West of Caedia, beyond the stony, close-grazed hills and the shepherd towns and the constant sea wind, there was a stretch of country with no gods. The village called Nowhere lay ten days inland, right where the road stopped meandering up and down and began a serious, serpentine descent into the Mirrorwood. At the brink of sunset, when the Sahirei caravan pulled into its nightly circle around the village’s water trough, the only sounds were the wind scraping over barren red stone and the regular clanking of machinery from the windmill.

Jennet Riadnis, known to the Sahirei traders as Quinnevra Archer, saw to her wagon mule and then wandered out of the circle to explore the village. It was, especially in the lengthening shadows, a desolate place. Not hostile, not dangerous, but empty, as if nothing had ever lived here or ever would. Silent.

The only colors were the brick of exposed earth and porous stone, the gray of old wood buildings, and the orange of the sun. Despite the fiery tone of the light, the air was already cold. Quinn pulled her dusty brown coat closed. So very, very quiet. Will Tuyera become like this, I wonder?

A nearby building had a familiar pictogram above its door: a pear, indicating food. A general store, Quinn thought. In a village this size, there’s no reason to specialize. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, taking care not to bump the sack that she carried. The building across the road cast this one into shadow, and no one had lit a lamp. The door slapped closed behind her, pulled by an ancient spring.

Quinn kept her free hand very still. If she allowed her nerves to rule her, her hand would drift toward the deep pockets of her coat--alerting the perceptive that her most reachable weapon was not the complicated crossbow on her back. Don’t be stupid. You’re Quinn Archer, remember? You’re nobody special. If the store is too dark, too quiet, it’s because there’s no one in it.

And they left the door unlocked.

It’s a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Who dares steal something in a place like this? Your neighbors would be talking about it, and probably criticizing your technique, by the time you got back out the door.

In the gloom, behind the desk that held the store’s record book, a door banged. Quinn whirled toward it and then forced herself to relax. A match flared.

“Sorry, miss. Was just getting ready to go upstairs. The Sahirei generally do their trading in the morning, just before they set out. You’re traveling with them this year?”

He probably knows every one of them by sight, if not by name. Not that Quinn would claim to be a Sahira. She was too dark-skinned to pass for one of them, or any Caedian, without some story about a foreign parent or an adoption. She was taller than most Caedian women and, by their wide-hipped standards, lean almost to masculinity. Her hair, too, was different from that of any Caedian she had ever met, jet black and tightly curled. Once she had worn it in dozens of beaded braids. Now she kept it as close-cut as any day laborer. Regardless of her efforts, though, Quinn stood out. Uncomfortably. Dangerously, even. “That’s right. Quinnevra Archer, machinist. Clockwork and toys, mostly. Call me Quinn.” She strode to the desk as the shopkeeper lit an amateur-blown lamp. “I can pay in coin or in trade.” She set a music box on the table and started to wind it with the key.

The shopkeeper shook his head. He was a middle-aged man who looked old, both from hard weather and hard life, Quinn thought. “There are no children here, miss, so toys wouldn’t be appreciated. Got a few clocks and things, though. You willing to pay in service?”

Quinn shrugged. “I can repair things. But I need to leave with the Sahirei in the morning.”

“I figured that. Let’s see, I have a pump that needs mending, and Evanie down at the tavern has a broken clock. And a broken mirror, but...”

“I can’t do anything about that.” A mirror required a glassblower, a good one, not to mention a ruinous amount of silver both solid and quick. Either that, or someone who was willing to cut living trees in the Mirrorwood, something that could be hazardous to one’s health.

“Didn’t think you could. So two repairs...”

Neither of them was interested in the full performance art that characterized bargaining in Acedar or Tuyera. The shopkeeper set a price, Quinn countered, and they settled halfway in between, with a minimum of fuss. Quinn pulled the key out of the music box and let it run down, to keep strain off the springs.

The shopkeeper looked, with some curiosity, at the tiny revolving figures in the box. A golden male doll, with a stylized sun rising behind him, chased a silver woman. She had copper flowers in her hair and gold leaves sprouting from her fingers. “Laurantine and the Shining One,” he said. It was a god-story. Quinn had once based a lot of her art around god-stories.

“Yes.” It played “Summer’s Love Lost,” a folk song with utterly inane lyrics and a gentle, mournful melody.

