Nessa,
I know it's been a while. I've started this letter about forty times. This is the one that made it out.
The posting is good. Hard in a way I didn't expect, which I think means it's exactly right.
There's a Lion-Folk here named Vrak. We've been running morning sessions together for three months and last week he said something to me in his language that I keep turning over. I don't have the words for what it meant yet. I'll figure it out.
Koba is something else. I've been trying to put my finger on what it is since I got here and I still can't fully. He's not warm exactly — he's just never wrong about you. He watched a session this week, pulled a chair, didn't say anything until the end, and then the one thing he said was the one thing I needed to hear. I've been in the Order two years and he's the first commander I've had who makes me want to be better rather than just not fail.
There's a place I eat most days — The Casque's Cask. Old retired Knight runs it, a real geezer, sharp as anything. Gives me grief every time I walk in like it's part of the service. I think he's the funniest man in Adobis and I'm not sure he knows it. Best Koru in the city. I've been eating there since the third week and apparently I've been ordering wrong the whole time, which he only just decided to tell me. Classic.
It's Harrik here and I want you to know that Adobis has a completely different understanding of what fall is supposed to mean. In Windas you know it's coming. The light changes, the air changes, it happens the way it's supposed to happen. Here the days are still hot enough that I'm sweating through morning sessions the same as midsummer. Then the sun drops and the cold just arrives. No warning. Last Gravar I woke up before dawn and could see my breath inside my room. By midmorning I was looking for shade again. I've stopped trying to dress for it.
I'm departing on something big on Wendas. I'll tell you about it when I'm back.
— Lore
Odvar, Harrik
The yard in the early morning had a specific smell — sand and cold iron and the faint bitterness of the mana-treated wood on the equipment racks, the overnight chill still sitting in the stone of the walls and releasing slowly as the sun climbed. The light came in flat and pale across the eastern parapet, casting long shadows from the training posts that shrank as the morning moved.
Two junior Knights were already running switching drills in the far corner — the scrape and pivot of boots on packed sand, the controlled exhale of each exchange. A Paladin worked footwork patterns along the eastern wall, her steps measured and deliberate, the sand marked with the traces of where she'd been. Somewhere above the main building a desert crow was making its opinion known about the morning.
Lore came through the gate with the weighted slab under one arm and the rod pair tucked under the other. He set them down in the center of the yard — the slab flat on the sand, the rods against the wall where they'd wait — and stood for a moment, rolling his neck. The cold air moved across the yard in a slow current that smelled of the desert and last night's cook fires from the posting district to the south.
The Paladin looked over once. Found somewhere else to be.
The two junior Knights kept drilling. Farren — broad across the shoulders, the heaviest reliable presence in the yard on any given morning — clocked Lore's arrival about three seconds later. His drill slowed.
"Don't," Farren said, to nobody. "Not today."
Lore walked over.
"Farren."
"I'm in the middle of something."
"You can finish it after."
"I'm in the middle of it now."
"It'll still be there." Lore looked at him. "Come on. I need you on my back for pushups."
"I knew it." Farren looked at the sky. "Every morning. Every single morning I end up on someone's back."
"You're the heaviest one available."
"Cassel's right there."
Cassel, without looking up from his footwork: "I'm not here."
"You're visibly here," Lore said.
"I'm conceptually elsewhere."
"Farren." Lore looked at him pleasantly. "Come on. You know how this goes."
"I know exactly how this goes. That's why I'm saying no."
"And yet."
A long pause. The desert crow above the main building continued its commentary. The sand in the yard was pale and fine in the morning light, still damp in the shadows near the eastern wall.
"I hate this posting," Farren said, and got on.
The cold of the yard ground came up through Lore's palms as he dropped into position. Above him Farren settled his weight and folded his arms across his chest and stared at the sky with the focused detachment of a man who had found his equilibrium with the situation.
The first pushup. The weight redistributed — the specific living quality of a person on your back versus a slab, the micro-shifts of a body finding balance, the variance in load that the stabilizers caught without being asked. The sand was cold and gritty under his palms, the stone beneath it hard. He moved through the repetitions at the pace the body had learned, not thinking about the count, the count coming anyway. His breath made small clouds in the still morning air. At fifty Farren shifted his crossed arms and the load moved two inches right and Lore's left shoulder took it without interruption.
At a hundred he stood.
"Off."
Farren climbed off and brushed sand from his back with the deliberate dignity of a man preserving what remained of his self-respect. Cassel had relocated to the far end of the yard and was now extremely interested in the equipment rack.
