here at the seat of the cult’s power, the architecture didn’t do any work to impress; there were just the naked stone pillars holding up the ceiling and the black-robed figures seated between them—somehow deeply intimidating anyway.

Isa had sat before the Council Inkarnam before—the day Elder Thrask assigned him his snake form, the day he had come of age—always for ceremonial purposes, where his role had been scripted and carefully rehearsed. He had never sat here beneath the green stone dome as an outsider for questioning. And having only ever known the High Inkarnai as stately, dignified, and wise beyond his understanding, Isa was surprised at how hostile they could be outside the context of rote ritual.

“Setting aside the fact that Kendiri seemingly invited you here without consulting the rest of us, the circumstances of your arrival are suspicious.” Elder Gani’s face, which had been rather pinched and sour when Isa was young, had gone sourer yet with wrinkles. “I question your decision to sneak in through one of our secret entrances—incidentally, the same way your thieving friend came in.”

“Force of habit, Elder,” Isa said, “I’ve been sneaking into places for years.” He meant to follow that with ‘apologies’ but instead snapped, “And Nazaru is not my friend.”

Perhaps more surprising than the council’s hostility was how calm Isa remained under their barrage of barbed questions. The residual child in him was still awed and ashamed at their judgment, but a longer-honed part of him—the part that thought fast, lied easily, and cared nothing for the scorn of others—lounged casually back in his seat throughout the questioning.

“And you have transportation to this kingdom at the end of the river?” Elder Quazari asked when he had finished outlining the plan to follow Nazaru to Lothmedi.

“A Krellish galley,” Isa said. Kendiri had made his job easy. All he had to do was reframe Damored’s plan as his own and fill in the gaps with some easily-improvised lies.

“And how are you financing this boat?” Elder Thasa asked.

“An associate is paying for it.”

“Yes. The um—” Quazari foundered on a polite word for Damored—“the tactomancer you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes, Elder,” Isa frowned, really wishing they could stop circling back to her.

“And how is she financing it?”

“You want me to answer that, Elder?” Isa raised an eyebrow and was surprised to find Elder Quazari actually blushing, her gray godmarks going a little darker in embarrassment. Suddenly unable to help himself, he answered anyway. “She fucked a tradelord’s son in Krell, then extorted him. I’d have done it but I don’t have her assets.”

“Isa,” he thought he heard Kendiri mutter as she put a hand to her eyes.

She was his only ally in the chamber, seated in Elder Thrask’s old chair, but, as the youngest of the High Inkarnai, her opinions carried little weight.

“Regardless of how you came by it,” Elder Darres said over the general rustling of indignation and disapproval, “you think this galley is fast enough to catch up to Nazaru?”

“Yes, Elder.”

“Do you know what kind of transportation he has?”

“Doesn’t matter. South of the Fork nothing travels downriver faster than a galley with a full crew.” 

“If he and his accomplice are on horseback—”

“Then they’re faster across good ground,” Isa said. “The rocks beyond the Riverlands are almost impassable on a horse.”

“Is this true?” Elder Darres looked to Kendiri, perhaps because she was the one who had undergone the Wandering most recently. 

“I wouldn’t know, Elder,” Kendiri said. “I’ve never been.” On the few occasions that High Inkarnai traveled, it was usually west to confer with their sister cults in Trestantia.

“If you want to check with someone who’s actually traveled that way, I’ll wait,” Isa said coldly. “Of course, while you’re doing that, my boat might leave without me, and then I’ll have no transportation. Would that be better?”

It was a strange revelation that he knew more about the base practicalities of the world than all of these Inkarnai. He had spent more time in it than any of them. When he tossed out information on boats, guns, and travel times, the most skeptical of them had no choice but to take his word for it. And there was that feeling again—of being so small yet too big for this Temple that had once been his entire world.

No matter how much they nitpicked his plan or made him run through it again, they were shooting in the dark, and Isa was their best hope.

“Nazaru was known for his skill in combat,” said Elder Quazari when the council had exhausted all their logistical questions. “He regularly bested top students.”

“Only by cheating,” Isa said. “I’m the better swordsman.” Out in a world full of guns, osseomancers, and other animancers, that mattered little, but Isa didn’t point this out. “Kend—sorry—Elder Kendiri trained with us both. Ask her.”

