I lean my head down on my hands. The floor of the tent is plain ground, stomped tight and flat. The air smells of something sharp and overbearing that I don’t recognize. Maybe some spice or incense that the Kertharians use? Papers strewn about by Finna are caught under my boot. They are full of writing in a language I can’t read.

  ”I’m not going on eight more suicide missions,” Finna says. Her tone sounds final.

  The look Mandollel gives her could peel paint off a wall. ”These people are acting senselessly. A well-executed plan will make short work of them, as we already witnessed.”

  My chest swells with pride, before realizing the compliment wasn’t really for me.

  ”1394 people will die this night, unless someone prevents it,” Lictor says matter-of-factly. ”Mostly women, children and elders. The local volunteer militias will be taken by surprise and they would have no chance of changing the outcome, even if they weren’t.”

  Finna turns her head so her hair covers her face, but I can almost feel the scowl.

  Mandollel crosses his arms and rolls his shoulders. ”We were not told about this. Our work should be elsewhere.” He is facing Lictor, but the last words are meant for me. “Did you know about this?”

  I shake my head. “We’d have to go in blind. It does feel like a suicide mission. Can you even teleport us around that fast?”

  Lictor shakes his head. ”I could, but multiple teleports inside Kerthar draw attention. Third one draws countermeasures.” He waves a hand dismissively. “It doesn’t really matter though, as teleportation will be made impossible inside the hour.”

  ”What!” Mandollel shouts. It’s the second time I see him being affected by something, but this time he’s not furious. He’s panicked. ”What do you mean, Janitor?”

  ”Later tonight, early morning, over a hundred Kertharian mages will teleport into the sky above Tenorsbridge and proceed to attack the city. The city wizards will fight back and win, eventually. The death toll will be in the tens of thousands. Half of Tenorsbridge will burn. Other teleportation attacks will happen during the night. Nowhere in Velonea is safe. It’s a terror tactic. They want to see as much of our lands and people burn as possible. It’s murderous, monstrous. And it will cripple us.”

  ”Can’t you trap the places where they teleport to?” Mandollel asks.

  ”Too finicky. Impossible to pinpoint the arrival locations in an empty sky. Ideas like covering the city with poison gas don’t work either. The cost isn’t… acceptable.”

  Mandollel clicks his tongue. ”Ambush, then?”

  ”Too many casualties. Making teleportation impossible will stop these kinds of attacks completely, with minimal loss of life on both sides.”

  ”Both sides!” Finna shouts. She’s been going through the footlocker and throwing around clothes and other personal items but now raises her head to glare at Lictor. ”Are you saying you’re worried about them?”

  Lictor’s face is neutral, but I can see a hint of distaste in the way his nose wrinkles. ”I’m not. But the council has decided this is the way it’s going to be done, so that’s that.”

  Outside, I can hear Rworg shout or sing something. Maybe it’s some sort of ritual for the dead Kertharians or for himself. My heart thumps in my chest. There are eight other camps and four hours to do something about it. We can’t abandon over a thousand people. We can’t keep fighting for four hours. I survived this fight because I knew what was going to happen. The thought is so alien that it leaves me reeling.

  Lictor drops a hand on my shoulder. ”Where to?”

  Finna is looking at us with a confused look. Mandollel is thinking about something. His fiddles with the buttons on his tunic, while Rworg is still howling outside.

  What the heck. ”Next camp. Far enough so we won’t be spotted.”

  Finna’s hands grab toward me. ”You—!”

  We’re elsewhere. Judging from the trees and the white boulders, rather close to where we left. I stumble and sit down hard on a small fallen tree trunk, wiping the imaginary cobwebs from my face. For all I care, they can’t get rid of teleportation soon enough.

  Lictor leans on a tree. He puts his hands in his pockets. He takes out a handful of nuts from his pocket and starts chewing on them. He gazes at the sky, waiting for me to speak.

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  ”I needed to get away from the others.”

  ”Good thinking.”

  ”It would have been too hard to keep from revealing I’m on a—”

  ”I know.”

  I close my mouth. Of course he does. Not because he has necessarily seen this before, but because he’s been doing this so much. I clear my throat. ”Can we handle all the camps this night?”

  ”Obviously not. The largest one has hundreds of soldiers in it. The best I’ve seen you manage is four. Only Mandollel survived that one.”

  ”How far ahead have you gone?” I can’t help asking. He could give me the answers. Why do I have to do this?

  ”24 hours. Always 24 hours. But you have to understand, the further you go and the more you meddle, the less you can trust what happens. The differences stack up, compound. That’s the reason why you and the rest are here. We need people who can think on their feet, make the best out of any situation, without relying on the Mountain Ride.”