A second desert crow landed on the roof of the main building. The first one turned to look at it. A brief silence passed between them that did not last.
The slab was forty pounds of dressed stone, cut flat and sized for grip without the hands becoming the limiting factor. Lore picked it up, extended both arms level with the ground, and began the squats.
The anterior chain loaded immediately — the deep pull through the front of both thighs, the secondary burn beginning across the tops of the shoulders where the arms held the slab level. The legs drove the movement. The arms held the cost. The morning air moved across his face, cool and carrying the smell of the district waking up to the south, bread baking somewhere, the distant clatter of a water cart. At fifty the shoulder burn had found its permanent address. At a hundred it was simply part of the landscape.
He set the slab down. Moved to the mat for the situps. The twist at the top — left, right, the rotation pulling specifically through the obliques, each rep tightening the burn — had stopped feeling like an addition months ago. Now it was just where the situp ended. A hundred.
He stood. Looked around.
Cassel had not moved far enough.
"Cassel."
Cassel closed his eyes briefly. "I'm not here."
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
"Have you ever done this?" Lore said.
"No."
"Then you don't know how bad it is. Could be fine."
"Is it fine?"
A pause.
"Get on my back, Cassel."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer you're getting. Come on."
Cassel got on, muttering something under his breath that wasn't complimentary.
Third circuit. The yard had filled properly now, the morning session running on all sides — the sound of steel on steel from the weapons pairs, the grunt and impact of the grappling section near the north wall, the quiet instruction of a senior Knight walking a junior through a switching combination in slow motion. The air had warmed slightly, the morning cold retreating as the sun cleared the eastern parapet and laid proper light across the sand.
Brael came through the gate and stopped. Looked at the slab. At the rod pair still sitting untouched against the wall. At Lore's arms holding the slab level at eighty squats into the third circuit. Then she looked up at the roof of the main building.
Five desert crows. The argument had escalated significantly. Two of them were nose to beak.
"Why are there five desert crows on that roof," Brael said.
The Knight beside her looked up. Looked back down. "No idea."
Lore stood from the last situp. Looked across the yard.
"Alright. Who wants to help me out? Come on — somebody's got to want to ride a Knight's back on a beautiful morning."
The yard continued its business without acknowledging this.
"Nobody? Really? Big strong Order Knights, not one volunteer?"
"I'm injured," someone said near the wall.
"You were running drills thirty seconds ago."
"Aggravated it."
"Farren."
From across the yard, arms folded: "I've done two circuits."
"I know. You were excellent. I'm asking again."
"The answer is no."
"Farren."
"No."
"You're the heaviest—"
"Stop saying that."
"It's a fact."
"It's a fact you use specifically to get me on your back."
"Is it working?"
Silence.
On the roof, one of the desert crows appeared to be delivering a formal address to the others. The others were not receptive.
"If I do it," Farren said, "you owe me a favour."
"Brotherhood doesn't have favours."
"This isn't brotherhood. This is you using my body mass against me."
"Same thing." Lore looked at him. "Come on."
Farren came over, said something under his breath that was not suitable for the morning hour, and got on.
Fourth circuit. The shoulders had moved past the early burn into something constant and established — not sharp, just present the way the cold of the yard had been present at the start of the morning. The slab at arm's length sat in the space where the anterior chain had been complaining and was now simply working. The burn across the tops of both shoulders spread into the upper back on each squat, the compound load building as the legs drove under it. The situps. The twist. Left, right. The obliques tight and feeding on every rep.
Above the main building the desert crow situation had developed into something that now involved seven birds, two clear factions, and what appeared to be a disputed piece of roof territory roughly the size of a boot.
"What is going on up there," Cassel said, shading his eyes.
"Don't know," Farren said.
"Why are they here."
Farren looked at the roof. "That is a genuinely good question."
He stood and looked around.
"Last circuit," he called. "Come on. One of you. Make a decision."
A junior Knight named Torven stepped forward. Three months at the posting, had watched enough mornings to have developed a theory.
"I'll go," Torven said.
The yard went slightly quieter.
"You sure?" Lore said.
"I've been watching for three months. Can't be that bad."
"It's not bad. It's a lot."
"I can handle a lot."
Lore looked at him for a moment. "Get on then."
"Don't I need to know anything?"
"You'll figure it out."