When the others looked to Kendiri, she nodded. “Isa is good.”

“With all due respect to your skill in fair combat,” Elder Thasa sneered, “are we expecting Nazaru to fight fair?”

“No,” Isa laughed, “but I’ve been a mercenary for twelve years.” Well, minus the five he had spent with Spensa, but twelve years sounded more impressive than seven. “You think I haven’t learned to cheat too?”

Elder Thasa made a disdainful sound. “Oh, I’m sure you have.”

“Pardon me for not living up to your standards, Esteemed Inkarnam, but if I had, you wouldn’t be asking for my help with this job, would you?”

“I don’t recall asking you here,” Thasa said with a nasty glance at Kendiri, “and I’m frankly not convinced you’re up to the job. Fellow Inkarnai,” he turned to the other elders, “my only memory of this brat is soundly beating him in combat.”

“When you were fifteen and I was ten?” Isa snorted before the other Inkarnai could reply. “Fair enough. You want a rematch, come down here, fer-de-lance. Let’s dance.”

“Isa Inkarnam,” Elder Darres said admonishingly. “Kindly, do not threaten a High Inkarnam in this chamber.”

Something snide rolled to the tip of Isa’s tongue but an older impulse stopped it. Elder Darres had been a fixture of the temple since Isa was little, always respectable, firm, and fair. That old reverence stopped the barb before it passed his lips, and he sat instead in frowning silence.

“And Thasa, stop needling,” Darres added offhandedly.

Thasa looked betrayed. “Elder, I’m only questioning the qualifications and motives of a known murderer for hire. I think that’s reasonable. Say all his claims to competence are true? How do we know he doesn’t just want to take his tattoos and leave us out to dry? For all we know, he’s in league with his old age peer. Were they not like brothers growing up?”

Elder Darres actually had a little chuckle at that—joined by Kendiri and a few of the others.

“The kind of brothers who push each other into snake pits, if I recall,” Elder Darres said with a look at Kendiri. “By the age of ten, I believe young Isa had likely accrued sufficient motive to kill Nazaru several times over. You were in their circle, Kendiri. Do I exaggerate?”

“No, Elder. Nazaru was… he had a lot of problems.”

It took the High Inkarnai nearly an hour of conferring but they agreed to Isa’s request and sent Kendiri to look after him while the more experienced elders prepared for the tattooing.

Inkarnai magic was a finicky fusion of animancy and corporomancy. Isa wasn’t privy to the entire process, but he knew that every spell started with the bone of a pre-Ascension animal, referred to as the spell’s ‘originator.’ It would take time to grind a segment of Isa’s originator bone to dust and mix it into ink for the tattoos.

“Come with me,” Kendiri said and led Isa to the milking room at the belly of the Temple. Everything in the Temple seemed smaller on this visit, but the milking room had always seemed too cramped. Lidded baskets stood in rows on the floor and the walls were lined with shelves of jars and syringes.

“What are we doing here?” Isa asked.

“What do you think?” Kendiri tossed him a jar, which he just managed to snatch before it shattered on the floor. “You owe me four hours, remember?”

“Didn’t know you were serious.”

“We have time to kill—and you did beat up one of my students.”

The Temple’s vipers needed to be milked regularly to maintain the Inkarnai’s supply of antivenoms. Once extracted, the venoms were administered in careful doses to cattle, who built up immunity to their assigned venom. When a cow was sufficiently immunized, the highest of Inkarnai employed ancient magic to draw out the antibodies used in the Temple’s antivenoms.

“Careful with these,” Kendiri said, nodding to the softly hissing baskets along the far wall. “Most are new, so they’re a little jumpy about being handled. And make sure you label everything correctly. You still remember all our species?”

“No,” Isa said impatiently. “I made it a point to forget how to identify dangerous snakes all those years out in the Wilds.”

“Then that’s enough chit-chat.” Taking a square of leather, Kendiri stretched it over a glass jar. “Get working.”

“Yes, Elder,” Isa sighed and followed suit, placing a leather square over his jar and tying it tightly in place with twine.

