Cassian frowned as he watched Adalai take his blanket over to Verina. "You shouldn't have meddled there," he grumbled to Marta. "This isn't the time for long, intimate discussions on the beach."

  "No?" The Hexton maiden gave him an amused look. "You don't think this is a situation where having trust in your fellow travelers may be the difference between life and death?"

  "Getting enough sleep can make that difference just as well," Cassian replied. "And it will distract him less tomorrow."

  Her eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. "Are you truly a man of Nerona? I thought you were all hot blooded romantics, lovers of poetry, women and music with no end to your appetite for any of them."

  "Don't believe the tales of troubadors, signorina, they're exaggerated beyond all recognition." Cassian watched as Adalai draped his blanket around Verina's shoulders. He suppressed a wince when she very deliberately pulled it off and set it in her lap. The man hadn't figured out what happened yet.

  "She needs to be less extreme in her reactions," Marta whispered. "The poor man doesn't know how to make heads or tails out of them."

  A flash of annoyance shot through Cassian. He pushed Marta away from the pair, growling, "Go to bed. At least a few of us need to be well rested tomorrow."

  "But I'm supposed to be on watch!"

  "Not any more. I'll handle the last watch so you go sleep. And believe me, making sure you do sleep is one of the things I'll be watching for."

  With a huff she set off toward her sleeping roll on the other side of the outcropping. Cassian watched her for a few moments to make sure she was really ready to sit things out for the rest of the night before taking a seat near the high tide mark. It was as good a place as any to keep watch for the remainder of the night.

  The sound of the waves drown out any sound that might carry from Adalai and Verina as well. That was a conversation best kept private. He still couldn't work out what the source of Adalai's deep discomfort with the Slavic woman was. Unless whatever far flung part of the world he hailed from had issues with the Slavs it didn't make a lot of sense. They'd have to work it out on their own.

  Cassian wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and waited for dawn to come.

  Verina sat with his blanket in her lap, stubbornly refusing to meet Adalai's gaze. He wasn't sure what had provoked the complete reversal in her attitude. The first day she barely looked away from him for ten seconds at a time but now she seemed to sincerely loathe looking at him. It didn't make a lot of sense.

  Since coming to Nerona Adalai had devised a strategy for dealing with things that didn't make sense. He ignored them and moved on to what he could make sense of. "Does your shoulder still bother you?"

  One pale hand reached up and rubbed absently at the angry red skin still flecked with bits of glassy stone. "It just itches," Verina said, her fidgeting suggesting she wasn't being entirely truthful. "Don't worry, I'm used to this kind of thing."

  "Can I ask exactly what kind of thing this is supposed to be?"

  She offered a shrug with her good shoulder. "Being a yaga. Dealing with the Great Linnorm day in and day out. He's a creature of the burning mountains, you know, a creature of flaming mud and ashen clouds. His touch has always been hot."

  Adalai tensed up. "Wait, the Linnorm burns you when you call on it? Did Cassian know -"

  She waved her hands frantically to cut him off. "No, no! The Great Ones cannot hurt their yagas once we are bound to them. But that is only true of the yaga themselves."

  Things clicked into place. The burnt blankets and melted sand stuck to her shoulder must have been a result of the Linnorm manifesting while she was lying down. In fact, if the creature burned anything around it other than Verina it might even explain her unorthodox appearance. Why keep your hair long or wear sleeves if they were just going to burn up whenever the Linnorm showed itself?

  It had to make life very difficult. Then he'd gone and gotten himself dragged off by an oversized crustacean while she was sleeping and made things even worse. "I'm sorry."

  "For what?" She asked, eyebrows knitting together.

  "That you got hurt protecting me."

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He caught the ghost of a smile on her lips. "That's why we're here, isn't it? To look after each other? The Great Linnorm is my Gift, passed down from the yagas since the loss of the Rus. What would I be if I didn't use it?"

  It was his turn to furrow his brow. Something that had stood out to him in the years since he was sent to Nerona was how deeply Gifts were rooted in peoples' identities. Yet ever then, Verina struck him as extreme. "Surely there's more to your Gift than the Linnorm. You're an Invoker. All the spirits of nature that can hear you should answer when you call."

  The glimmer of amusement vanished. "No. That is the way of Invokers, yes, but once I was chosen to become a yaga I had to decide whether I was willing to give that up." She brushed her fingers along the tattoo on her other hand. "The Artificers who mark us do more than bind a spirit from the Rus to us for the rest of our lives. They must also cut us off from all other spirits as well or the binding will fail."

  "Why would you agree to such a thing?"