“You made her look a bit scared.”

Quinn shrugged. “Well, she did get turned into a tree.” And that was all she wanted to say about that, even in Nowhere. Implying that the gods were cruel and arbitrary might make them angry, and someone who angered the gods might be turned into something much more unpleasant than a tree.

“True enough. So, what are you looking for?”

“Your biggest bag of oats for the walking appetite in front of my wagon. To start with. Why are there no children here?”

It was his turn to shrug. “This is a godless land. Not much grows here, plant, animal, or human. Once in a while, Evanie’s cat will have a kitten or two, but never a full litter. Just as well, too. We don’t have enough rats for them; one good thing about living in the middle of Nowhere.”

Quinn smiled appreciatively. It was, she thought, only politic to be amused by what had to be the town joke. “But if there are no children...”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “No danger of the town dying. Some people come because this is a trade road, some people come to harvest the Mirrorwood--isn’t exactly safe to live there, is it? And some people come because they’ve had too many interesting times and they’d like to try a little boredom, just to see how it fits. That music box, it isn’t exactly a child’s toy, is it? Too delicate.”

Quinn suppressed a triumphant smile. She had had conversations like this before, and knew where it was going. “Not really. Aristos all over Caedia like them. For more than one reason.” Quinn closed the top part of the box, banishing the amorous sun god and his hapless prey, and inserted the key again. This time, she twisted it to the left, and pulled. A shallow, concealed drawer slid out.

The shopkeeper made a soundless hah. “So thieves think it’s just a jingle-box...”

“And overlook a lady’s jewelry. Right.” Not that a sufficiently desperate thief wouldn’t make off with the box for its own value, but that wasn’t Quinn’s problem.

“You have any others?”

“Lots.” Quinn put down the sack and rummaged through it. “What would you like? God-stories? Little dancers? Birds? Do you have any lead, by the way?”

“Lead?”

“Just raw lead, like you might make into a fishing weight. A machinist goes through a lot of metal.” Which was true, if utterly beside the point.

“Not a lot of fishing around here, but I keep some in the back for Tero. He’s the plumber. Half a moment.”

He vanished into the back room again. Quinn picked out a selection of three different music boxes, none with god-stories, all with happy-looking figurines. Some people come because they’ve had too many interesting times and they’d like to try a little boredom, just to see how it fits.

It described her, certainly. Not that she could stay in Nowhere.

Under the right circumstances, even the lack of children might be a benefit. Back when she was Jennet Riadnis, she had seen women who, for one reason or another, had been pressured into having baby after baby until their health failed. Nowhere might be a good place to run away to.

For most people. For some, it isn’t nearly far enough.

* * * *

“Bedtime.”

“Mommeeee...”

“Bedtime.”

Nowhere might not have children, but the Sahirei traders had plenty of them. It was full night now, and the fire was dying to embers as the Sahirei retreated to their own individual wagons--some more voluntarily than others. In her own half-sized, private wagon, with the door shut so that the light wouldn’t spill out, Quinn turned up her lamp and regarded the innards of the tavern clock. What happened to this thing? Thrown in the horse trough?

She had come away with rather fewer music boxes but a good set of supplies, including fodder, food, lamp oil, and lead. The lead she hid immediately. Quinn would rather have her coin stolen than lose the lead and the molds for it.

These springs are an awkward size, but I think I have something. The clock’s insides were liberally speckled with rust. Quinn would have to replace the weakened springs as well as the one that had snapped, and then clean and polish the rest of the mechanism. How old is this clock, anyway? Or is this another consequence of being in a godless land?

She didn’t like to admit it even to herself, but the past few days had shaken her. When they first passed the border of Caedia, when the grass started to thin and give way to bare ground, Quinn had felt relieved. Muscles in her shoulders that had been tight since the day she was born, or so it seemed, finally had a chance to relax. No unseen eyes. No ever-present ears. Other than the Sahirei, with their animals and children and painted wagons--a festive-looking, if businesslike, parade that looked more and more out of place in the empty landscape--no one cared who she was, or what she did, or what she had done.

Freedom.

Two days in, though, the landscape started to affect her. The sere red hills weren’t just quiet. They were lifeless. No grass. No bugs. Not a mouse or a lizard.