Not all children at the Temple got good at milking vipers, but Isa and Nazaru had spent so much time in this room as punishment for fighting that Isa was better than most. When he opened the nearest basket, muscle memory took over. Isa snagged an adolescent fer-de-lance behind the jaw, his thumb resting firmly on the back of its head to keep it from biting.

“Gently,” Kendiri scolded as the viper writhed in distress against Isa’s grip. “Those babies are all we’ve got right now.”

“Right.” Isa eased up on the little snake, reminding himself that his hands were more powerful now than they had been when he was twelve. “Sorry.”

Taking the jar in his left hand, he brought the leather lid to the snake and let it bite, keeping a controlling hand at the back of its head, massaging the venom glands. Liquid death shot from its fangs and dribbled down the sides of the jar to gather in the bottom.

As they worked, Isa fell into a long-forgotten place of concentration. This was where he had learned to balance fear and turn it to focus. When Kendiri spoke again, it was almost a surprise that she was still there.

“I should have asked if you remember how to administer antivenoms.”

“Of course,” Isa said, as he finished labeling his seventh jar and putting it in line with the others. As Kendiri let the cobra beneath her thumb spend the last of its venom, she and Isa both glanced toward her belly. “Just to be safe”—Isa reached across the table to the nearest shelf to pull a syringe and jar of cobra antivenom close—“I’ll keep this right here.”

“Thanks.” Kendiri detached the cobra from the leather and carefully returned the young snake to its basket. A hand rested on her stomach for a moment before she reached for another jar.

“Who’s the father?”

“Osu.” It was the Inkarnam way of saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘It’s not important.’

Isa nodded. “You have a name yet?”

“Ah, ze’ll be Inkarnam, so I’ll let the council choose a name.”

“Probably for the best.” Isa smiled. “We went back and forth for weeks.” It was only belatedly that he realized he had broken his first safety precaution: don’t open the door. Don’t talk about them. Damn Kendiri for being so easy to talk to.

“Taniri is an unusual name,” Kendiri said with a careful glance at Isa’s expression, clearly gauging his reaction. “Sort of Inkarnam. Sort of not.”

“Spensa wanted Tanessar, after her favorite prophet.” The smile was as easy as it was painful. “We met in the middle.”

“I’m touched.”

“She’d have made you a good namesake… no thanks to her father.” Isa’s throat tightened on the last words with pythonic force—except that there was no prey in his gullet. Just hard emptiness, impossible to swallow.

“Are you alright?”

“No.”

Isa had forgotten how to cry. Instead, he held the banded krait at eye-level and watched a drop of venom quiver at the tip of that little fang. One bite…

“Isa,” Kendiri said sharply. He had never heard that kind of alarm in her voice but like a good Inkarnam, she got it quickly under control. “You know I’d never stand for that, right?”

Banded krait venom was fast-acting and lethal to a human but the milking room shelves were packed with every antivenom the Temple had on offer, all clearly labeled and easy for the youngest apprentice to snatch at a moment’s notice. Kendiri would have the cure in Isa’s veins in moments and all he would have to show for his stupidity was maddening pain and possibly nerve damage.

“Put the krait down,” Kendiri commanded.

“I’m fine,” Isa said, softly stroking a thumb across those soft yellow and black banded scales.

“I mean it, Isa. Drop her.”

“I told you I’m fine. You know me, Kendiri. I’m too much of a coward to…” He sighed, still gazing at the snake in his hands. “I’ve been here a few times. Never followed through with it.”

“You know that’s not reassuring, right?” Kendiri said. “If nothing else… just remember that we need you. You’re the only one who can catch Nazaru.”

“Yeah?” Isa said, his throat still too tight. “For people who need me, the High Inkarnai sure seem to hate me,”

“Yes,” Kendiri said and he was grateful that she didn’t insult him by denying it, “but hatred comes from a specific place inside a soul, doesn’t it? Hatred is of Aer.”

“You’ve started to talk like High Inkarnam, you know.”

“Okay, in plain language: they look at you and see something they might have been in a different life. If they don’t disdain you, how will they know they were right in their decision to return to the Temple? After all that we lost when our magic failed to protect us from the plague?”

