When they returned to the Silk Fans’ complex for the evening, Blake called them all to his office. They were all covered in mud, and dried flecks were falling off on the floors. The Silk Fans wouldn’t be too happy about that.

  But he didn’t plan on taking too long.

  “That was a rough way to end our first expedition, but I don’t imagine this is the first rodeo for any of you guys,” Blake said. He flopped down in his seat, shedding a layer of dried mud. There was no cushion, so he wasn’t ruining anything.

  “First rodeo?” Grímur asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Uh…” Blake scratched the back of his head. “Just a saying. I really couldn’t explain the origins.”

  “I’ve never seen a snake like that before,” said Sara. “And I’ve seen a lot of snakes.”

  “It was becoming a fiend,” Blake replied. He’d been running theories through his mind of why it had sought them out for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t like monsters wouldn’t do that—especially the fiend-y ones. Lightstalkers were called lightstalkers for a reason. But it had found them from far away, and it had been weirdly persistent.

  For the moment, he told them his simplest excuse: “I believe it had something to do with the fact that I’m part fiend as well, but I don’t have any concrete theories.”

  It didn’t really make sense. Why would something attack him just because he was a fiend, especially when it was a fiend itself. It wasn’t that the snake couldn’t have just hunted them, sure, but him being a fiend wouldn’t have factored into that.

  The theory that was starting to feel more likely the longer he thought about it was that someone had been luring it toward him, attempting to covertly kill him. It had been an assassination attempt.

  But he didn’t want to worry any of the recruits, especially not before their first expedition with a client.

  “For now,” he said, “I’m going to divide you up into two groups. Sara, Cedrick, and Grímur. You three are together tomorrow. You’ve got a good monster hunter, a good tracker, and a good all-around fighter. Jared, you’re with me. I’ll track the monsters, and I can help with the clients. If anything else comes after us, I should be able to lead it off.”

  The four of them nodded, and Blake said, “For now, you’re all dismissed. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Dust Broom watched the fiend-Blend boy dismiss his recruits. He sat at his desk for a few seconds after they left the office before he himself left.

  After he finished his rounds and his shift ended, Dust Broom returned to his quarters, a small chamber for the guild sweepers that housed four of them. There were two stacked bunks and closets nestled in along one wall. It wasn’t much, but at least it was shelter, and it granted them a room aboard the manaship.

  The three other sweepers waited, sleeping soundly in their bunks. They were old Cohong men who had no other prospects and couldn’t afford to retire, so they’d come along with a trading guild.

  Dust Broom wasn’t much different. His joints ached, and his lungs rattled with each breath. Cycling mana just didn’t feel as good as it once did, and it failed his body. Perhaps he should have listened to his mother and turned to qi cultivation instead, but he was too old to change course now.

  He pulled open his closet and retrieved a black cloak with a hood, then pulled it up. With no one else watching, he activated a veil, hiding himself from all but the strongest of spiritual senses, then escaped the compound.

  It wasn’t difficult, really. He knew a few of the guards, and they always turned a blind eye when he jumped over the compound’s outer wall.

  From there, he took the wooden walkways until he reached the inner wall of the Indent-City. He located a maintenance hatch and dipped into the internal machinery of the manaship.

  It was mostly tubes. Interwoven tubes carrying volatile mana to through the ship’s channels, or to the core thrust generator, but half of them did nothing. They’d done nothing for a decade, and were only necessary to make the ship fly again.

  Most of the residents still believed the manaship would leave some day. The ship had been dispatched by the King as part of the colonization fleet, with a Steerman appointed rule the ship and the region it hovered over. They thought that once the Nords were established well enough, the ships would just leave.

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  That never happened. It was a slow process of integrating new worlds into the North Stars Empire, and most never fully integrated. Colony planets tended to take so long to accept their new rulers that, by the time the manaships were no longer necessary to dominate the locals, they had already fallen and become a part of the local landscape.

  This planet would be like all the others. It wasn’t the first time the isolation wards had failed around a Harvest world, and it wouldn’t be the last. But they’d also colonized normal worlds—worlds that hadn’t been Integrated. This planet wasn’t ready to revolt. None of them were.

  Dust Broom continued on through the hallways of the manaship until he reached a deep chasm. Lattice girders ran along the walls, and his joints ached in anticipation of the descent down the stairs.

  This was going to be his last meeting. That much, he promised himself.