  Clouds cover the moon. Lictor’s form fades into the churn of darkness, even though I try to focus my gaze on him. “Once teleportation stops working, the Mountain Ride becomes useless. You can barely get out of the view of the city.”

  “Not useless. Very, very powerful still. But yes. It will limit us greatly. Some feel it will be a blessing. Not having to be responsible for the whole world.”

  I can understand that viewpoint. Even with my limited spins on the Mountain Ride, I already know I’d go mad. What if something were to happen to Lille or the rest of the village? I would need to check in on everyone I care about, every day, to be sure. I’m starting to understand what Lictor said about it requiring a very certain type of personality to being a Janitor. I rub my face. “Fighting the camps is not an option. We’ll need to evacuate the towns, organize their defenders as best we can. Help where it’s needed most.”

  I wait, but Lictor doesn’t answer. I listen and hear his light, slow breathing. He’s asleep, eyes closed and leaning on a tree, one hand still in his pocket. I let him be. He looks so peaceful and I haven’t had a second to think properly since this morning. Moving silently, I take off my bow and quiver and set them next to me against the tree trunk. I slide down to sit on the mossy ground. The bark of the tree trunk makes a scraping sound against my tunic as I lean on it.

  Fighting can’t have been anyone’s real plan. We’re a team of four. Well, maybe we’ll be a team one day. The point is, we’re not an army. We’re supposed to be doing something else.

  This is part of my training. Getting used to all the new ideas. Replaying the night, so I have time to get up to speed. I wonder if everyone else has gone through a same kind of training regimen.

  I groan and clench my fingers around a piece of bark, breaking it off the trunk. Nothing is real on a Ride. I squeeze the damp piece of bark to feel it in my hand. I’ve already died twice, but the thought feels irrelevant. I come back with memories, but trying to connect them to anything is impossible. My body leaves behind anything it has learned. It’s like dreaming about shooting a bow, and believing you’re an archer when you wake up.

  Still, if I’d spend enough time on it, could I? Override muscle memory by engraving the skill into my memories over uncountable Rides. Learn to do a backflip, finally. Is that how Lictor is so good at magic?

  At least the villages are left behind as well. It doesn’t really matter what happens to them. Not this time. I’m not certain saving them is the end goal even in the real world. Not for us. Lictor needs a very specific group of people to do something very specific once teleportation has become impossible. Which means it’ll probably be somewhere far from Tenorsbridge. Which means it’ll very probably be a suicide mission, exactly as Finna said.

  What a cheerful thought.

  I form a plan while Lictor sleeps. It doesn’t take long. We should have lots of time still left to do what I have planned. I shake him gently from the shoulder.

  He opens an eye groggily. I can see only the white of his eye before the iris spins into view. I wait and let him collect himself. I was about to lay out my plan, but I can’t keep my curiosity in check. “You really were out of it, weren’t you? When did you last sleep?”

  Lictor yawns and leans his head down to his chest with a groan. He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “About twenty or a hundred hours ago, depends on how you look at it. You don’t necessarily need to sleep, but things sort of start to bleed in together if you don’t take any time off on some Rides.” He mushes his nose and mouth with his hand, and slaps himself on the face gently. “What next?”

  “I want to learn as much about the area as possible. We’re not here to fight with the camps, but we’re here for some reason.” I watch for his reaction when I say this.

  There’s none.

  ”I’m here to learn something. A lesson of some kind. Getting to know the area is the best I can come up, if you don’t want to tell it to me straight.”

  Lictor offers me his hand without a word.

  I grab it and brace for the teleport, but it doesn’t happen. Lictor keeps touching runes on his clothes. They glow blue and burn away into nothing. The cloth is left tattered with blackened holes where the larger runes were.

  Lictor disappears.

  I do too.

  “Hold on tight,” his voice says from next to me before I have time to be surprised.

  Through my grip on his wrist, I can feel him crouch, like preparing for a jump. Suddenly there’s a wrench on my hand and the ground and the forest fall away from under me. The wind blasts my face and blocks the scream from getting out. The air is cold and crisp and the wind blows my hair around my face. My invisible hair whips around my face and stings my eyes. The sensation is singularly unpleasant. Still, I’m not going to close my eyes. No way.

  Above, there’s nothing but stars.

  “We can get a better view from up here. Pay attention. You should learn where the camps are along your route. Pay attention, please.”

  I don’t really hear him.

  I’m flying.

  I twist and turn in the air, gripping Lictor’s wrist hard. I can see the mountains in the north, lights of what must be Tenorsbridge somewhere far into the west. The slightest hint of red shimmers at the edge of the horizon. I’m looking down as the ground drops even further, and the forest starts running away from under us. My stomach is left behind. The carpet is being pulled from under my internal organs.

  I hoot. I’ve never been happier. This is exactly what I hoped an adventure would be like.

  I’m flying!