“They were right,” Isa said. Because, for a moment, he had felt so at home here beside Kendiri, bottling venom. What he wouldn’t give to have been here the whole time… to make all those years in between disappear… “You were right.”

“Was I?” Kendiri said. “Life here hasn’t been much kinder than anywhere else.”

“But you’re still here!” Isa protested, at last dropping the banded krait—perhaps a little too hard—back into her basket. “Don’t you understand? After the worst plague in Riverland history, you’re still here. You have a home, and a family, and this…” He gestured around the milking room, “work that does good.”

“Isa…” For once, Kendiri seemed lost for words. “I—”

“I made a mistake not following you into the Wilds.” The truth had pressed at his lips so many times; it was time he finally admitted it—to himself if no one else. “I chose wrong. I shouldn’t have gone with Nazaru, I shouldn’t have let him goad me into the things he did… I shouldn’t have become a mercenary.”

“If you hadn’t become a mercenary, would you have met your wife?”

“No…” And her life would have been so much better. She might have stayed a celibate priestess and pursued all the great studies for which she was so well-suited. Or maybe she would have left the Church Sapiam for another man, one who would have taken good care of her and her children. “It would have been better that way.”

“Mmm,” Kendiri hummed in thought as she picked up a little coral snake. “Somehow, I doubt your Spensa Sapiam would see it that way.”

“You don’t know that.” Isa had sent to the Temple Inkarnam inviting Kendiri to their wedding, but like Spensa’s family and priesthood sisters, the Temple Inkarnam had wanted nothing to do with a pair of unscrupulous heretics. “You’ve never met her.”

Kendiri smiled down at the red snake under her thumb and let out a little chuckle.

“What?”

“Do you know why, of the three of us, Elder Thrask made you the constrictor?”

Isa had to admit that he’d never given it much thought. The cobra seemed to suit Nazaru, the mamba suited Kendiri, and Isa had been fond of the Temple’s pythons—the way they would slowly undulate and squeeze, almost cuddling, even as they killed.

“Vipers go straight for what they want. They wind up and it’s a clear shot to their target. Elder Thrask said that kind of decision-making was too much to ask of someone like you. You like to probe a thing, hold it, feel it, wind your way to where you’re going. Vipers have to strike on a snap decision and then bear the weight of regret if they get it wrong. Nazaru doesn’t regret.”

“And you?”

“I don’t get it wrong.”

“Ha!” Isa said dryly.

“But you, Isa… you change your mind all the time, regret all the time. Elder Thrask didn’t want you to live with every knee-jerk decision you ever made. It’s not the way your mind works. Sometimes, you have to come back to a thing again, and again, and again, before you find out what you really want to do with it.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I make bad decisions,” Isa said. “Thanks. I never would have—”

“I’m saying,” Kendiri cut him off in annoyance, “that just because you’ve decided that everything good in your life is over doesn’t mean that it is. You’ve been wrong about a lot of things. Why not this too?”

Isa opened his mouth but found himself stumbling with a lightness he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Why not this too?

“Isa Inkarnam,” a voice said and Isa turned to find an apprentice at the door. “They’re ready for you.”

Isa was blindfolded before entering the ritual hall—a precaution they didn’t take with child initiates first connecting with their snake forms. A child who had just learned to read would never be able to parse the deeper secrets of the magic Inkarnam from simple observation; an experienced adult shifter was a different story. Since Isa was not a High Inkarnam, this knowledge didn’t belong to him and he wasn’t insulted at the blindfold. What he did find a little insulting were the restraints they strapped around his wrists, biceps, knees, and ankles. As if he didn’t know how to hold still through a little discomfort.

“You can see my scars, right?” Isa said into the dark. Stripped down, he was a map of aged blade and gunshot wounds. “I assure you, Elders, I can hold still.”

“You told us that your ship leaves tomorrow at noon, young Isa,” said an age-worn voice—Elder Zeyan—“and there is a great deal of ink to apply.” Something pressed to Isa’s lips and he grudgingly allowed the High Inkarnam to insert a dowel between his teeth. “Trust me, you will be glad of the restraints.”

