"Hey, boss," Jadpers hailed as her commander stepped out of the small building. "Just in time to miss the fight, as usual."

  Heemlik gave her a look that only worked with a raised eyebrow.

  "You want to infiltrate and fight Staff Officer vlii Eerind next time?"

  Jadpers held up her green hands placatingly. Around them, Heemlik's crew were coalescing with their prisoners.

  The encampment was finished. Already the refugees were approaching from behind Heemlik’s forces in columns, as orderly as only Adaalantian prisoners could be. Once they were past this checkpoint, they’d be out of the Gaar and into the northern fringes of Adalaant proper.

  "Hey, if I can take you," Jadpers said, "I'm sure your daamel would be no problem."

  Heemlik shook his head, but they both knew he was grateful for the levity, after what he'd just done. What he'd just survived.

  "He's dead then?" Jadpers asked. Heemlik nodded.

  "Yes. Sun-Beak has already left to tell my daamvi. We'll need to wipe out this encampment and get the refugees on their way to Adalaant before they close the gap we've created."

  Jadpers glanced past her commander at the dark room he'd just left. There was the body of an Adalaantian aristocrat in there. It was caskerwol night. Nobles’ corpses were supposed to be drained and displayed in the daylight, preferably on a special tower. Heemlik didn't say anything as the flames caught at one corner, so Jadpers didn't either.

  ***

  Heemlik turned to look at the prisoners his soldiers had gathered. They were not a diverse group. Naruglid men, from one end to the other. A few bled from minor injuries.

  Heemlik met each and every one of their eyes. It was only proper, since he'd never see any of them alive again. He'd given them orders, once. He owed them this much. Even if they’d refused his offer to defect and join him.

  "You know the drill," he said, gesturing over them. "I want them gone. Make it quick. Drain as much blood as possible."

  Jadpers had fled her home to avoid participating in her father’s pointless wars. It had taken some adjustment to take such brutal orders from Heemlik, but his was not a pointless war. She was part of why he was fighting it, after all. She gave the Adalaantian sign of acknowledgement with a fist. "Right away, sir. Shall I debrief you on the ambush in the chasm?"

  Heemlik nodded, turning from the gathered prisoners. "How many refugees did we lose?"

  Jadpers followed him out through the encampment, on their way to the assembled pikemen at the front entrance. An archer Heemlik knew waved down from a captured watchtower, which he returned.

  "A few died, boss, but mostly they're just wounded."

  It amused Heemlik that Jadpers insisted on such an informal term for him. She claimed it more closely translated to the appropriate Prisnidine term from her tribe, but he wasn’t sure he believed her.

  Outside, he sighed. "They have a long journey ahead of them. At least the hardest part is over.”

  "Yes, boss.”

  Heemlik stopped at the entrance to the encampment’s Adalaant-facing gate. The sandy steppes of Gaar-Adalaant were an ochre color by day, which made for a haunting hue by night. Especially under the gaze of a pink moon like Hepa.

  The refugees Heemlik had turned into pikeman stood in an unorganized, injured, but proud company before him. These men whom the Fade turned into asylum-seekers, and whom the Kingdom of Adalaant turned into food for the Fade. Heemlik was proud of them all.

  "You've done well tonight, good people," he said, spreading his hands. Jadpers stepped back to allow him the floor. "With this post out of your way, you have a clear journey from here to the northernmost provinces."

  A bearded man raised his hand. "What about our wounded? We've got too many to carry."

  Heemlik nodded. "That is up to you. We can take whoever you must leave behind."

  Heemlik was reminded of that strange legless girl they’d found before embarking for this encampment. He needed to check in on her. Nobody was going to claim her to go with them and burden themselves with carrying her. She hadn’t awoken or spoken in her time under his care, but Kaanel said that was soon to change.

  “Jadpers,” he said, returning to the present. “Escort these good people to the others and let’s get moving.”

  ***

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Later that night, or rather morning, Heemlik was inspecting the sick and wounded he’d gathered one more time before they left the Gaar. He'd seen the agony in the survivors' faces. Some of them had left husbands, wives, and even children behind, shipped to other parts of the Gaar. Many people refused to leave with him, in case they got transferred back to their family’s workplaces. They never would, but Heemlik could only argue so much.

  Heemlik recognized everyone in the tents. There was the woman with a deep gash in her leg that they'd barely kept from bleeding her to death, the man who hadn't woken up from a hit to his head for a few days now, and –

  The girl with no legs.

  Heemlik looked her over. Her slave engram looked a little less spastic. That was a good sign, at least.

  "Jadpers," Heemlik called, waving his lieutenant over. "Rememer this one?"

  "Oh," Jadpers said, "Yes, I do. That's the girl Sun-Beak found, right?

  Heemlik nodded. “I still wonder what happened to her."

  "Beats me, boss. We found her next to the Fade, but she had no burns from it. My working theory is that she’s a moon-witch.”

  “A moon-witch?” Heemlik raised an eyebrow at the sleeping girl. Just what he needed: another mage. Of course Jadpers would notice; Prisnidines had a deep respect for lunomancers. Most of them did, anyway.

