It was an odd experience when something you said would happen actually does. Often it proves to yourself exactly what you’ve always known. Everyone else is either an idiot or incompetent.

  Now, Taenseva would never say that out loud; she needed these idiots after all. But when Talf and Alafaya got back from the abandoned mine with a thunder crystal, it wasn’t nearly so easy to keep her opinions silent.

  “DO YOU WANT US TO GET BANISHED?”

  Talf gave her a confused look, glancing from the thunder crystal in his grasp to Alafaya across from him. Taenseva had assumed that having a reasonable person along would keep something like this from happening, but apparently Talf was too good at corrupting people for that to be a viable option. “Why would we…”

  “WHERE IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK THEY’RE GOING TO ASSUME WE GOT THAT?!”

  “Ah… the desert?”

  Taenseva threw her arms in the air and marched off to find Ashevian. The likelihood of her murdering those two was far too high at the moment. She stomped over to where he sat, sewing up a hole in his shoes—It was hard to come across shoes on Arithren that worked for the birdlike feet of a niorta. Teizen had just straight up given up on shoes six years ago.

  She glared at Talf as she put her hands on her hips, migrating her glare toward Ashevian, who really didn’t deserve this treatment but she was too pissed to do anything about that at the moment. “Ash! This is the last straw, can we please leave Talfaxin behind?!”

  Talf had set down the crystal and followed her, watching with wide eyes, but those eyes weren’t nearly as concerned as they should be… “What?! Why would you leave me behind?!”

  Ashevian glanced between the two of them, and then in the direction Talf had been, “You were yelling about something? What did he do this time exactly?”

  Taenseva gestured toward the thunder crystal, and then realized she was standing in the way. She stepped to the side, still pointing at it. “He found a squalling thunder crystal.”

  Ashevian stared at it, his shoe mending momentarily paused. “Ah… Talf, you do realize everyone’s going to think you stole that from somewhere, right?”

  “Well I didn’t.”

  Ashevian glanced at Alafaya, who nodded. He sighed long and hard, “and we can’t just leave it here?”

  Taenseva scoffed, folding her arms and shaking her head, “Someone will find it. And now that it’s been disturbed its aura will start up. There’s plenty of moisture in the air for it to feed off right now.”

  “And we can’t just let them find it?” Ashevian asked, raising an eyebrow. He finished pulling the stitch through as he spoke.

  “I don’t know how it works, but priests can tell who last touched one.” Taenseva explained calmly, definitely not at all in a tone that implied she would be roasting several people for dinner tonight. “Most people aren’t stupid enough to be that person.” her narrowed eyes focused on Talfaxin, who was finally seeming to understand.

  “Because they’ll assume we dug it up.” Talf seemed to realize the implications at the same time.

  A thunder crystal was extremely valuable. Too valuable. Everyone these days agreed that digging one up after you find it just makes it easier for it to break. Everyone would be angry at them for doing that.

  Kinthek, who’d been innocently sitting beside Ashevian, was watching the crystal with a mixture of discomfort and awe. “The penalty for digging one up or breaking one is usually death.” His face momentarily flushed crimson. “At least, that’s what it is if they can’t make you sell your soul for a new one.”

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  Alafaya raised her hand, and everyone focused on her, she signed slowly, deliberately, “Could we just tell them we made our own that way? Say we were scared of getting caught outside a city on Light day.”

  Taenseva glanced toward Filfinde and Flame as they walked out of the camp—likely because of the argument—they would be perfect for such a claim if it weren’t for one thing. She signed her answer as well as spoke it, her anger was less than a few minutes ago. “We’re well known in practically every city on our route. They all know we only have two bloodbinders. If we claim that, they’ll expect us to have acquired a third. All they have to do is a little bit of digging and they’ll know it couldn’t have been something like that.”

  “And not everyone is unobservant enough to think I’m a bloodbinder, especially next to Filfinde or Flame,” Kinthek filled in. “So we also can’t just pretend that’s what it is.”

  “We can go put it back…” Talf offered, his figure slumped.

  “Taenseva’s right though, it’s aura started up.” Kinthek observed, watching the crystal pulse lightly. “People could find it through that if they have any life force, and plenty of travelers activate theirs.” He glanced at the others, possibly noting that no one else seemed to know much about life force. “Ah… that’s the ability priests use, but theirs is more concentrated I think.”

  Talf leaned absurdly close to Kinthek, staring him in the eyes, “And? Can you do anything with it to help?”

  Kinthek’s eyes strayed toward the crystal, “No, it’s pretty useless here. We could… break the crystal, it wouldn’t have an aura then, but if someone finds it they can still figure out who last touched it, and that’s probably worse than if they found an intact one.” His tone became bitter at that, Taenseva thought it might have been accompanied by a hint of nostalgia.

  Teizen, who’d been watching the back and forth with entertained eyes, finally spoke up, “aaaannnndddd… so we’re going to go to the middle of the desert and bury it then.”

  Kinthek actually snorted, “As you dig one up they have these sort of… half melted pieces attached to them that break off on their own. Without those, the crystal itself will break if the sand around it shifts, and then we’re back to the same problem.”

  “Wow Kinthek, you sure know a lot about thunder crystals, I take it you’ve dug one up?”

  “And smashed it to pieces.”

  Teizen seemed surprised at his blunt answer, but even so she smirked, leaning back in her seat, “I knew you had dirty secrets…”

  “So anyway,” Taenseva continued, “If we make sure Talfaxin was the last one who touched it and leave him behind, our problem is solved.”

  Ashevian groaned.

  He watched as the others continued arguing, feeling the bag across his chest getting heavier and heavier with each moment. Of course, it wasn’t actually getting heavier, but with the amount his thoughts were straying there, it was hard to really think so.

  “I… might have a solution.” He started, frowning.

  No one seemed to be listening though. Teizen glanced at him, but when he didn’t immediately explain, she went back to yelling at Branix—she seemed really happy about being able to yell at him, but Kinthek wasn’t entirely sure that she actually disagreed with what the man was saying.

  He shook his head and stood up, making his way out of the group and away from all the yelling. No one paused in their arguments to give him a second glance.

  Kinthek stopped outside the circle of wagons. There were only three, but it was enough to surround the fire and cooking area. Outside of that they’d set up tents for the night, the stars were visible past them. He sighed and sat down against one of the wagons, looking out at those stars, at the moon, at the part of Arendi that was visible as it rose into the sky.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, thinking.

  Finally, deliberately, Kinthek opened his bag, pulling out the communication crystal. He turned it around, looking at it, tapping it, wondering how it worked. Fora had said it was easy to figure out so… ah, there. There was a small indent on the side, when he pressed his thumb into it, the whole crystal lit up, floating up into the air like a lake of pure water.

  He blinked at it, watching it buzz for a long moment. “Ah… is this thing working?”

  It remained silent for another second before a frantic voice responded, Eliax. “Kinthek! Are you alright? Do you need something? How have you been?!”

  He blinked at it, blushing as he realized that refraining from contact for nearly two years probably hadn’t been the wisest decision. “Sorry I never used this before… I was being… stupid.”

  She was silent, which seemed like an agreement to him. “So, why are you calling now then? Is something wrong?”

  Kinthek sighed, “Yes. It’s… well Talf, a Niortak in the caravan I joined. He found a thunder crystal in an abandoned mine an hour ago. And you know how people get when a thunder crystal is involved.”

  A small gasp came over the crystal, “Are you alright?”

  Kinthek nodded, and then realized that she couldn’t see that, “For now, but we… don’t know what to do with it.”

  There was further silence, “I’m on my way. Give me five minutes.”