Torven got on. Forty pushups in his jaw was set hard. Eighty in he had gone completely still, everything redirected into not making a sound. The cold sand, the sky above, the weight of Lore driving through the pushup and back up. At a hundred Lore stood and Torven climbed off and rolled both shoulders and looked at his hands.
"How," Torven said. Just that.
"Every day," Lore said. "You stop noticing parts of it. Other parts get worse."
"Which parts get worse."
"You'll find out." Lore picked up the slab. "Same time tomorrow if you want to know."
"Ask me when I can feel my back again."
"Fair." Lore extended both arms. "Stand clear."
The slab. Arms out. The shoulders beyond complaint now, beyond the specific report, into something blunt and total across both — a deep pressure sitting in the muscle and bone like ballast. The legs drove. Two hundred squats. Three hundred. The burn had become information — this much, this depth, this is where you are, this is what's left. The situps. The twist feeding the obliques with every rep. Five hundred.
The rods.
He picked them up from the wall. The yard had thinned a little — some of the morning session had moved inside, others lingering. He extended both arms.
The morning air was warmer now. The light had gone from pale flat to direct, the shadows from the training posts shortened and sharp. Sand dust hung in a thin layer at ankle height where the morning's work had stirred it.
Above the main building, ten desert crows were now engaged in what could only be described as a full breakdown of diplomatic relations. The disputed territory had expanded. Several of the newer arrivals appeared to have chosen sides without fully understanding the situation. Two of them were screaming.
The first thirty seconds the weight sat in emptied shoulders and was simply the next thing. At forty-five it became a conversation the shoulders were losing. At sixty the conversation had become one-sided. At ninety it wasn't a conversation anymore — the weight was a fact of the world and the arms were the only thing between it and the ground and the ground was not an option.
"Is he smiling?" Cassel said, low, to Farren beside him. He was looking at Lore.
"Don't," Farren said.
A pause.
"There are ten of them up there," Torven said, looking at the roof.
"I know," Cassel said.
"Why are they here."
Nobody answered that.
Sweat had soaked through the back of Lore's shirt. The burn in both shoulders was no longer burn — something past that, blunter, absolute.
"I think it's over a female," Farren said, still looking at the roof.
"Nah," Torven said. "Food. Definitely food."
"You're both wrong," Cassel said. "They're dumb birds. They're fighting over nothing. Could be anything."
Farren and Torven looked at each other.
"...Nah," they said, together.
Two minutes. He brought the rods down.
He stood with his arms at his sides and breathed. The morning moved around him — the sounds of the posting, the warmth of the sun now fully up, the smell of the yard, sand and iron and the faint drift of the cook fires from the south. Above the main building the desert crows continued their dispute, unresolved, apparently irresolvable, with no end in sight.
He picked up the slab. Tucked the rods under one arm.
"It's over who leads the murder," he said, and walked through the gate.
Farren looked at Torven. Torven looked at Cassel. Cassel looked at the roof.
Nobody said anything.
The Adobis library sat at the northern edge of the civic quarter, a low sandstone building with thick walls and narrow windows designed to keep the heat out and the dry air in. Lore had found it in his fourth week at the posting and had been back perhaps a dozen times since — not regularly, but when something needed thinking through that the yard couldn't solve.
He spent an hour with the bestiary section, pulling what the Order's records had on the deep southern desert range. The entry on Giant Earth Drakes was sparse. A single paragraph, a size notation, and the classification apex — engage only with full hunting party, Knight Lord minimum command. No tactical account. No record of a completed hunt at this scale in the past thirty years.
He put the record back and sat with the empty table in front of him for a while.
Then he went to Garron's forge.
The door was closed. From inside came the specific sound of careful work at temperature — the kind of work that didn't want interrupting. Lore stood outside it for a moment, listening to the rhythm of it through the door. Then he turned and walked back toward the eastern district.
The eastern district smelled like woodsmoke and rendered fat and someone's laundry going stiff on a line above the second-floor windows. The market stalls were open but the vendors had settled into the unhurried version of themselves — leaning on tables, talking across the gap between their awnings, nobody pushing anything at anyone. A pair of children cut across the street without looking and vanished into a side alley. A dog sat in a doorway in the one strip of shade on the whole block with the absolute commitment of an animal that had found the correct place and was not leaving it.
He smelled The Casque's Cask before he turned the corner — the sauce reducing in the back kitchen, something sweet and dark layered beneath the char of the flat iron and the fat rendering off Koru in slow waves that sat in the still air. He pushed through the door.
