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“As you say.”

Eavus paused. He’d never seen a village of the locals, if this could even be called that, and they’d apparently never seen a soldier up close, because everything came to such a sudden stop when he emerged that he felt like he was the emperor himself. Eavus swallowed, then hustled to catch up.

“Here.” He snatched the sword out of her hands. “That’s mine.”

“You can’t use it. You’ll rip open.”

“I’ll be fine.” Eavus swung the sword a few times, testing his shoulder. The skin at his waist pulled uncomfortably, but it would just take getting used to. He couldn’t sit around all day while other people took his weapons. At this point, returning the sword was even more important than producing the girl.

Revni waited at another of the small huts, but Eavus stopped short at a small boy lugging a sloshing bucket of water towards the circle of stones in the center. It should have been a blazing fire, but was only a blackened remnant of log and damp ash.

“I know you.” Eavus blurted in Aleterian, but it didn’t matter. The boy startled, then gave a shy grin.

Eavus followed Revni, giving the kid another glance. “That’s the little shit that stabbed me.”

“He is the reason the Dinaeii healed you.”

Eavus blinked. Every word out of Revni’s mouth today was like being slapped in the face.

“What?”

“You didn’t kill him when you could have. You didn’t kill me.” He could have been wrong, but he thought her cheeks took a rosy tint. Her eyes flicked to his face, before she turned deliberately away. “The Dinaeii decided you were kind.”

“Kind?” he said incredulously. Revni snorted in agreement.

“Able to be trusted, then.”

She had one hand on the door, but she paused so abruptly Eavus almost walked into her. He took a step back when she spun to face him. What had he done now? She looked peeved.

Eavus flinched when she raised her hand, but she only scrubbed at his cheek. “Three days and no one has cleaned it properly.” Eavus’ face stung from how roughly she had pulled at him. She rubbed the tips of her fingers together, exasperated. “Sap. No wonder.” But she looked more at ease than she had, and pushed the door open.

Eavus stooped, following Revni into the dim hut, but when he straightened, his eyes met those of the old woman seated in the center, and he had a sudden, off-kilter feeling of familiarity. Not because he’d seen her before. Though, as Revni introduced them, he supposed he had.

“This is Berae. She is the one who healed you.”

Eavus felt like he’d shown up for battle only to be directed to fortifications built on lily pads. The white-haired woman wore a finely-woven dress in a repeating pattern of expensive blues and golds. Her gesture for him to sit was met with a tingling of shiny bangles—thin, high-quality. Good teeth when she smiled. Good skin, despite its wrinkles. All she needed was to pull her hair up and he could have been seated before a riconoi matriarch, being loaned out for the day or sent on an errand. It wasn’t wrong, it was just so outside his notions of possibility that he’d never considered it. The Dinaeii were poor. Crude. Dirty. They didn’t host guests, pour tea. And yet, here tea was, woody sage and apple-scented chamomile wafting up with the steam.

“Is she the leader of this village?”

“It is a hunting camp,” Revni scoffed, as if he was stupid.

Eavus flushed. He had thought these ramshackle groupings of straw-topped huts were their villages. Everyone had. They’d come upon more than one in the course of scouting for roads, and sometimes they’d moved on, and more than once they’d set up camp nearby, waiting for the locals to return—to ambush them, to talk, he didn’t know. He wasn’t in charge. But he remembered Maener and his rumors, always thinking the territory was inhabited by ghosts. Maybe instead the Aleterians were just a bunch of idiots.

“So are they nomads?”

Revni scoffed again, more dismissively, like he’d insulted them. “These are new settlers. Most Dinaeii live far west, in a—” She turned her head towards the old woman, asked something in a language Eavus had never heard, and was answered. “Hillfort.” The word was native. “Between the mountains, where the land is good.” More tents on toadstools. Where the land was good? And between the mountains? Eavus thought he knew Arnea—there were the flat lands to the south that Aleteria had already conquered; mountains to the west, yes, but only good for mining; dense forests; those horrid marshes. More mountains north, sure, but that was Sculpae territory, bare rock, practically uninhabitable—hence the Sculpae’s ruthlessness. That there was something in between—something more, where, as the woman’s outfit and bearing clearly showed, wealth could be obtained—was mind-boggling. “Berae came east,” Revni went on, “with her daughter and new husband. The Caerdeneii attacked, and the warriors were all killed. Aleteria buried their dead.”

Eavus remembered. Maener and his ghosts, indeed.

“The Dinaeii are growing, like Aleteria. They would make a treaty.”

“So let them.”

“Berae does not speak Aleterian. You do not speak Dinaeii. I will translate.”

“Since when do you speak Dinaeii?”

“Since I spent the past three days learning it.” Her eyes flashed. Eavus wanted to protest—no one can learn a language in three days—but it felt futile to keep arguing.