Dear dead. Tatter-cloak and his army snuck from the frost orchards beneath night's silhouette. They had until dawn. It was winter. Dawn wouldn't come for most of the day. You came too, shaking in your cloak, you were a better death mage in the dark but did that hold true for revolutionary armies? You knew nothing of revolutionary armies.

That's not true. You learned much of them, through a whole autumn and the approach of winter.

Near the end of autumn, the so-called king and his forces took over a town founded during the past months, due north of the frost orchards, mere hours' march away.

Armies used fancy words like that, march and due north, forces and town foundations.

Technically, you came marching only as Tatter-cloak's bodyguard. Armies and monarch supporters used words like that too. "Bodyguard."

You were there as a bodyguard; nobody knew you were a death mage. Hardly anyone heard the entire book of the queen, there was only one copy and it stayed with Tatter-cloak. Nobody knew the house between two white hills belonged to you, no one in the army was allowed there except a few commanding guards, whatever that meant, you pretended to be busy in the kitchen--really guarding the tunnel in the fake fridge that would kill anyone else who entered--whenever Tatter-cloak had royal meetings to discuss strategy and feeding the troops outside of the orchards and weapons to arm the army with.

That's why the town took shape, a trade center for the logistical team of the army, trading with coast towns and travelers.

You learned much of armies, that autumn into winter.

You had also drifted from Tatter-cloak. The meetings, the late nights, the visiting guards; all drips to a lake labeling you relegated to a visitor in your own home. You slept in the bathroom's tub the days your face bled, in case somebody came up the stairs; the bedroom adopted a second bed to give the appearance the monarch wasn't sleeping on the couch in somebody else's place, appearances mattered, you knew, but some dawns you woke wishing to take Tatter-cloak to see the frost orchards, just you two, no audience, to dance in the glowing afterlights of an autumn that only came every two years; instead you woke to wince at thudding laughter from the dining room table, surrounded by too many chairs.

"It's okay," you'd whispered to the sea cat, moved from the sitting room to hide in the closet behind the dead man's clothes. "It won't be forever."

"It's because we believe in him." Them? It'd been days since you had the space to ask.

"Bodyguard isn't the worst role to have in a rebellion." What was the worst role to have in a rebellion? Enemy?

"I hope nobody tried opening the fridge this morning." Because you'd barred it shut from the inside with a bar of frozen blood. Perhaps not the sturdiest barricade, but you weren't about to use the sea cat's bones.

Beneath night's silhouette, army sneaking to strike at a so-called king, you shivered with the prospect of actually guarding a body, in a battle, by yourself. Were you supposed to block arrows with a massive shield, like the round thing held by the commanding guard at your side?

No, you were a better death mage in the dark, you could fake being a bodyguard. Yet, you had left Tatter-cloak behind before. And most of that autumn creeping into winter, you'd tried often convincing yourself Tatter-cloak hadn't left you.

Hence that day, days ago, when you'd hardly cared if the commanding guards found out you were a death mage. They'd sat around the table strategizing how to attack the so-called king and his forces. You'd tiptoed down the stairs, ribbons in your hair, cheekbones clean, and said you could deal with the outer ring of guards. You had a plan, and they didn't need to worry. You'd slipped into the kitchen to guard the fridge before puzzled eyebrows could sprout into questions you were unwilling to answer.

Beneath night's silhouette, soldier blood pounding in your senses, their skeletons fidgeting, you stepped up to the frozen tundra ahead of the rebellion's barrier snowbanks. You stopped a dozen paces out, you spread your arms wide for the drama. Your cloak fluttered in an ice wind. The jet bird soared high above, eager to see you alone again, uncooped from your house you visited.

Across a distance of glittering white waited a town, snow packed high into walls, guards atop them shivering with hot blood. None of them saw, you, invisible in starlight. You lowered your arms and screamed a curse in a silent language, flung it forward with your tongue and lips and bansheed the human hearts drumming up staccato rain. An arc of swelling ocean words stopped them where they stood, took the breath from lungs and the heat from hearts. Their eyes spun dizzy with stars and soldier bodies crumpled.

The curse dissipated. It let them have their breath back. The toppled pikes, the curved scythes, you didn't do anything about those accidental wounds.

You hugged your cloak to you. You walked back. In the ice and snow you crouched beside Tatter-cloak, rough grass stems and dry soil pounding far faster than a calm person's should. "The guards are knocked out," you said.

A commanding guard, oversized shield painted dark, tilted their head at you. "You walked ten lengths away and stood there and walked back. What do you mean the guards are knocked out?"

Another guard tapped them on the shoulder. Whispered furiously.

"I think I should stay behind now," you said. The guard's eyes slowly widened. "Trusting your allies, and such."

Tatter-cloak frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I'm not killing anyone tonight."

Tatter-cloak tapped a finger to his lips, eyebrow raised. "If you're super sure."

You nodded.

Tatter-cloak turned to Oversized-shield. "Nuqilik, guard me." Oversized-shield nodded, and crept around you to shield him. Then Tatter-cloak wriggled his fingers in a complex pattern to basically mean "we advance, now," and pulled a blade from his hip. The finger wriggle spread down the line--not that you could see it, but the blood pantomimed it.

