Nuria heard about the construct from one of the local farmer’s sons just before midday. She had finished her second cup of sweet coffee with milk and was slowly coaxing a sickle blade out of a hunk of metal when Tomau charged into her smithy, breathless, as if he’d run all the way from his mother Sima’s yuca fields.

“There’s a crystal cat in the forest,” he said.

Nuria frowned but didn’t look up from her anvil. “Leave it alone.” Each word was accompanied by the clang of her hammer.

“It’s dangerous, isn’t it? You have to do something.”

Now Nuria did look at him, squinting at his tanned skin and the dry leaves stuck in his curly brown hair. “It’s only dangerous if you attract its attention,” she said. “We’ll summon a mage to take it away or disenchant it safely.”

“But—”

“Tell your friends the same.” She offered him the hard-eyed glare she’d given fresh, eager-scared recruits when they joined her company during the war.

Tomau hunched his shoulders and frowned petulantly. Getting old enough to be insulted about being thought a child, she supposed, and to court danger as a preliminary to other kinds of courting. He moved to leave, the bright daylight at his back throwing his face into shadow.

“Do you still have your hammer?” he asked. He didn’t mean the one she was holding.

“Leave it alone,” Nuria repeated. His footsteps receded, and she exhaled sharply before thrusting the cooling metal back into the forge.

Tomau had come to her hoping for a show. As if she were a traveling bard, and the construct were a puppet.

Memories rolled in like storm clouds. Razor-sharp claws. Wickedly curved teeth. Piles of broken crystal glinting in sun or moonlight, streaked with blood. Turquoise waves whose foam churned pink across sand littered with mauled bodies.

Nuria returned to her work, trying not to think about funeral pyres stretching up and down the shoreline, smoke billowing over the ocean into a storm-gray sky. She tried not to think about limping down cobblestone streets in civilian clothes, between the rubble of pale blue and yellow buildings scored and stained with magic, to the Plaza of the Saints where the new governor waited to announce the war was over, his predecessor bound nearby with the knowledge of his impending death dark in his eyes.

She certainly did not think of the chest at the foot of her bed, or the items stored inside, their enchantments dormant like seeds in a long drought.

Sima arrived at the smithy near sunset, dragging her niece Lia by the arm. The girl’s brown skin was bloodless with fear, and the older woman didn’t look much better. Her braided hair was pulled back and covered by a tied cloth, her hands caked with dirt as if she’d come straight from digging up yuca without stopping to wash.

“Tell her,” the farmer said, releasing Lia, who slid to the ground and stared up at Nuria.

“I can guess,” Nuria said.

Lia cringed. “Fierela and I just wanted to look at the cat. Then Tomau threw stones at it, and it spat fire, and…” Tears slid down her dark face.

Two men leaned against a nearby wall, their brightly embroidered linen shirts suggesting they were from Sarlianca, on the opposite coast. They were bodyguard and driver for a merchant who had breezed in with a broken wheel rim; she was being entertained at the village’s small inn while Nuria worked.

The driver glanced between Lia and Sima, but the guard stared at Nuria. She stared back until he dropped his gaze.

“Is anyone hurt?” Nuria asked.

Lia trembled. “I don’t know. We were all running, and it chased Tomau—”

“So you went to Sima,” Nuria said. “Where was he going?”

“To the river.”

If Tomau had run toward the village, Nuria would already be pulling on her armor. But he’d gone in the other direction. The construct would revert to its passive patrol commands as soon as it made a kill, assuming no one else provoked it.

“Castrialan cougar, huh,” the merchant’s bodyguard said. “Have to hit those fast and hard, or it’s all over but the funerals. Do you have a mage here?”

“No,” Sima said. “We have a healer, but he doesn’t do magic.”

“Boy should have known better than to bother it,” the driver said, scratching his neck. “Could be someone’s property got loose. Almost worse than the stray derelicts. Best report it and let the authorities do their job.”

Sima snorted. “If the Castrialans did their job, those menaces wouldn’t still be reappearing in random places.”

