Free No Return by Zachary Jernigan

body as best she could. The air and water were cold, but the sun warmed her.
    She enjoyed dinner—not so much the taste but the weight in her stomach—and tried not to think of the commitment she had made. Relying on others had never been her strong suit, but facts were facts. A lone traveler was a target.
    Night had already fallen when she left the hostel. She walked the treeless path to the theater alone. The boy’s body had been removed. The ground had been raked and the torches lit.
    Soon, the old men began to arrive. As they topped the hillock and descended into the stands, not one paused to stare at the Needle extending across the sky above their heads. Neither did they gaze at the moon, which sat massively on the razor-backed hills directly before them. The men of the badlands were not dreamers, Churls knew. They woke before sunrise to graze their goats on paperweed and thorny sage, and died defending the animals. No mystery, no mysticism in that. If Adrash chose to destroy the world, they could do nothing to stop it.
    Likewise, life would go on just the same if Adrash chose to redeem it. Though Churls did not like the people of the badlands, she felt an odd communion with them. They understood that fate could not be bargained with. It held a person like a mother holds her child, lovingly or with revulsion. One did not get to choose.
    The boy Churls was meant to kill stepped into the circle of firelight. He sneered at her disdainfully, but failed to hide the underlying fear. She saw it in the set of his shoulders, the hesitation in his steps.
    Looking away, she caught movement before her in the stands. It did not surprise her. She had almost expected it.
    A small white figure stood on the hillock, staring into the sky.

EBN BON MARI
    THE 16 th OF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, KINGDOM OF STOL
    T hey commenced a light breakfast on Ebn’s balcony when the sun was a finger’s breadth above the horizon. Light fare, Ebn had told Pol. Nothing fancy.
    A lie. In truth, she had woken two hours before dawn to oversee the preparations.
    Blood warm orange and kiwi juices. Rashl eggs and sheep tripe, scrambled with dandelion greens, scallions, and bitter basil. Earling potato and pigskin fritters with hot mustard aioli for dipping. Pomegranate juice cooled with carbonated rosewater ice cubes. Rapeseed oil and mint-filled pastries. Unleavened anisebread topped with crumbled goat cheese, smoked tigerfish, and shaved horseradish. Black wine from the A’Cas Valley. Finally, lefas bean and lemon zest sorbet she herself had made the night before.
    Neither spoke while eating. Pol picked at the fritters and pastries, which saddened Ebn, but his obvious enjoyment of the pomegranate juice and anisebread nearly made up for it. Being so easily swayed by his moods annoyed her, but after seven years together there were reactions she had learned to accept.
    She tried not to stare at him as they sipped the wine. This, too, she had expected.
    He is not so beautiful , she had tried to tell herself many times. He was not the ideal elderman, certainly: too thickly built, too coarsely featured, and all that white hair. On a darkened street, an observer might mistake him for pure human, not a halfbreed at all. In close quarters, of course, one could not fail to notice that his skin was not a shade of brown, but purple. One would not miss his double-irised eyes, which shined as though they had been plucked straight from an elder corpse—a rare trait even among hybrids.
    Such distinctions meant little to him. Even on the coldest of days, he wore little clothing, clearly unembarrassed by the two closed fists raised in relief on his pectoral muscles, a mutation which made it appear as if a man were trying to push his fists through Pol’s body. Of course, mutations were not rare among eldermen, but few chose to display them. Most, like Ebn, had been encouraged since childhood not to broadcast their unnatural heritage. Amongst