Recover
Math sat on the train tracks, waiting for the Captain of Swords to wake. He watched the Souna tend their wounded and gather their dead. They seemed as upset about the horses as the people, but satisfied with the outcome. Most of them had survived—and they’d have plenty of stories to tell.
Everything was a mess: the train tossed on its side, the earth torn and gouged, the air thick with blood, offal, and smoke.
The Souna bickered in the distance, and wild birds called overhead.
He wasn’t sure if it was truly peaceful, or if he was simply so drained that even the mud looked as inviting as a feather mattress.
He felt hollow. Not from grief, exactly—though maybe that too—but from something more corrosive: the slow, sinking realization that he was about to make a choice he couldn’t take back.
Kai stood nearby, arms crossed, black eyes flicking too often toward Nuhzar’s still form on a horse blanket. “If we leave while he sleeps,” she finally said, “we might save ourselves all manner of hardship.”
Math rested his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “We need his help.”
He didn’t say the rest aloud—that if Math returned without proof, without someone to vouch for him, the Order would bury him. One way or another.
“Ah, yes,” Kai replied. “For he was of such great assistance in Cherkiss, was he not?”
He frowned. The emotions he felt from Kaiataris were even more laced with worry than when he’d fought the grimmock—anxiety, dread, a dense, ugly fear. It didn’t make sense. Nuhzar wasn’t a threat; he was barely alive. Maybe she feared that lingering there gave Sanistral time to catch up.
Or maybe—maybe she was thinking what he hadn’t wanted to face: that returning to the Order—accepting knighthood, if they still offered it—meant severing whatever had been building between them.
“She is not wrong,” Nuhzar said hoarsely. “Thank you for saving my life, but I have to ask—why would you?”
“Like I said. We need your help.”
Kai made a sharp, disdainful sound in the back of her throat.
Nuhzar’s expression shifted—bleak, tired. If it was meant to be a smile, it never quite arrived. “Your grim lord seems to think otherwise.”
“I am no such thing!”
“She’s not a grim lord, Alik.”
Nuhzar raised his eyebrows. “Don’t shovel shit on my gravestone. I saw her puppet the dead.”
“I refuse to be categorized as part of an organization I did not even know existed,” Kai snapped. “Let alone one hunted by the very order that I—”
“Kai, please,” Math cut in. The last thing they needed was her revealing the origins of the Idallik Order to Nuhzar.
She turned on him with eyes full of fury, betrayal, something deeper, but stopped herself mid-breath before giving voice to those emotions. Without a word, she turned and stalked off toward Oltaxath.
He watched her go, the urge to stop her lodged like a stone in his throat. But the words choked off inside him. Guilt twisted in his gut, sharp and relentless. He was doing the right thing. The Order had to be warned. This wasn’t about him—or her. It was about saving the empire.
That didn’t stop it from feeling like a betrayal.
Nuhzar followed her with his eyes. “I admit, when I think of a necromancer, hot-tempered spitfire is not the image that comes to mind.”
“Yeah, well…” Math dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m not here to talk about her. I need to talk to you about…” He hesitated, then gave a short, humorless laugh. “Maybe the Tri-Mother really does send trouble in threes. I need to talk to you about the tree people, the Kaliri, and a grim lord.”
Nuhzar gestured toward Kai. “But you just said—”
“Not her. A real grim lord. There is one.”
“Gravespit.”
“No. King Sanistral of Lomar. He’s one of the originals—over fourteen hundred years old. And while I suspect he’ll skip invasion and go straight to godhood, he’s helping the Kaliri arm themselves with some very nasty weapons.”
Nuhzar stared at him like he’d started speaking in tongues.
“How do you know this?”
“He told me.”
“You haven’t had time to travel to Lomar and back.”
“There’s a portal network—older than the Age of Bone. One links Lomar and Rokasmaa. Kai sabotaged it, but there’s another to Kaliri, so it’s only a delay.”
Nuhzar inhaled deeply. “I suppose that merits a thank-you. But that’s only one calamity. You said there were three.”
“Then there are the Parnathi—the Tree Queens and their followers. Have you run into Huraiik yet?”
Nuhzar gave him a flat look. “Huraiik’s dead.”
“You’d think so, right? But when the Queens kill someone, they can … absorb them. Memories, skills—everything. I’ve fought a plant version of Huraiik. Twice. And he didn’t just look like him—he could manifest his sword.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I’m not. I’ve killed him twice. Pretty sure the second time held. But he won’t be the last. They’ve taken down a lot of knights.”
