We stayed in Dodge another day. It was a day longer than my schedule really permitted, but there were repairs to be made. There were bodies to be collected. There was peace to be had, a strange mix of elation and sadness that it might be.

Cassius and I argued. He wanted to claim the mystorium in Tacita's suit for Dodge. The mystorium there would have been worth a true fortune. It would have taken months of the economic output of the whole city to match its value. But it felt wrong to me. She had died in our defense. We could hardly loot her corpse and still acknowledge her sacrifice. It felt like a perversion of what she had done.

In the end I won him over by bestowing the virtue of keeping our relationship with the Empire in good standing. We did have right of salvage over the corpse. If we sent her back with her suit still shrouding her form, keeping her dignity intact and returning the fortune to the West, it would not go unnoticed. The powers of the Empire would see what we had done, would know the temptation we had passed up.

So he acquiesced. I did not pass the moment without noting how easily he could shift his loyalties from his homeland to Dodge. It served me well in the moment, but loyalties that shifted so easily could shift again.

The corpse of the golem was cut further into pieces that could be fit in carts, and those carts joined our Griid-train. I could only imagine the delight such an offering would bring to Jacob. And I needed answers. I needed to understand what the thing was, why it had attacked us, what its source was.

So we set out. We left the city differently than we had arrived. Olaf and I were different. We had come to the city with a friendship that was still nascent. Looking back, I can see that Olaf had been as eager as I had been for the friendship to bloom. Looking back, I can see that he had the same defensive reservation that I had held.

The battle with the golem had broken through all of that. When he had sacrificed himself in the Choosing to win us the round, it had opened my eyes to the rare and precious soul he possessed. When he had guarded me so in the aftermath of that event, it had proven the true valor of the man. He had fought beside me to save Magneblade and Tara from the attack by the Buffalo Griidlords—Jythorne, Snowfang, and Bonefrost. I recognized the good and rarity in him and wanted to keep something so treasured in my orbit. I don't know what he saw in me, but he wanted a companion as much as I did.

After we had stood together against the golem, a mortar had been laid binding us closer. The shields we had held between each other were dissolved. So it was, that as we passed from the plains that stretched from Kansas City into the hillier ground to the east, he revealed his affair with Tara.

My voice was disbelieving. "Tara? Olaf… she's decades your senior…"

He waved my comment away. "We're Griidlord, Ti. We'll live for two hundred years given the chance, and stay young and fit the whole way. What does the number of birthdays matter?"

I said, "Yeah, she has the shape and the face of a girl of twenty, but she's been around a lot longer than you. I think there's something there you should be careful of. How many lovers do you think she's had in those decades? She knows the way of these things much better than you do."

"Why does that matter?"

"You just need to be careful, Olaf. She knows the way of relationships in a way you can't. You'll find yourself wrapped around her fingers like yarn on a kitten's claws."

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He scoffed. "Tara's not like that."

I nodded slowly. "I suppose she's not. Still, just, be careful. How in the name of the Oracle did this come to pass anyway?"

He shrugged, his cheeks coloring. "It was right after Magneblade nearly died. She was beside herself. I was too, though I didn't know the man at all, hardly. Might have been near him at a party a time or two, but he really wasn't anyone to me. I think it was the emotion of the whole experience. One minute I was in Houston battling through that Choosing. And, Ti, it was brutal. Our Choosing was hard enough, but I had to go from that to the ordeal in Houston which was just another level. People were dying. Not rarely, they were dying every day. Then you were there, under the oak outside the arena, telling me there was a suit waiting for me in Boston. As fast as anything I was there in the snow, a real Griidlord hammering at my shield, then the next battle. I was so confused. I hadn't had a chance to put my head back together."

He paused to watch the flight of a bird. I followed his eyes and saw the huge woodpecker. Dark and swift, its body as big as a small crow, the flash of red on its crest.

Without taking his eyes from the bird, he said, "Then there was Chowwick. She was so upset. I was upset too. The emotion, all of your emotions, her emotions, Magneblade barely breathing. It deleted so much of me. I walked with her back to her room in the Tower and then…"

He smiled, sheep and devil rolled into one. "Then she pulled me into her room."

I shook my head slowly.

He spoke fast, as though trying to dissuade the temptation to judge. "She was in a weird place. But I was too. Afterward I was a little worried that I'd taken advantage of her emotional state. But… the next evening…"

I said, "I don't think you need to be worried about you taking advantage of her."

We walked in silence.

He said, "What about you? You've been in the suit for months! The maidens must be throwing themselves at your feet!"

I was haunted by a beautiful, precious memory—folded-back suits, bare skin, flesh pressing flesh beneath the trees by the salt flat.

He spoke again, maybe to cover the discomfort he saw on my face. "I don't remember you growing up, Ti. You must've been in town. I remember your dad at some of the parties. I was only a little fella, but I remember him. Everyone used to talk about him. But you were never there."

I shrugged. "I was sick. I only remember being in my bed, being tended by doctors. When I got well again, Father put a training sword in my hand and then there was time for nothing else."

His face melted with sympathy. "So you didn't play with other kids when you were small? Never?"

I said, "No."

But as I said it, I was struck again. Just as the memories of my mother had come unbidden, flooding my mind without warning—filling my vision with vivid pictures of her at that rickety old table, of the dirty floor of our little house—

This vision that erupted placed me outside. I was running, a gaggle of others around me, our tiny feet bare and pounding the dirt street. I felt the motion as though I was experiencing it, the heat of the sun scorching my bare skin.

I remembered tumbling, wrestling, another boy trying to pin me. I remembered laughing. I remembered the strength of my little legs, the vigor of my little body.

And I remembered a face—the other boy, above me, playfully trying to get me in a crude wrestling hold. The shock of red hair. The parting in the flesh above his upper incisors that formed a harelip. Behind him, palm trees swayed.

Olaf's voice intruded on my thoughts. "Ti, you okay? Hey, Ti!"

I blinked. The memory dashed away as quickly as it had arrived. I looked about. The train was still rolling. Only I had stopped. Olaf stood before me, concern and confusion etched on his face.

I shook my head, trying to clear it—but just as desperately, trying to retain a grasp on those fragile, fleeting images that had assaulted me.

I had been fit and healthy. I had had friends. The scorching sun and swaying palm trees spoke of a settlement far, far to the west, deep within the Empire's borders.

Olaf put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. "Ti… you in there? Are you okay? ARE… YOU… O—"

I spoke, "I'm fine. I… I just felt dizzy for a moment."

He said, "Should we maybe stop for a while? Are you having a fit? We could water the animals…"

I shook my head. "No. No, I'm fine. Really."

I didn't want to stop. More than ever, I wanted to be back in Boston.

I wanted to find Zeb.

I needed to find Zeb.

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