“And if we had stopped the Castrialans from gaining power in the first place, there wouldn’t have been a civil war, and we wouldn’t be having this argument,” Nuria snapped.

The bodyguard raised his hand as if to ward off her temper, or to caution the other man against arguing. “Might as well wait for morning,” he said. “Hard to find what’s left of the boy in the dark.” His companion nodded, and Lia sobbed.

“He knows the forest, and the river,” Sima told Nuria. “I’m sure he’s hiding, waiting for a chance to come back. You could find him, protect him. Maybe even stop the cat for good.”

If Tomau were still alive, the construct would hunt him until he wasn’t. He might lead it back to the village and put everyone else in danger. But that didn’t mean she should look for him; better to set up a defensive perimeter and hope for the best.

Even if the best meant Tomau was dead, and the construct moved on.

Sima must have read her thoughts on her face, because her brow furrowed, mouth falling open. “You cannot mean to do nothing,” she said. “You’re a shatterknight. You will help him?” It didn’t sound like a question.

The two strangers eyed her speculatively, while Lia hid her face in her knees.

I’m not a knight anymore, Nuria wanted to say. I’m only a smith. I warned him. If we were still at war, I’d be using him as an example for my other soldiers. Seeds of foolishness bear bitter fruit.

But they weren’t at war. They were in her village, the place she’d left with much fanfare as a bright-eyed volunteer, the place she’d spilled blood to defend—not because her sovereign demanded it, or her honor, but because she wanted people like Sima to be able to raise their children in peace.

If she let one of those children die now, when she might save him, what had it all been for?

“Tell me where you last saw him,” Nuria said.

Despite the decade since she’d worn it, Nuria’s armor still fit, if differently where her muscle distribution had changed. First came her thin undershirt and pants, tight to keep from wrinkling, then the padded jacket and skirt, made from quilted layers of tightly woven fabric and leather. On top of that, she draped her spellbeads and the broad metal disc that hung from them, emblazoned with the symbol of her former unit: a butterfly orchid, its four petals spread like wings. Her feathersteel helm smelled of mineral oil and the herbs she stuffed in the padding to keep it from getting musty.

And, of course, there was the hammer.

The handle was half her height and nearly as thick as her wrist, meant to be held with two hands. The head was steel, flat on both ends, and heavy enough to break a foot if dropped incautiously—as Nuria knew from experience. At the bottom of the haft, a milky-white crystal lay inert, waiting for the spells within it to be invoked.

She had rarely ventured into the forest since she was a child, exploring its depths or seeking the privacy a small village couldn’t provide. The southern half had died from a magic snap-frost during the war, but otherwise it was largely the same. She jogged between slender trees, brambles tugging at her pants, pine needles and leaves crunching beneath her boots as the sun slid toward the tops of the distant mountains. Crickets and frogs sang as she passed; hutia scuttled along branches overhead; a cluster of blackbirds with bright red stripes on their wings scolded her for disrupting their meal. No sign of Tomau or the construct.

She reached the outcropping where the children had spied on the cat. The ground was scuffed and trampled, and a small pile of rocks lay nearby—remnants of their first and only volley. No blood, but footprints and broken twigs attested to their flights in different directions.

The path toward the river was easy to follow from there. Nuria moved as quickly as she could, her right foot aching, a stitch burning in her side. The murmur of water grew louder, and with it came the smell of wet earth. Eventually, the tree line thinned, yielding to bare soil and scraggly bushes, their yellow blossoms bobbing in the light breeze. Ahead of her, the Diama River cut through the land like a scar in the deepening twilight, a few mud turtles basking on its shore.

Still, she did not find Tomau.

His trail ended at the water’s edge. Had he jumped in and drowned? Made it to safety downriver? The last rays of the sun limned the tops of the trees, the sky purpling like a bruise.

A scattering of colored light danced on the surface of the water, her only warning.

Reflexively, Nuria rolled sideways to avoid being struck, coming up in a defensive crouch in time to redirect the second swipe from the construct’s claws.

