"Where," bellowed the girl, "are my mothers, Derek?"

  Normally, Derek would have enjoyed having Phoebe on his lap, but not on the wood floor of the hallway, and certainly not with a crack in the azure slave engram on her cheek. In the hand that wasn't pressed into his throat, she held a festering orb of magic. Like her eyes, it shone a vibrant, threatening silver. It was blinding in the darkness of the farmhouse at night. Derek didn't want to know what it would do if she slammed it into his face like a rock. Based on the remains of the door to the attic, he already had a pretty good idea.

  "Mothers?" Derek wheezed. He couldn't get her hand off his throat; her grip was steel. Even though he was ten years older than her. What had happened to her in her room? How had she suddenly become so strong and so dangerous? He’d thought he was safe with her in the house at night.

  "Yes," Phoebe snarled. "Mothers. I'm Adalaantian. I should've known from my honey-yellow skin that you stare at so much. You purchased me - what did you do to my mothers?"

  Derek's mind worked quickly. He needed to keep himself focused - she was such a stunning, slim figure, full of curves and flavor. He just needed to touch the engram on her cheek. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew enough to keep her distracted.

  "I told you," he gasped, "I bought you at Aleb! I don't know anything about your mothers. Phoebe, my fresh little flower, please – Ack!"

  Phoebe squeezed his throat, but she made an obvious effort to lean away from him, as if he were some huge spider she was about to crush. "You lie. My engram cracked, and I can remember their faces. I came from Adalaant."

  Cool silver light curled around Derek's neck. "And my name is not Phoebe."

  Derek could make no words. He tried to signal to her that if she wanted him to talk, she needed to loosen up. The engram on her cheek was within reach. He needed to be fast, but more importantly, she needed to be slow.

  "What – " he said as a smidge of air was allowed into his body, "what is your name?"

  Phoebe opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her expression turned searching, but only for a moment. Derek saw vulnerability and pounced on it. He thrust a hand up at her tattooed cheek.

  But Phoebe was faster. In a blur of silver motion, the hand that had been wielding that fearsome magic caught his wrist and twisted. The magic dissipated. Nothing snapped, barely. Derek involuntarily cried out in agony. But when he did, Phoebe’s grip weakened. Her eyes went wide, and she stared in horror at what she’d almost done to his wrist. He was almost as surprised as she was. Not that she’d almost hurt him severely. She’d done that before, and tried to all the time. What surprised Derek was that, when she finally had a chance to hurt him, she hesitated.

  Derek did not miss his second chance. With his other arm free from under her slackened knee, he jabbed into her engrammed cheek.

  The engram flared a painful violet color. Phoebe recoiled with a scream, the magic evaporating from her eyes and hands. Derek placed his hand firmly on her face and pushed her down, reversing their positions. She clutched at his hand as the engram re-assembled and asserted itself. Derek released the engram and pinned her hands away from her beautiful face. She couldn’t be allowed to scratch it.

  The slave engram was a basket hanging from a chain, surrounded by a firm circle. The problem, Derek observed, was a hole in the circle. As he watched, it closed itself up, but he'd seen enough slave engrams to know the signs of long overdue maintenance, the crackle here and there. He frowned.

  I had it touched up half a year ago. How is it fading already?

  The hallway smelled like dust and sweat. He looked up at the remains of the door to the attic down the hall.

  And what kind of magic was that?

  Beneath him, Phoebe stopped moving. Her eyes were closed, her mouth hung open, and her chest rose and fell. In a moment, the fact that she just tried to hurt, and probably kill him, lost all significance. Derek's racing heart kept up the pace, but for a different reason.

  She could have killed me. But she didn’t. Why did that surprise him? Did Derek not think she loved him as much as he loved her? Faced with her first true opportunity to hurt him, Phoebe didn’t take it.

  All this time, knowing in his heart that she loved him as much as he loved her. That she cared for him, that she wanted him. Finally, Derek knew he’d been right all along. The terror for his life from moments ago melted into a sense of validation he hadn’t realized he needed. He had been right. He would not forget this night, though she would have to. Derek had given up so much for Phoebe already, and it had all been worth it. After this, Derek knew there was nothing he wouldn’t give up for her.

  Derek had to gaze at her. He wanted to see her eyes again, but with their normal brown color. Her head was the proper slave bald, but it wouldn’t always be that way, if she could be made to see reason. Her figure was slim and not-so-slim, in all the right places. She looked wonderful in the dress he had sewn for her. No matter how good Derek got at the craft, the best parts of anything he designed for Phoebe to wear were the parts that got out of the way. He lingered on these for some time to calm himself down, and clear his head.

