Dokyi turned to Evvy and bent until they were face-to-face. He grabbed her by the ears and pressed his forehead to hers. Briar wasn’t sure if he was trying to scold Evvy or just knock two rock heads together. Thinking that he ought to intervene before Evvy said or did something rude, he turned to excuse himself to the God-King. The boy was scowling at the message he had just received.

“You don’t look very happy,” Briar said.

“I have not heard from the king of Inxia.” That was the realm to the northeast, a country that stood between Gyongxe and the Yanjing empire. “I often do by now. Our mages who deal in conversations at a distance have not heard from his mages in several months. No horse messengers have come through the Green Pass, either.”

“It is only the third month of the year,” Briar reminded him. “It’s probably frozen solid.”

The God-King gave him an absentminded smile. “The Green Pass is in hill country, beyond the mountains of the Drimbakang Sharlog. Usually it is open by this time, though the weather has been very harsh in the hills this year.” He stopped speaking as he stared off into the distance.

Briar waited longer than he would have waited for anyone else to resume talking. When he was sure the God-King had simply forgotten what he’d begun to explain, Briar asked, “So what has this Inxia fellow to do with how well you’ll sleep tonight?” He could tell the God-King was worried.

“All three kingdoms north of Yanjing have been fighting the empire for the last five years,” the God-King explained. “Since Inxia is our closest neighbor, we have sent mages and soldiers to their assistance for four of those years. We should have heard what they will need for this year’s fighting by now.”

Briar nodded. Now he understood. “Because if Inxia falls, Gyongxe is next.”

“I would like to think not,” the younger boy replied, but he did not sound convinced. “We have very little to interest the Emperor Weishu. Except the gods and spirits, who are closer here than anywhere else in the world, and you can’t pay soldiers with those. There are the temple treasures, but surely Weishu’s mages do not believe they can take the curses from temple goods. We do spread word that there are curses on anything stolen from the temples of Gyongxe, and we cannot remove them.” The God-King sighed. “I would feel better if I knew the Yanjingyi armies were denting their teeth on my neighbors again this year.”

A surge of pity raced through Briar’s heart at the expression on the God-King’s face. That’s not the look any boy his age ought to wear, thought Briar. I’d even feel sorry for a man of twice my years in his shoes.

It was at moments like these that Briar understood why the gods of Gyongxe had told their priests to choose this boy to rule over the many different tribes, villages, cities, faiths, and temples of Gyongxe. There was something great inside the God-King; something larger than Briar was. He wouldn’t have spent a day in the God-King’s skin for all the pretty girls between there and home.

“Briar, did you see it?” While they had talked politics and war, the rest of the statue-raising party had crossed the river bridge to join the God-King’s group. Evvy raced over to the tent. The pockets of her orange wool tunic sagged with what Briar knew were more stone fragments. “You aren’t even looking!”

“We watched the statue raising,” the God-King told her. “I’ve seen such things before, you know. Briar was impressed.”

“I was,” Briar assured the girl.

Evvy stopped at the open doorway and bowed to the God-King, then braced her hands on her knees while she struggled to catch her breath. They had been in high mountain country for nearly two years, but Evvy and Briar would struggle with the thin air if they tried to run. Rosethorn had trouble breathing all of the time. Although their entire journey had been Rosethorn’s idea, she had been forced to spend much of it resting. She had chosen to work on the spring gardens instead of taking the awkward journey down the cliff into the river canyon with Briar and Evvy that morning. Briar looked forward to getting back to lowlands again, so his Rosethorn could breathe more easily.

“Could you see what I did?” Evvy demanded. “I kept the scrap rock from falling on anyone!” She grabbed the pack she had left with Briar and emptied her stones into it. “Do you know it’s going to take them at least ten days to walk back to their home temple? They only had the five shamans who could do the spell, so there’s no one to keep the magic going at night. If they aren’t dancing, the statues won’t move. They’re going to be awfully tired — the shamans, not the statues. I offered to clean up the loose rock, but Dokyi said the Drimbakang Zugu have their own way of dealing with it. What does that mean?” She gathered the stones she’d left with Briar and stowed them in her pack as well.

Evumeimei Dingzai was a skinny former slave who never missed a meal if she could help it. She was five feet tall with a strong Yanjingyi face: wide cheekbones, sharp chin, and long black eyes. Briar liked to tease her that she’d smacked her face into a door once, since her nose was flat at the tip. Her hands and nails showed scars and scratches from two years of hard work as a stone mage and a lifetime as a cat owner. He had found her scraping for a living in a slum. Although her magic was different from his, he had learned that he would not give her up to a teacher of her own power who would be unkind to her.

The God-King stood and moved off the giant pillow where he and Briar had spent the morning. “Wait a moment, Evumeimei.”