It was bigger than a real cougar, but just as fast. Red, which meant fire. Nuria spoke the spellword to activate her beads, their magic flickering to life with a bluish-white glow that sheathed her in defensive cold. Her breath misted from her helm as she parried another blow with the hammer’s head, turning her swing into an attack that met empty air.

The construct retreated, circling her. Its governing commands were simple, but it wasn’t mindless. What it was, thankfully, was damaged; a strange lightning in its head sent periodic shudders through its body, which explained why she’d avoided its surprise attack.

She was rusty as an old nail. Foolish of her to come out here.

But if the construct was attacking rather than patrolling, that meant it hadn’t killed Tomau. Nuria adjusted her grip on her hammer’s haft and said a prayer to whatever saints still listened to old soldiers: give me the strength to champion my cause.

A jet of flame burst from the construct’s mouth, hissing to steam as it hit her frigid armor. She was already moving, bringing her hammer in an arc around her head. It missed as the cat slid sideways, but she continued the spin and connected with its right rear flank, a glancing blow that chipped off crystal but didn’t slow it down.

They continued their dance, trading wound for wound, fire for ice. It lasted forever and no time at all, as most battles did. Nuria’s arms and legs soon ached with fatigue, vision blurring from a blow to the head that rattled her teeth. She couldn’t take much more. Every swing was slower, every step shorter.

Soon, she would join her fallen comrades. A good death, she told herself. She might not be able to destroy the cat, but at least if it killed her, the boy and the village would be safe.

“Nuria!” a voice cried. Tomau stood on the other side of the river, a shadow among darker shadows cast by the light of the sickle moon.

The construct froze, lightning flashing in its head again. Its command spell flickered as its attention was split between Nuria and Tomau.

“Nevascavene!” Nuria shouted. The gem on her weapon blazed a fierce, icy blue, its magic surging up the haft to the head. With a growl, Nuria drove the hammer from sky toward earth with all that was left of her might.

It hit the cat squarely in the head, crystal shattering under the impact. The faulty enchantment that powered the creature exploded outward, shards flying in all directions, jagged and sharp. Nuria was thrown to the ground, her breath driven out of her as if she’d been hit with her own weapon.

She stared at the stars wheeling overhead, vision sparkling at the edges, blood thundering in her ears. Ten years since she’d fought like that. Ten years since she’d said farewell to her company and wrote her last apology to a lost comrade’s parent, partner, sibling.

Ten years since she’d felt alive enough to die without regret.

May I live another ten, and ten more after that, she thought. Long enough to see the last of the stray constructs deactivated and dismantled. Or at least to see Tomau have children of his own, and teach them not to throw stones at glass cats.

The boy shouted her name. She could picture him cupping his hands around his mouth to be heard over the sound of the water.

“I’m so sorry!” he screamed. “This is all my fault, I didn’t realize—Please, be alright? Please?”

She didn’t have the energy to answer him, but she did deactivate her spellbeads and hammer, the glow of their respective magics fading. With any luck, she’d never have to do this again.

Tomau, despite his apologies, treated the situation as an adventure to rival every story he’d ever heard. He all but danced around Nuria, oblivious to her exhaustion as she limped along. The night air was warm and humid as a dragon’s mouth, which normally didn’t bother her, but her exertions had left her overheated. She longed to strip off her armor and wipe away the sweat and dirt caking her skin, to put her hammer back in its chest and crawl into bed, but she had to see the fool boy home before she could rest easily.

Sima waited in front of her small wooden house, staring up at the moon. A string of prayer beads dangled from one of her clenched fists. When she turned, the bottle of rum in her other hand caught the light as it fell from nerveless fingers.

“Tomau!” Sima cried, dropping to her knees.

Teenage stubbornness fled as Tomau ran to his mother and they hugged, weeping and talking over each other. Sima held him at arm’s length, shaking him, then clung to him as if she’d never let go again.

