I come lurking with the fringe of night. Panting, the jet bird perches on the backpack, hugged close to my stomach in shaky arms, the straps hang loose over my shoulders.

My boots touch gravel-mixed ash and I shut my eyes, reaching out for crystalline blood. He lies close, I know it, but for my worn body, crunching boots, my parched throat--especially amidst the cabins of sleeping people--so many hearts beat too much of a distraction to hone in on where.

I trek to the beach, drop the backpack in the indent where a jet bird's nest used to belong. Catching my breath, I rub out my thighs and awkwardly shoo the jet bird off the backpack. She flutters off, glaring sideways. I dig out a bottle and drink, cool my throat in the muggy heat, I tip some out for her inside the squat lid.

Sinking to the sand, I close my eyes, hold hands over ears, and stretch out softly for a child's blood. I part through the other beating hearts, jittery, and find him, crystalline blood jagged in the fringes of the town.

He seems unwounded. He sleeps, or at least his heart beats slow enough. He traveled all the way back here from the fire on his own--did he come because the walk was familiar? Last I saw of him he was screaming for his auntie and sprinting through ghost flames. Did he get here okay?

Slowly, I stretch out wider. My senses float over the sleeping town. Strangers, all of them. Almost all of them. There is the stone mage, deep mountain caves worn so smooth. There are the handful of sleeping textures, the curse a child cast nights ago. It has still not worn off, closest to its source. A wriggling thing, power collapsing over and over upon itself, comatosing the people in a particular ring of cabins.

Maybe, this magnet of power drew a child back here; his screaming self, his silent self, his leaping from rooftops self. I should think of him as deadly, wild, unpredictable; but the clinking sound of bones on a thread, echoing from the rocks where we sat, reminds me of a sort of peace. A strange possession. He is my child, my death mage who lost his aunt to a burner man, my death mage child not from the caves yet who lost his family the same as so many of those boys.

I open my eyes. Perhaps I shouldn't think of him that way. Shouldn't think of him as anything but deadly or unpredictable. Perhaps I shouldn't, and yet.

From the beach, I go alone. The jet bird laps water from a clay bottle lid planted in the sand. I go, chasing down a child, in the town of cabins' oceanless edges. I hug my arms to myself, step quietly over ash-mixed-gravel.

When I find him, my brow furrows in confusion. My fingers discover only smooth stone, blocking the road, the child mere footsteps away. I knock on it, the echo tells me it is a whole shape. A hollow shape. The child's blood shifts inside and my arm falls. I stare, at the empty blackness. Swallow the swoon of my ribcage down to my full stomach.

"Hello?" I whisper, close to the stone, and knock again. The child's blood stirs, but in the silence come no knocking replies. Soundlessly, I pace around the hollow shape, hands tracing for any airholes. An exit, a latch to a door. I reach my fingers up the solid surface, stand on tiptoe, my fingers barely touch a stone-rough corner. I knock again, knuckles scraping. No noise in reply.

I leave, insides knife-sharp, I go to find a stone mage, boots crunching. I will force him to rip apart this stone prison. Crack it wide, whyever trap a child in a stone box?

But. I stop myself in the path. A stone mage will try to kill me again. Will use a child in a stone box against me.

I stand an island in the gravel-mixed-ash, but a cabin waits off to my left. A single person slumbers within. Wary, I go pound on this door instead. The blood within startles and sits up.

***

You knew, dear dead, the first question you were going to ask Tatter-cloak. What did it feel like to have the blood within you constantly tugging toward the faraway horizon?

When he arrived, to your insistent tugging, you would ask: did it hurt?

You knew he could feel it, he began walking not long after you started tugging, which was not long after the jet bird quit screaming at the fleeing soldiers and fluttered back to you.

You crawled out to the garden to wait, and every time you stood to stretch out your back, you tugged again against rough grass stems, dry soil. As if insistence could make him walk any faster. In the garden, waiting, you plucked up crawling fungi, rows or mushrooms, dug up tubers with sea cat bones because you didn't want to search for the shovel.