  Derek lifted Phoebe and carried her in his arms back to her room, the attic. She could sleep in the house’s bedroom when she behaved. He grabbed a heavy set of chains and manacles on the way. He didn't know if that would stop whatever just happened from repeating, but it was better than nothing while he waited for late morning. Not that the town scriptomancer, who maintained the engrams, had any excuse to sleep in as late as he did; damn layabout hadn't done a day's work in his life.

  Derek bound his slave to her bed, and stepped back. There was no window in here, both to make escape more difficult and because the westward view was dominated by the Fade anyway. The wall of mist towered over his farm like a giant tree. A colossus that provided fruit, but promised to fall ponderously on everything Derek knew. The source of his livelihood, and its eventual destroyer. That was what it meant to be a fogcrawler, to slowly crawl away from the Fade, the source of your livelihood and your doom. It was no different from any other farmer, who worked the soil to which they would one day return. Just that every generation or so, the soil piled up so high around your house you had to build a new one on top. The old house became a deadly basement to which you never returned.

  Derek ran a hand along the hardwood doorframe. This farmhouse had lasted an unusually long time. His father built it, back when he’d recently retired from the Kenkada military and settled down here with a woman above his station who’d grown tired of city life. Mr. Dextovis had only convinced her because the Fade had slowed down so much in their lifetimes. And in their entire lives, that hadn’t changed. Derek had been raised not helping his father knock down and rebuild some shoddy excuse for a home, like most fogcrawlers, but instead adding new rooms and floors.

  But the same year they passed away, the Fade began slithering forward once more, gobbling up land at a concerning pace. It was almost as if it had been waiting so as not to disappoint Mrs. Dextovis. Derek counted himself fortunate that he wasn’t raised to be superstitious. Otherwise, the timing might have made him think the Fade was punishing him for removing his parents from the picture.

  His greatest treasure secured, Derek rubbed his eyes and made his way back toward his room. He nearly tripped on what was left of the door. When he laid down again in his bed, his eyes were drawn out of his own east-facing window. He squinted at a bright silver moon that rose in the east every midnight. It was a very fast moon compared to its remaining siblings in the sky. He tried to remember what its name was before falling asleep. He failed; his mind was too busy wondering if he'd seen it dim.

  ***

  The settlement of Halfway was named after an old refugee saying about always being only halfway to a destination. It was an odd cross of culture. It had once been a small Barridian village that fled at news of the Fade’s beginning, despite the Fade’s great distance. In the middle of baskerwol, no less, when the planet orbited between both its suns and there was no nighttime to cool in. In that first week, the Fade spread like wildfire through a hay bale, before slowing down to the crawl at which it now traveled. After the Barridians had fled, refugees nearer to the Fade found it and settled it. They filled the Barridian buildings with bright Centralian greens and oranges, crafting, and eventually, art and music.

  Reaching around the unconscious slave slouching in front of him, Derek Dextovis patted his horse's neck affectionately. The dirt here was green and yellow with grass, colors it only bothered with in caskerwol. Virtually all plants turned white in baskerwol. Derek’s horse Clopper stood at the point between two hillocks where the road turned toward Halfway, and the small town became visible. It had no walls, just a few farms and a wide market square for traveling merchants and farm owners like Derek to try to cheat each other. There they were now, mostly relaxed during the lull between opening and noon.

  The sun, Yu'um, shared the sky with four of the eight remaining moons, most of which were only visible to someone who had lived in the same area for long enough to notice them. One of them, the silvery one, had set by now, but its absence was draw enough for Derek’s eyes. Last night, it seemed to stick out more than before somehow, like a bottle that's been facing backward in the pantry for years which now faces toward the door. It was the closest to setting out of the visible moons.

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  Derek didn't notice. His mind was on the incident last night, and the unconscious girl slouched between him and the horse's neck. Ordinarily, he’d gently tug her back so her body rested against his, where it belonged, but the only thing that could distract him from Phoebe in arm’s reach, was Phoebe in Derek’s memory.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Derek snapped back to the present moment in time to avoid the person walking in the opposite direction, a short farmer who owned the farm north of Derek’s. He was probably on his way home already; Pablo liked to get his errands done early.

  “Sorry, Pablo,” Derek called over his shoulder.

  “And quit riding around with your slave in front!” Pablo retorted, as if Derek hadn’t said anything. “You’re practically sitting on her instead of the saddle. Mists, sometimes I think she’s threatening your horse’s job.”

  Pablo turned and strode away in the direction Derek came from, toward the fork in the road to their farms. Derek shook his head. Pablo was just a grouch. He didn’t deserve space on Derek’s head today. He needed to sort Phoebe out before long so she could wake up. It wasn’t good to keep a slave asleep for too much time at once. This was a slave engram, not a stasis one.