Nuria left them to their reunion. Her hammer grew heavier the longer she carried it, as if weighted with the memories of all the children barely older than Tomau who had never returned to their families.

Her home and smithy were a long walk from the farm, closer to the road in the main part of the village for ease of access to travelers. She passed dark windows and lit ones, shadows moving inside behind thin curtains. Sometimes voices carried through the still air, but otherwise the only sounds were the insects chirping and the steady thumping of her boots.

After nearly dying, it was almost anticlimactic. And yet preferable to the alternative.

Nuria didn’t bother lighting a fire for herself, for cooking or bathing. She removed her armor in the smithy and set it aside, then poured a bucket of lukewarm water over her head and toweled off the worst of the grime. Cuts and bruises began a chorus of fresh protests; one slice on the back of her arm stung worse than the rest, and her head throbbed enough that she grudgingly admitted she needed to seek out Reslan, the village healer. He might already be asleep, in which case she’d manage it herself as best she could and try again in the morning. It wouldn’t be polite to arrive empty-handed; she considered her stock and settled on a small packet of nails.

Reslan lived at the southern edge of the village just before it became forest, his home and drying shed nestled in a vast garden that seemed a part of the wilds beyond. Dozens of cucuyos crawled among the plants, their bright green spots glowing in the dark. Fever grass sprouted in dense clusters, periwinkle carpeted the ground around the base of a vast ceiba tree, and bright yellow gavilana and pink starbursts of dormilona fought with gripeweed for space.

Gripeweed was also called shatterstone, because of how it grew in crevices and broke rocks apart. It became a symbol during the war, its seeds defiantly sown in cracks between cobbles—or torn from the ground wherever it was found. The Castrialans had enforced mass burning of the herb for a time, until they realized it was nearly impossible to exterminate. Right now, its leaves were closed, but they would open with the warm touch of the morning sun.

Nuria brushed the chimes hanging from the wall, then knocked on Reslan’s front door, calling out, “Hello, it’s Nuria.” She waited, inhaling the sweet scent of the night-blooming jasmine twined in a trellis around the door. Inside the house, a rattle of motion was followed by the flare of a flame, small and unsteady, behind thin curtains. It grew brighter, suggesting a lamp had been lit, moving a few paces until it stopped with a thunk as if placed on a table.

The door opened inward, Reslan’s handsome face illuminated by the light behind him and the pale crescent moon. He was a few years older than Nuria, and as far as anyone knew he’d been a field medic from the same side of the war, though not the same unit. Unlike her, he hadn’t grown up in the village, had simply arrived one day and quietly transplanted himself like one of his herbs. His gray-streaked black hair fell in disheveled curls across his tan forehead, and his deep brown eyes searched Nuria’s under a thick arched eyebrow.

“You survived,” he said. “Good. And Tomau?”

“Safe,” she replied, not surprised word of the situation had spread. It wasn’t a large village, and people meddled and gossiped.

“The cat?”

“Destroyed.”

Reslan opened the door wider and gestured for her to enter. He kept his home fastidiously clean, so Nuria removed her shoes and left them on a rug just inside. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the coal dust and soot caked into her calluses, the scent of the cookfire and his latest poultice or tonic not strong enough to cover the indelicate aroma that lingered despite her quick wash.

“Where is it, then?” Reslan asked brusquely.

“The cat?” Nuria asked.

“Your injury,” he replied.

She gestured at her head, then showed him the cut on her arm. He grunted acknowledgement and rummaged through a complicated cabinet full of drawers and boxes and jars in various sizes. Soon enough he had a ball of wax and a container of healing salve that smelled mostly of garlic, with a hint of honey. The wax went into a metal bowl, beneath which he lit a candle that soon melted the material, the scent of camphor and mint permeating the room. He washed her wound carefully, then smeared the garlicky paste on it and wrapped it in a tight bandage. By the time he finished, her headache was gone.

“I need to change this twice a day for a week,” Reslan said. “Come by after dawn and before sunset.”

