Pierce caught its eye and waved. The giant looked back at him for a moment, its face impassive. Then it raised a hand slowly as if just learning the gesture, and waved it back and forth gently.
Scythia and Axebourne stood together on the field that had been cleared outside Testadel's gate. They had their arms around each other's waists, and they were both studying the fortress complex that towered above them.
"They're getting a lot done, quickly," Axebourne observed. "Kash really did run a tight operation."
"Maybe there was more to him than we realized," Scythia said. "It's hard to admit, isn't it?"
Axebourne nodded. "Easier for me now," he said. "The vice of pride has no hold on me anymore. But my thoughts still tend to run in the old patterns. I still think of him as a villain."
"It will take time," said Scythia, "for all of us. It's not as if he were an angel."
"No," Axebourne agreed. "His methods were often distasteful, if not outright evil."
Scythia nodded. "But I was right too. We only ever did what we thought was right. How are we to learn when to war, and when to make peace, unless we pick a path and tread it?"
"My wise wife," Axebourne said. Scythia frowned.
"Don't tease," she said.
"When have I ever?" Axebourne laughed.
Scythia looked across the open field. This had once been a garden outside the walls of the Temple. Men had trimmed the hedges in the shapes of various weapons. Scythia remembered frolicking among the trees and shrubs with the other boys and girls when her parents had come here on pilgrimage one year. The garden was gone, but the land had been cleared. Humans and gen were using it as a staging area for timber and stone. No sooner had one team dropped off the fresh materials than another would come and cart some off to go rebuild one thing or another.
"Is it going to work?" Axebourne asked his wife.
She was silent a long time, watching the fortress's ramparts, the traffic moving in and out of the gates. Humans and gen working together. It was unheard of. Even the Monstrosities had been put to good work.
No one in Overland could say when the rift had begun, or whether it had always been that way. It had just seemed so natural.
We live up on the surface, she thought. They live down below, where they belong. If it were to be otherwise, the world would feel askew.
Certainly the world did feel off. In bad ways, but also in good. Axebourne should not be here, by all rights, and yet the Blacksmith himself had sent her husband back. Everything she thought she knew was shifting. If a man could come back from death, his body glorified, to serve a grand purpose, then anything could change, couldn't it?
"Scythia?" Axebourne asked.
"I'm sorry, my love. I drifted," she said.
He smiled and kissed the side of her head. "That boy's rubbing off on all of us."
Scythia chuckled.
"I think so," she said, watching a human man exchanging chatter with a gen woman as they leaned on a pile of timber to eat their lunch. "I think it's going to work."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Flood Day
In all the ruckus of the invasion, many people had been unable to prepare for Flood Day. Everyone called it a day, but it was really more of a short season - a rolling flash flood that covered the breadth of the continent.
It always started in the northwest, with a sudden gushing of water from the mountains that overlooked the Chasm there. The moats that surrounded every city and homestead were uncovered and cleared of critters and random debris. Sandbags were piled against anything that might leak. The ground floors of any building not made of stone were vacated, their modular walls removed temporarily so that their upper floors now stood on sturdy stilts.
News from elsewhere revealed that this season had most everyone scrambling to prepare. The new city of Testagrond was in good shape, though, being in the midst of rebuilding from scratch.
Gorgonbane sat together at the bar in Sugar's new tavern, Ugrata and Deathgripz with them. The rest of the place was full of humans and gen just now experiencing the euphoria of Sugar's cooking. Many of them watched Gorgonbane and whispered.
The window shutters were open, and Pierce watched the Flood waters amble by. This far southeast, the water didn't really rush, so damage was minimal. The moats helped considerably to prevent catastrophe, but they weren't deep enough to route all the water away.
Someone rowed by on a canoe, and Pierce waved.
"I know the farmers and merchants hate it," Sugar was saying as she leaned on her bar, "but I've always liked Flood Day."
"My grandmother used to tell me fairy tales about a thing called winter," Deathgripz said. "People would huddle in their houses together burning wood for warmth, since the outside was so cold it chilled you to the bone."
She nudged Agrathor in the rib as she said this and said, "You'd probably like that, huh?"
Agrathor cackled and his green eyes brightened.
"This reminds me of that," Deathgripz finished.
"Exactly!" said Sugar, and refilled Deathgripz's stein, though it was far from empty. "Everyone all cozy in a small place together. It's a hugger's dream."
"Winter, huh..." Pierce said. "Never heard of that one. Wonder if the sky's blue on that level."
"What level?" Agrathor asked.
"The one where winter happens."
The bone man growled. "Oh no, don't you go thinking again. You get these thoughts in my head..."
Deathgripz thunked a metal finger on Agrathor's hollow skull and it played a short, clear note. He snapped his jaws at her finger and she laughed. He chuckled too.
Pierce started to wonder when all this had happened, something starting between them and all the questions that entailed, but Agrathor's grumbling kept his