Isa woke on a hard pallet, prickling with the memory of needles and beading blood. This wasn’t the room that had been his growing up—the ceiling plaster wasn’t flaking in the right patterns—but all living quarters in the Temple Inkarnam were functionally identical. Four bare walls, a pulsing biolight above, a small desk for study, a bed made from the same hard wood as the desk, and a thin mat for meditation. Had this been another city, another temple, Isa would have assumed he was being held prisoner. But no, this was home.

Staring into the biolight, Isa tried to find comfort in its wavering gray-green glow, the way he used to when he was young. But the comfort wasn’t there. This wasn’t home anymore. Home was waking with soft breathing at his side and seeing the sunlight fall in golden stripes on the hair of someone he loved.

Isa turned over on the hard pallet and used the ensuing wave of pain to sweep the memory away. He was a mercenary now, with a job to do. Best to forget that he had ever been a father and husband with the luxury of watching the sun wake his wife.

The High Inkarnai had salved and bandaged their work but damn it if Elder Zeyan wasn’t right. Isa hurt. Under normal circumstances, an Inkarnam’s tattoos were applied and refreshed a few inches at a time. Having work done up both arms and legs, across his chest, and down his back all at once was pain on a different level. The tattoos that lay close over bone—the tag runes on the backs of his hands and feet and the animantic marker overlapping his vertebrae—ached bitterly as he eased his way into his cassock.

Transforming would have been the easier way back into his clothes but Isa didn’t want easy. Not with Spensa pressing into his thoughts. He needed the pain to take that space and push her out. He had just buckled his weapons belt across his hips when someone knocked at the door.

“Come in,” he said and the door opened to reveal a skinny thirteen-year-old Inkarnam with intent brown eyes and an untidy braid. 

“Zarra,” he said in surprise.

“The elders say you should leave now, if you want to reach the harbor by noon.”

“I’m a little faster than that,” Isa said, “and they sent you to wake me? Seems mean.”

“I asked to come, Elder Isa.”

Isa tilted his head to observe the lanky child, wondering—

“I remember what happened,” Zarra blurted out, as tense as she had been during their confrontation in the tunnels. “Elder Kendiri made me swear not to tell anyone, but I remember the fight. I…” Her voice quavered and she licked her lips. “I remember being afraid.”

“Alright,” Isa said, “then why come here?”

“Elder Kendiri tells me to look my fear in the face.” Zarra had her hands fisted at her sides—perhaps to keep them from jerking reflexively to her sabers. “She says that’s the only way to bind Theid, to keep zir in the Dark where ze belongs.”

Isa smiled. “She got that verbatim from our teacher.”

Elder Thrask had dangled Isa over the rattlesnake pit and calmly talked him through the fear until he could force it back into the Dark. But Kendiri wasn’t here to talk Zarra back to Aer. Instead, this poor kid got Isa. He took a step forward and Zarra’s hands twitched toward her sabers.

“Theid may not be wise,” Isa echoed Elder Thrask, “or lucid, but zir foremost impulse is to keep you alive. It’s up to you and Aer to figure out whether what Theid tells you is worth holding close or pushing away. So, what is it you fear about me, Zarra Inkarnam?” Isa couldn’t dangle Zarra over the python pit, so instead, he put his hand on the doorframe by her shoulder, closing her in. “And do answer from the Gray.”

“I-I don’t know…” pressed back against the wall, Zarra seemed to think for a moment. “I guess… I was out on an errand when the cobra-shifter broke in, so I’ve never faced anybody—any person—I thought might actually kill me.”

“You handled yourself alright,” Isa said. “Room for improvement, but you’ll improve with time.”

“I will?” Zarra repeated and until she did, Isa hadn’t realized that he had used ‘will’ instead of ‘could.’ He didn’t know why he had said ‘will’…

But you do, Aer said. You see a little of you in her… and a little of Nazaru. She’ll come at the world like she came at you; fast and without considering her options. And Isa was back at the riverside in Krell with those dumb servant girls too busy giggling to notice a predator watching them from the lilies. And this is what you fear, isn’t it? Aer said softly. Not the height. Not the rattlesnake. You fear that a bright-eyed girl might not live to be a woman.

