Blade Kin by David Farland Page B

defeating part of the Creators’ plans. Now when Phylomon the Starfarer returned, he would lead them north to destroy the Creators.
    Tull stood with Fava and listened, not to the Spirit Walker, but to a fox barking in the distance and the wind rushing through the redwoods. He looked up through the black branches at the sky, and Fava nudged him.
    She said, “Now I know why your eyes have seemed to gaze a thousand miles away. You have been keeping many secrets.”
    “I did not want to ruin the kwea of our wedding,” Tull said. “I want you to always be able to look back and think of it as a happy time, not mingled with fear.”
    Fava got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Tull took Wayan from her.
    They began ambling home, and when Tull glanced back, Chaa leaned over the fire, ringed by Pwi.
    He was squatting over the carcass of the eel with a knife, skinning it. Chaa had many hunting trophies in his house—teeth of dinosaurs and lions, hides from bears—but Tull imagined the pale blue eel skin as a rug on the Spirit Walker’s floor, and thought it an odd trophy.
    Tull carried Wayan back to the cabin. All through his walk, Tull held the small boy and wondered what the future would bring for Wayan.
    Perhaps he would someday be carried away as a slave to Bashevgo, or perhaps the boy would die at the hands of the Creators. Maybe he would live here in town and be happy, marry well, grow old and die among friends. Yet that seemed too much to hope.
    It had been only three weeks since Tull had taken Wayan from their father, rescued the child so that he should not be abused as Tull had.
    And in Tull’s mind a little voice whispered, When you took Wayan to raise as your own son, you took him because you wanted to promise him a future.
    When Tull reached the cabin, he laid Wayan in bed with Fava, set the fire, then went outside to think. He looked out over the waters at Smilodon Bay. The town below swept around him in a bowl shape, the gray stone houses hidden among the shadows of the redwoods. Pale lights from fires shone through some windows, and the light of Freya—one of the two smaller moons—made the smoke hanging over the chimneys gleam as if pale white ribbons floated above the town.
    Overhead the stars seemed to want to burn a hole in the darkness. A red drone warship flamed like a comet on the horizon. Tull stood, tasting the cool night air on his tongue, and decided, Tomorrow I will become a Spirit Walker.
    ***

Chapter 6: Eyes of Bashevgo
    Garamon Goodman, the mayor of Smilodon Bay, slept fitfully the night of Tull’s return. He kept tossing in his blankets so that they wound around him and pulled off of his wife.
    At four in the morning someone knocked at his door, softly, three times. Then he heard a faint scratching. Eyes of Bashevgo, he realized—a member of the secret arm of the Blade Kin, who worked here in the Rough.
    He hurried to open the door. “What do you want?”
    At the door stood Kelvin Bywater a local glass maker. Garamon had known Kelvin for thirty years, but had never known him to be a member of the Secret Eye.
    “I thought you should know,” Kelvin said. “Chaa and some of your local boys have just sworn to overthrow Bashevgo.”
    Garamon stood in the doorway, confused. “Bashevgo? They can’t be serious!”
    Kelvin whispered, “They’re serious, friend.”
    “The Pwi aren’t that naïve!”
    “The mute that Tull brought back today has managed to be quite an agitator. Your Pwi would march tonight, if Chaa asked them to.”
    “Well then,” Garamon whispered. He wrung his hands in the darkness. “We can’t have that, can we? We must keep the merchandise pacified. So we shall have to agitate the agitator.”
    ***

Chapter 7: The Attraction of Small Predators
    General Mahkawn lay in bed that morning in a stone shack on the isle of Bashevgo, and listened: outside roosters crowed down the street, and a few blocks farther a pig squealed as it died in the market, the sounds muted by a rain