But you did search for boots, while waiting. You carved through the snowbanks to the house, peering under the damaged roof through the cracked walls. The wardrobe had cracked through a board in the gray-stained wall, and you gripped the corner of the wood, you yanked and stumbled backward and the wardrobe fell out nearly on top of you, thumping back-first into the snow.

The fire had burned both doors off. You could swing what remained of one door open and shut, a hand-sized corner, half-charred edges breaking off in your fingers like choppy feathers. Most of the cloaks were singed beyond saving, same with the towels. Maybe, if the sea cat hadn't slithered out and prodded the doors open...

You rescued the boots, in the back of the wardrobe, barely scorched. You gathered a few mostly-whole cloaks. Tied one into a sack, which you slung to the garden then used to hold crawling fungi and mushrooms and tubers.

The garden you kept digging up with pieces of the sea cat, hips for shovels, ribs to chip the frozen dirt. The jet bird grew bored of watching halfway through the revealed red mushroom row, and waddled through the ruins of the house, bones light. If anything did collapse on her you were sure she'd be fine. That was the reason you kept your back to the house, she'd be fine, you were just out in the garden, collecting vegetables in a charred cloak; it was fine, totally fine.

You hauled your supplies back to the snow hill; in the tiny hiding place, you waited for Tatter-cloak. His blood trekked between the white hills. But not alone. Impatiently, you unknotted and retied the cloak-turned-sack, tiny hiding hole filling with the scent of thawing dirt, like unseasoned rain.

Tatter-cloak came to your hiding place alone, kind of. He came ahead of a pair of soldiers, within visible distance. Or, they were close enough to see, though whether they walked behind snowbanks or could see around Tatter-cloak, you didn't know. So tugging, you guided Tatter-cloak towards your hiding spot. He followed, unwaveringly stepping, head twisted to study the house's ruins. When he was footsteps away, you poked your head out so he could find you.

His snowshoes stopped crunching. "Wha--" he said, face glowing pale. Either startled at your appearance or startled at the house, you weren't sure.

"They knew I was alone in there," you said. "They brought torches and burned it down."

"Who?" he glanced backward, briefly.

"Exactly who you think."

"I just...I mean, I. You're referring to the army, I mean, there's no one else around... I can't comprehend that they would..." they scrubbed their eyes. "Listen, I didn't know about this before--"

"--I know--"

"--I didn't even know anything was off until they wouldn't let me come back here, and I was like 'why can't I sleep in my own bed?' and they told me I wasn't thinking straight, and I needed to sleep in one of the tents. That I could go back in the morning. I didn't know it was burned down.

"I should have brought you last night, when we met the Empress's spokeswoman, I'm so sorry I let them convince me you shouldn't come, I should have brought you anyway even though I was afraid someone would say something, and I shouldn't have left at all--" he dropped to his knees, snowshoes tips jammed into the snow. "And I'm monarch for these people?" he whispered.

You nodded. "And I can't stay."

Tatter-cloak didn't look up. So you asked, "what's it feel like to have your blood being tugged on?"

He glanced up. Stared numbly over the glittering snow in the red sun for six, long breaths. "I don't know, I just felt drawn here."

"That's it? It doesn't hurt?"

He shook his head. And shivered, briefly. "I didn't know that's what was going on."

You bit your lip. "I didn't know how else to tell you where I was."

He shivered again, and you curled smaller in the hiding hole.

"I can't stay," you said again.

He shook his head, unkempt hair swaying softly. He knelt back on his heels, crossing mittened hands. "You just lost your house! Maybe process that first, and then decide. You could move to the palace, I'm sure I could get a room for you, or you could stay in the city--"

"I can't stay," you said again. "I lost my house because the people over there," you pointed vaguely to the frost orchards, "wanted to kill me. And I can't move to the palace. They won't want me there either."