“Well…” Breathing deeply, Isa met Zarra’s bright eyes and did as Elder Thrask had taught him; pushed his fear back. “Respectfully, Zarra, there are far scarier things than death.”

Zarra tilted her head. “Is this way of saying I shouldn’t be afraid of you? Because that’s not very—”

“No,” Isa said. “No, you little idiot. I should terrify you to your fucking core. Just not for my strength, or my sabers, or my snake form. All those things, you can fight." 

“Well, what does that matter if I lose?” Zarra demanded.

“It matters,” Isa insisted, “because fighting brings out all your skill and intensity. A predator presses you to live—even if it’s just in that hideous moment before you die. At least you die with a living soul in you, one with all your Spirits.”

Zarra was staring up at him, disconcerted. “What are you even talking about?”

Yes, Isa. What are you even talking about? What are you doing?

Opening the door, Isa realized, and gripped the physical doorframe hard to still the tremor that had started at his core.

“Imagine…” His voice had gone raw. “Imagine having no reason to draw your sabers or your fangs. Imagine having nothing you cared about that much. Not your own life or anyone else’s. Nothing.”

Zarra shrugged. “Wouldn’t that be… I don’t know… freeing?”

Isa had thought something similar when he heard of legendary bounty hunters like invincible Corrath, roaming the dunes alone, unattached, and invincible. “Not the way you might hope. It’s dark and empty. When you leave for the Wandering, I want you to remember that. That’s what waits for you out there. Emptiness.” 

Zarra looked skeptical. “There are good things out there too though.”

“Yes,” Isa said honestly. “Most of the best things. Chances are, you’ll find experiences out there beyond anything you could dream of inside these Temple walls. But you’re just one person. A life that you build of your own power is fragile, the world is big, Alkem is ruthless, and ze will take it away. I want you to understand… you are blessed, Zarra Inkarnam.”

“I am?”

“Yes!” Isa’s hand had moved to grasp her shoulder, still as soft as any child’s but underlaid with the hard beginnings of a fighter’s muscles. “You were born to an order that is eternal. No matter what happens, the Temple will still be here for you. If you’re smart enough to come back here, you’ll always have a family worth defending—elders to look after you and young ones to take care of. You’ll have a reason to wake up and be alive.”

“You…” Zarra blinked up at him, finally seeming to understand. “You don’t have that?” And Isa was satisfied that, at last, she looked afraid of him. Properly afraid. In a deep way that had nothing to do with the animal fear of sabers and teeth.

“But, Elder Isa, what if…?”

“What?”

“What if the Temple doesn’t stand forever?” Zarra whispered. “We lost so many people last year, so many elders, and the Herpendium—”

“That’s why I’m going to bring it back,” Isa said, gripping her shoulders with both his aching hands. “For you. So this place will be here for you to come back to—when you’re a smarter wanderer than I was.”

Zarra nodded, her shoulders relaxing slightly in his hands. “Okay.” She smiled up at him a little too warmly, and for a terrible moment, Isa saw Taniri—who would never be thirteen years old.

“Go on, then, kid.” Isa turned Zarra around a little roughly and pushed her out the door. “Tell the elders I’m on my way out.”

Kendiri was waiting for Isa when he descended to the floodline floor, one story above the ground floor.

“We’ll go out the front,” she said and motioned him toward the snake door leading to the public hall. “No reason for you to brave the crocodiles again.”

The little doorway was only a foot in diameter, big enough for a child trainee to crawl through but not an adult. The only full-grown humans who passed in and out of the Temple’s interior were those who had a non-human form. Kendiri and Isa transformed side-by-side and slithered through. In twin pops, they transformed on the other side and straightened up to face each other. The bandages, because they were sandwiched between Isa’s skin and his cassock, came with him.

Kendiri had brought something with her too, it seemed—a pouch, which she drew out of her robes and pressed to Isa’s prickling chest.

“Salve for the tattoos,” she said at his confused expression, “two doses of king cobra antivenom, and one ounce of your originator dust.”

Isa lowered his voice in case other Inkarnai were listening. “Were you supposed to give me this?”

“Nazaru took a whole rib of his originator,” Kendiri said. “I persuaded the council that it was only fair to put you two on even footing.”

“Do I get a wagonload of vipers too?”