  He descended a maintenance stairway. There hadn’t been much maintenance happening in the inside of the manaship, though. Rust flaked off the walls, and a burst pipe hadn’t been fixed, simply because nothing was flowing through it at the moment. Mana-rats scampered away from him, moving on to a different target.

  The Nords had gotten too comfortable, just like the Cohongs. What had begun as a band of roving raiders had grown and grown into an empire of bureaucracy, where paper-pushers believed they held all the power in their magic rules. The once-daring cultivators who’d built the world they knew were cowed into submission by deals and the complexities of daily life.

  The worst of it, their inability to take care of what they had, was a symptom of a broader apathy. The people knew their King didn’t care about them, and they were right. They knew it was every man for himself.

  And nothing would change. Nothing.

  When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he pressed his finger into a mana channel, flooding the rune-line for a second. A light lit above his head. He deactivated it, then reactivated it, then deactivated it again—three more times.

  Another man emerged from the shadows between two massive mana-carrying pipes. He was a Nord through and through, wearing heavy scale mail armour, a helmet with a long nose-piece, and a long mane of brown hair running down to his shoulders. His eyes glowed turquoise as he stared at Dust Broom.

  “What news?” the man asked.

  “The fiend-Blend is the one you’re looking for, Okir,” Dust Broom said. “My replacement. When we meet next, I will bring him to you.”

  Okir leaned back on a mana pipe, resting his back while crossing his arms. He stared directly at Dust Broom. “Indeed. You’re getting quite old. No new advancement lately, Junior Brother.”

  “I will bring you a replacement. He’ll do everything I can do, and so much more.”

  Okir laughed. “He has been garnering quite a bit of attention, don’t you think? We won’t be the only ones courting his allegiance. The Fallen One will be testing him.”

  Dust Broom shook his head. “The Fallen One? What does he matter?”

  “He is everything.”

  “When you came to me two decades ago, you told me your rebellion was against the King.”

  “And the Fallen One whispers in his ear. The King isn’t in control.” Okir raised an arm and motioned around him. “Who do you think is responsible for this rot?”

  “The King’s personal failures. He’s spread the empire too far. It’s too old. Like all empires, it must face the end of the cycle and die. We’re here to speed it along.”

  “No.” Okir stepped forward, pressing a finger up against his chest. “We’re here to restore the old North Stars Empire.”

  Dust Broom heaved a sigh, but didn’t argue. This was the game, and he wasn’t going to fight with men who agreed with him on most matters. All that mattered was that the King no longer ruled.

  “So,” Okir continued, “you think that this fiend-Blend boy can replace you?”

  “I think he would make a better servant than I, Senior Brother.”

  Okir nodded. He turned away, stepping farther into the shadows. “Perhaps. I leave this to you, then. Court him. Groom him for our cause, as I assume you have already begun to do.”

  “I have, brother. When I die, he will replace me at your side, as your window into the outer world and your enforcer. You promised me, two decades ago, when we planned this. You promised me revenge against Golden Locust.” Dust Broom crossed his arms. “Okir, I am tired. I will not make it another five years. Perhaps not even two. The day draws closer.”

  “You and your petty grievances!” Okir snapped, whirling on Dust Broom. “We’re to reforge the North Stars Empire in fire and flame, and you care about your brother? He doesn’t matter!”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Your position in the guild was all that mattered,” Okir countered. “You had the freedom and discretion to act as my enforcer—the man who is least suspect—and this is what you do with it? What about the Cause?”

  “I’m giving you a new Executor of the Will. Someone to shape for the Cause.”

  “All this time since our last face-to-face meeting, and this is how you treat me, Junior Brother? You sound…eager to leave.”

  “I am dying, Okir. Dying. I have no strength left to advance,” Dust Broom countered. “Say the word, and I will begin training my replacement.”

  “Yet you hold lingering resentment toward your guild. How can I trust you will focus on the boy, and not on your own vendetta?”

  “I’ll leave it aside,” Dust Broom said. He wasn’t sure exactly how much he could promise, and whether he truly meant it. But he needed to work with men like Okir. Whether he would choose the Cause or revenge against his brother was another question altogether, but with any luck, he wouldn’t have to choose. “I’ll speak with the boy again.”

  Okir snorted. “Very good. When you talk with him, be sure to…insist on our ways. I know what you’ve been telling him. Nonsense about looking to the future? Don’t fill his head with unrealistic lies.”

  “I understand, Senior Brother.”