“Lucky it didn’t need stitches,” Nuria said.

“Yes.”

“Or a spell.”

Reslan’s neutral expression hardened, almost imperceptibly, almost a trick of the light. “Anything else, smith?”

Nuria needed a lot of things, some of which Reslan might have been able to provide if he were inclined, but she kept such fantasies to herself. She shook her head and stepped over to the door, pulling her boots back on.

“Thank you,” she said. Wincing at her own social ineptitude, she pulled the packet of nails out of her pocket and offered it to him. “For your trouble.”

Reslan’s lips quirked up in a ghost of a smile. “This honor is mine. A life for a life.”

Nuria answered his smile with one of her own. “Let me know when you need something forged or fixed.” She raised a hand in farewell and left.

She was halfway down the herb-lined path away from the house when the door opened again, light spilling out to cast her shadow ahead of her.

“Nuria,” Reslan said. She turned to face him. Had she forgotten something? He ran a hand through his hair as if agitated, then dropped it.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Have breakfast with me tomorrow,” he said. “Bring coffee.” He shut the door without waiting for a response.

His brusque request repeated in her mind all the way home, where she mechanically ate some hard bread, sweet ham, and cheese before falling into a dreamless sleep.

For the next few days, it seemed every person in the village and surrounding farms checked in on Nuria. Many were curious as to how much of Tomau’s story could be believed, so she repeatedly recounted her own version, correcting the more outlandish exaggerations. She accumulated gifts—food, coffee, and rum mostly—but also a new leather strop and a fancy straw hat she was unlikely to wear except on festival days. Someone even started a shrine to Saint Cobredad, patron of mercy, against the northern wall of the smithy, complete with a wooden figurine and a semicircle of candles, flowers, and beads.

“I can barely get any work done,” Nuria remarked to Reslan one morning. “If one more person kisses me, I’m moving into the forest.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Reslan replied as he finished wrapping the bandage. A flush crept up Nuria’s back and neck, and he seemed to belatedly realize what he’d said, because he swallowed loud enough for her to hear it.

The awkwardness was interrupted by rapid footsteps outside, followed by frantic pounding on the door. “Nuria! Are you in there?”

Reslan opened the door to reveal Tomau, bent double with his hands on his thighs, breathing heavily.

“What is it?” Nuria asked, dread icing her skin like the spell in her beads.

“A Castrialan mage,” Tomau said. “He wants to know who destroyed his cat. He has three more of them!”

Reslan’s hand found Nuria’s shoulder and gripped it tightly enough to bruise. The pain calmed her, centered her. She straightened and stood.

“Who’s with him?” she asked.

“My mother, and the elders, and some of the others who live near the road. Are you going to fight him?” Tomau asked, his voice cracking. Where before he had sounded eager to see her in action, now fear colored his tone.

“No,” Nuria said. “I’m going to turn myself in.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong!” Tomau exclaimed. “You were only protecting me.”

“The Castrialans don’t care,” Reslan said grimly. “He’s a mage and the cat was apparently his property. If it had been a stray, the corps might never have noticed the loss. Since he’s claimed it, it’s his word against Nuria’s that she wasn’t the aggressor.”

“What will he do to you?” Tomau asked her.

“Kill me, I suspect,” Nuria said. “Unless he wants to march me to the nearest magistrate for the entertainment of a public trial, which I might survive. But he should leave the village alone.” She thought of that long-ago day when the governor was executed, how he knelt beside his enemy and waited for death. At the time she had wished he would fight, or at least rage and speak out. Now she understood the futility of his situation, the sacrifice he made for an uneasy, unjust peace.

“No,” Reslan said. “He won’t stop at you.”

Nuria narrowed her eyes at the certainty in his voice. She expected him to be scowling, but his expression was blank, distant.

“He’ll likely demand recompense from the village,” Reslan continued. “Coin, goods, or blood. Perhaps all three. Mages assigned to areas farther from cities often take advantage of lax oversight to…indulge.”