“Do you want a wagonload of vipers?”

“No.”

Isa and Kendiri were standing in the private Inkarnam chamber off to the side of the statues of the Seven Spirits. Through a regular human-sized doorway, supplicants filed into the front hall of the Temple, bearing offerings of rice, produce, and calves. Most if not all were devout followers of Ostia Sapiam, but the smart goddess-worshippers knew to spare some tribute for the Temple Inkarnam. After all, for all the wisdom and riches their goddess might grant, who was going to help them when they needed a body part replaced or a snake bite treated?

Ostia, in all her forms, demanded blood. Cows were slaughtered on the altars of Sapiam, Torrens, and Cassidar alike. So, wealthy patrons of the Temple Inkarnam often offered livestock, assuming the Inkarnai did the same at their own private altars behind closed doors. Of course, the Seven Spirits cared nothing for material tribute. The livestock went straight to the Inkarnam stables in the nearby countryside, where the healthiest were immunized to snake venoms.

“Isa,” Kendiri said, “before you step through that doorway, listen… I’d love to have the Herpendium back. Aer knows, we all would. But I want you to understand… I’m glad that I saved my fellow Inkarnai instead of going after Nazaru. It’s a decision I’d make again. And again.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I’m trying to say that, if you get out there and find that you don’t want to die by cobra venom, well… I won’t come after you.” 

“But—the Herpendium—”

“Is a book, Isa. A thing of Osu. Friendship is of Aer and we put Aer before Osu.” She touched his tender shoulder gently enough that it barely hurt. “I know that following Nazaru hasn’t been good for you in the past. And well… if you wanted to stay here in Azenkar, I’d protect you from the High Inkarnai.”

Isa could only shake his head for a moment, unsure what to do with the affection he certainly didn’t deserve. “I appreciate the thought, Kendiri. I do. But why in Aer’s name would I want to stay in Azenkar?”

“I don’t know…” Kendiri turned pointedly to the front hall.

Isa followed her gaze—and felt the world stop.

One of the visitors had just knelt before Aer and pulled her hood back to reveal dark braids and sharp black eyes.

Spensa.

She was too thin. Not that she had ever been plump, but the plague had carved harsh hollows from her cheeks and around her clavicle. They should have filled out now, all these months later, but they hadn’t. He tore his gaze from her and it was like tearing off an infected limb—agonizing but vital if he was to survive.

It was only once he had pulled himself back behind the safety of the wall that he could breathe again.

“What is she doing here?” he hissed.

“She comes once a week,” Kendiri said, “early in the morning.”

“What?” It was an hour’s walk from Rionde to the Temple. “Why?”

“To pray to Aer.”

“Why would she do that?” Spensa had her goddess. Even after her order had cast her out, she would never convert—-

“For you, genius,” Kendiri said with a smile. “She asks Aer to look after you, wherever you go, to keep you safe from the dark in your mind.”

“That… That’s not how that works,” Isa said to avoid having to feel an emotion—any emotion—at Kendiri’s words.

“You think we didn’t explain that to her?”

“I…” Isa’s head had started to spin. His breath wouldn’t come normally. “I have to go.”

“You don’t even want to speak to her?” If Kendiri sounded disappointed in him he wouldn’t hear it. The door was closed. Closed, damn it!

“Kendiri, I can’t.” 

“Isa, just—”

“Please!” His bandaged hands were clutched in Kendiri’s robes, shaking “… I can’t."

Kendiri pressed her lips together, looking sadder than Isa had ever seen her, then relented with a shake of her head. “Alright, fine. You remember the way out the back.”

Maybe the reason Isa’s life was so full of regret was that he never learned anything from his mistakes. Like he never seemed to absorb the most obvious of all lessons: trust no one. It didn’t occur to him that Kendiri might have betrayed him until a figure barred his way out the back corridor.

With the light behind her, she appeared only as a silhouette but Isa would know her shape at the ends of the Gray.

He jolted to a halt.

“Spensa?”

“Isa.” His wife folded her arms. “You weren’t going to sneak off without saying goodbye again?”

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter of Seven Forsaken. You can get new chapters of this story + more serialized stories from the world of Altima on my Patreon.

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