You sat in the snow, watching them both go, rubbed your undereyes and pictured a so-called king getting what he deserved. Tatter-cloak's justice. You held back tears that would only freeze, did you actually want to know what that justice looked like, did you want to be there and see, this winter night before dawn?

Sitting in the snow, you reached out with those senses to trace the shape of a battle. The sleeping soldiers of the so-called king, their front line of guards unconscious by a curse, waking to pulses of panic. You traced the edges of a massacre, of Tatter-cloak's autumn-trained army quiet in the night, killing people thrashing inside their tents, bleary with sleep.

You had never met a so-called king, not in person. Maybe you heard him shout that night in the palace, glowing with glimmer insects. Maybe you saw him the day the queen died. But never as a so-called king, never anybody to pay attention to. So you didn't know if or when a so-called king thrashed in a tent, reached for a blade before a pike thrust took him in his heart. Or maybe that's not how it happened.

You rocked in the snow in your cloak, a jet bird cometed into the snowdrift beside you and cast a cloud of flaking white. She waddled free, wings flapping, coming close to peck at your cloth-covered elbow.

"Hello," you said, blinking hard to hold back tears. Whatever for, you didn't know. Maybe the missing out. But you didn't want to be there, in the massacre.

The jet bird waddled behind you and nestled around the curve of your spine where it met your hips. You rocked back and forth, leaning into and away from her softness. You glanced at the snow crater. "We'll have to cover that up. We don't want mysterious holes left out for someone to wonder at."

Or maybe you did. If a so-called king had a friend who retaliated, maybe a large hole would confuse them. Pointlessly so, but still confuse them.

But you kicked thick powder into the hole, crumbled the crater walls and left it more a shallow dip than a hole. You rocked back and forth, back and forth, senses afire with people dying. But not because of you.

***

The imminent unconsciousness of the man is precluded by a grand downpour of soil and dust. No longer summoned by his magic, the swirling gravel and soil collapse to their mother-home, washing the silent jet bird, child and I in layers of thin powder. I cough. The jet bird's blood shifts ragged, like she wishes she screamed away this magic-lifted, but harmless, dust wave.

The man's muscles go limp and I release the blood noose, let it ink onto the rocks. The jet bird, agitated, flutters to the ash-coated ground and hops, dust fluffing from her feathers. What a great inconvenience to halt magic with a squawk but stand powerless before common dusty feathers.

A thrum. Of dry cold and splintering frost. The burners, now coming quickly--mage fights surely do that kind of thing. Make burners walk faster.

I limp through the ash, cuts sting with each movement. Cuts from gravel, scathing soil. My limbs limp solidly as mud, weak as water. I half drop the child onto the rock pedestal, opposite the unconscious man. I blink at, then giggle--the child's fingers still cling around the half-peeled fruit. I curl over and laugh at his half-closed eyes, his slowing heart, the steady breathing of his lungs.

My laughter ends in shallow gasps. The jet bird hops to the stone. Waddling beside the man, she pecks at his cut wrist and jolts back, but the man doesn't move.

I sink beside him. This man, who told half-fabricated stories of his wife and seven children, wanted me dead. How nice.

I wipe my dusty cheeks. He said stone mages bury their dead's skeletons deep in the ground, but what about when those dead are sky birds?

Like a screeching instrument, the thrum of burners' blood echoes again against my senses. I close my eyes and pull in a breath.

"Are we done running?" I whisper to the child. Who curls up half-asleep and doesn't answer. As if I could sleep now; my skin tingling with adrenaline and my stomach knotted with exhaustion and my hands and arms laced with tiny cuts. "Are we done running?"

My shoulders droop. I take the half-peeled fruit from the child's hands and dust it off. We could stay, wait for the burners. We could stay, watch an unconscious man die, watch a child die, leave a bird to fly for herself. We could fight them, here, in this town aflame.

"Or are we running?"

The burners aren't very good at keeping people from fleeing their fires. From what I've seen. They don't seem to care who slips away before their presence, the smoke and light from a distance warns us to flee, run for our lives. Which the burners don't seem to mind. They let ships set sail, they don't guard the roads, anyone could leave hours before they appear and they never seem to know.

By deduction, then, the burners come for the buildings. As if magic is a passive thing pulped in the papery doors of people's homes and woven in hallway rugs and molded into sculptures by the hands that fire bricks. Not as if the burners come for the scent of magic emanating off a breathing, walking magic-wielder.

I set the fruit aside, its silhouette rolls fro and to. I rest my face in my hands. I have a child to carry. I have a stone mage who wants me dead for a deed some other death mage did years ago--what is the difference between leaving him alive on this stone pedestal for the burners to take, and mouthing the curse that would stop his heart right now?

He would haunt a fire, this man who fabricates a life to tell a woman with a mute child. He would haunt me, whether I was the one to kill him or not. He seems vengeful like that.

"Are we done running?" I whisper. "Or should we leave this town, the sleeping people, this strange rock pedestal?"

The jet bird unhelpfully pecks at the fruit. Squawks at it, like she's hungry and wants food now. But I don't have any for her. She squawks again, and I whisper, "catch yourself something in the water." I rub my face, massage my calves, we can walk down to the ocean. I predict we have until noonday before the burners get here.

I lift the child in my arms. I hold his fruit in my hands. I carry him half over my shoulder with the shake in my elbows. Unceremoniously, I tug the man behind us by his blood, heart of worn-smooth mountain caves.