Lyrralt, however, didn’t. He stepped in, lifting his mace high over his shoulder.

Before he could knock the woman’s head from her shoulders, Igraine stopped him. He stepped in front of Lyrralt, raising a hand in front of Lyrralt’s mace.

With a glance at her father, Everlyn dropped her arms and said simply, “We have to stop the fighting.” Despite the softness of her voice, the words carried to the others.

On both sides, the attacks slowed until, all along the line, humans and Ogres stood warily still, breathing heavily, weapons frozen but held at the ready.

“Please…” Everlyn turned to Turk, the human who had shown her his crippled hand in Nerat. “This is not what we came here for. Please, stop the fighting. We mean you no harm.”

“Ogres always mean harm!” he snarled, thrusting his maimed hand into her face.

Jyrbian growled as Everlyn closed her fingers over the man’s hand, showing him tenderness. Disgusted, Jyrbian reached for Everlyn, but Igraine stepped between them.

“We aren’t like that,” Everlyn told Turk, meeting his shocked gaze unflinchingly. “That’s why we’re here, because we-we choose not to keep slaves, not to harm others. That’s why we’ve been driven from our homes.”

Turk pulled his hand away from her. “You’ll not find a welcome here. Too many have died, or worse, at the hands of your kind.”

“Then we’ll go,” Igraine spoke for the first time, laying a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Put away your arms. Leave us, and tomorrow we’ll be on our way. We want no more killing. We want only a place to make a home in peace.”

Khallayne looked up and down the line and saw that Igraine’s words found support, even among the humans. They had begun to lower their weapons, to stand down from their tense posture. She felt the pressure easing.

Turk looked at Everlyn. “Is this the truth?” he demanded of her. “Will you leave, without further harm to any of my people?”

Before Jyrbian, or any of the dozen or so others who seemed about to answer, could speak, she nodded emphatically. “Yes. I promise.”

Turk gestured abruptly, and the humans began to withdraw.

“I’ll take your word on this,” Turk warned Everlyn, “though I may be crazy to do so. But if you break your word…”

Without completing the sentence, he backed away. As quickly, as silently, as they had come, the humans melted back into the plain, taking their fallen with them, leaving behind a band of dazed Ogres. If not for their few dead and wounded, Khallayne could almost believe the fight had never happened.

“What…?” Even Jyrbian, usually so authoritative, so sure of himself, was at a loss.

“What have you done?” Lyrralt asked finally, in a silence so profound that all could hear his words. “Why did you stop the fight? We should have killed them all!”

“Is that what you’ve learned from my father? Is that who you want to be, after all we’ve been through?” Everlyn asked with quiet strength.

Obviously struggling to understand, Jyrbian said, “They attacked us.”

Kaede appeared at Jyrbian’s elbow, a bloody dagger in her hand. “They’re humans.” If she had said “animals” or “dung,” her voice could not have portrayed more disdain, more contempt. “And they attacked us without provocation.”

Khallayne remembered that Kaede had left the camp. She tried to remember if she had seen Kaede during the fighting.

“They have reason to hate us,” Igraine was saying softly, “after all that we have done to them.”

Jyrbian opened his mouth to disagree with Igraine, to agree with Kaede. Humans were stupid and savage, good for nothing but slavery. And as for humans who would attempt to kill Ogres… his hatred, his lust to kill them boiled over inside. But Everlyn was watching. Sweet, kind, gentle Everlyn, who seemed so fragile that surely his rage could burn her up.

Visibly he controlled his emotions and was rewarded with a smile that warmed his heart. But when he stepped toward her, as usual she turned away.

Kaede put her hand on Jyrbian’s, her breast against his arm and gazed up at him with all the heat, the desire, he wished to see in Everlyn’s eyes.

He turned away. “We cannot go on this way,” he said, facing Igraine.

Khallayne stepped forward. Lyrralt was at her elbow. Bakrell, also, seemed to have appeared from nowhere, clutching a bloody weapon, as his sister had.

Toning his words with respect, Jyrbian said, “Now is the time to speak of the future. We’ve been running. Now you want us to run again, this time from a pack of puny humans. We could have vanquished them, made slaves of them! Built a new place here.”

There was only a minimum of mumbled agreement and much shaking of heads from those around him, but none spoke out. They waited for Igraine to respond.

Everlyn, her face flushed, eyes narrowed, said hotly, “You’ve learned nothing! Slavery is an evil thing! We can never build-”

Igraine hushed her with a glance. “We must find our own place,” he said, softly, then he repeated it in a louder voice for those at the back of the crowd. “And we must build it ourselves. Of our own sweat, not on the misery of others.”

‘“You mean, no slaves?” Lyrralt stared at Igraine in disbelief. The preaching of kindness and generosity in order to increase production from slaves had seemed bad enough. But this…!

“Lyrralt. It’s wrong to take a person from his home, from his family. It’s wrong to lock a man away, take away his freedom.” Everlyn touched his arm, as compassionately as she’d touched the human.

Jyrbian’s expression changed into one of jealousy and desire.

Lyrralt stared at her as he had stared at Igraine, as if he’d discovered someone, or something, he’d never seen before.

Igraine’s persuasive words filled the silence. “If we don’t change our ways, we’re doomed. Did you-all of you!-not see it in Takar?” He swept his arms wide.

There was murmured assent. “Did you not feel the hopelessness, the uselessness in your lives?” Jyrbian looked around at the crowd, saw the eager faces, the fevered eyes.

Igraine’s voice took on a compelling, urgent quality. “Can you not see what our kind will become if we continue on that misbegotten path? Have you ever felt more alive, living as we have these past few weeks, than in all of your miserable lives before?”

He had them now, their hearts and minds. The surge of joy, of faith from his followers, was almost tangible to behold. “We will leave in the morning,” he said. “We will find a place of our own, where we can be safe and happy.”

The crowd sighed. The Ogres, arms around their loved ones, began to drift away.

Everlyn went with her father, without a glance for Jyrbian, who would have followed her had Lyrralt not caught his arm and pulled him back.

“Is this heresy what he has been preaching all along, about not having slaves?” Lyrralt accused his brother, his glance taking in Khallayne, too.

Jyrbian shrugged, watching Everlyn’s disappearing back. “I’ve been too busy to sit around Igraine’s feet like a doting child.” He turned away.

The others also walked away, leaving only Khallayne and Bakrell to hear Lyrralt’s horrified voice. “This is madness! It was bad enough when he was talking about ‘choosing for yourself’ Now he wants you to live as humans live, digging in the dirt for food, building miserable clay huts with your own hands! Don’t you even care?”

“Do you? Care, I mean?” Bakrell peered closely into Lyrralt’s eyes as if to gauge the sincerity of his answer.

“Well, I don’t care,” Khallayne said, before Lyrralt could answer.

“You don’t care as long as you can practice your heretical magic!”

She met his angry gaze with an expression of equal determination. How long since she’d thought of her magic as a thing to be hidden away? As a wrongness? Any philosophy, heretical or not, was worth the peace and joy and sense of belonging of the past weeks. She shrugged, looking eerily like Jyr-bian a moment earlier. “You’re right. I don’t much care about his philosophy, one way or the other.”