Ana spent the next morning's march with half of her focus on practicing her channeling, while keeping the other half on the situation and the now almost four hundred and fifty strong column of people. The temperature kept fluctuating. While it was usually perfectly comfortable, sometimes it would instantly drop to freezing cold or rise to oppressive heat for a few seconds before returning to normal.

The changes were getting more and more frequent, as was the thunder. It had quickly gone from every few days, to daily, to every few hours. Now it was almost hourly, day and night.

Ana had a pretty good idea of what would happen when the frequency reached every minute, then every second, and then, like a coin spinning to rest on a table, reached almost infinity.

Besides all that, it was almost eerily quiet. There was only one attack all morning, and that barely qualified. Two of the ranging scouts in the forest came across a demon, which they led back to the massed firepower of the Delver parties. Not a single changeling or sapient revenant showed itself.

"They're being kept back," was Pirta's opinion. The command group had gathered for a short meeting during a rest, and nobody there was optimistic enough to argue against her. "Karti's massing his forces, either for a defence of the white obelisk, or for a decisive attack or ambush. I would say that we need to increase our vigilance, but I don't think that's possible. Now it's a question of not becoming complacent."

"The thunder should be enough to keep everyone on their toes, I should think," Captain Falk said, "but additional scouts may be in order."

"One would hope. And you're right. We should increase the number of scouts, and have them range further afield in case the enemy is massing nearby or shadowing us. The earlier the warning, the better."

"I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you what my Level 15 Ability is," Ana said and immediately had everyone's undivided attention.

"Oh, thank the gods," Drisa the Administrator said. "Do you know how uncommon it is for me to have no damn idea what Abilities someone has, based on their Classes and Levels? It doesn't happen! That's how uncommon it is! Do you mind if I take notes? I'll remember perfectly and forever either way, but I'd really love to record this." She gestured meaningfully with the quill and paper she already had out to record any decisions taken.

Ana looked at her, then shrugged. "Fine. Just stick to the actual Ability. I don't want my name in there."

"On my honor as an officer of the Bluesky Guild," Drisa said eagerly.

"Alright. Well, the big thing would be the wings," Ana said with as much nonchalance as she could muster. "Fully functional, ethereal — or crystalline depending on how you look at them, but with no physical presence."

The shocked expressions and exclamations from the others was the high point of her day so far.

"They have a second effect, too. My Party members become immune to fear and intimidation as long as they're out. They're not permanent, though. My best estimate is that they last about ten seconds per Class Level. I'm not sure how long it takes before I can bring them out again, since I was busy learning channeling from Tellak when it happened, but longer than half an hour and shorter than ten, at least."

"That's a lot of detail," Drisa said cheerfully. Her quill had stopped almost at the same time Ana stopped speaking — the woman wrote fast! "Thank you."

"Yeah. Sure. The reason I'm telling you all is that I was thinking I could go for a flight and take a look around. Get a different perspective, you know? And I know you'd all have a bunch of questions afterward. This way you know for how long and how often I can do this, unless it's better for me to keep the Ability ready for combat."

"That would most certainly be an excellent trump card," Captain Falk said. "If you can strike important individuals in their backline it might even turn a battle. Yes, indeed! That said, I will let my curiosity get the better of me and ask that you bring out these wings and, as you say, take a look around. That way we would learn the precise recovery time as well."

"Any objections?" Ana asked, looking around. There were none, and she was glad for it. She'd been itching to go back up ever since her feet had touched the ground again the previous day. "In that case, I'll go let Messy know what I'm doing, and then I'll go up. I'll land here and report what I've seen, if you don't mind sticking around."

"Not at all," Pirta said. "By all means."

Messy was delighted to hear that Ana was bringing her wings out again, though a little disappointed that Ana didn't think this was a good time for them to try flying together. The others nearby, though…

"The hell do you mean, 'bring your wings out?'" Kaira almost screeched. "What haven't you been telling us?"

"Nothing much," Ana said, grinning happily at her friend. "New development. I'll be back in a bit."

With that she turned and took a few running steps. Then she willed her Wings of Glory into being, leapt into the air, and left an awestruck commotion behind her.

Perhaps she was being childish, she thought as she soared. This time she climbed higher and faster than the first, aware of how short a time she had to enjoy this and wanting to take full advantage of it. She wasn't sure why she took so much pleasure in shocking the others with what she did. Maybe she was punishing them for putting her in a situation she didn't want, but she'd never thought of herself as vindictive. Besides, it drew attention to her that she didn't want. Perhaps she was doing it to impress and amaze, but why should she care what most of these people thought of her.