“What do you propose, then?” Nuria relaxed her hands, which had tightened into fists.

“Bullies seek easy victims, ones they can control with fear. Your mere presence may be enough to deter him.”

“And if it isn’t? I barely survived a single construct.”

Reslan held up a finger to quell her. “Tell the elders Nuria is on her way,” he told Tomau. “Tell them all to hide, as far from the mage as possible. Run!”

Tomau fled as if a cat pursued him, dark hair streaked with red by the early morning sun.

As soon as he was gone, Reslan began to pull out the bottom drawers of his huge cabinet and set them aside. Once he was finished, he reached inside and lifted a board from the floor, revealing a hidden compartment beneath.

“Should I be seeing this?” Nuria asked.

Reslan shrugged. “It’s nothing illegal, any more than your hammer and spellbeads are. Still, some look for excuses to make trouble, so I’ve tread cautiously until now. If we die, it doesn’t matter. If we live, I trust you not to invite further trouble.”

When she saw what he removed from its hiding place, Nuria whistled. “You’ve had those all along?” she asked, crouching next to him.

“I brought them with me when I left the army, yes.”

“So you’re not a medic.”

Reslan flashed her a grin. “Who isn’t a medic when the need arises, brave shatterknight?”

Nuria laughed, warmth curling in her stomach. She might not die today after all. Hope grew within her like a weed, strong enough to break stone.

The mage waited near the road in the center of the village, crystal cougars prowling around him, scattering red light across the buildings and ground. He wore the elaborate purple robe of the Castrialan mage corps, its long puffy sleeves and hem trimmed with glass beads that formed alternating ruby and sapphire flames. The fabric frayed at the edges, rubbed thin at the knees and elbows, but the man showed no sign that he cared. His posture was straight as a pike, and he looked down his pale nose at Nuria with the arrogance of power and privilege when she emerged from her smithy.

“Bold of you to appear in your full armor,” he said.

“Bold of you to use your abominations to threaten innocent villagers,” Nuria countered.

The mage bared his teeth in a sneer. “If you thought to plead for clemency, you make a poor showing of it.”

“Would you have granted it even if I had begged?”

“No,” he said, brushing a stray leaf off his sleeve. “But perhaps I would have killed you faster.”

“Is that so?” Nuria asked dryly. She tightened her grip on her hammer.

“You’ll never know.” His smile widened. “And now my cats can play with impunity, thanks to your provocation. It’s been so long since I’ve had the pleasure of reducing an entire village to ash.”

The constructs stopped circling him and stalked toward Nuria. She shifted her stance, left leg in front, hammer raised over her right shoulder. Sweat soaked her undershirt, the only evidence of the fear she’d swallowed like a foul medicine. She muttered the spellword to activate her beads, and once again a mist of cold engulfed her.

Dying would serve no one. She had to live, and she had to win.

In unison, the cats bent their jointed crystal legs and leaped, claws extended like rows of knives.

The instant their feet left the ground, a rhythmic clacking echoed across the village, loud as thunder. Reslan emerged from between two buildings, striking a pair of smooth wooden sticks together. Enchanted claves, designed to counter Castrialan magic. The sound made the constructs vibrate uncontrollably, the enchantments holding them together disrupted by the sharp resonance. They landed stiff as statues, unable to move their limbs. It wouldn’t last long, but it was enough.

Nuria darted past them, toward the surprised mage. He realized the danger too late, his fingers tracing the glyphs of a warding spell. She bellowed “Nevascavene!” and his movements became clumsy, his voice catching in his throat as cold blazed up her hammer’s haft. By the time he recovered, he couldn’t do more than raise an arm to feebly catch the blow that fell. Flesh and bone froze just before being crushed to bloody splinters by her spelled steel.

A faster death than he deserved, Nuria thought, but the battle wasn’t over. Reslan trembled from the waves of power emanating from his hands; he wouldn’t be able to maintain the rhythm for much longer.