"But, you've helped us so much! Helped me, I don't know what I'm doing," Tatter-cloak flopped sideways in the snow, twisting their head to squint at the sky. "I can't even say that to anybody else, they think I'm a savior of some kind. How do I live without you around to talk to? Or the bird around to stare menacingly at me?"

"You could run away too," you whispered. Your heart skipped at even suggesting it, mentioning it, giving it breath to live.

"No. No, they do need me," his arms slowly scraped back and forth, over the snow. "They'd throw their lives away in a war if I weren't here. I'm doing something real and good and actually meaningful, and I can't just give that up because I want to run away," his hands paused. "And," he added softly, "I would like to see the palace again."

"What good would I do sitting in a room at the palace?" your fingers unknotted, re-knotted, unknotted the cloak-turned-sack. "Waiting for you to come back so we could talk about..." you traced frozen snowflakes with your boots.

"The skeletons in the basement?" Tatter-cloak said.

"The carvings in the streets?" you shrugged.

"That bird--she really does need a name, you know--could join the aviary. Oh wait. Start the aviary?"

"She'd probably break the window."

"Oh yeah."

A pause. Which is when your eyes gave out control and water slithered down your cheeks. "I don't know where I'm going next," you whispered. "I didn't have anywhere else to go, except here."

"You could come to the palace," Tatter-cloak repeated.

"I could," you pretended.

Something from the house crashed, and you jumped. The jet bird squawked, muffled, and her silhouette rose into the air.

Tatter-cloak sighed. "She would do worse than break the aviary window, wouldn't she?"

"Possibly," you wiped your cheeks.

Tatter-cloak shielded his eyes, squinting at the jet bird circling overhead. "I'm pretty sure she's a strange royal avian, not like the others. Of course the queen or Aqtilik would know that better. But that bird doesn't quite belong in the royal city."

"And I don't either, with all those people. I'm sorry."

Tatter-cloak's arm fell to his side, crunching the snow. "So you're not coming with me."

You crawled out of the hole and sprawled beside him, cloak sticking with snow. Distant guards not forgotten, you just didn't care so much, with you both lying on the ground beside each other. "I don't belong with a palace," you whispered. "If I did go there I'd spend too much time in the burial tunnel, and I'd get strange stares there, or worse. I don't belong with an army, a monarchy. I wouldn't leave if there was anything less between us. If nobody sought my death," you hugged him, awkwardly, lying sideways in the snow.

"And I am the monarch," Tatter-cloak hugged you back, tightly, compressing your selves into a whole glacier, despite its cracks. "And that will keep standing between us, won't it?"

"I suppose so," you whispered, squeezing your eyes shut. It was fine. Totally fine. The cold, the snow, the bones buried deep below.

"So now what?" he whispered.

You drew back. Tried to smile. Teardrops plipped tiny craters by your nose. "You go back. You take your army to the palace."

"You mean, I pretend to be an Empress's steward," he sat up slowly.

"You slip your way out of an Empress's hold."

"That'd be great. But I don't know how to do that. Act like her favorite?"

"And I..." you shrugged. "Maybe I'll go visit the mountains. Try to find the place where I was born." Find a little girl's grave and apologize.

"Can that bird carry messages?" he squinted at the sky, searching for her. She circled well behind you, away from the guards.

"I don't know. She can find people, I don't know about carrying things to them."

A distant glint, a sprinting heart. Wordlessly, instinctively, you dove back into your hiding hole.

"What's wrong?" Tatter-cloak scrambled to his feet.

"Your guards," you hissed. "They're sprinting toward us."

Tatter-cloak's face melted into smooth contentment. Slightly pale, but still. "I'll come back here tomorrow."

"I don't know if I can stay hidden that long," you reached out to scrape snow across the hillside to shrink the yawning hole. "I'll guide you to where I am tomorrow."

"Okay. I'll find you!" he turned, marching toward the ruin of the house.

"Goodbye," you whispered, Tatter-cloak's snowshoes tromping away, your hands cascading snow over your hiding place.