Her therapist's words about positive attention came back to her. She wished she could deny that it might be that easy.

Not wanting to pursue that line of introspection anymore, Ana turned her full attention to flying and what she could see. In thirty seconds of climbing almost straight up, she'd reached something like three hundred feet, and for the first time she got a look at how the Splinter was laid out. The forest stretched unbroken in every direction, the canopy undulating gently with the landscape. Far to the north rose the hills and mountains that Tor insisted one could never reach, and to the west — duskward — was a hint of a sea, which became more clear the higher she rose. To dawnward the forest continued forever, and far to the south the forest fell away before giving way to plains.

To the south-east, her attention caught on a haze of smoke rising from the trees. And as she climbed to five hundred, eight hundred, then a thousand feet, her Perception-sharpened eyes picked out a needle rising inside a large meadow or clearing, blindingly white in the sunshine. That, she knew, was their destination.

The same as on her first flight, an undefined feeling in the back of her mind told her that she didn't have long to go. Less than half of her total time, in fact. Yet she didn't feel concerned, or hurried. The Ability, or the wings themselves, came with a whole package of instincts that told her that she could easily land safely in the time remaining.

She took a look around, making sure that she hadn't missed anything obvious nearby. No smoke rose from the forest. No dust from the road ahead or behind. The road crossed a wide stream or small river a few miles ahead, but that was nothing new — though now that she thought about it, Ana wondered where the bridges had come from. Or the road, for that matter. Did they come with the Splinter, or had the Guild had time to build them in the one-and-a-half to two years that the place had even existed?

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It wasn't important at the moment, but still something to find out.

Feeling her time now actually running out, Ana folded her wings, twisted her body, and dove. Her wings came out again, catching the air and giving her almost perfect control as she descended rapidly, making wide turns to bleed off some of the speed. The Guild members were packed in a fair-sized glade through which the road passed, leaving much of the road empty. With two turns Ana lined herself up along it, treating it as a runway — she might have been able to just come straight down as she had on her first flight, but this way was more fun. The air roared past her and through her clothes as she came in low, doing well above a hundred and with ten seconds to spare. As she approached the command group she turned her wings almost perpendicular with the ground, jerking her ten feet into the air but stealing most of her speed, and she beat her wings, actively fighting her momentum. When her time ran out she was hovering six feet in the air before the others, much like she had in the square when Pirta made her marshal.

The wings dissolved into motes of light, and Ana dropped gracefully, bending her knees in a soft landing. Grins, stunned faces, and a bemused look from Pirta met her, as cheering and applause broke out from the gathered crowd.

Ana felt suddenly embarrassed, Acting and a lifetime of practice being the only things that kept her from grinning with satisfaction herself. Yeah. There might definitely be something to that whole "craving positive attention" thing.

"Well, Marshal," Pirta said calmly. "That was quite a display. Did you see anything of note?"

"That looked gods-damn amazing," Simt said, not sparing the captain so much as a glance. "I've only seen two people fly in my life, and they were both just passing by. What's it like?"

"Gods-damn amazing," Ana replied, just flippant enough to make Simt grin. "And, Captain, I saw what must be the white obelisk. Far south and dawnward, just like we thought."

At the confirmation that their goal was in reach, the group became much more solemn. "That's good to hear," Pirta said. "Though the Wayfarer hasn't steered us wrong, I can't deny that having you confirm our path is a relief. Is there anything else you can tell us?"

"There was a lot of smoke around it. Looks like there's a pretty big camp there, unless the fires are for something else."

"If they've many fires burning during the daytime, I doubt they're just campfires," Captain Falk said. "No, they must have some purpose, though what…"

There were murmurs of agreement around the group, along with some suggestions, from the fires being a source of Fire-aligned mana to the smoke being the agent destabilizing the Splinter, or something more benign like Karti being encamped in a marsh and the fires being there to keep the bugs away. In the end they agreed that it didn't really matter; as Wandak, the heavily pierced and newly minted Level 20 Swordsman put it, "If we wipe Karti and his bastards out, we can deal with the fires and whatever their purpose is afterward."

Ana came to regret her impulsive display almost as soon as the meeting broke up and the officers got the train moving again. She'd gotten used to seeing fear, admiration, and awe on the faces around her, along with a host of other reactions. Many, if not most of the people there had seen her on the square, when Pirta made her marshal and the Wayfarer first manifested a version of Ana's wings to raise her up. That had been for a brief moment, and some time ago. Now, having just seen Ana soar through the air, every one of those reactions was amplified, though the lean toward awe was more noticeable than ever. Murmurs of "Angel! The Wayfarer's angel!" followed her wherever she went.