The front room was low-ceilinged and cool the way thick mudbrick stayed cool through the morning. A narrow window cut the far wall at an angle that dragged light across the floor in a long gold strip. Four tables. Two occupied — a pair of merchants with their heads together over flatbread and figures, and an older woman in the corner with a book open in her lap, turned to a page she'd been sitting with for a while.
Kert was behind the counter. His hands were flat on the wood — broad across the knuckles, dense with old scarring, the look of hands that had spent decades wrapped around something that required a grip. White beard, short. The unhurried stillness of someone who had stopped needing to prove anything to any room a long time ago. He looked up when Lore came in and his eyes went straight to the face, then moved — down to the shoulders, the back, the way the shirt sat.
"Healing up," he said. Not a question.
"Slowly."
"Ribs?"
"Still know they're there."
"Deep bruise takes three weeks minimum." He looked at him for another moment — not at the face this time, at the shoulders, the way the shirt sat across the back. Something shifted in his expression. "How long have you been running the weighted circuit."
Lore looked at him. "Since month two."
Kert nodded slowly. "It's showing. Through the back, the shoulders — you're carrying differently than you were in Pyrion. Weight's redistributed." He set both hands on the counter. "You were lean when you got here. Now you're built." He turned toward the kitchen. "Usual?"
"Please."
"And the second plate. Don't make me ask twice."
Lore took his corner table — two walls behind him, the whole room in front. He stretched his legs out and listened to the flat iron hiss in the kitchen and the merchants negotiate in low tones. The woman in the corner turned a page. The light strip moved across the floor.
Twenty minutes later Kert came through the kitchen doorway with the plate. Thin-sliced Koru fanned across a bed of duru, the sauce worked through both of them until the grain had gone the colour of dark honey — steam rising off it in slow curls, the smell of the marinade hitting before anything else, the sweet base and the salt underneath and the char on the meat's edges where it had caught the iron. He set it down, put a cup beside it, and went back to the counter.
Lore ate. Outside the narrow window a cart was having a disagreement with a wheel. The dog from the doorway appeared briefly in the street, considered something, and moved on. The sauce had soaked into the duru all the way through and every bite had the full weight of it. He worked through the plate slowly and watched the city move through the window.
He thought about the Drake. Then he stopped.
The first plate was empty. The second arrived without him asking. He sat with the cup afterward and let the afternoon settle around him and didn't try to fill it with anything.
The southern gate sat in full Thorvas afternoon sun, the sandstone of the archway pale and bright enough to make you squint on approach. The Church wagon had dropped Psi at the road's end an hour back — a shared cart heading further south, three other passengers, two days of hard roads that had rattled everything loose and coated the lot of them in the fine pale dust that the desert got into everything. He had his travel pack on one shoulder and the particular stiffness of someone who had been sitting in a wagon bed for forty-eight hours and whose body had opinions about it.
The gate guard was a heavyset man with a city posting insignia who looked up as Psi approached, took in the parish robes, the road dust, the pack, and straightened slightly.
Psi asked if he could point him toward a Knight named Lore.
The guard's expression shifted. "You know him?"
"Since we were children."
He looked Psi over. "Since you were children." He looked at him a moment longer. "You hear about the Sand Casque?"
Psi had not heard about the Sand Casque.
The heat radiating off the gate archway was its own separate presence. The guard told the Sand Casque story with the unhurried relish of a man who knew where the good parts were — the hardening under mana, the joint theory, the moment the thing finally went down. Then, because the Sand Casque naturally led there, the wyrm. The wyrm had grown in the telling. The frenzy had acquired texture. Lore's role in the conclusion had been rendered in terms that were accurate in spirit and generous in particulars.
Psi stood with his pack in the Harrik afternoon heat and listened to a city gate guard talk about his childhood best friend. At one point the corner of his mouth moved.
"He's usually at The Casque's Cask by late afternoon," the guard finished. "Eastern market, second row, corner. You'll smell it before you find the sign."
Psi thanked him and walked through the gate into the city.
The smell found him halfway down the second row — something sweet and dark and charred drifting out into the market street on the still Harrik air. The sign above the door was carved wood, a Sand Casque claw gripping a barrel, the paint on it faded to something better than new. He pushed through the door.
The room was dim and cool after the street. He stood in the doorway while his eyes adjusted and found Lore in the back corner before Lore had fully looked up — the same instinct, opposite direction. Still sitting with his back to two walls. Second plate in front of him, sauce on his fingers, completely at home.
