MIRRI

  Eventually, she had the control necessary to keep her eyes dry. The evidence evaporated, and Mirri's breathing was level and controlled by the time Viran and Dovin joined them.

  There was little doubt in Mirri's mind as to what was in the long crates her mother had Viran stash in the rafters, laid up between support beams. Bronze was not important enough to lock in the Warden's Perch, and Seraph Steel was too valuable to leave in the armory. Only one of the Venatrix's armaments needed Yarrun's attention before it would function again. Perhaps two, if the human took the boots.

  The mess caused by Mirri's weakness was a perfect teaching opportunity for Viran. There were plenty of mistakes to analyze, and she had survived them, so they could be ignored in favor of combing for information that would be relevant to the future.

  Like every single detail she remembered about the two strange humans currently occupying the bathroom one door over.

  "The space was too tight for the spear, and the pelt looked like a child's toy," Mirri's snout scrunched on its own as she recalled their first encounter. "I don't think it was intentional bait, but the movement when he tried to hide was what drew my eyes in the first place. She was behind the door, and I didn't look."

  An amused huff of air drew Mirri's attention to the familiar form leaned up behind the door to her mother's office.

  "Start doing that. Checking behind doors, when you enter a room. You're a mage with a mage's durability, Young Immortal in a safe haven or not." Dovin chastised her.

  Mirri swallowed her protests and nodded. She was vulnerable in a way Viran was not, whether she had believed a child was in danger or not. A thought which brought her back to Calen.

  "They were reckless. Unarmed. Well, no formal arms," Mirri corrected herself as she continued. "The woman tried for a grip around my neck, the boy swung a bag of slough at my knee."

  "And there were no knights, or other bodies upstairs?" Her mother asked.

  Dovin snorted.

  "Not according to the Waster, and I'm getting the impression she would crow about stepping on a rat with eyes that glinted a bit silver in the moonlight."

  "Sutai." Viran volunteered Sutai's name as if Dovin had forgotten it.

  The Warden's expression turned on Mirri before she could begin to roll her eyes.

  "Did you search them thoroughly? Could they have hidden firearms somewhere before you arrived?" Isha asked.

  "No, I—" Mirri inhaled sharply. "The shots. The male has minor fire channels, well-constructed. They're buried in the mess now, but he could have operated something and tossed it away."

  She had her doubts about Calen's ability to carry five miniaturized cannons and hide them successfully, and he hadn't smelled like powder up close, but her senses had been overwhelmed. Smoke from the burning oil and the shot from the Bessos man could have easily disguised the evidence, especially if he had rinsed his hands in the water barrel.

  Of course, he could have only done that if he were capable of walking across the room. An exonerating detail her mind had buried under the flames of suspicion.

  Mirri added another failure to the tally.

  "What about the third man? Did you frisk him?" Dovin asked.

  "No," Mirri admitted with a grimace. "I missed him in the smoke, with the Bessos knights and the— and Sutai taking my attention. He could have lost the firearms, or tossed them away."

  "And we don't have him to check for a bandolier." Isha sucked air through her teeth. "We'll have to ask them. Go through the rest of it, focus on your interactions with our guests."

  Mirri recounted the rest, including her suspicions about Calen's behavior, and his strange accountings about light. Dovin had looked almost ready to interrupt her when she testified to the boy studying the channels in her hands up at the tower, but a jerk of her chin left his mouth closing. She put particular emphasis on the way his channels had mirrored hers below the knuckles by the time they had arrived at the gully, and the rest...

  The rest was currently the subject of song. 'Silver and Seraph Screams' had been the working title when Viran had shoved the wagon out of the mud in the pass. Dast might have been a bit too fond of his flask, but he had the heart of a poet, and knew how to share.

  Mirri tried to ignore that her failures were now more Immortal than she was.

  "So the boy's a reckless pragmatist with light channels built for warcasting, an overdeveloped manasight, and first exposure malleability means your potion left him with an unknown level of regenerative talent. What about the girl?" Her mother asked.

  She had a tablet of soft clay in front of her, but the stylus lay flat on the desk. Nothing had been transcribed yet, and likely wouldn't until Viran had finished with his report. Putting details about a Young Immortal's channels to writing would be an atrocious violation of trust.

  "Protective of him. She was quiet otherwise. Likely a lesser regenerative talent, under the rest of the durability curve," Mirri admitted. "I couldn't see her channels through her hands from that distance, Mahira was the only one who got to examine her closely."

  "And the Venatrix died protecting whatever she saw. Earth had secrets, and those two knew them." Dovin said gravely.