Better dead than in constant fear, High Servitor Yulessin’s voice murmured in her memory. Alone with the five of them, he had shed his usual effete mannerisms like a soiled garment. He was fat and fastidious and unmanned since childhood, and he used all that to blind everyone--especially his god, Lord Thauran--to the fact that he was also strong, intelligent, and very, very bitter. No one should have to live like this. No one should ever have to live like this.

Quinn imagined Tuyera, huge, riotous, reeking, with the constant undercurrent of nervousness that flowed from the temple at the city’s zenith. The colors of the place: unlike white-stoned Acedar, every surface in Tuyera was painted, turquoise and ruby and amethyst and gold, making the Sahirei caravan seem almost prosaic. Feather cloaks and warrior headdresses and shields inlaid with snarling faces, and fear, eternal fear. Now imagine how it will become, Jennet. Imagine it--gone. The paint chips away. The fountains dry. Perhaps for a few years, monkeys play at humanity in the marketplace and birds nest in the crenellations, and then they, too, move away. A city of dry wind and crickets, until the crickets die.

Better dead than in constant fear.

Were we wrong?

A dog barked.

Quinn set aside the clock and the bottle of oil and tilted her head to listen. The Sahirei animals had been subdued ever since they left Caedia. There was very little to bark at except the other dogs.

The bark turned into a snarl, and then into a yipe.

Probably just pack politics, Quinn thought, even as she pushed her door open and slipped out, blinking at the darkness. Dogs were as bad as nobles in their own way. They always had to know who was in charge, who was second, and most importantly who was last, weak enough to be nipped without repercussions. At least, being animals, they didn’t make up fanciful names for their rankings.

The fire was a dim orange glow in the middle of the circle of wagons. The only other light came from the stars. And here in the godless lands, even the stars were sparse, a tired-looking scattering.

The dog protested alone for another second or so, a hurt, frightened, “Iy! Iy! Iy!” And then he was joined by cacophony.

Doors slammed open around the circle. Quinn gasped, put her hands in her coat pockets, and strained desperately to see what was going on. There was a full-blown dogfight on the opposite side of the circle, snarling and snapping and an increasing number of painful whimpers.

No human voices. Not a villager, then.

A dark shape ran toward the fire. Halfway there, it spun angrily and cuffed a dog that was worrying it. The dog flew a good eight feet and landed on another of the pack, who shied sideways and protested. The rest of the dogs hung back.

The dark shape turned back toward the fire. Quinn stared at it, holding her breath. Pale luminous eyes glared back at her.

It had a dog’s face--sort of. It had a mane. The paws were closer to those of a bear, including the long, violent claws. Its front legs, at least, were awkwardly jointed, with “elbows” sticking outward and claws pointing in. It wouldn’t run like a dog or a cat, Quinn thought; it would have the clumsy-seeming, deadly fast gait of an alligator. Not a natural creature--in some ways, not a creature at all. That’s a beastling.

The face was contorted, not with animal anger, but with hatred. Your fault.

Quinn shook her head.

Lips curled back. The teeth looked too big to fit comfortably, even in that mouth. Your fault!

Quinn licked her lips. “Go away!”

A snarl, deeper and wetter than those of the dogs.

“There is nothing for you here. Try to hurt us and I’ll kill you. Go away!”

The beast crouched. Quinn’s hands tightened.

From beside Quinn’s wagon, another voice spoke. Male and unfamiliar. Calm. Deep. “Are you in pain?”

The thing’s head snapped around.

Quinn felt, rather than heard or saw, the reaction of the Sahirei, frozen on the steps of their own wagons. People who had been holding their breath finally let it go. People who had been taut with fear relaxed, just a little. One of the wounded dogs raised its head, struggled to a crouch, and whisked its tail back and forth across the ground, just once.

“I’m a healer of sorts,” the strange man went on. He stepped into the meager firelight. Tall and fair-haired, Quinn saw out of the corner of her eye. “If you’re in pain, I might be able to help.”

That’s a beastling. Quinn had no doubt that it could understand the words. Is he mad, or smarter than the rest of us?

The man walked forward. From the back, at least, he looked quite fearless, and his voice was pitched to soothe rather than threaten. “It’s all right. It’s all right. Just let me look at--”

The thing lunged.

