Thomil’s world broke with the ice. His legs gave under him. Dark and cold closed around him, even though the ice beneath his knees had yet to split. He drowned with his family.
A “NO!” like a spear pierced the smothering dark.
Maeva was submerged except for her head, the chill of death already clinging to her lips, fiery hair frosted to her cheeks. She had clawed her way up a tilting pane of ice—not to live but to scream, “Thomil! RUN!”
And a truth snapped painfully into place in Thomil’s heart: Maeva had carried Thomil all this way for this moment. So that, at this last stretch, Thomil could carry her daughter. This was a reason to live greater than all his grief and fear.
The water lit up bright white in three—four, five, six—places that quickly turned a churning red as Blight claimed the drowning victims, and so went the last of the Caldonnae.
But not quite. Thomil clutched his niece close, and the feel of her head on his chest drove him to his feet. Not quite the last.
We are one blood, Beyern’s voice resonated even as the hunter and Maeva and all the rest slipped into the blazing jaws of death. One blood, one name, one purpose…
Empty of all things but that purpose, Thomil turned and sprinted for the city. No longer caring if he destroyed his body, he ran as no human had ever run before. Carra’s weight, which should have slowed him down, pulled him forward as though all the fickle gods of the Kwen had thrown their strength into this last sprint for the shoreline. Siernaya of the Hearth made strength from the burning in Thomil’s lungs, Mearras of the Hunt lent him stamina beyond his physical form, Nenn of Waters held the ice firm, even as cracks bit at Thomil’s heels. The rocks along the edge of the lake glowed gold with the magic of Tiran. Salvation. And Death Herself seemed to let Thomil slip by.
His boots went through the ice at the last few paces, where the warmth of the barrier had reduced it to a thin sheet. It didn’t matter. The water here only reached his shins, and he crashed forward, cutting his legs on the breaking ice but unable to feel the damage through the cold. He reached the rocks a madman and scrambled up them into the golden glow of safety.
The barrier didn’t resist Thomil’s entry—just washed him in light that prickled painfully on his chilled skin, then turned to pure spring as he broke through the other side.
They had made it.
Thomil fell to his knees on the flattest ground he had ever seen. Not ground, he realized. The stuff beneath his knees was a Tiranish invention. Pavement.
He set Carra down as gently as he could on the unnatural flatness. Her little face was pale with cold and oozing blood where Blight had burned a crescent across her left eye. With his hands shaking beyond his control, Thomil fumbled to yank his mitten off and pressed two fingers to the side of her neck.
“Please…” he murmured, “please, please…” and even here, where none of his gods could reach, they granted this one mercy. A heartbeat answered.
Carra was going to live. With that understanding, the animal strength went out of Thomil, and he collapsed beside his niece. Blight had gone from the air, but so had any whisper of Thomil’s gods, leaving behind only the terrible absence all around.
On his back, Thomil opened his mouth to sob, but he was too weak to do more than wheeze. Tears trickled from the corners of his eyes into the hair at his temples, melting the crystals where sweat had frozen on his skin, and he hated himself for not being able to scream. The Caldonnae were gone, along with all their skills, and songs, and love for each other. The Earth should be shaking. The sky should open up and wail for their loss. And here Thomil lay, gulping like a beached fish, unable to muster a sound.
He didn’t know how long he had been lying there when a boot heel dug into his shoulder.
“Hey!” a voice said with the impatience of someone who had repeated himself several times. “You awake, Blighter?”
Thomil barely understood the words. They were off—nearly Caldonnish but not, nearly Endrastae but not. A foreign face swam into focus above Thomil, green-eyed and snub-nosed under a thatch of short brown hair. Tiranish.
“Hey, Benny!” The barrier guard turned and called over his shoulder. “We got a Kwen over here!”
The sun was peeking over the eastern hills, but it was not the sun Thomil knew. The barrier had altered its color, and straight buildings broke its light into stark alien rectangles. Even the air was wrong now that Thomil’s lungs had stopped burning enough for him to taste each breath—smoky. But unlike a campfire or prairie burn, this smoke carried a tang of acid like the taste after vomit.
“Just one this time?” said a second voice.
“Well, two, counting the little one, but I think it might be dead.”
No! Thomil tried to say, but all that came out was a burning gurgle.
A second figure appeared above him, distinguishable from the first only by the smattering of freckles across his nose; Elder Sertha had warned that Tiranish could be difficult to tell apart. These two were dressed identically in stiff brass-buttoned uniforms. Both of them had strange weapons on their backs, longer than clubs, shorter than spears, and gleaming metal. Guns.
“If they’re too weak to work, we don’t have space for them,” the freckled guard said coolly.
Did that mean…？
“Want me to throw them back out?”
“No!” Thomil finally managed and grasped the first guard’s boot. He might not be able to speak above a grating rasp or even stand, but his grip was powerful from years of stitching leather and stringing bows. It should speak for itself. “I can work.”
They were among the few Tiranish words Thomil had learned before the crossing. Elder Sertha had said that anyone who made it to this side of the barrier would need them to stay alive.
“I can work!”
“Yeah?” the freckled Tiranishman looked unconvinced. “You don’t look it.”
“He’s got quite the grip, though.” The first guard grimaced down at the hand on his boot. “Can’t hurt to take him to the camp and see if he recovers.”
“Fine,” the freckled guard said impatiently. “I’ll get rid of the girl.” He reached down for Carra.
“NO!” Desperation reanimated Thomil’s body, pitching him forward over little Carra.
“Oh, for Feryn’s sake!” The first guard placed a boot against Thomil’s shoulder to shove him aside.
But there was one last thing Elder Sertha had said about the Tiranish: they couldn’t knowingly separate parents from children. Their religious laws forbid it. So, braced over Carra, Thomil rasped a Tiranish word the Caldonnae had little use for:
“Mine… My daughter.”
It felt viscerally wrong to deny Maeva and Arras’s existence when their blood was still fresh on the ice. But the Tiranish gave strange power to words and claims of ownership.
The boot lifted from Thomil’s shoulder.
“Your daughter, huh?” The freckled man said. And apparently, the Tiranish had the same trouble with Kwen faces as Thomil had with theirs; neither guard questioned why Thomil shared precious few features with his niece. The gray eyes were enough for them.
“Fine, then, you can go to the camp together. See how you like it.”