Lore looked up. Took him in — the robes, the pack, the road dust sitting in his curls and across his shoulders. Stood up from the table.
"You look awful," Lore said. "And you smell worse." He grabbed his cup. "Come on, we're going."
Psi looked at the plate in front of Lore. Then at Lore. "You're leaving that."
"It'll be here when we get back. Kert." He raised his voice toward the counter. "Hold the table."
Kert looked over. He looked at Lore, then at Psi, then back at Lore. "Wash him first," he said.
"That's the plan."
They went.
Lore knew a bathhouse two streets over that the posting used, run by a broad woman named Syla who charged fair and kept clean water and had a small adjoining room where traders left luggage and Knights left gear they didn't want to carry through the market. Psi stood in the street outside it and squinted at the sign.
"You're really making me bathe before I eat."
"You've got two days of wagon road on you."
"I've had worse."
"I know, that's the problem." Lore held the door open. "You're going to wherever that is clean or you're not going. Those are the options."
"This is genuinely offensive."
"There are clothes inside you can borrow. Something will fit."
Psi looked at him for a moment — the faded yellow bruise under his eye, the dark scar on his cheek, the way he was standing. "You look like you had a rough week."
"I had a good week. It just looked rough."
"The other guy."
"Looked exactly like he wanted to look." Lore held the door wider. "Go inside, Psi."
"I'm going." He went through the door. Over his shoulder: "This is still offensive."
"You're welcome."
The door closed. Lore leaned against the wall outside and tipped his head back against the warm sandstone. Somewhere down the street someone was hammering something. A cat crossed the mouth of the alley opposite, deeply unbothered by everything.
Forty minutes later Psi came out in clean clothes — a loose shirt and trousers from the stock that fit well enough across the shoulders and short in the legs, which was unavoidable — his dark curls damp, his short beard tidied, two days of road finally off him. He spread his arms.
"Better?"
"Much." Lore pushed off the wall. "Now we can eat."
"This is a very strange welcome."
"The universe watched you get off that wagon. The universe agrees with me."
"The other passengers genuinely did not complain."
"They were being polite." Lore started walking. "Come on."
"I think you're exaggerating."
"You've been in the desert long enough that you stopped noticing what two days of Harrik heat in a sealed wagon does to a person." He glanced sideways. "The guard at the gate took half a step back."
Psi opened his mouth. "He did not."
"Half a step is his version of a full retreat."
"You weren't there."
"I know that guard."
Psi was quiet for half a block. Then: "He actually stepped back?"
"Half a step," Lore said, and held the Cask's door open.
Kert had held the table. He had also cleared the second plate, wiped the surface, and placed a fresh filled cup across from Lore's corner. He looked up when they came back in.
Psi sat and looked around the room — the low ceiling, the narrow window throwing its long gold strip across the floor now angled toward evening, the steady warmth from the kitchen, the smell of the sauce and the char and something darker and spiced underneath it all layered into the walls the way smells got into places that cooked the same thing well for a long time. He took it in.
Kert arrived at the table with a plate — Koru over duru, the sauce dark and fragrant, steam still rising — and set it in front of Psi. He refilled the cup that was already there from the house blend without being asked and set it back down.
Psi looked at the plate. The smell hit him properly at close range — the marinade, the char, the sweetness in the sauce. He cut a piece, put it in his mouth, and went still.
He chewed slowly. Looked at the plate. Looked at Lore.
"What is this place," he said.
"The Casque's Cask."
"No, I mean—" He gestured at the room, the plate, the cup, all of it. "What is this place."
"I eat here most days."
Psi looked at him for a long moment. Then at Kert, who was still standing at the table. "How long has he been coming here."
"Since Pyrion," Kert said.
Psi set his fork down slowly. "Pyrion." He turned to look at Lore with the deliberate patience of someone taking a moment before responding. "It is Harrik."
"I know."
"That is months, Lore."
"I know how long it's been."
"Months of this." He pointed at the plate. "And you never said a word."
"We don't write letters."
"I know we don't write letters. I'm saying the next time we were in the same place — which is now, currently, this moment — you could have led with this."
"I led with getting you clean."
"After this." He pointed at the plate again. "This should have been the opening line."
Kert pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat down in it. Lore looked at him. "What are you doing."
"Sitting."
"You don't sit with customers."
"My establishment." He settled in with the air of a man who had been waiting for an occasion that warranted it. He looked at Psi. "What was he like. Before."