Quinn yelled, a battle cry or an incoherent warning, and wrenched her weapons out of her coat. She fired both of them at once.

It sounded like a double thunderclap and echoed from the nearby hills. The beastling shrieked, but to Quinn’s sudden terror, didn’t fall. Instead, it shoulder-checked the man aside, knocked him into the dust, and charged through a gap between the wagons. A horse screamed--in panic rather than pain, Quinn knew, because it continued to do so. Quinn had no doubt that the beastling could kill a horse with one bite or swipe.

“Lorr, are you all right?”

That was Kiroc Perrinca, the Sahirei “king.” Quinn’s eyes had adjusted enough to see his wife and children huddled on the step behind him. He rushed to the strange man’s side, offered a hand, and gave Quinn a guarded look over the man’s shoulder.

Quinn re-concealed the two guns. The Sahirei knew that she had the prohibited machines. She doubled as a caravan guard, and the pistols were a selling point. But she had also agreed, tacitly, to keep them secret from outsiders who might be more devout, or less bold, than the Sahirei.

“Me, I’m fine,” the stranger--Lorr--said, and accepted Kiroc’s hand up. “Nice shot,” he said, addressing Quinn.

Again, a relaxation. His opinion matters to them. “Shot? What shot?” Quinn said, and then added, “Thanks.”

Lorr’s teeth flashed, a quick grin. “Anyone hurt?”

“The dogs,” Kiroc said.

Lorr nodded and strode toward them. “Could someone get me some light? Good pups,” he added, making his voice soothing again. “Good puppies.”

Quinn wasn’t afraid of the Sahirei dogs, but she hardly thought of them as puppies. “I’ll get light.” Her work lamp was still burning, after all, and it had a mirror backing. A healer, surely, would need as much light as a craftsman.

By the time Quinn got back outside with the lamp, there were human noises all throughout the camp, including the heartbroken wailing of a small boy. “Cloudy’s dead,” Lorr said softly, by way of explanation as Quinn came up behind him. “Tiger here is in a bad way, and Shoe will lose an eye. Everything else is minor. Could you hold that up, about there? Thanks.”

Quinn raised the lamp, as requested, and studied Lorr.

Tall and fair-haired, as she had noticed before. Also exquisite. In Tuyera, she had known nobles who thought they looked like that. Most of them were delusional; the others ruined it the second they opened their mouths. Suddenly, being injured doesn’t sound quite so unpleasant.

Hirath would have mugged him in broad daylight, if necessary, to get him as a model.

Hirath is dead.

Unwelcome thoughts. Quinn looked at the dog that Lorr was working on, and found her eyebrows rising of their own accord. “You really think you can heal that?”

The dog’s entrails were hanging out. Lorr was putting tiny stitches in them, closing a rip before he tried to replace them. He didn’t pause or look up. “No doubts during surgery. It isn’t good for the patient. Or the healer.”

“Sorry.”

“We’re lucky this happened in the abandoned lands, though. Less chance of disease.”

He dressed like a farmhand; his clothing was brown and homespun, his golden blond hair tied back with a worn boot lace. But he has, Quinn thought, a master craftsman’s hands. Even without knowing about medicine--even trying not to look too much at the dog, in case the sight of that much damage made her ill--she knew skill when she saw it. So what in the world is he doing in the middle of Nowhere?

A question you’d have a hard time answering yourself. Don’t jog the man’s elbow, Quinn. She held up the lamp.

It took a long time--Quinn wasn’t exactly sure how long--before Lorr put the last stitch in the dog and sprayed its belly, one more time, with a sharp-smelling liquid. “He doesn’t move at all tonight,” he said, straightening up. “Tomorrow, he rides inside the wagon with his family.” He looked down at himself ruefully. “I think I need to find a water pump. And a change of clothes. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“What do you mean, for what? For shooting the beastling that was trying to kill me. Not to mention the light, and the company.” Lorr gave her another one of those quick, flashing smiles. “Would you mind if I rode with you tomorrow? When I’m not seeing to Tiger, of course.”

“Hmm.” It was amazing how much the word ride could sound like flirt, given the proper context. It was amazing how much she didn’t mind. Despite herself, despite the wounded dog at their feet and the blood all over Lorr’s hands, she found herself smiling back. “Tell me something. Would you really have tried to help that beastling?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether he ate me first.”