  Part of Derek wondered if he should just ... take the slave engram off. After all, she had spared his life. She clearly had feelings for him, even if she didn’t realize it most of the time.

  No, he told himself firmly. The engram stays until she isn’t confused anymore. It wouldn’t be smart to give a confused woman back powers like that.

  Where had she even gotten those powers in the first place? Derek certainly didn’t recognize them. The only form of magic he knew was scriptomancy, but that required a moon-shard, and Phoebe didn’t have one. Whatever it was, he couldn’t ask the town scriptomancer about it. That left him little choice except to hide it entirely, to keep it contained on his own.

  Thinking of the town scriptomancer brought Derek back to the present. Derek wasn't bad at market, no matter what his late mother and father said. In fact, that was proof to him that he surpassed both of them. He just didn't enjoy market, because at one point or another, he had to deal with the damned scriptomancer.

  "Well, Clopper," he said, gently kicking the beast's sides. "Let's trot into the thieves' den."

  Derek hated scriptomancers. Everyone did. They always charged too much, did shoddy work when they could get away with it, and always acted like they had people by the balls. After all, they did. At least in Barrid, where the damn crown kept making it harder for new ones to be trained and restricting possession of moon shards. If a fogcrawler village was lucky enough to have a scriptomancer set up shop, they had to act right if he was going to stay. And if a scriptomancer stayed in the same place long enough, he got settled in all the wrong ways. Hired guards, scaring off others of his kind. A scriptomancer was practically a baron, if he played his cards right, and scriptomancy was an excellent hand all by itself.

  And the crown's a whole desert away, Derek thought bitterly as he slid off his horse. Close enough to tax us, but not close enough to deal with these damned mages. Whole chain of parasites, and I'm at the bottom.

  Derek strode down the "thoroughfare" of Halfway, his slave bouncing gently in the saddle as the horse clopped along. She wouldn't awaken for several hours; that was one of the many uses of a quality slave engram. The azure thing sizzled occasionally on her cheek whenever it appeared she might awaken, and she went right back to slumber. The thing was like a cattle brand with extra utilities. It controlled her memories so she didn't know where to run back to, it could be used to sedate her, and it could even be used to inflict pain when necessary.

  Derek arrived in front of the scriptomancer's shop. Unlike most of the merchants here, he didn't stand outside and call out his wares for attention. He didn't need to. Arrogant prick. All he needed was the sign above the door, which proclaimed, in perfect spelling, "Scriptomancer: Engrams, Written Magics for Sale at Reasonable Price." It even had a decorative slave engram and a contraceptive engram. The two most popular engrams in a place like Halfway. One of these days, Derek was going to rewrite the sign, once Derek figured out how to spell the swear words his father brought home from the legion. And if he could ever get past the pair of guards the mage employed, eyeing him as he approached.

  Having tied Clopper to the hitching post, Derek reached up and slid Phoebe off. She stirred momentarily before the engram kicked in. Derek held her in his hands like he'd seen his father hold his mother. Whatever he thought of them, the chicken farmers' son had to admit they must have loved each other. It felt good to hold Phoebe the same way. He loved her too, after all.

  Derek gazed at Phoebe's beautiful features. She did indeed have that distinctive yellow-brown tint to her skin, marking her as a narubati woman. While most narubati lived in and around Adalaant, along with the yaglids, that was the opposite side of the Fade from here. The previous owner told Derek she was just a kid from a failing orphanage in Aleb. He highly doubted she was actually all the way from Adalaant, but after last night, it was difficult to know anything about her for certain. All he knew now was that his fresh little flower loved him back, and that was all he needed.

  Derek's eyes kept coming back to the engram on her cheek, especially the imperfections he was here to have addressed. When he purchased her three years ago, in Aleb, his father was angry. He accused Derek of purchasing her because she was pretty, not because she could work hard. As it turned out, she could indeed work hard, but Derek was without shame in admitting his father was correct. That's what he got for sending a boy he gave no time to meet a girl "properly", as mother would put it.

  Derek's eyes wandered downward on Phoebe's sleeping form.

  Perhaps I oughta have the other engram checked, too, he thought. Certainly don't need any kids yet. Not before she's ready for the slave engram to come off.

  Derek walked up the step to the mage's house, and kicked at the door with his foot. Some people knocked with their knuckles, but not Barridians. It implied their hands didn't have anything better to do, and Derek's definitely did.

  But of course, the slimy mage couldn't be bothered to open the door himself.

  "Come in," he called through the wood. Derek kicked the door again, a lot harder this time. But it wouldn’t budge, not unless he put more into it than he could with his woman in his arms.