"Kert," Lore said.
"I'm making conversation."
"You're interrogating a guest."
"These are the same activity." He looked at Psi and waited.
Psi looked at Lore. Lore looked at the ceiling.
"You want the honest version?" Psi said.
"I want the honest version," Kert confirmed.
"He was a menace." Psi leaned back. "Completely serious face, which made it worse. He'd find the one thing in a situation that was not supposed to be touched, interacted with, or acknowledged, and he'd go straight for it with total calm. Like it was the obvious and correct decision. And then look genuinely puzzled when it became a problem."
Kert nodded slowly. Deeply unsurprised.
"There was a market vendor in Lumina — Aldas, sold dried goods, very protective of his stall — and Lore decided at some point that one of his storage containers had an interesting latch mechanism. Not the goods. Just the latch. So he kept going back to look at it. Every Thorvas. Just standing there, examining this man's latch."
"What happened."
"Aldas chased him off three times and then just gave him the latch. Took it off the container and handed it over. Just to make it stop."
Kert looked at Lore. "Did you keep the latch."
"For about two years," Lore said, at the ceiling.
"He did," Psi confirmed. "I saw it. He had it on a shelf." He picked up his cup. "That's who you're dealing with. That's been true since he was nine years old."
Kert settled further into the chair. "What did you call him."
Psi's eyes went bright. "Oh, we have time for this."
"We absolutely do not—" Lore said.
"Drak," Psi said to Kert, ignoring him. "Since we were about ten."
Kert looked at Lore. Lore had both hands over his face.
"What's a Drak," Kert said.
"Drak-kin. Little lizard — you've seen them, size of your hand, runs up walls, gets into everything. You can't catch one, you can't corner one, and they look at you with this completely unbothered expression while they're in the middle of ruining your morning." Psi gestured at Lore. "Tell me that isn't accurate."
Kert looked at Lore for a long moment. Then he looked around the room — at the corner table, the wall positioning, the way Lore sat.
"The latch," he said quietly.
"The latch," Psi agreed.
Kert stood, went back to the counter, and began wiping it down with the quiet satisfaction of a man who now had everything he needed.
"I'm going to use that," he said.
"Use it whenever you want," Psi said.
"Every single day," Kert said pleasantly.
Lore looked at Psi. Psi looked back at him with the expression of a man who had just done something he considered a public service.
"How long are you in Adobis," Lore said.
"A week. Maybe ten days, depending on the cart schedule south."
"Good." Lore picked up his cup. "There are people here I want you to meet. Tomorrow won't work, but the day after — there's a Lion-Folk named Vrak, a tracker named Davan, a Knight named Brael and one named Sera. You should know them."
Psi looked at him for a moment. Lore didn't make introductions. He'd never made introductions. Psi absorbed this without commenting on it. "All right," he said. "I'd like that."
They moved through the posting in no particular order — Koba, the yard, the combination work, the Gravari canyon. When Lore got to the Sand Casque, Psi set his fork down and listened with the focused quality he brought to things that mattered. His jaw tightened at the frenzy. A slow exhale when Lore got to Davan.
"The joint theory," Psi said. "Koba had that before the fight."
"From an old patrol report. He had a hypothesis. I tested it."
"And if the hypothesis was wrong."
"Then it was wrong and we adjusted."
"In a frenzy."
"That's generally when adjustment is most necessary, yes."
Psi looked at him. "You know what I keep thinking about? The version of you at fourteen who couldn't throw a clean left hook to save his life."
"That improved."
"Clearly." He picked up his cup. "The wyrm."
"The guard told you."
"The guard told me you killed it alone in the dark with the power of personal conviction. I want the real version."
"There were six of us. It was not dark. I had a sword." Lore paused. "The personal conviction part is probably accurate."
Psi laughed. "Davan."
"Davan is why anyone came back."
"Does he know that."
Lore was quiet a moment. "We don't say things like that out loud. But he knows."
"It might need to be said out loud."
"Noted." Lore picked up his cup. "He mentioned once that his sandals were wearing out and the market here doesn't carry his size. I have a contact in Safaris who deals in specialty kit. I was going to quietly handle it."
Psi looked at him across the table. Something in his face went soft and stayed there. "Yeah," he said. "That's right."
"Don't make it a thing."
"I'm not." A beat. "I just — yeah."
"Tell me about Vrak."
"You tell me about Vrak. I want to hear it."
