Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction. -- Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

Autumn swept over Carann and Malish, turning the leaves golden and the wind cold and biting. Both empires waited for the other to make the first move. Each army stood ready to attack at a minute's notice. All the generals had their battle-plans prepared. Diplomats made frantic last-minute attempts to prevent the war. Jalakanavu refused every draft of a possible treaty as soon as she understood Malish would be considered the aggressor. Kilan refused every peace offer Malish made when it became clear they demanded on having Istogu handed over to them.

"Why do they want that province so much?" he asked Death one afternoon, when he had finished reading yet another letter from the Malishese diplomat. All those letters were essentially the same. They varied only in how respectful the tone and wording were. "It's hardly a rich, flourishing place."

"Jalakanavu doesn't want it," Death said. "She couldn't care less about it. Neither could most of the common people. Her government are the ones who want to... How did the Prime Minister put it? Oh yes. They want to reunite the families cruelly separated, and to return the empire to the glory of Yataulsham-Iqui[1]." Her voice practically dripped with sarcasm. "He conveniently ignored that Yataulsham-Iqui never cared much about Istogu. His battles and conquests were mainly against the kingdoms across the sea in the west. The few times he did invade Carann, he found it took too much effort to conquer. Eventually he decided to leave it alone. Istogu was an independent kingdom until Emperor Zizhen[2] conquered it. Well, actually Istogu's king asked to ally itself with Carann against Nirne, and Zizhen insisted on it becoming part of the empire."

Kilan remembered some of this from his history lessons. He'd forgotten most of the details, and had a vague idea that Death was leaving something out. The trouble with history was that there was so much of it. Other subjects inevitably had to stop somewhere, but history went on and on and on.

When you thought you knew everything about it, you found something that made you realise how little you actually knew. When you mastered one area of it, a hundred new ones awaited you. Even the most in-depth study of an era couldn't give you a complete understanding of what had happened in it. There were always the events that slipped through the cracks. There were thousands upon thousands of people whose lives and stories were forever forgotten. There were thousands upon thousands of people who had written about their lives, and their writing had been overlooked or remained undiscovered.

The more you studied it the more you realised how futile trying to learn it was. No one could ever know all of it. There was just too much to learn in a hundred lifetimes. And most disconcertingly, you realised you and everyone around you were just tiny drops of water in a vast ocean. The most you could hope for was that you might be a footnote in the history books. Some extremely lucky people got whole chapters dedicated to them. But if you studied enough, you knew better than to want to emulate them. They inevitably gained their fame from bringing death and destruction everywhere they went.

Kilan was jolted out of his increasingly depressing thoughts by Death tapping her fingers on his shoulder. He felt the coldness of her touch even through the layers of his clothes.

"You're doing it again," she said. "Stop worrying."

"I wasn't worrying," he protested, feeling rather offended. Why did she automatically assume he was worrying when he was lost in thought? He did not worry nearly as much as she seemed to think! ...Well, all right. He worried far more than most people did. But most people were not the ruler of an empire about to go to war. He had plenty to worry about. "I was just thinking."

Death raised an eyebrow. He got the message as clearly as if she'd said it aloud. Those are the same thing, for you.

He changed the subject. "Nimetath sent me a message from Istogu. She said they're staying in a village tonight and crossing the mountains tomorrow. Have you any idea what's waiting for them in Malish?"

Death's eyes glazed over as she looked into the future. Even though he had seen her do that before, it was still eerie to see. It was as if a white film covered her normally pale blue eyes, making the iris disappear and the pupil appear watery and cloudy. Once or twice, in poor lighting, he had thought her eyes vanished entirely. Kilan looked away and pretended to be very interested in rearranging his ink pots and pens. In the process he almost knocked over a jar of red ink, right on top of the prime minister's budget report. By the time he had prevented that catastrophe Death's eyes were back to normal.

"Nothing to worry about yet," she said. "They'll get to the river safely. What happens after that is up to them. Thankfully they have one fluent Malishese speaker with them. I don't think they paid much attention to Qihadal's lessons."

Kilan blinked. Qihadal had been loud in her complaints about the poor language skills of the entire group. She hadn't mentioned anyone who was fluent in Malishese. True, his ex-wife hadn't told him directly. Nadriet had repeated some of her comments when describing a lesson she had witnessed. But someone who already understood the language would have been a great help to Qihadal. Why had they not offered to assist her in the lessons?

"Which of them speaks Malishese?" he asked.

"Princess Qiyuan," Death said. "You remember her? Princess Ixerthi's granddaughter."

Yes, Kilan remembered her. Nimetath had personally gone to Istogu weeks ago to find someone there who knew the best way to cross the mountains. She spoke to Princess Ixerthi about it, and after that meeting Qiyuan had been an accepted part of the mission. Kilan knew all that. Nimetath had told him all about her visit in her official report.

More than that, he clearly remembered Qiyuan's arrival at the palace. He had expected her to look like her grandmother. Instead she was almost indistinguishable from the majority of Carannish people. Her mother was of the Jichun ethnic group[3], and Qiyuan took after her more than her part-Malishese father. She had certainly made an impression, though. She had arrived in the full formal costume of her mother's people. Her hair was braided (which wasn't unusual) and the braids were covered with what looked like glitter (which certainly was). Her floor-length dress was bright pink with orange fur trimming on the sleeves. Draped over her shoulders she wore a blue cape, embroidered with white flowers, that was cut diagonally so it reached to her waist on one side and to her elbow on the other.