  “I’ve thought of that,” he said slowly. “But what was she doing beaten and left like that then? And how did she get a slave engram?”

  Jadpers shrugged. “Couldn’t say, boss.”

  “Her slave engram's a bit cracked, too. Has she woken up as far as you know?"

  "No. You really should be asking Kaanel these questions, boss."

  She was right. Heemlik didn't answer. Instead, he ran a calloused hand over the young woman's bald head. She showed no reaction. Heemlik had seen people go comatose from injuries and exhaustion before. Far too many times. He'd been in charge of making them do it. He didn't like how much this resembled that fate. Kaanel had written the same healing engrams on her as he did on most of the refugees, but her body seemed to reject them like it was rejecting the slave engram on her face. Kaanel was the only scriptomancer Heemlik knew of in the Gaar. If the person they were taking her to couldn't fix the engram, they'd have to grant her Heemlik's least favorite mercy.

  And my father's favorite.

  Jadpers patted his shoulder. "We need to hurry, boss. The breach we've created out of Gaar-Adalaant won't last long."

  Heemlik nodded slowly, and stood up. "You’re right. Let’s keep moving; Sun-Beak will certainly beat us to the next rendezvous point by now.”

  ***

  Jadpers the Sharp sat sharpening her knife in the shadow of the Fade, the mist obscuring the sun rising in the east like the giant cloud it was. Among Jadpers’ people, blunt weapons were the preferred method of killing each other. Using a sharp weapon made it easier for her to kill. It drew a line between her memories fighting for her stupid dad in the marshlands, and fighting for refugees on the steppes of Adalaant. A line between killing for her father’s reunification bullshit, and killing to protect people whose king had turned them into food for his most valuable beast.

  Sharp weapons didn't work well on Prisnidine skin. The leathery, wood-like texture chipped rather than lacerating. It was like cutting a young, tough tree, and if you aimed for the bony areas like the hands and skull, it was like cutting at a knot in the wood. A human had to remain focused on their work when handling something as sharp as Jadpers' knives. She, on the other hand, used sharpening sessions to let her mind wander. She regularly nicked herself, and felt nothing. Knots had formed on the fingertips most often caught this way, like calluses.

  Jadpers stared out across the curving, dry, cracked lands of Gaar-Adalaant behind the convoy. It was the opposite of Prisnidine in every way. The aridity had been hard on her plantal skin for some time into her pilgrimage, but after passing through Barrid, the Gri'zin Desert and Herepo, Adalaant was easy.

  Behind Jadpers rested the wounded. Her attention was divided between the land ahead of Heemlik's company, his dead daamel’s encampment behind them, and one particular refugee. The girl with no legs, and in particular, the cracked slave engram.

  Jadpers found the girl attractive – in the same way a painting or a sculpture could be attractive, since Jadpers had never met her awake. This was a fine line, especially for Jadpers, who had partially decided to stay in Adalaant because she wanted a woman as a partner and that was much easier to pull off in Adalaant than her homeland. Especially with a father who demanded everything, up to and including heirs.

  The soldiers of Heemlik’s army kept their distance from Jadpers. Her presence took adjustment for people who’d grown up thinking just being near her could be lethal. But they had forsaken so much already to trust Heemlik; they could learn to tolerate, if not seek out, the company of a Prisnidine. It helped that she wore a few protective tokens to make them feel safer, and that she was a fixture of Heemlik’s company by now. She largely kept to herself. It was a lonely existence among these people who feared her.

  For all their skirmishes and conflicts, Prisnidines agreed on many things. One of those things was the importance of memory – to a Prisnidine, the only thing separating a person from a plant was recollection. They often summarized it with the phrase, "a person is no more than the sum of their memories".

  Slave engrams, therefore, scared the shit out of Prisnidines. Where a non-Prisnidine saw the same person with parts removed, Prisnidines saw a different person entirely. Stories of people forgetting something important and acting completely differently for it dominated Prisnidine myths. Prisnidines, more than any other Mekkendorians, were prone to losing their memories in their old age. They tried to put themselves in the ground when that started happening. Whenever Jadpers saw a slave engram, she felt like she was talking to a possessed corpse.

  Kaanel had said this girl's engram was in a very bad state of repair. It deteriorated unusually quickly. It was like a fragile bone that kept setting much faster than normal. He had done a little to sooth the engram. No matter what he did, though, this girl's engram needed an expert better than Kaanel to remove it entirely.

  Her legs won't be an issue for Heemlik's Herepo moon-witch friend, Jadpers thought. Curious to see if Saangra can restore her to her pre-engram self. Based on what I've heard her mutter in her sleep, that … might make things difficult.

  Jadpers nicked herself again. The wood chipped ever so slightly. She hardly felt a thing. She glanced back at the sleeping legless girl before continuing to sharpen.

  Oh well. If the girl recovered at all, that would be good enough. That engram looked angry and broken, like a shattered pot with blood dripping off some of its pieces. Jadpers would do her best with whoever woke up from it.