So Lore told him. Psi asked real questions — the first session, the language gap, what it looked like when Vrak started integrating Order methodology into what he already knew. He asked about Kweli-born.
"The step before Of Pride," Lore said. "Of Pride Kord is the full naming — being claimed into the Pride, into the family, as one of them. Kweli-born is the recognition before the claiming. You've proven you belong in the conversation. The formal step hasn't happened yet."
Psi sat with that. "Three months."
"Three months."
"And you don't know what to do with it."
Lore looked at the window. Outside the Harrik evening was doing its thing, the last of the light going amber in the narrow strip of sky above the buildings. "It's — " He stopped. Started again. "I grew up in a city that learned to tolerate me eventually. The people there didn't dislike me by the end. They just recognized I was useful and worked with that. That's about as much as I expected from most places." He was quiet for a moment. "Vrak isn't tolerating me. He's not working with me because I'm useful. He looked at what I actually am and decided it belonged in his Pride." He picked up the cup. "I don't know what to do with that. I keep looking at it from the outside because I'm not sure I trust it yet."
Psi looked at him steadily. "Trust it."
"Psi—"
"I know you. I've known you since before you had anything to offer anyone. What Vrak saw — " He gestured vaguely. "That's been there the whole time. The rest of us were just slower to say so."
Lore said nothing. He looked at his cup for a long moment. Then he set it down and looked at the table.
"You're the only one who chose me before any of this existed," he said. Quietly. Not looking up.
Psi didn't say anything either. He just held it with him for a moment.
Kert appeared from the kitchen with a small clay pot — something dark and spiced, still steaming, smelling of dates and oil and something sweet underneath — and set it between them without explanation and went back to the counter.
Psi looked at it. "What is that."
"Try it."
Psi tried it. Closed his eyes for half a second. "Why did he just bring this."
"He does that. When he decides you need something."
"Has he ever been wrong."
"Not yet."
Psi looked at the pot. Then at Kert's back. "This man," he said quietly, "is a genuinely good human being."
Kert, from the counter without turning: "I can hear you."
"Good. I meant it."
A pause. Then Kert, gruffly: "The spice comes from the Safaris market. Third stall past the water fountain on the left. In case you're passing through."
Psi looked at Lore. Lore raised his eyebrows as if to say: see what I mean.
The lamp above the table had started to matter as the dark settled outside. The clay pot sat between them long since empty. The room had filled and thinned and was on the quieter side of the evening now, just a few tables occupied, the city outside doing the same.
Psi refilled their cups and looked at Lore. "You're heading out tomorrow."
"Wendas morning."
Psi looked at him.
Lore held the cup in both hands. Looked at the table. "Giant Earth Drake," he said, low enough that it stayed between them. "Deep southern sector. Twenty-five, thirty feet — size of a two-story building. It's an apex animal, Psi. Nothing in the field record at this scale in thirty years."
Psi was quiet for a moment. He'd been in the Order long enough to know the taxonomy. He looked at the table, then back at Lore.
"Koba's leading it," Lore said.
"Good." Psi picked up his cup. "That's good."
"Good team."
Psi nodded. He didn't ask anything else. "You sent Nessa a letter."
"Last night. Goes out with the morning dispatch."
Something settled in Psi — small, a fraction of held tension releasing. "Good."
The Harrik evening outside was doing its thing — the heat still coming off the stones but the cold in the air above it, neither one winning yet. Through the window the last vendors were packing up, the market folding into the dark.
"The Church is good?" Lore asked.
"It is." Psi turned the cup in his hands. "Genuinely. It's not what I expected — I joined thinking it would be quieter. More internal. It's not like that at all. There's so much work." He looked up. "People come to you when they're lost or frightened or they've just buried someone and they don't know what to do next. Your job is just to be there. Steady. Useful in that particular way." A pause. "I'm good at it."
"You were always good with people."
"I was always good at reading people. That's different." He set the cup down. "The Order taught me to read them. The Church is teaching me to be useful to them once I have."
He talked about the work — the parishes, the communities, the specific texture of spreading the word in places that didn't have much else to hold onto.
Lore listened. He was present, interested, genuinely glad that Psi had found it. But there was a particular stillness in him when Psi talked about the mission of it — the spreading of the word, the preaching, the institutional reach of the Church growing outward into communities. Not disapproval. Not judgment. Just a specific quality of quiet that meant something wasn't landing where Psi was putting it down.