Nuhzar’s expression shifted—from skepticism to nausea. “Can you prove any of this?”
“No. Of course not.” Math pulled a bundle of letters from his belt pouch. “The only thing I can prove is that we have a Kaliri spy in the Order. Someone at Isofal survived the attack. Captain Qin had the first two letters. One of his killers had the last.”
“Let me see those,” Nuhzar said, and tried to sit up.
“Stop that. You’re going to start bleeding again. You know, this is why healers growl whenever Sword section knights walk into the Halls of Mending,” Math muttered, already moving to help. “Let me.”
Once Nuhzar was upright, he opened the letters. His hands shook slightly, but he read them in silence. At the last one, he paused. Frowned. Circled something—probably a translation spell—and read it again, slower this time.
It might’ve looked like an inventory list, if not for the way his jaw locked and stayed that way.
“And you’re saying Sanistral is working with the Kaliri?”
“Yeah. You found those black-powder weapons at the ambush site, right?”
Nuhzar nodded. “We did. Concerning, but not panic-worthy. They can’t be that accurate. We train on how to deal with black powder.”
“You’re wrong,” Math said flatly.
Nuhzar’s eyes narrowed. “Come again?”
“Not very accurate?” Math scoffed. “They never missed. Not once. Did you think all those holes through our knights were just lucky shots?”
Nuhzar stared.
“What?”
“Math,” he said, voice gone quiet and flat. “There were no bodies.”
Math sat very still, pulse racing. “What do you mean, there were no bodies?”
“Do you need one of the children to spell it out?” Nuhzar said. “We found the cart. The horses. Those strange metal tubes. A lot of blood—but no human remains.”
“Then how did you know I wasn’t dead?”
“Circumstantial details and a hunch. Your shackle was unlocked, but there were no signs of violence. Blood pooled around the back of the cart, but none inside. Someone had tossed Qin’s scrying stone into the woods. No one but a member of the Order would’ve thought to do that.”
“The Queens were right behind us,” Math said quietly. “They must have taken the bodies.”
He lowered his head. He didn’t know why he’d ever thought they needed to make the kills themselves.
Of course they didn’t. They must’ve been thrilled to stumble on a pile of fresh, perfectly good human corpses.
No doubt they’d be meeting plant-versions of Captain Qin and the other knights soon enough.
Neither man spoke. The silence stretched—long, taut, close to snapping.
“The weapons,” Math said at last. “You found them at the site. That’s evidence.”
“Of what, exactly?”
“That there’s a grim lord helping the Kaliri.
Every one of those weapons is engraved—enchanted—in the old grim lord style.
It looks decorative, but it’s not. And you don’t have to take my word for it—we must have samples somewhere in the archives.
Or, if you don’t feel like waiting until we reach a cenobium…
” He pulled a small object from his pocket and held it out. “Here. Look at this bracelet.”
He kept forgetting to give it back to Kai.
Nuhzar took it and turned it over, studying the etched lines. “What does this one do?” Nuhzar asked.
“Oh. Um. It doesn’t do anything now, but it used to create an illusion. That’s how you might’ve gotten reports of Captain Qin strolling into the Sounalla train station.”
“I wondered how you pulled that off.”
“Point is, Sanistral’s behind those enchantments. And since these weapons can only be used by mages, don’t assume your standard anti-black-powder drills will cut it.”
Nuhzar’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I saw it with my own eyes, Alik. They weren’t using match cord to set off the black powder. They were using magic.”
“I believe you.”
“But—?”
“There is no ‘but,’” Nuhzar said, dry. “Just thinking—if they’re already breaking the Innalova Accords, why stop halfway?”
Math huffed. “Funny. That’s what I said.”
Nuhzar exhaled through his nose. “So. We’ve got tree people who can suborn the dead, and a grim lord who’s a head of state arming our worst neighbors with enchanted weapons. That about it?”
“Not exactly,” said a voice behind them.
Kai had returned. Her posture was composed, but her words came cold and sharp.
“You have yet to account for the part where Sanistral must capture one of the Queens to complete a ritual that would grant him godhood. I’ve little doubt this business with the Kaliri is merely a distraction—meant to ensure no one who might stop him is prepared to do so. ”
She fixed Nuhzar with a look so pointed it felt like a blade.
Math sighed. She was still angry. Of course she was. But even as her voice turned clipped with disdain, he felt the weight beneath it. She had figured it out—not just the tactics or the stakes, but what he was planning.
Nuhzar narrowed his eyes. “How do you figure into all this? You show up at the perfect moment, and I’m supposed to believe that’s coincidence?”