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“Then how do you know anything at all?”
“Because truth is objective.”
“But reality is subjective,” she countered. “We are all little universes made up of subjective experience and objective truth, all spinning on our own axis, traveling on the long path to understanding. Sometimes, truth changes as we incorporate more knowledge. Last year, you were a blacksmith’s apprentice, but you became a smith, and then you became a Maelstrom. Imagine, then, what you will become tomorrow.”
I took a deep breath, inhaling the tea scent. “Imagination won’t save them. Hellion and Cian need medicine.”
She sipped from her tea. “They need time and care, as do you.”
I frowned at her. “Me? I’m not injured.”
Warlord Chinua moved to a counter piled high with several boxes and jars. She opened them one by one, adding a pinch of something green or red into a bowl, mashing the ingredients together with her thumb. “Medicine for the body is fairly straightforward, but for the mind and heart…” She shook her head. “There is no salve for the sickness of loss.”
My hand went to Thorn, still resting at my side, and my gut twisted.
She finished mixing her ingredients and went to kneel beside Cian, dipping her fingers into the grayish salve and spreading it over his wound. “They will both be better within a week, or they won’t.”
“A week? We don’t have a week! We need to get back to Ezulari, gather the remaining troops and—”
She silenced me with another click of her tongue. “And while they recover, you will work to earn your food and lodging.”
I sighed. “Seems fair. What exactly will I be doing?”
Her fingers paused. Eyes narrowed, she looked at me from behind her veil. “You will do what you have always done when your head and heart were not one.” The warlord rose, cleaning her fingers on the black apron she wore. She placed the bowl of salve back on the counter and picked up an unopened box, which she brought to me.
When I didn’t take it right away, she nodded and held it out more insistently.
Slowly, I lifted the lid and leaned in to see what medicine she had brought me.
There, resting in the bottom of her wooden box miles away from the last place I had seen it, was the dreamsteel ingot I had made.
I looked at her. “How did you get that?”
“From another place. Another time.” The warlord gave me the box and said, “You will forge.”
DespiteherclaimthatI would have to earn my keep at the forge, Warlord Chinua first sent me to the bathhouse, which was more of a small hut with a stone floor. Apparently, I was an important guest, and they took the idea seriously. I wasn’t to raise a finger to do anything unless the warlord decreed it. That included scrubbing the blood, mud, and dust of battle from my body. I tried to object, but they seemed offended. Rather than cause an incident, I went along with it.
They carried away my battle leather and brought me new clothes, long layered tunics open in the front, and baggy pants like the ones Odan had given me for training.
After bathing and dressing, I was thoroughly exhausted and teetering on my feet. It’d been days since I last slept, a dangerous way to operate a forge. Thankfully, the warlord had predicted as much and told me I could start my forge work the next day. Instead, she tasked me with looking after Cian and Hellion’s wounds. She took me into the red hut, showed me how to make the salve, how to apply it and how often.
“I don’t want to offend you,” I said as she watched from the other side of the room while I applied the salve to Hellion’s arm, “but I believe Cian would be surprised by this show of hospitality since he is…”
“A half-breed?”
My fingers froze. I turned to look at her, but I could no more judge her expression through that veil than any other time. “Is it true you would have amputated his wings?”
She closed her eyes and tilted her head. “That is the common practice, yes.”
I turned away, that familiar anger waking in my veins. I pushed it back down. “Why?”
“Because it is written. The same reason I gave my right hand to become warlord of this clan.” They lifted their stump. “Because there is a price to be what we are, even if we do not choose to be it. I know you do not understand our ways, human, but know that I have nothing but respect for Uriden’s Claw.”
“Uriden’s Claw. What does that even mean?” I grabbed the bandages and carefully started to wrap Hellion’s arm.
The warlord’s eyes slid past me to Cian. “Uriden was a great hero king and the last to stand against Lukesh. Before Lukesh, these lands were not united. We were all at war all the time, and Uriden was the greatest warrior. A dozen Terrors could not be his equal. He would not bow. Lukesh, knowing he could not bring Uriden to heel, brought his legions and sent a command. Kneel or die. While Uriden’s clan would have fought to the last breath, Uriden could not bear the loss of life. He chose exile over extinction. Lukesh withdrew. Our people lived, neither bowing to Lukesh nor hunted to extinction. We were allowed freedom. They say Uriden wandered for forty generations. Some say he wanders still. Cian claims the bloodline, as his mother did.”
“And yet you would cut off his wings.” I shook my head.
