They could hear it now, an immense quiet motion in the dark. There was nothing out there but dark forms, black on black moving. "How many are there?" shouted Tamsin, as she glimpsed phalanxes of horns closing in from one side, an ocean of furred backs from the other.

Jordan shook his head. He looked so serious that she was afraid to ask what he was thinking. To Tamsin, the arrival of these beasts seemed wondrous. She couldn't imagine why he found it disturbing.

They continued to come, all night, and eventually Tamsin had to sleep. She lay down facing the jaguar and wept quietly, for it seemed as though she and Jordan were being granted a benediction by nature tonight—and she had not realized until this very moment that all her life, she had longed for such a blessing.

Tamsin wept again the next day, but this time it was because she finally understood the reason for Jordan's unhappiness.

They had woken to find themselves at the center of battalion of animals, hundreds of them, who lay head-to-tail in a sweeping circle around them. When Jordan stood up and walked to the edge of the camp to piss, they all stood as one and did likewise.

That woke Tamsin, who was appalled, then laughed until her sides were sore.

It was later in the day, when they were riding elk-back into the desert, that the escort ceased to be magical for her, and became something sinister—an abomination. She had not considered how the animals would feed.

Without warning, a bear that she had been admiring turned on the gazelle trotting next to it and ripped its throat out. Tamsin screamed. The gazelle fell, thrashing, spouting blood everywhere. As the bear stopped to feed, a few other carnivores moved in to share the meal, and the rest of the batallion—hunters and prey alike—simply split politely around them and moved on.

"How could it do that!"

Jordan had turned in his saddle to watch. "I guess it makes sense," he said reluctantly. "Mediation controls these animals. They're not acting out of their own volition."

She cried then, as she realized that the harmony of nature she had fallen asleep to was a sham, merely evidence of overwhelming power; these animals would die because of herself and Jordan, pawns in a game about which they neither knew nor cared.

"I've been thinking about this ever since we met desal 447," he said. "Is this how the world was intended to be? Were we meant to treat all living things on this world as puppets we can just order around? As slaves? Is that what Mediation wants to return to? If it is, I think I can understand where Thalience is coming from."

"It's evil," she said.

He nodded. "Even if we don't do anything, just knowing that the world is like a big puppet show for our benefit... it makes everything cheap. Like we're being cheated somehow."

She nodded, wiping at her eyes. "It is all a lie, isn't it?"

The sky, the earth, the animals and trees, were constructs of the Winds, who could do with them as they pleased. What they pleased to do was make them act like natural things. They—or whoever controlled them—could as easily make them act differently.

Tamsin had pictured Armiger's conquest of the Winds as a liberation, akin to the Iapysian parliament overthrowing Queen Galas. It was a change of government, no more, she had thought.

Might it mean something else, though?

"Jordan, what is Armiger going to do with the world if he conquers it?"

Conquest of the Winds meant complete command of Ventus—earth, sea, sky, and nature. And while Tamsin loved nature and might wish to preserve it, another mind, given that kind of power, might conceive an entirely different world. Brick over the seas. Turn the sky to gleaming metal. Replace everything alive with something mechal, in the name of efficiency or power.

"I know," he said. "I've been worrying about that. For all that they're tyrants, the Winds use their power to keep Ventus a garden for life. It seems as if Thalience genuinely loves the life here. But Mediation? I don't know. And Armiger? Is he going to care as much? Would we? I don't know—but it scares me to think about."

Tamsin thought about it, and as she did, it came to her that her life was dividing in two at this point. She had thought that time had split in that moment when Uncle tore her out of her village, and her family and childhood died. Now, even that seemed like a period of innocence to her—a time when, however sad her life, the sky was still the sky, and the grass still the grass. None of that was true anymore, nor could she imagine how it could ever be true again.

It seemed he had barely fallen asleep before Hesty was shaking his shoulder, and Lavin blinked his eyes open to find sunlight streaming through the flap of the tent. The army was ready to decamp; they were to leave in the morning.

"Sir, wake up sir!" Hesty's hand shook him again. The motion sent waves of nausea through him, and he cursed, shrugging Hesty off.

"Who would believe morning could come so quickly," he muttered.

"Sir, it's not morning!"

For a moment Lavin forgot his whirling senses. Hesty sounded scared. Not nervous, or apprehensive as he'd been in the past before battles. But frightened. Lavin looked up at him.

It was cold enough for Lavin's breath to frost, but Hesty was sweating. He wasn't dressed properly, either—he wore a quilted robe around which he'd buckled his rapier.

"Sir, it's the middle of the night."

"What are you saying?" It was daylight, anyone could see that.

"Sir, it's two o'clock in the morning. A new sun appeared, just five minutes ago. The sentries woke me and I came straight here. Sir, the camp is waking up. Panic is spreading."

"Hand me my uniform."

He didn't even have his laces tied up before he heard a relay of shouts coming from the edge of the camp. A faint voice repeated it nearby, then one of his own guard twitched back the flap of the tent and said, "Sir, a small force of men is approaching from the east. There are Winds with them."

"Thank you." He stepped in front of the mirror to adjust his hair. "Hesty, go get dressed. I want you to be calm. If anyone asks, don't admit that you're surprised by this. In fact, tell your men we arranged for the Winds to bring us this new sun."

"Yes, sir." Hesty saluted and left.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to deduce which way was down and move his limbs accordingly. Do not lean right. Walk to the tent flap. Good.

He emerged into hot daylight. The sun was at the zenith; he shaded his hand and peered at it. Something odd about it. He squinted, trying to figure out what it was... the sun was smaller than usual.

And square.

He looked away; the spots made his vertigo worse for a few moments.

The sky around the little sun was daylight blue, but it rapidly faded until, at the horizon, it was night-black again. Everything to the horizon was day-lit, but Lavin got the impression that beyond a circle of ten or so kilometers, night still reigned. It was bizarre.

A group of maybe twenty men on horseback, and some odd animals had reached the edge of the encampment. One of the figures had apparently dismounted, and was talking to the sentries there. After a moment, the sentries backed off, and the group moved forward. It was hard to tell what the animals were; at first he'd thought they were mastiffs, but they moved differently. Lavin ordered his camp chair and the banners of his office and titles brought out. He refused to be a supplicant now, after all that had happened, so he sat in the chair. It would have been difficult to remain standing for any length of time anyway.

The group came closer. He recognized the livery on some of the men, but couldn't really bring himself to think about it, because his attention quickly became fixed on the animals.