Three quthli spread out as Faro inched backward. He held his spear in a high guard, point angled toward the ground, his thumbs atop the smooth chorwood haft. Two of the quthli held spears as well—longer than his—but the third wielded a knobbed club, a weapon favored by their kind. They were far bigger than Faro, their arms as big as Faro's legs, and their muscles were taut beneath flowing grey pelts. Their breathing always slowed just before they attacked.

Faro moved first. He leapt at the middle quthli, hoping they would have anticipated a strike to either side. The middle quthli held his spear toward the butt end, ready to extend to either side, and once Faro deflected its point he was inside the guard, slamming his own spear into the creature's gut. It collapsed backward, gasping, but Faro kept on the move, leaping over the crumpling body and spinning around, jogging backward as the other two quthli pursued. He dodged right, putting the quthli with the club between himself and the other spear.

The near quthli grunted and rushed at Faro, but before the distance closed he threw his club. Faro tried to deflect, but the quthli leapt forward and grabbed at Faro's spearhaft. Faro barely ducked the club and wrenched his spear away, but the beast was inside Faro's guard. He tried to bring the spear-butt around to strike but the blow barely affected the massive beast and allowed it to grab the haft. The other quthli was upon him. Faro tried to wrench his spear free, but he was no match for the foe's strength, and he let go, pulling a knife and slashing across the grappling quthli's throat as he dodged around, trying to keep the dying quthli between him and the second quthli's spear. It was too late; the quthli spearpoint clipped Faro's abdomen hard.

Faro backed away, holding his side.

"Shouldn't have tried to block the club with your spear," Coir said. The man sat upon a carven chair beneath a nearby apple tree with a little folding-table beside him. The old man's white beard reached to his lap. He marked a tally on a sheet of paper sitting on the table and smiled.

"No," Faro agreed.

"Naked wrong look," gasped the quthli, pointing at Faro. The quthli tongue had only a few hundred words in total, and they practiced a form of speech Coir declared unknown among other creatures—they spoke while breathing inward or outward, as befitted need. The practice gave their language a strange huffing quality. Their hand signs and body position were far more developed than their spoken vocabulary.

"That makes only three victories out of seven bouts this morning," Coir said. He was speaking his native Noshian, though his voice had started to waver of late even in his native tongue. His ability to reach the tones of the Vienwé speech was far more affected. "Maybe you should go back to fighting two at a time."

"No," Faro replied in Noshian. "I prefer the challenge."

Coir shrugged.

"Then don't defend with your weapon when you could move your body," he said.

"You are a warrior?" Faro asked, pretending to be more annoyed than he was.

"I have watched you make that mistake enough times to know, young one," Coir said. He loved calling Faro young one.

"We hunt," the quthli said, picking up his club. With that, the three quthli departed, jogging toward the jungle in their hunched way.

"Tub is not up for another bout, then," Coir said, watching them go. The quthli did not give each other spoken names—they relied on scent, instead, a method that did not work well for Coir, or even for the Vien. So, Coir had named many of them, himself. Tub was one of the older and more venerated hunters of the tribe that served Vireel.

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Coir rolled up his paper, tucked it into his satchel, and stretched out a hand to Faro.

"Help me back to the house," he said.

Faro picked up his blunt spearhaft and tucked his wooden knife back into his sash. He offered a hand and Coir took it, grasping a cane with his other hand and rising from the chair. Together, they walked across the grove beneath ripening fruits. Coir's house lay near the edge of the jungle by the old wine press. The quth had helped him build it. It was oddly boxy, with corners of right angles. The old man said it reminded him of home, which during Faro's early years had not made sense to him. How could home remind someone of home? It wasn't until Coir had first told him of the fall of Drennos that he finally understood.

"It is a warm day," Coir said. The house had an overhanging roof, and beneath this Coir often napped, papers blowing away from him on the unpredictable breezes. Faro had often chased the pages down for him. Now, the man settled into a deep wooden chair and sighed. "Fetch me some wine," he said, without a hint of doubt that Faro would comply. And comply Faro did, stepping into the man's house with its cubbies full of tenae. No doubt Coir would be ordering Faro to help him make another batch of paper any day, now.

Faro poured from a long-necked bottle into a large wooden tankard and carried the drink to Coir.

"Thank you, lad," he said, and smiled. "I get to call you that, you know, even if you'd be a grown man with children in Nosh."

Faro smiled back, inwardly cataloging that this was the fourth time Coir had made such a statement to him in the past few weeks. Faro was thirty-three, less than half of Coir's age. The old man drank, wiped his mouth, and set the flagon down on the arm of his chair, his eyes already closed.

Faro left him there, walking back into the grove. He stopped to pick an apple and took a bite. He was still chewing when he heard a nicker and turned to see a vaela trotting up to him, its long tail tossing from side to side. The two-horned beast came to a stop next to him, staring at the apple.

"You can reach your own," Faro said, knowing that the vaela did not care. Whatever made the creature think that fruit was better when taken from his hand, there was no dissuading it. Faro had watched the beast drop from its dam, and had fed it while its legs still wobbled. No doubt it was his own fault. He held out the apple, and the vaela took it with wide lips, crushing the fruit and dripping pulp from the side of its mouth. Faro walked on, the vaela trailing behind, hoping for more.

The hoof-falls of the first vaela masked the approach of the second until it was near, but when he heard it, he knew it was ridden from the weight of its step and the pace of its gait.

"There you are, Falo," Vireel said. She could not pronounce the Noshian "r," and had replaced it. He never remembered her calling him anything else.

"Welcome back, orvu," he said. Vireel slipped off the magnificent three-horned vaela and strode to his side in a breeze of turmeric-dyed robe. Her creature followed behind with horns lowered in submission. She did not speak further, and together they walked, aimless so far as Faro knew. The two vaela trailed behind.

"Did you find what you sought?" Faro asked at last.

"Do you know what I sought?" Vireel replied. In the last two years, the woody projections on her head had grown more pronounced, sprouting up through her violet-green hair. The pigmentation of the Change had spread down her neck. Nevertheless, it did not much mar her looks. She still walked with impeccable posture and spoke in a lyrical timbre.

"No," Faro said, honestly. The secrets irritated him above all. Sometimes, he suspected that even the quthli knew more than he about what went on outside their little glade.

"I had business with the enclaves."

"What business?"

"They press forward against the Nethec, and the lines of battle draw close to us."

"Are we in danger?"

"Always."

Faro waited a while to see if Vireel would offer more, but she didn't.

"That still does not say what business you had," he ventured.

"I sought to deter them."

"Did they listen?"

"Of course not."

"Why do the enclaves hate you so much?" No one had specifically told Faro that the enclaves hated Vireel, but he had come to believe it to be true. Vireel's answer did not dissuade him:

"It matters not. It all happened over thirty years ago, but they will not forgive me in three thousand and thirty. We are alone here."

"And if the forces of the Nethec and the enclaves overrun us?"

Vireel did not answer, and they walked together in silence beneath the shade of the trees.

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