The worst part was the people who wanted to touch her. This was a world where magic was a very real thing, a part of daily life. Why, then, were people treating her like a saint, reaching out to brush their fingers on her armor as she passed? The first few times she'd had to hold herself back from reacting violently, and told them off. When it kept happening she finally just gave up and walked farther from the crowd.

At least most people didn't actually approach her.

As uncomfortable and annoying as those people were, they didn't concern her the way the fearful or angry ones did. They tried to hide it. No one scowled or stared daggers at her when she could see it, but their body language couldn't lie. Some people there, militia, volunteers, and civilians alike, people who she'd spent the last several weeks giving all her time and repeatedly risking her life to protect, hated her. And while it didn't touch her emotionally, it did worry her because of what it might mean.

Their enemy served the Sentinel. The Lord of Order also had many followers among the Guild members. And if the Wayfarer answered prayers by offering guidance, wouldn't the Sentinel do the same? And what guidance would he give to people embedded among those coming to ruin his plans?

She'd been worried about possible traitors before, but hadn't had a good way to identify them. Now she marked the faces of every single person that looked at her funny, or who was trying to hide their antagonism. They may not all be enemies; it could be something as simple as envy, or a feeling that she didn't deserve what she'd been given. She'd keep an eye on them all the same. The big question was how to subtly bring them to the attention of the others and make sure that if they decided to do something stupid, the damage they could do was reduced.

And, of course, there was Pirta. Ana didn't want to mistrust the captain. She had good reasons not to in what the captain had said when their prisoner revealed who was behind the destruction of her Splinter, and in what she had done since. But she was the highest profile worshipper of the Sentinel in the Splinter, going so far as to carry around an effigy of the deity.

Ana didn't want to mistrust the captain, but could she afford not to?

For the first time in her life, Ana willingly went to a priest to help her with her problems. Mamtass and the temple's regular volunteers usually walked together somewhere near the front of the train, and today was no exception.

"Walk with me, padre?" she said as she came close.

Mamtass chuckled softly at the title, excused himself, and fell out from his group. "How can I help you, Chosen?"

"I'm not sure," Ana admitted, keeping her voice down. "I don't want to start any kind of religious conflict. But I also need someone knowledgeable whom I can be sure isn't being influenced by the enemy."

"The enemy being the Lord of Order?" Mamtass asked, just as softly.

Ana gave him a flat look. "We were trying not to let that spread."

"Nor has it. But word has gotten to me, and while I would prefer not to tell you how I see no reason to hide it from you. But with that established: what is it you need?"

"There are some people in this caravan who are showing some outright hostility toward me," she said bluntly. "I'm not sure how to deal with them. If I put them under guard I'll be wasting resources that we can't spare, and it will be obvious who I'm targeting. That'll just cause new problems. But if I do nothing they may turn on us, either when our guard's down or at the last moment. And then there's the biggest potential problem: the captain."

"The captain," Mamtass mused. "If you're asking my opinion, I would advise you to trust her. My impression is that she serves her Guild first, her people second, and herself third. The Lord of Order may be her deity of choice, but if her god and her duty come into conflict, she'll choose duty."

"That's a relief," Ana said, allowing herself to believe him. Or at least that he was being entirely earnest. "What about Falk?"

"Tober Falk?" Mamtass sounded almost amused. "You'll not find a more reliable ally. No, that's an exaggeration, but you understand what I'm getting at, I'm sure. He worships the Lady of Justice, and like all her worshippers he takes an extremely dim view of those who harm the innocent. And Mistress Falk is one of ours. Or mine, perhaps. I get the impression that, Chosen or not, you're not the pious type."

Ana could feel the Wayfarer laughing at that.

"As for those among the Guild members who concern you," Mamtass continued, "that is a difficult question. My best suggestion at the moment would be to have them quietly watched, and not assigned anywhere they could cause real harm."

"That's hard to do when I don't even know their names."

"Oh, I can help you there. I take pride in knowing every Guild member in this Splinter, at least by name and reputation. Walk with me, and let me know who concerns you. I swear I won't use the information for anything nefarious," Mamtass added, then gave her a smile of such transparent nefariousness, that he couldn't be anything but completely honest.

Ana couldn't help but laugh. A priest with a sense of humor. What next, an honest politician?

"Fine, padre," she chuckled. "I appreciate it. Are you available now?"

"I'm available for anything of sufficient importance. If you need me, I'm yours."

"Come on, then," Ana said and picked up the pace. "Let's see which of our neighbors want to stab me in the back."

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