Psi noticed. He'd always noticed things about Lore that Lore didn't announce. He didn't press it. He just let it sit there between them, that small distance, the width of two people who loved each other and were becoming different things.
"Do you miss it," Lore said. "The Order."
"Parts." Psi considered that honestly. "The clarity. There was always a next thing, always a chain of command. The Church is shaped differently. Took me the whole first year to stop reaching for structure that wasn't there." He looked at his hands. "But I watched enough of the MalWar campaign to understand what that clarity costs. What it was doing to people I respected. What it was starting to do to me." He stopped. "I made the right call."
Lore said nothing. A child's laugh echoed somewhere down the street, distant and clear in the cooling air.
Psi looked at him — at the dark scar on his cheek, the fading bruise under his eye, the way he sat in the chair. The Kweli-born. The Drake tomorrow. Psi saw it clearly. He'd seen it since they were nine years old, just smaller then, less refined.
He didn't say any of that. He just looked at him for a moment.
"You look like yourself," Lore said.
Psi came back from wherever he was. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Good." A beat. "So do you."
"How's Lumina," Lore said, after a moment.
Psi looked at him.
"Changed," Psi said. "The market district expanded into the old tannery block. The street where we used to run is different. Cleaner." He paused. "Barret the cobbler retired. Finally went to live with his daughter."
"He was always going to do that."
"Said it every year. Finally did it." Psi turned the cup. "Old Maren passed away in Gravarn. She'd been running that grain stall since before either of us could remember."
Lore was quiet for a moment. "Was she well at the end."
"Her daughter said she went quietly."
"What a shame." He said it cleanly, without performance. "She was fair to work with."
"She was."
"Anyone take over the stall?"
"Her son-in-law. Changed the layout, which people had opinions about. But the quality held."
"Good." Lore picked up his cup. "My old corner?"
Psi smiled — just a small one, private. "Still there. Some kid uses it now. Saw him on my way out, sitting with his back against the wall, watching the street the way you used to."
Lore looked at his cup. Something moved across his face and settled. "Poor bastard."
Psi laughed — short and warm. "I thought the same thing."
They sat with it for a moment. The lamp threw steady light across the table.
"I don't miss it," Lore said. Not defensively. Just a fact.
"I know," Psi said. "I do, a little. But I think I mostly miss the idea of it — the version of it that never quite existed." He looked at his hands. "The city doesn't miss either of us. It just kept moving."
"That's the right way to be."
"Yeah." Psi looked up at him. "Yeah, it is."
He stayed another half hour after that. They talked about the Order years, a training fight that had been frightening at the time and was just funny now with enough distance between them and it. Lore laughed more than once. At one point he said something that made Psi laugh hard enough that Kert looked over from the counter with an expression that wasn't going to admit anything.
"Where do you go after the southern outpost," Lore said, after a while.
"Small settlement about four days east of it. Doesn't have a name on most maps — the Church calls it the Harrik Station, which isn't really a name so much as a description." Psi turned the cup. "There's a community out there that's been without a proper presence for years. We're going to establish something permanent. Build it up from nothing." He looked at the cup. "It's going to take a while."
"How long."
"A year, maybe two. Depends on what we find when we get there."
Lore nodded. "Good work."
"Yeah." Psi looked at him. "What about you. After this — wherever this takes you — do you know where you're going?"
"No." Lore picked up his cup. "Koba will get his orders from Yara and I'll get mine from Koba. Safaris maybe. Firoxy if the border situation has changed." He set the cup down. "I don't know yet."
Psi looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded, just once.
When Psi finally stood to go he shouldered his pack and rolled his stiff shoulders back and looked at Lore across the table. Just looked, for a moment. The lamp threw warm light over the worn wood and the empty cups and the cold clay pot between them.
"Come back from this one," Psi said.
"That's the plan."
"I mean it."
"I know."
Psi looked at him a moment longer. Then put his hand on Lore's shoulder — not brief this time, a proper hold, the grip of someone who had known the person underneath the Knight for a long time and was saying something with the pressure of it that he wasn't going to put into words. He held it. Then he let go. And walked out through the front door into the dark.
Lore sat with his cup. Kert refilled it without being asked and said nothing and went back to closing the kitchen. Outside the Harrik night had settled in fully — cold and absolute, the kind that made the lamplight feel like something worth having. Through the window the street was empty and the stars above the roofline were hard and bright the way they only got when the warmth had finally left the air completely.
Wendas tomorrow.