Look for me by the moonlight;
Watch for me by the moonlight.
I'll come to thee by the moonlight,
Though hell should bar the way.
-- Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman

Qihadal had come to the same conclusion as Kilan. Long before she heard anything about Nalginton's death she had already started planning how Carann would win a war against Malish. She studied maps of the border, circling the places that were least defended, and drawing lines of hypothetical routes the army would take to reach Ihalāiksonen.

And then everyone waited, tensely, expecting a disaster at any moment. Days passed. They became weeks. Weeks became months. After almost two months, Qihadal had the baby, and Carann got something new to think about. An heir to the throne was a more cheerful topic than a possible war.

Kilan knew from hearing other men talk that he was supposed to be overjoyed when he held his daughter for the first time. Instead he was just terrified. What if he dropped her? What if he was holding her incorrectly? He breathed a sigh of relief when he handed the newborn princess back to Qihadal.

Death watched from the shadows, invisible even to Kilan, as Qihadal handed little Princess Linyie to the nurse. She had seen untold thousands of newborn children. For far too many of them, she was there to collect their souls. There was nothing unusual about Linyie in and of herself. But for who she had been, and who she would become... Well. Death would watch her future with interest.

~~~~

A month after Linyie's birth, Malish also gained a royal heir. It was a boy, as Jalakanavu had predicted. Most of the people accepted her as Queen Regnant for the next ten years. There was some grumbling about being ruled by a woman. But most of the Malishese took the attitude that it was only a temporary situation, and not worth complaining about.

Prince Shuradin gritted his teeth when he heard this news. His chance of becoming Iqui was slipping away. He wouldn't stand for it.

He would overthrow that bitch and her brat if it was the last thing he did.

~~~~

The news of both royal births did something to alleviate the hostility between the two empires. They forgot about preparing for war in favour of gossiping about the future of the new babies. Death knew better than to think it would last. But she could make it last as long as possible.

Some people lived -- er, existed, since most of them were dead -- under the delusion that she liked bringing death to the universe. Death couldn't understand where this idea had come from. Her job meant an endless stream of complaining or traumatised souls for her to deal with. Most of them then stayed around for the rest of eternity, grumbling endlessly. Why did anyone think she was eager for more work? A war would cause much, much more work for her. So it was in her own best interests to prevent as many of them as possible.

At this very minute there were more than twenty thousand wars raging throughout the universe, and another ten thousand threatening to erupt. The people who died in those wars, combined with the people who died of other causes, added up to a staggering number of souls. Death had quite enough to do without Carann and Malish making her job harder.

She watched events unfolding in both empires for several days. At last she decided there was no immediate danger just yet.

Kilan disagreed with this assessment.

The chaos of the last few months had left him understandably reluctant to leave Carann, even to visit the Land of the Dead. Now that things had finally calmed down, Death all but dragged him away from his office and into her realm.

"But I can't leave tonight!" he complained as she determinedly marched him towards Varan's home. "I have work to do!"

Death remained unmoved. "You've worked quite enough. You need a break."

Kilan tried a different tack. "What if something goes wrong while I'm away?"

"Qihadal is perfectly capable of handling any crisis you care to name." It pained Death to admit it, but it was true. "More capable than you, in fact. She doesn't waste time wringing her hands over what might go wrong."

"I resent that," Kilan grumbled. He had to practically run to keep up with Death, but he still found the time and breath to complain.

"Do you deny it?"

"No, I just resent it."

He made the sort of half-embarrassed, half-defiant face of someone who knew their argument was full of holes but would stubbornly cling to it anyway.

They arrived at Varan's home before he could protest any more. Varan was waiting for him -- unsurprisingly, as this visit had been her idea. Death pushed Kilan through the door.

