“Another war?” a spectral voice asked.

  Yechvan turned over in his bedroll to ignore the spirit. He often tried to shut them out, always failed. With the war threatening, his ghostly visitors were growing more restless by the night.

  Sleep was elusive. His leg itched something fierce, and his thoughts constantly wandered to his preparations for battle. Ulula would have already visited Usao and Teg on her way to their appointed campsite east of Oonkowt, where the southern border met the River Kyl.

  “You’d think your qish would have realized by now that no one wins in the end, not really.” The spirit began to sing.

  Yechvan gave up on sleep when he recognized his friend’s silky tenor and rolled back over to listen to Kenji Arbin’s haunting melody. The Five Nations human sat cross-legged, head tilted up, eyes closed in concentration as the sorrowful notes floated into Hlenice’s silvery glow.

  Kenji had been an aspiring performer. He was pale, with dimpled cheeks and a disarming smile. At least, he had been in life. Half of his face had been smashed by a rock flung by a catapult. It had knocked him from his horse as he fled a siege during the Great Northern War. Kenji positioned himself to keep his mangled side in the shadows. A fellow pupil of Dorin Sen’s, Kenji had been a good friend to Yechvan while he and Sekku were living in the border town of Hodu in the Five Nations.

  Though Yechvan lamented yet another sleepless night, he was grateful for Kenji’s company. He’d hoped to be fortunate enough to talk to his friend once more. “Have you spoken with Dorin Sen lately?” he asked, curious about their old teacher.

  “We play Thrice at least once a season. He asks after you. Next time I see him, he’ll be pleased as plums. Tell me everything. Tell me what has happened since the war.”

  Yechvan sat up and grabbed a skin of mead from his pack. “I am no longer welcome in Hodu, if you can believe it.”

  “Clearly,” Kenji guffawed.

  After taking a great pull, Yechvan offered the skin to Kenji out of habit.

  He reached out to take it, but his hand passed through. “Thanks for that, by the way. Ever the tease. Dorin Sen tells me your man Zu killed him in battle, brags to everyone who’ll listen about dying at the hands of the greatest warrior on Ex’ala.”

  “He was the one who challenged—”

  “Relax, relax. I meant no offense. Dorin Sen had his reasons, which I’ll allow him to explain, if he ever gets off his rumpus and visits you. Gods, he’ll be pleased.”

  “I heard about what happened to you. How in the hells did you end up stuck in a siege?” Yechvan wondered.

  “Shortly after you left, I joined a troupe for a couple of seasons.”

  “You always talked about doing that. I’m glad for you.” Yechvan raised his skin in a salute.

  “A traveling act, strictly the classics from ages long since past. Mostly tragedies. It was honest work and good practice. We went east beyond the capital and were making our way back around to the west when we got mired in the war. Bad timing.”

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  Kenji was a kind soul, a rarity among the humans Yechvan had met while living in Hodu. They’d bonded over orphanhood and being raised by their teachers—Kenji by Dorin Sen, Yechvan by Sekku. Kenji and Haru, daughter of the local shona, had been the only children with whom Yechvan had formed any sort of friendship during his time there.

  “You look so old now,” Kenji said in disbelief. “Last I saw you was what, eight years ago, when…” He let the words linger in the air, heavy as the fire’s smoke.

  “Something like that,” Yechvan replied, shrugging of the memories of his harrowing escape from the Five Nations. “You don’t look quite the same either.”

  “Gods and thunderstorms,” Kenji laughed. Their relationship had always been one of tit for tat, of playful jibes and friendly banter. “Tell me about you and your Zu. Tell me a story for the ages.”

  Yechvan wasn’t sure his was a story for the ages, but he obliged in honor of the long nights they’d spent studying the classics. He regaled his friend with a colorful retelling of the war, the aftermath, the tenuous peace that followed. Kenji was a lover of stories, and Yechvan could picture him dipping his mind’s quill into the inkwell, collecting the tales to share with his friends in the afterlife. A glimpse of the master storyteller he might have become had he lived on.

  Instead, his beautiful story had been cut short in one brutal, senseless instant.

  “Any lucky ladies in your life? You used to go on about raising sheep, growing vegetables and planting a pear grove with your army of children. Seems to me you need to get busy if you’re to raise a dozen little Yechvans. Few make it past forty these days, if my otherworldly company is any indication.”

  “As you can surmise by my current companion, no lady as yet,” Yechvan admitted, gesturing to Zu, who snored loudly and drooled peacefully onto his pillow.

  “Any prospects?” Kenji asked.

  “Sadly, no.”

  “So war is to be your wife and regret your mistress? Just like Tonfu in Gonei. You remember that one?”

  “‘We are but lost on Tristan’s seas, all thought of rescue out of reach. Then Lifol brings her waves to bear, to sow hope and reap despair.’”

  “Bravo!” Kenji applauded. “I can’t believe you remember after so long.”

  “Neither can I, honestly. You must have jogged my memory.”

  “I miss the days when we used to sneak to our hideout, stay up all night and talk and read the old plays.” Kenji gazed up at the heavens. “So many missed opportunities. I should have taken advantage of the little time I had. But we never know when Trilan’s hand will grip our own and steal us away to his realm. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Live your life and live it well. When you find someone, don’t let them go.” The grief that strangled his voice could only have come from a broken heart.

  “Did you find someone?” Yechvan asked. “Was he in your troupe?”

  Kenji shook his head with a deep sigh. “His father was the shona of a small village in Omkala, far to the east. My troupe camped there for a few seasons waiting for the thaw. He saw us growing close and…well, you know how my people are. I wish I’d been born an orc.” A tear streaked his cheek, and his throat caught with a shame that was unwarranted and a regret that was undeniable. “Your people are so free with their words, their feelings. They don’t judge others like humans do.”

  “You have only known a few orcs, Kenji. You cannot draw conclusions about an entire race based on the few. There are rotten apples in every bushel.”

  “Oh, sure, but our whole crop is infested, save a few. We are the people who devised the saying ‘the sheep who strays from the flock is the first caught by the wolf.’ What’s a saying the orcs are famous for?”

  “Koruzan’s hair, I’ve no idea. ‘What the qish commands, we obey’?”

  “That isn’t what I mean, and you know it.” Kenji crossed his arms and huffed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just lamenting lost experiences now that I have no future. I do hope we get the chance to visit again before you die.”

  Yechvan hoped so too, but he’d seen only one spirit more than once.

  “Time passes slowly here.” Kenji sighed.

  “That’s funny, the last spirit I talked with said the opposite.”

  His old friend shrugged. “I’ve heard it both ways.”

  “It does feel like an eternity since we spoke,” Yechvan said. “But I’m sure I will join you and Dorin Sen before long.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Like you said, we never know when Trilan’s hand will grip our own and steal us away to his realm.”