LITMIR.BIZ

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through his beaked nose, the one who kept her secrets and guarded her privacy, was Torchay. Was that friendship?

      She rather thought it was. “We are friends, Torchay,” she said. “You’ve perhaps been a better friend to me than I have to you, but we have been friends for a long time. Why else would we have lasted nine years?”

      Torchay slicked his knife along the stone, a satisfied sound. “I thought so.”

      “You know, you’ll sharpen that knife away to nothing if you keep that up.”

      He grinned at the familiar comment. “Perhaps,” he said in his regular response. “But it will be a very sharp nothing.”

      They were friends. Everything was exactly the same as before, and everything was different. She knew. At least one person in this world considered her a friend.

      Torchay’s head came up at the noise of doors opening and closing, boots clattering on flagstone. “That will be Beltis and Hamonn.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Torchay put away his blade so quickly Kallista did not see where and picked up the cloaks tossed on the bench beside him. The blue he handed to Kallista, and draped the blue-trimmed black over his forearm. It would likely get cold before dawn, she realized, and as usual, Torchay had already thought of it.

      “I’ll have them assemble in the courtyard,” he said and disappeared into the outer rooms where the others lived.

      Kallista led her troop through the dark streets of Ukiny by a pale steady light courtesy of the South naitan Iranda. Her best skill was lighting up a dark battlefield, but she could also scorch enemy soldiers, depending on how far away they were, how many they were and whether the local chickens had danced a waltz or a strut that morning. Iranda’s magic was not under the best of control, but she hadn’t burnt any Adaran soldiers since she’d been under Kallista’s command.

      Only five naitani besides herself, plus their five bodyguards, made up Kallista’s troop. Three wore the yellow tunics of South naitani—Beltis the fire thrower, Iranda the scorcher and a girl from the eastern coast who could spoil the enemy’s food. Kallista wasn’t sure what use Mora would be in battle, but she was part of the troop, so she would be with them.

      The lone naitan in the green of East magic could cause uncontrollable growth in plant life. Rynver was one of the few male naitani in the military. Men did have magic, but it was less common—perhaps one in every ten rather than the one-in-five rate of women born with magic. His parents hadn’t expected their son to have magic, so Rynver had never learned to control it. His military service had already stretched beyond the required six years, but when he learned control, like Iranda, he’d be gone. Back to civilian life, working on a farm somewhere.

      The other North naitan wouldn’t have to wait. When Adessay turned twenty-two and finished his tour of mandatory military duty, he had a place waiting in one of the western mines. Today, he would be spilling debris from the breach down the glacis as the Tibrans tried to climb it, rolling stones in their path and generally disrupting their advance. He didn’t have a great deal of power to put behind his earthmoving, but that and his excellent control was why he would be welcomed outside the army.

      Beltis would spend her life in the military, like Kallista, because her fire starting was too powerful, exploding ovens and setting houses on fire even after years of working on her control. Kallista’s control was so fine she could set tiny blue sparks dancing from finger to finger—and sometimes did when a staff meeting droned on and on and on. But no one had any use for her lightning, save Adara’s defense forces. Defending the helpless gave her magic some use, gave her life a purpose.

      When her troop was disposed to her satisfaction, Kallista wrapped herself in her cloak and went to stand near the arrow slit in the parapet. The lights of campfires spread down the beach as far as she could see. She’d have suspected the Tibrans of lighting more fires than they had troops to demoralize Ukiny’s garrison, but she had watched them unloading. She had never seen such a vast army, never imagined a need for such a thing.

      Kallista turned her face into the wind, feeling it rush past her from the shore, from the North. She squared up her shoulders, pointing them east and west so that North lay directly before her. First the Jeroan Sea, then the lower fringes of the Tibran continent. It rose to a high plateau ringed by cliffs, or so she’d been told, and beyond that, mountains. Mountains as high and wild as the Devil’s Tooth range along the neck that bridged the sea, but colder. Beyond the mountains lay pure North. Cold, clear, rational. Utterly unlike Kallista’s own hot-tempered, impulsive, passion-ruled nature.

      Perhaps that was why the One had given her North magic, so that its icy control could provide what she did not possess in herself. Kallista opened herself to the North, calling its cold clarity into her mind and soul, filling herself with its sharp-edged magic.

      She sensed Torchay’s presence behind her. “You should sleep, Sergeant.”

      “So should you. Your rest is more important than mine. Your lightning will be needed. We guards have divided the watch.”

      Kallista glanced toward Beltis’s stocky guard who stood over his charge. Hamonn gave her a tiny nod, acknowledging his duty, accepting it from her. “You’re right,” she said. “The battle will begin when it begins.”

      She lay down where she was, her back against the fortification, and listened to the quiet sounds Torchay made as he settled close by. “Sleep well, friend.”

      The silence that answered had her fearing she’d overstepped some unknown bounds, until at last he spoke, his voice even quieter than hers. “And you also…friend.”

      “Stop! Wait, dammit—what kind of friend are you?” Stone bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to decide whether the contents of his stomach were going to come out. He knew he’d feel better if he could just shed his jacket in this infernal heat, but the padded gray nuisance was part of the uniform. They could unbutton it, but they couldn’t leave it off even in camp.

      “I’m your only friend, thank you. No one else would put up with your rubbish.”

      Stone tilted his head and peered up at Fox who had stopped after all and was waiting, swaying slightly in the offshore wind, his face strange and shadowy in the firelight coming from the nearby crossway between tents. Stone knew that face better than his own. Both of them named Warrior, of the highest caste Tibre had to offer, below only the Rulers themselves. Both of them vo’Tsekrish, of the king’s own city.

      They had been partnered the day they left women’s quarters to begin warrior training, when they were six years old. They were now twenty-two. Or maybe twenty-three. Stone didn’t keep track of that sort of thing.

      He and Fox had learned to read side by side from the same book. They had learned to fight back-to-back against the same teachers. They had even discovered the pleasures of women at the same time, though not with the same woman. Stone trusted Fox with his life.

      But at the moment, he could cheerfully throttle him. “I thought you said you knew where women’s quarters were.”

      “I didn’t say that. You did.” Fox grabbed a handful of Stone’s hair and pulled him more or less upright, leaning down until they stood eye to eye.

      Stone envied him those few inches that made the lean necessary. “’S not fair,” he muttered. “I should be the taller. I’m lead in this pair.”

      “You’re drunk.” Fox shoved and Stone staggered back several paces.

      “Am not. If I was drunk, I’d have fallen. ’Sides, Stores won’t give us enough to get drunk. Just enough to get pleasantly snockered. Besides that, you’re drunk too.”

      “Not drunk. Snockered.” Fox frowned. “Why d’you suppose that is?”

      “Dunno.” Stone looked around for a place to sit. He didn’t recognize the tents—though why he thought he should since all something-thousand of them looked exactly alike, he didn’t

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