"I'll be back later," she said, and disappeared.

~~~~

Kilan had expected many things from his meeting with Varan. At the top of that list was a lecture on not working so much and spending more time with his daughter. He never expected to be dragged into a strategy meeting.

"The important thing is to win the war quickly and decisively," Varan said, jabbing a ruler at the map of Malish she'd pinned to her kitchen wall. Her tone was similar to a university professor lecturing a not very promising class. "Preferably in a matter of days, and with the least loss of life possible -- on both sides. We don't want the Malishese to have any grounds for accusing us of needless cruelty."

"You've thought about this," Kilan observed. He looked at the coloured flags stuck on various parts of the map. "Are those the places you want the army to travel through?"

Varan nodded. "These are mostly-uninhabited areas. Nothing there but a few farms. And the land is mostly flat. The army could cross them in a day without meeting much resistance. But to get there, they'd have to cross the border here." She jabbed the ruler at a flag stuck on top of a mountain range. "That's--"

"Wait," Kilan interrupted. "I'll never remember all that. Have you a notepad I can borrow?"

Minutes later, when her brother was armed with a notepad and pen, Varan continued her lecture. "That's the Qar'misderlil mountain range, on the border of Istogu."

Kilan didn't even try to spell the name of the mountains. He scribbled down, Mountains on Istogu border. "Crossing a mountain range sounds difficult."

"Yes," Varan agreed, "but that's why the Malishese have no guard outposts within eight miles of there. The people of Istogu have been crossing and recrossing the mountains for generations. They can guide the army across safely."

He added this to his notes. "Cross the mountains, cross the uninhabited land, then what?"

"Then you come to the Husmarna river and all the towns along it." Varan jabbed the ruler at a cluster of dots on the map. "Avoiding them would take the army miles out of their way and straight into better-defended land. I asked some of the souls of the Malishese how -- hypothetically, of course -- someone would get through those towns unnoticed. They all said the same thing: by the river. The Husmarna is the main river of Malish, going through most of the major towns and out to the sea. Merchants, fishermen, soldiers, holiday-makers; everyone uses it. Even in the middle of winter it's crowded with boats. The army would just have to steal enough boats to carry them, fly Malishese flags, and they'll be lost among the rest of the traffic on the river. They can sail right up to a mile or so from Ihalāiksonen. Then there are checkpoints for boats to go through, and they'll have to travel by land and hide in the ancient tombs."

Kilan had feverishly scribbled all this down at record speed. Now he looked up. "Ancient tombs?"

Varan pointed to a circle just outside Ihalāiksonen. "The Hatdùlsa tombs, where all the past Iquis are buried. No Malishese people dare go anywhere near them for fear of angering their gods. If the army go there late at night and leave while it's still dark, no one will see them arrive or leave. They'll be able to get into the capital without being seen. The guards will be taken by surprise, and the city will be easy to capture."

If things went as Varan planned, the potential invasion of Malish would be the easiest, most orderly invasion of any country in history. That was what bothered Kilan.

"There are so many things that could go wrong with this plan," he said as he surveyed his notes. "Most importantly, have you forgotten that we aren't at war yet?"

"Not yet," his sister agreed. "But I've been talking to War."

It took Kilan a moment to realise she meant the personification of war, and not war itself. "Death's daughter?"

Varan nodded. "We met a few weeks ago and started talking. She told me all about the approaching war when I beat her at a drinking game."

Kilan tried to wrap his mind around the thought that his sister was having drinking games with at least one of Death's children. Did Death know about this? "And she helped you come up with this plan."

"Not exactly." Varan looked slightly sheepish. "I came up with it by talking to some of the other Reapers, and some of the souls. But I used what she said to make it as foolproof as possible."

She should have known better than to call anything "foolproof". Nothing attracted Fate's attention more than someone believing nothing could go wrong. The most foolproof plan imaginable was never so good that some fool wouldn't come along and mess it up.

"I'll show Qihadal this and see what she has to say," Kilan said. "She might know a way to sneak into the capital city without alerting the guards at all."

Varan placed the ruler on the table and sat down on the chair next to him. "That reminds me. How's the baby? What's she like? Is she old enough to talk yet?"

Kilan stared at her blankly. "She's just over a week old. Of course she's not old enough to talk yet!"

His sister shrugged. "It's easy to lose track of time when I've so many other things to think about. But what's she like?"

Good question. What was Linyie like? Kilan had seen his daughter at least once every day since her birth, and frankly he couldn't see anything special about her at all. She was bald and wrinkly, like most babies, and her sole occupations were sleeping or screaming at the top of her lungs. "I suppose she's... normal."

There was a long, awkward silence.

"Normal?" Varan repeated in tones of horror. "That's all you can say about your own daughter?"

"There isn't much else I can say about her!" Kilan protested. "She can't walk or talk, and she certainly hasn't started school. She's just a normal baby."

His sister made an exasperated noise that was half a sigh and half a growl. "Men."

~~~~

Some people were not suited to being parents. In Death's opinion, Kilan and Qihadal were both among them. Kilan regarded little Linyie with a mixture of alarm and indifference. Qihadal was just indifferent towards her. She didn't hate the little princess as she hated her other daughter, but she didn't love her either. The poor girl spent most of her time in the company of nursemaids, only seeing her parents once a day.

Death had many flaws, but she was reasonably sure no one could ever accuse her of being a bad parent. She was on relatively good terms with all her children, even when they tried to drive her to despair. And she certainly never ignored them -- unless they were being unusually stupid. So she decided to do something about Linyie's unfortunate situation.

Besides, knowing what she knew about who Linyie truly was, befriending the child appealed to her sense of irony.

She arrived in the royal nursery to find the little princess was already asleep. Young children were far more sensitive to the presence of the supernatural than the average human. Linyie started awake with a high-pitched shriek. Death winced.

"Quiet!" she whispered, kneeling down next to the cot.

Linyie stopped wailing and stared at her curiously. They looked at each other for a long moment, the baby and the Grim Reaper. Eventually Linyie seemed to decide this odd stranger was not important enough to warrant her staying awake. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep without so much as a whimper.

Death laughed. "Hello, Ranoryin. Nice to see you again. Though I doubt you'd say the same if you remembered me."