Essun had seen many things in her long life.
She had watched Tribes rise and fall from the comfortable distance of the Threshold Lands. She had buried three husbands and outlived children who should have carried her legacy forward. She had witnessed Primal Surges and tribal wars and the slow grinding cruelty of the Lands of Stone across more decades than she cared to count.
But she had never quite seen something like the Tokoloshe.
She had watched him and Uncle Adam from afar when they first arrived here.
A weathered old warrior and a young man whose bearing didn't match his Dross clothing. She knew right away they should have been some privileged Anointed Ones from an empire, refugees from whatever political disaster had driven them to these remote territories. Their manners were too refined. Their knowledge too extensive. Their cultivation too deliberate.