Most Carannish people only wore such bright clothing on festival days. The cape especially was an unheard-of innovation among the Wenzhan people[4]. Kilan had never seen anything so eye-catching even among his father's people. No, no one who saw Princess Qiyuan's arrival was ever likely to forget her. Yet she had never mentioned that she spoke Malishese fluently.

I suppose it makes sense, Kilan thought. If anyone in Carann knew Malishese, it would be someone from Istogu. She's part-Malishese herself.

All the same, he wondered why she hadn't told anyone.

"For goodness' sake!" Death glared at him. "There you go, worrying again. What is it this time?"

Kilan hadn't realised he was worrying at all. Simply wondering about something didn't count as worrying. "I just thought it was odd she never said anything about it. Speaking Malishese, I mean."

Death looked at him as if he was very stupid. "Kilan. If you were in a strange place, surrounded by people you'd never met before and don't know if you can trust, would you be in a hurry to tell them you spoke the language of the empire you're at war with?"

Oh. He never thought of it from that perspective.

~~~~

There's one good thing about this mission, Hailanyu told himself every time he wished he hadn't come. I get to see and do things I'd never have seen or done otherwise.

It wasn't quite the comforting thought it seemed. He'd never slept on a barn floor before, while livestock snorted and his companions snored. He'd never climbed a mountain before. Nimetath said they crossed the mountains at the easiest place. If so, it didn't bear imagining what the hardest place was like. Hailanyu had been forced to crawl on his hands and knees for much of the climb. The only solace he had was that several of Nimetath's spies had done the same. One had been physically dragged up by her friends.

He'd never walked twenty miles in a day before. He'd never had to boil water to make sure it was safe to drink before. He'd never had to bathe his feet in an ice-cold stream to stop them aching before. Yes, this mission was certainly giving him many experiences he'd otherwise never have had. And he would have been much happier without them.

Why did books never mention this sort of thing? He'd read many novels about noble knights who walked vast distances in full armour. Invariably they kept up their spirits with the thought of their beloved wife or fiancée who waited for them at home. Maybe it was because Hailanyu wasn't a noble knight. Or maybe it was because he had neither a wife nor a fiancée waiting for him at home. But whatever the reason, he could barely walk vast distances in relatively light clothing.

Books spoke of the heroes hunting for their food. Alas, the books never described the unpleasant, stomach-turning job of preparing food for cooking. Hailanyu got an unpleasant shock when he learnt he had to skin a rabbit. He got the skin cut off its main body, then spent an hour wrestling with the bloodied, cold corpse as he struggled to pull the skin off its legs. One of the spies took pity on him and told him he had to cut off its head and feet. After that nauseating ordeal he had to cut it open and pull out its internal organs.

I can use this information in my book, he told himself when he wanted to be sick. It will be an unusually realistic book.

All the same, he couldn't imagine anyone would want to read about how slimy a rabbit's innards were. Or how they slipped out of his hands and appeared to writhe like living creatures. Some things were best left untold.

They reached the Husmarna River on the third day of their travels in Malish. Until now their journey had mostly been across empty grasslands that rose and fell sharply. The only living creatures they saw were rabbits, birds, and the occasional herd of wild horses. Near the river they began to see small houses dotted at intervals. The grasslands gave way to recently-harvested fields.

The river lay in front of them, a vast, flat expanse of perfectly calm water. The opposite bank was at least a mile away. A line of trees, stripped bare of their leaves by the wind, grew a short distance away from the bank. The group stopped among them, where the shadows meant there was less chance of being spotted, and checked to make sure there was no one nearby.

Not a single sign of life. There were no boats on the river. There were no piers or docks. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had ever tried to sail on it.

"Seems suspicious," one of the spies said, eyeing the peaceful water as if he expected some monstrous creature to burst out of it. "Perfectly good river, and no one's using it?"

Princess Qiyuan had said very little to anyone during their journey so far. Now she snorted and stepped forward. "The river is too shallow here for boating. Everyone knows it cannot be navigated until it deepens near the town of Zayishram."

"How far away is that?" Nimetath asked, already taking her map out of her pocket.

"Three miles, I think," Qiyuan said.

Nimetath checked her map. "Yes, just over three miles. We'll rest here for a while."

Hailanyu sat down among the withered leaves beneath a tree. His feet ached. The bag containing his food felt as if it weighed a tonne. They still had three miles to travel before they could find a boat. He wasn't stupid enough to think their troubles would end there. What would happen when they finally reached the town?

It didn't bear thinking about.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] Yataulsham-Iqui = Emperor of Malish who died over eight hundred years before our story starts. The most revered Iqui in Malishese history.

[2] Emperor Zizhen = Emperor of Carann who lived almost six hundred years after Yataulsham died. Kilan's great-grandfather thirteen times removed. Later in life he developed an interest in alchemy. In modern Carann he's famous (or infamous) mainly for blowing up part of Zasordoth Palace during one of his experiments.

[3] There are at least forty different ethnic groups in Carann. They've intermarried with each other so much and for so long that there are few visible differences between them. (The Yingshu, who have Nirnian ancestry, and the Laugichong, who have Malishese ancestry, are the most notable exceptions.)

[4] Wenzhan people = The largest ethnicity in Carann. The Caranilnav family was originally from the Yangjung ethnicity (which now no longer exists as a distinct group), but through generations of marriages they've become primarily Wenzhan. (Kilan is half-Wenzhan; his father is from the Moyao ethnicity.)