The villagers were running, all toward Stepan’s library. Nearby, Fatih stood up, blood running down the front of him, gasping in and out, disjointed breaths. He turned toward the house with the corpse in its doorway. His back was turned to Zoe and he hardly seemed to acknowledge her presence. In the moments after the chaos, the footfalls of soldiers drew nearer to where Zoe stood. Fatih snapped a fire-rod over his knee, crackling and flashing, and threw it into the house in whose doorway lay the old woman.

Zoe thought she heard a small, childlike scream of fear as the house went up in flames, but her head was swimming and even as she stood, she swayed on her feet. Perhaps she’d only imagined it.

Captain Cigdem approached. “Come on,” he said. “They’re going to barricade themselves in.” He motioned to the crowd of Valers – Zoe couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like Luca was leading them – running toward Stepan Zelenko’s old library. Zoe stood, fingertips just barely clinging to her weapon as she watched.

Luca was behind the rest, motioning wildly with her arms, towards the library. She shouted something, ushered everyone toward the door. As the great wooden gates creaked open, she stood beside them, watching the soldiers as they gathered across the village. She saw one house go up in flames, then another, and another. The crowd, panicked, shoved into the building, packed shoulder-to-shoulder, flooding into the great entry chamber.

Luca went in last, shutting and barring the doors behind her.

As soon as she closed the doors, and silence fell within, she fell back against the doorway, panting, struggling to steady herself. She looked at her hand – it hurt terribly, but the wound from Fatih’s gun was long-gone. She brushed some of the blood away from her hand and saw only a scar, which ached when she touched it.

Stepan came up to where Luca sat, leaning against the door, breathing heavy. “We can’t do this anymore,” he said. “We have to cooperate with them.”

Struggling to lift her head, Luca looked up, pushed against the door, and finally managed to get her eyes level with Stepan’s. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You can’t.”

Stepan bent his knees and lowered himself until he was level with Luca. When she lowered her head to look at him again, she saw he was shaking. “I don’t know where my family is,” Stepan said. “They could be dead for all I know. The soldiers want to kill them, you know? They want to send somebody after them, track them down and kill them.”

“And this makes you want to work with the soldiers?” Luca gritted her teeth, struggling to stand. Her bones felt heavy. “That makes no sense. We need to come up with some kind of plan to save the village.”

“The village is burning!” Stepan said, half-shouting. His sudden outburst drew the eyes of much of the crowd, and some began to murmur resentfully. A wave of fear ran through the assembled people. Luca pushed against the floor, but couldn’t stand.

Suddenly, Stepan reached out and wrapped his hand around Luca’s elbow. Their forearms parallel, he stood and helped her up to her feet. She was still shaky, but remaining standing was much easier than standing up. “The village is burning,” he said, more quietly. “And the only way to stop it is to cooperate. Maybe, maybe if we keep them focused on us by talking, helping them, Hilda and Kamila will get to Kivv.”

“By the time they come back with help, we’ll be done for.” Luca said this barely above a whisper, motioning for Stepan to come closer. Some of the crowd still looked at her. She stared back warily. “We should have this conversation someplace else,” she said. With hesitant steps, she walked into the crowd. The place was packed, but people parted before her, allowing her and Stepan through to the back of the room and the hallway beyond. They made their way through the darkness, past the bloodstained walls, and into the office with the old destroyed radio. Stepan pulled out a chair for Luca to sit down, then collapsed himself against the wall, putting his back against it and slowly sinking down until his knees were against his chest.

“We’re done for as it is,” Stepan said. “But if Hilda and Kamila and Aleks have escaped, and if they’re on their way to Kivv for reinforcements – Marga said she was going to contact them, but she never managed it before…” He coughed. “It’s not that I think they’re going to make it to Kivv and come back with reinforcements and save us all. I just want them to be okay.”

“So we have to take care of ourselves. Well? Aren’t you a Mirshalite?” Luca set her jaw and pulled herself up straight in her chair, looking down at Stepan.

He nodded, slowly. “I’m surprised they didn’t just kill me, but the longer I can distract them, the longer they’ll stay away from my family.”

“And? You possess the power of Cultivation. You can help us, here, now.”

“And if we drive them out of the village, the first thing they’ll do is go north to Kivv. They have vehicles – Hilda and Kamila and Aleks are all on foot. They’ll track them down and kill them.”

“They’re killing us!” Luca said, leaning forward. “And you can’t possibly know what you’re claiming! You’re just making excuses not to do anything!” Stepan flinched under Luca’s glare. “We can work together, and we can save these people, or you can sit there and feel sorry for yourself and treat everyone here like we’re all your martyrs for the sake of three people!”

“I can’t just give up on them…”

“You wouldn’t be!” Luca shouted. She thought Eirchais was whispering in the back of her head, but the voice was inaudible over her own thoughts. It sounded concerned, though she couldn’t catch the words. “We’re not going to just give them a kick in the back and send them north. It’s back to Gaurlante with them, or straight into the ground.”

She stood up, the blood rushing in her veins. She felt invigorated, and though her hands shook, her feet were planted steadily. “And I think I have a plan. But I’m going to need your help.”

“There’s not much I can do,” Stepan said. “You’re on your own, Luca.”