  Derek closed his eyes and counted to three. It wasn't smart to deal with someone when angry. It just made him more likely to make mistakes.

  After an annoying sequence of gently laying Phoebe against the wall, opening the door, and lifting her up again, Derek sidled into the cramped space of the scriptomancer's shop.

  Everything about the way Mr. Kebbik the scriptomancer looked made Derek’s blood rise. He had not two, but three chins. His wardrobe took Derek's neighbor, the cotton farmer, a year's harvest to make. His fingers had enough rings to impress a Jel-Hangan polygamist. His hands and skin revealed to any honest man that this was not someone who knew which end of a plow to hold. Derek had only met three scriptomancers in his life, and the only one that hadn't gone to fat was the youngest, even if he'd looked well on his way there. Derek was pretty sure Kebbik never went out the door.

  But perhaps the thing that made Derek seethe the most was kebbik’s hair, which had the audacity to stretch past his shoulders. Even at the Fade edge of Barrid, hair length was an important symbol of status. Slaves like Phoebe were bald, while monarchs' dragged on the ground behind them in a protective sheathe like a wedding dress’s train. A free farmer like Derek's hair was short and respectable, tickling his ears. A scriptomancer who knew his place only let it go past his ears at best. But who was there to make Kebbik show respect in any way, let alone cut his hair?

  The inside of the shop matched its owner. Replicas, models, and diagrams of various engrams for sale cluttered the desk and the walls. Trinkets and the like were scattered in the display. Most of those, Derek knew, had once been heirlooms that farmers around here gave up to pay Kebbik's service fees. One of them was a hair sheathe Derek’s father once wore in the army under his helmet. If the building caught fire and nothing was rescued, Halfway and the surrounding farmland would lose more of its property than Aleb would if its bank collapsed. It gave the impression of a vampire's blood herd; a parasite's collection. Derek wasn't sure whether to rank Kebbik one step below or above one of those creatures.

  "Ah, Mr. Dextovis," the runewright greeted from behind his counter, offering his hand to shake but not standing up. His voice sounded like it washed in the fat of his chin before exiting his lips.

  My hands, Derek barely kept himself from snarling, are still. Fucking. Full. You dolt.

  Derek didn't shake the proffered hand, just stared at it until the merchant got the message and leaned back with much more grace than should've been possible. The huge, cushioned chair probably helped.

  "So," Kebbik continued, in his expensive voice. "What do you need me for today, little farmer? Slave engram need maintenance? Perhaps there's a free young lady who's finally interested in you too, and you need an engram on you for some … mechanical assistance?"

  Derek knew Kebbik was trying to make him uncomfortable. Uncomfortable people are easier for a merchant to squeeze. But Derek was a farmer who raised his own animals, and it would take more than sexual marketing to get under his skin.

  Derek pulled up a chair for sitting engram recipients in, and gently laid Phoebe in it. Her head lolled to one side, and he corrected it so the azure engram on her cheek faced Kebbik.

  "I had this touched up at the beginning of this caskerwol season," Derek said. "It was supposed to last the rest of the Yu'um year and into the next. But last night, it started giving me issues. See this?" Derek gently traced on the place where the circle border of the symbol broke. "What gives, mage? Losin' your edge?"

  Kebbik frowned. He leaned forward, selecting a pair of glasses so he wouldn't have to stand up to peer. His chair creaked beneath him, and then so did his desk.

  "Hm," he said after a moment. "You seem to have mottled it."

  "I did nothing of the sort," Derek replied. “Do I look like an idiot to you?”

  Kebbik sat back, setting down his glasses. "No, but you do look like a farmer."

  "And?"

  "And farmers often break things they don't understand."

  Derek rolled his eyes. "The best swordsman in the world is still at the mercy of his blacksmith. Just fix the engram and I'll get out of your hair. My account says I get unlimited touch-ups during caskerwol."

  Kebbik considered, which was annoying because the only thing he could be considering was how to extract money from somebody who'd already paid him in advance.

  "And don't fuck up her skin this time," Derek added. "No burns or flaking. Last time, you – "

  "Yes, yes," Kebbik waved him aside. "I know her beauty matters a lot to you, young man. I remember the other engram you've purchased for her. Now then, let me check your account and we can get to work.”

  Before turning to open his ledger, Kebbik leaned forward to peer at Euffie’s engram. Derek felt the urge to stop him somehow, but Kebbik would get a good look at her no matter what Derek did if he was going to do his job. For a moment, Derek thought he saw Kebbik’s calculating, arrogant gaze flicker with something as foreign as surprise. It was gone too quickly to be sure, and by the time the ordeal was over and Derek rode away, he’d forgotten it.