  "Healing," Mirri said aloud. "Healing and fire. That's what she said. Not exactly, but she had salvaged a broken patch, and said that her brother ran the furnace."

  "So if they're telling the truth about being Arrivals, those are the only two runes they would have had access to, until you arrived with your lightstone," Isha's claws drummed on her desk thoughtfully. "Mahira was no fool though, she knows the efficiency limits of channels biased for healing. Knew."

  Mirri's tail wrapped itself around the leg of the low-backed seat. Her mother wasn't pressing at her failures without reason, the bitter correction was an attempt to make sense of the Venatrix's decision.

  Abandoning the Arrival would have been an awful choice, and exactly the kind of decision the Maw liked the force. Mahira would have been able to do the calculus, seen her death written in the extended engagement without a weapon, and had chosen it anyway.

  There was no more assistance coming, either. The scattered nature of this year's Arrivals would stretch Sanctum's already strained resources to their limits, and Mahira had been the answer to the Maw's encroachment on the Highlands. Whatever Emma knew would be the only boon Sanctum granted them, now that the Venatrix had fallen. And Calen had stopped his sister from voicing secrets of fire, with a warning she seemed to agree with.

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  If they wanted to understand the depth of power the strange Arrivals were wielding, the upcoming meeting was the time to uncover the hints, before they had time to close ranks and disappear down the Long Roads to rejoin their people, wherever the Arrivals from Earth chose to rally after this season of change.

  "The boy's leg was half-necrotized by the time I got the potions in them," Mirri grasped for answers in the details. "He should have been dead if the venom was spreading, heart, liver, something should have given out long before what I saw, and the third one was a true Null. She did the healing on her own, without a rotation."

  Mana exhaustion also would have explained the weakness of Emma's grip around Mirri's neck. The desperate ambush made more sense if she had been focused on restoring Calen's vital functions, and run herself dry by the time Mirri arrived.

  "Not a chance. Her mana pool wouldn't have been deep enough, not with the level of durability investment I saw. I'd have been able to see her channels without looking." Dovin grumbled.

  The Warden disagreed.

  "*If* we assume she was facing the same limitations on healing efficiency as everyone else, yes. But they were educated. Multiple languages, an understanding of combustion, deeper insights on light than we have, and the boy said she understood that last bit better than him, even with his reported efficiency." Isha said. "What if she actually understands the minutiae of flesh?"

  "That's the work of decades. Centuries, even. Something Immortals manage with careful study of themselves. They claim their world was manaless, and neither of them is fully grown anyway."

  Mirri looked at Dovin before realizing she was the one who had spoken. Arguing against her own point. She could even trace down her reasoning, to find why the note of fear had crept into her voice.

  Because the other option was that they were being lied to, that Earth had had mana, and the girl was a Fleshrender, with knowledge drawn from bloody experience. And right now she would be recovering, soaking in power Mirri had drawn from Eastwatch herself.

  "And yet the boy was alive for long enough to be saved," Isha hummed, neither agreement nor disagreement. "I suppose we'll have to ask them. Viran, start when you split from Dovin."

  And that seemed to close the matter for now. Her mother did not reach for the staff, there was no crackle of dry air over Mirri's scales, and no one called for fire or warned the garrison.

  Mirri sat quiet while Viran gave his own meandering account, hoping the Warden was right.

  The breeze over her clothing was momentarily a stark reminder that she was no longer armored or armed, and separated from the otherworldly nobility and whatever powers they wielded by no more than two slabs of oak and ten paces.

  Fire, at least, could only destroy. Mirri had no desire to be twisted into some new horror, someone else's vision of the perfect monster.

  Dovin's quiet chuckle drew her out of the spiraling nightmare.

  "Viran, 'Squeaky' is Ramik Raincaller's great-grandson," Dovin was explaining. "You'll get a fair duel with him in a few seasons, in front of an audience no less."

  Viran seemed confused even as Mirri's heart soared. Finally, good news.

  While she had been busy making a mess of the Tenets, her cousin had soundly defeated his intended opponent, outnumbered and unarmed, without causing serious injury.

  They would both have months to adapt to what they had learned, and increase their mastery of mana, but Viran was learning the basics. He would progress much faster

  "Why would he try to rush our fight? It wouldn't have counted if he beat me, right?" Viran asked.

  "No, but it's good you didn't harm him meaningfully," Isha said, standing. "We can make a show of good faith, and ransom the north tower's garrison very effectively now. Offering the unharmed Bessos scion back is sure to complicate tribal politics, given Saah's men were supposed to get the ransoms for our captives."

  "And now we know you'll have the advantage in the arena, too," Mirri added. "They may back down entirely."