“That’s where you’re wrong!” Luca felt light, excited. She remembered how proud she was, even through the fear, when her parents explained why they had to turn against the Empire. Were they finally as proud of her as she was of them? “I’m not on my own. You’re going to help me.”

Stepan bowed his head for a moment and then leaned it back against the wall again. “The best thing I can do is to do nothing.”

“No.” Luca walked around the table, crossed the gap between them, grabbed Stepan by the shoulders, and dragged him up to his feet. His face twisted with surprise and then anger. “Listen to me. I am sorry about what happened. But you need to work with me here, unless there’s another Sower in the village we don’t know about, or everyone in this building is going to die. If your children are on their way to Kivv, they’re safe. Nothing we do here is going to affect them, but if you do nothing?” She scoffed. “Do you truly think doing nothing is going to help?”

Stepan’s angry glare slackened, and his mouth turned down to a frown. He sighed and gave a small nod. “I…” He hesitated for a long time, and Luca held him there, patiently. They had time.

“I don’t want to be responsible for letting anybody get hurt. I’m no good at this Sower thing. I guess there’s a part of me that thinks if I just stay out of the way things will turn out better than if I try to save everyone.”

“I think,” Luca said, a slightly bitter, twisted smile on her face, “that I remember the Sower’s Oath better than you do, Stepan Zelenko. Because we are not yet free, and so the oath still binds you.”

“You don’t get to say that,” Stepan muttered. “You’re not…”

“’The world’s peace will die without tending,’ isn’t that right?” she quoted. “Perhaps I have no right to lecture you, but you need to remember. Now stand up.” She let go of him, and he did not slump to the floor again.

Stepan reached up and adjusted his cap. “That’s right,” he said. “’The tree has its own kindness.’ But that isn’t enough. We have to add something of ourselves. But I’m no warrior.” He ran his hands along the stone bricks, and his eyes lit up with realization. In those eyes Luca saw something she hadn’t seen from Stepan in the years she’d lived in Etyslund. It was like a younger man’s mischief, the joy of curiosity satisfied, discovery and the realization of something exciting. Stepan grinned. “So what is your plan?”

She told him.

Outside, the Invictans gathered, preparing their weapons and determining their formation. This would be a difficult operation for them, naturally. The Invictan way was to carefully plan before entering a battle, whenever possible. The stakes were known. The players were known. The Invictans had every advantage and on top of that, they had the greater chance to use their foresight. They knew roughly what to expect from the villagers, while Luca and Stepan knew only a little of the Invictans’ approach. They had a minelayer among them, but that meant little in an assault such as this. Luca felt confident that the captain would favor a frontal assault, but even that could mean many different things.

The people inside drifted through the interior, finding places to hide, until Luca and Stepan came out and ushered them together, guided them to a few designated places within the building. They were packed tightly, uncomfortably close, but with Stepan’s Cultivation, the building accommodated them.

Concentrating hard on the weave of the Veil, pulling it around himself and the others, sweat beading over his eyes, Stepan called on powers he hadn’t employed in years. The feel of each thread brought memories back of the early days at the Kivv monasteries. The feel of his fingertip running across ancient ink, before his mentor pulled his hand away and chastised him, gave him a cloth to wipe the oils from his hands. He took it and –

And it was along the street between those twin mounds of stone that he and Marga first spoke, two aspirants tired from a day’s training. They walked and took in what they could of the city’s sights. It was calmer and more peaceful to walk with another, than alone.

Were it not for the Sower’s gift, tears would have flooded Stepan’s eyes. He knew he would have fallen to his knees, then, remembering. He had never learned to suppress the rush of memory that came from touching the Veil. But with the calm detachment that came from a Sower’s gift, he did not need to suppress the memories. They drove him, gave him focus. He embraced them.

The stone responded to Stepan’s call, in time, and became as a living thing, it wove a shell around himself and Luca and the few others packed in with them. It wove shells around the huddled masses of the village. Stepan felt them through the stone – the masses of Etyslund, scared, anticipating violence. The stone shook and Stepan felt what it felt, from every crack and plant-borne pit in the stone’s surface to the euphoric sensation of the mortar flying away. Stone became stone again, free from the confines of brick and plaster. It was free, he was free, it frolicked and –

And he watched his firstborn daughter run across the field. It seemed only a little while ago that she took her first steps. She was strong, and proud, already. Stepan thought of putting down his book and running after her, to race around the town. He smiled at the idea, but…

The Invictans at the gates shook and cowered before the rush of stone. As their prisons formed, a few tried to escape through narrowing windows. Their armor stung only for a moment, like the shell of a nut. Easily broken to reach and rend the warm meat inside. Luca winced at the agonized screams. Stepan felt a vague disappointment, that the experience of killing an enemy was such a dull thing. There was no rush of remorse, not yet – the gift took that away from him and he felt little.

A part of his mind screamed in protest: he was trained to heal and not to harm, to restore! But was this not restoration?

The prisons shut themselves with the groaning of many tons of rock, and the whole place shook around Stepan and Luca. Pages of books – caught in the heedless rush and bubble of the living stone – fell torn around them. Yet only a few pages. Other books, intact, thudded onto the floors in plumes of thin, wispy dust.