Nuria raced to the first cat and swung, fragments of its broken crystal head spraying toward the other constructs. The force of the impact slowed her motion. Her hammer arced toward the next creature, but her aim was off; she struck only a glancing blow that cracked its front leg. She danced back a step, rotating so the weapon would fall straight between the eyes of the second cat.

Reslan’s rhythm faltered, and his enchantment failed. Nuria hit empty air as the cougar stumbled sideways on its broken leg, then lashed out. She dodged its claws to land a solid blow on the side of its head, ending it with an impact that shuddered up her wounded arm.

The final cat swiped at her back and spat fire, and she staggered away in a haze of pain and heat. With a growl, she launched herself at it, her cold-spelled hammer and armor trailing fog in the warm air. Swing after swing missed the creature as they dodged and leaped around each other, frost and flame, metal and magic. The longer they fought, the more fatigue slowed her muscles, every breath burning as her heart beat faster than the claves that now lay silent. Some of the moisture soaking her shirt was not sweat, but her own blood.

A deep slice to her calf sent Nuria to one knee, barely able to parry another attack with the haft of her hammer. She saw her own death coming in the pair of crimson eyes staring down at her, the fire coiling in its open mouth.

The construct stopped as a strange pinging noise penetrated Nuria’s stunned senses. Another sound came, then another. The cat turned left, then right, spinning in a half-circle with a strange whine.

Rocks. Someone was throwing rocks at it.

Not just someone: everyone. Nuria peered up at the buildings surrounding her. Dozens of people hid behind the walls of their homes, the smithy, the small inn and trading store. They pelted the cougar with stones and sticks and whatever else they had on hand, yelling taunts and obscenities that would make a soldier blush.

The construct’s commands discarded Nuria as the immediate threat and scanned the area to choose a new one, but there were too many. Before it could settle on a single target, she gritted her teeth and stood, bearing down with her hammer one last time. The cat’s skull shattered from the impact, spraying shards in all directions. The glow of its crystal form faded as it collapsed, inert and harmless.

Nuria leaned heavily on her hammer, willing herself not to sink to the ground again. If she did, she wasn’t sure she could get back up.

Sima emerged from behind the smithy, staring impassively at the broken constructs. Tomau joined her, and the other villagers, some approaching warily, others boldly striding forward to poke at the fragments of their enemy. A cheer went up among them as they confirmed their victory, neighbor hugging neighbor in relief and celebration. Nuria didn’t doubt a party would be organized in short order, with food and music and embarrassing amounts of rum. Nothing like a brush with death to encourage people to live it up.

For now, at least. Eventually, the merchant and her people might spread word of the lone shatterknight who saved a village boy from certain death. The authorities might send someone to discover what became of their missing mage and his constructs. The fire doused today might be rekindled later, to burn even hotter.

Or it might not. This far from larger towns and cities, it was entirely possible no one would miss the dead man until his trail was colder than an ice cougar’s breath. Absent further signs of rebellion, they might not even care. She wouldn’t let the threat of a dark future overshadow the relief of averted tragedy in the present.

“You were supposed to run,” Nuria told Sima when the woman drew closer. “You could have been killed.”

“And so could you,” Sima replied.

Nuria grinned. “The day is young.”

“And you aren’t.” Sima smiled back, then glanced up and shouted at her son and his friends, who had already begun throwing shards of cat at each other.

Some things would never change, bless them.

The world reeled and Nuria stumbled, but Reslan was at her side, his smile warm, his claves tucked away. He waved off everyone who wanted to talk to Nuria, thank her, ask if she was well. He helped her limp home, undressing her as gently as possible and promising to clean her bloody clothes, which she asked about repeatedly in her near-delirium. The wounds on her back and leg needed stitches, which he supplied in grim silence, along with a succession of salves and rubs and teas that staved off fever, eased her pain, and made her drowsy for days. He even did her the favor of ensuring no one tried to kiss her as she recovered.

Well, no one else, anyway. Love was its own kind of weed.

 

(Editors’ Note: “In Time, a Weed May Break Stone” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 51B.)

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