  A forced surrender while outnumbered and unarmed was a brutal defeat, squires or not. The betting odds would be unattractive to say the least. Any attempt to maim Viran in the arena would be an obviously mean-spirited ploy that would have half the city up in arms, Mirri hoped.

  People were afraid of the marks, but Uncle had been well-loved on both sides of the Fang, in part because he could afford to be. Her cousin had just taken the bulk of the pressure from Saah's gambit off himself, completely by accident.

  But Viran's face fell, and he shook his head.

  "He would have won, if he was alone and it was dry." he said.

  Mirri opened her mouth to protest the foolish notion, but Dovin held up a palm, halting her.

  "Explain." Came the brusque order.

  It took severe effort for Mirri to keep her wings from visibly wilting over the back of the chair as Viran spelled out, step by step, just how fortunate he had been.

  To hear his tale, the squire had wasted half his mana on the tower and another quarter on his companion, and still almost locked Viran in place with a casting implement destined for the scrap pile. With no obstacles on the sands of the arena, none of Viran's physical advantages would matter.

  "He could keep me still from a distance, just like you do in serious fights, Auntie," Viran's shoulders slumped even further as he finished. "I got lucky and outlasted him."

  Isha's voice was calm when she replied, but she was finally taking notes. Her wings had been held high and wide throughout the conversation, never wilting or drawing down.

  "We'll have time to formulate a counter. We should assume they'll help him with his problem areas before next time either way," The Warden said. "That kind of awareness about the circumstances of your victory is good, Viran. It's how you keep winning fights, instead of keeling over to the first opponent who understands you."

  "While we're on the subject of understanding, what about our guests? How much are we helping those two if they turn down the bestowals?" Dovin asked. "Is Wardship on offer?"

  "Yes, and I hope they take it, whether they reject the Steel or not," The Warden said. "They should take both, with the enemies they made today, and things will become truly interesting if they're that smart."

  "I should leave before they come in," Viran interrupted before Mirri could voice her fears. "I'm scary."

  "Nonsense, you're my nephew, and I'll not lie to them about how much they'll be seeing you. You'll sit over by the window, and practice with this once the bowl fills," Her mother produced a gleaming silver medallion, which flew through the air into Viran's waiting claws. She turned as an 'errant' gust of air unlatched the shutters next to Viran. "Mirri, are you going to be—"

  The offer was logical, but leaving would be cowardice, and she was supposed to be in control now. Anything other than immediate refusal would worry her mother.

  "Two unarmed humans?" Mirri huffed air through her nostrils. "Don't expect me to turn my back, but I've been closer to both already today."

  The knife at the small of her back was secure in its scabbard, and her mana pool had recovered. She would be sitting next to Viran as well, and Dovin had made no move to leave. This was the safest room on the continent for her.

  Short of the girl actually being a fleshrender, she was at no risk. So the knot of worry in her guts was about the way Calen's channels had been crippled, not any real threat. She was just considering the form penance might take.

  There would be no fixing the way he had biased his channels, so it would have to be recompense of some kind. Waiting outside would simply leave her out of the process, waiting for a verdict.

  "Good," Isha's teeth showed a bit, but the grin was good-natured. "This will be good practice, before we end up back in crowds at the city. I may ask you to fetch things, if written examples are needed for some things. I don't expect they're literate in Elvish yet, but they'll likely have the aptitude if they're already multilingual."

  Mirri nodded slowly, holding her tongue. She knew where the texts and tablets were stored, and knowledge was as good a currency as any, for Arrivals. The tools hadn't moved from the same cabinet on the mat in the corner where she had had her own first lessons in literacy.

  And her mother was right. Best to adjust before she was in crowds. Calen in particular had been closer to a knifepoint than he seemed to realize several times.

  Listening to her mother explain her goals for the conversation left Viran slightly slack-jawed, and Mirri pointedly not grinding her teeth. She had agreed to help Viran with his mastery of mana, but he wasn't going to turn around and use that knowledge against her, and already understood the basics.

  If Earth had been manaless, the two gifts from the sky soaking in power next door would value even her own moderate knowledge highly, and while one of them had a particularly useful talent, both had the potential to be dangerous with proper training.

  Calen had been willing to bide his time and serve Saah's men up to the Maw for failing to help when he deemed action appropriate. The price he might choose to exact on her once he realized just how much she had twisted his channels boggled the mind to consider.

  Hopefully the Arrivals wanted something simple and easy that would take them far, far, away, instead of what her mother planned to offer them for their help.

  Like an escort to the Long Roads and a sack of gold.