  Verina's eyes unfocused, staring into the middle distance. "Have you ever been lost, signore?"

  Adalai closed his eyes and took a moment to steady his breathing. "As lost as a man can be."

  "The spirits of the Rus are lost, signore." She held out her hands, palms upwards, and one of the Linnorm's heads appeared over them looking down at her with what Adalai could only describe as a wistful expression. "Him What Walks has taken the land from us. The people can find new homes but what are the spirits to do? The hills and plains, the steppes and mountains they called home are gone. There is no place for them now. No place save with their yagas."

  "I see." In truth there was a lot there that Adalai didn't understand in the least. He'd heard of the Slavs before. He knew they were a wandering people with no land to call their own but Verina made it sound like their old land was lost in a very literal sense. As if it had been physically moved or possibly even destroyed. The Linnorm's continued existence suggested the land had to be out there somewhere but he wasn't an Invoker. Nature spirits were not his forte and he couldn't be sure. "Well, it sounds as if the Great Linnorm is very fortunate. That's one thing he and I have in common - we're both lucky to have a woman as generous as yourself looking out for us."

  Verion blushed and fidgeted with the blanket in her lap. "I don't know as I would go that far. It's the duty of the yagas to look after the spirits after all."

  "It's your duty to look after the Linnorm. It's your duty to look after the rest of us. Who is looking after you?"

  "The Linnorm himself, of course."

  Adalai nodded. "Of course. That will have to be another thing the two of us have in common."

  The Linnorm gave him an approving look before vanishing from sight. "He likes you, I think." Verina sighed and pulled the blanket out of her lap and draped it over her front, struggling to keep it in place without covering her tattoos. "Whatever it is, he sees you differently than other people. It's strange. He could somehow tell you were involved as far back as when Cassian came to recruit my brother."

  "Is that why you snuck out to meet us on the beach? Because the Linnorm wanted to?"

  "He was quite insistent on it."

  Adalai chuckled, feeling a little chagrin at how he'd assumed Verina's close attention to him was on his account. In point of fact she was just responding to the dragon on her back. "Have you figured out what it is he's so interested in?"

  She flicked a glance at him through her eyelashes. "No. I don't think I'll ever have a good understanding of how the Great Linnorm thinks. But I might have found a clue or two."

  "Well, if you figure it out in full I would be interested to know." He got to his feet and dusted himself off. "In the mean time, tell me if you need someone to look out for you. That's what I'm here for, after all."

  He wandered back to his pack, wrapped himself in his cloak and laid down to sleep. It was a little chilly but he still found it more restful than it had been when he'd had his blanket.

  The next morning Cassian tromped down from the atoll's outcropping, his vial of mercury in hand, and came to a stop next to Marta. She was watching the other two members of their band. She'd put a small kettle of water on one of the flanks of the Linnorm and brought it to a boil. Adalai was talking softly to her as he stirred something into it.

  Cassian scowled and muttered, "That's your fault, you know."

  "I'll take the credit," she replied with a half smile. "It doesn't mean much, given the circumstances, but it's better that they're getting along again, isn't it?"

  He leveled the vial at her in an accusatory fashion. "Listen here. This isn't one of your Hexton caravans where everyone is one big family, understand? Bravos exist to do the most dangerous, least appreciated jobs in all Nerona. That's not to say they don't like romance or family. It just means that if we let those things cloud our judgement when we're doing our job out here it could very well get us killed."

  She chuckled. "I've been wondering if I would ever see any of the famous Neronan passion from you. I have to admit this is not how I expected it."

  A humorless smile twisted his lips. "Oh, I'm exactly what you'd expect of a Neronan man most of the time, Dame Marta, though I admit these circumstances are unique. But I love a good bottle of wine most evenings and I've charmed a woman a time or two. I know the signs."

  Marta spared him a scornful look. "Do you?"

  "Of course. I see them on your face whenever Sir Braxton comes up." A blank expression slammed over her face like a portcullis and she turned away immediately. Cassian moved to one side of her and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Now I don't know anything about Clan Towers or how a Baron is likely to think of one of their daughters. I don't really care, either. What raises my ire is that we are all of us now deeply compromised as bravos and that is very, very dangerous."

  "You gathered us to help you rescue your brother," she responded in an equally quiet tone. "You were compromised to begin with."

  "Yes," Cassian hissed. "How foolish of me to think that I might find some companions who would make up for that weakness."

  He stormed away across the beach, pulling out his map and wishing that at least one thing would go right that day. So naturally that was the day they first encountered the Benthic.