Let go, Moash, something deep within him whispered. Give up your pain. It’s all right. You did what was natural.
You can’t be blamed. Stop carrying that burden.
Let go.
They each picked up another bundle and began walking back. They passed the carpenters who were making the ladder poles. Most of these were parshmen, and one of the Fused walked among their ranks. He was a head taller than the parshmen, and was a subspecies that grew large portions of carapace armor in wicked shapes.
The Fused stopped, then explained something to one of the working parshmen. The Fused made a fist, and dark violet energy surrounded his arm. Carapace grew there into the shape of a saw. The Fused sawed, carefully explaining what he did. Moash had seen this before. Some of these monsters from the void were carpenters.
Out beyond the lumberyards, parshman troops practiced close-order drill and received basic weapon training. Word was that the army intended to assault Kholinar within weeks. That was ambitious, but they didn’t have time for an extended siege. Kholinar had Soulcasters to make food, while the Voidbringer operations in the country would take months to get going. This Voidbringer army would soon eat itself out of supplies, and would have to divide up to forage. Better to attack, use overwhelming numbers, and seize the Soulcasters for themselves.
Every army needed someone to run at the front and soak up arrows. Well organized or not, benevolent or not, the Voidbringers couldn’t avoid that. Moash’s group wouldn’t be trained; they were really only waiting until the assault so they could run in front of more valuable troops.
“We were set up,” Khen repeated as they walked. “They knew they had too few humans strong enough to run the first assault. They need some of us in there, so they found a reason to toss us out to die.”
Sah grunted.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” Khen demanded. “Don’t you care what our own gods are doing to us?”
Sah slammed his bundle to the ground. “Yes, I care,” Sah snapped. “You think I haven’t been asking the same questions? Storms! They took my daughter, Khen! They ripped her away from me and sent me off to die.”
“Then what do we do?” Khen asked, her voice growing small. “What do we do?”
Sah looked around at the army moving and churning, preparing for war. Overwhelming, enveloping, like its own kind of storm—in motion and inexorable. The sort of thing that picked you up and carried you along.
“I don’t know,” Sah whispered. “Storms, Khen. I don’t know anything.”
I do, Moash thought. But he couldn’t find the will to say anything to them. Instead, he found himself annoyed, angerspren boiling up around him. He felt frustrated both at himself and at the Voidbringers. He slammed his bundle down, but then stalked off, out of the lumberyard.
An overseer yelped loudly and scuttled after him—but she didn’t stop him, and neither did the guards he passed. He had a reputation.
Moash strode through the city, tailed by the overseer, searching for one of the flying type of Fused. They seemed to be in charge, even of the other Fused.
He couldn’t find one, so he settled for approaching one of the other subspecies: a malen that sat near the city’s cistern, where rainwater collected. The creature was of the heavily armored type, with no hair, the carapace encroaching across his cheeks.
Moash strode right up to the creature. “I need to talk to someone in charge.”
Behind him, Moash’s overseer gasped—perhaps only now realizing that whatever it was Moash was up to, it could get her in serious trouble.
The Fused regarded him and grinned.
“Someone in charge,” Moash repeated.
The Voidbringer laughed, then fell backward into the water of the cistern, where he floated, staring at the sky.
Great, Moash thought. One of the crazy ones. There were many of those.
Moash stalked away, but didn’t get much farther into the town before something dropped from the sky. Cloth fluttered in the air, and in the middle of it floated a creature with skin that matched the black and red clothing. He couldn’t tell if it was malen or femalen.
“Little human,” the creature said with a foreign accent, “you are passionate and interesting.”
Moash licked his lips. “I need to talk to someone in charge.”
“You need nothing but what we give you,” the Fused said. “But your desire is to be granted. Lady Leshwi will see you.”
“Great. Where can I find her?”
The Fused pressed its hand against his chest and smiled. Dark Voidlight spread from its hand across Moash’s body. Both of them rose into the air.
Panicking, Moash clutched at the Fused. Could he get the creature into a chokehold? Then what? If he killed it up here, he’d drop to his own death.
They rose until the town looked like a tiny model: lumberyard and parade ground on one side, the single prominent street down the center. To the right, the man-made ward provided a buffer against the highstorms, creating a shelter for trees and the citylord’s mansion.
They ascended even farther, the Fused’s loose clothes fluttering. Though the air was warm at ground level, up here it was quite chilly, and Moash’s ears felt odd—dull, as if they were stuffed with cloth.
Finally, the Fused slowed them to a hovering stop. Though Moash tried to hold on, the Fused shoved him to the side, then zoomed away in a flaring roil of cloth.
Moash drifted alone above the expansive landscape. His heart thundered, and he regarded that drop, realizing something. He did not want to die.
He forced himself to twist and look about him. He felt a surge of hope as he found he was drifting toward another Fused. A woman who hovered in the sky, wearing robes that must have extended a good ten feet below her, like a smear of red paint. Moash drifted right up beside her, getting so close that she was able to reach out and stop him.
He resisted grabbing that arm and hanging on for dear life. His mind was catching up to what was happening—she wanted to meet him, but in a realm where she belonged and he did not. Well, he would contain his fear.
“Moash,” the Fused said. Leshwi, the other had called her. She had a face that was all three Parshendi colors: white, red, and black, marbled like paint swirled together. He had rarely seen someone who was all three colors before, and this was one of the most transfixing patterns he’d seen, almost liquid in its effect, her eyes like pools around which the colors ran.
“How do you know my name?” Moash asked.
“Your overseer told me,” Leshwi said. She had a distinct serenity about her as she floated with feet down. The wind up here tugged at the ribbons she wore, pushing them backward in careless ripples. There were no windspren in sight, oddly. “Where did you get that name?”
“My grandfather named me,” Moash said, frowning. This was not how he’d anticipated this conversation going.
“Curious. Do you know that it is one of our names?”
“It is?”
She nodded. “How long has it drifted on the tides of time, passing from the lips of singers to men and back, to end up here, on the head of a human slave?”
“Look, you’re one of the leaders?”
“I’m one of the Fused who is sane,” she said, as if it were the same thing.
“Then I need to—”