The Desert Spear

cured with a wave of your hand. All I can do is play my fiddle, and I can’t even save a life when I do. You and the Painted Man have become giants while I spend months teaching my apprentices, and all they’re good for is getting folk to dance.”
    “Don’t belittle the joy you and your apprentices have brought to a town fraught with hardship,” Leesha said.
    Rojer shrugged. “I do nothing a keg of ale can’t do on its own.”
    Leesha took his hands in hers. “That’s ridiculous. Your magic is as strong as Arlen’s or mine. The fact that you have such trouble teaching it is just proof of how special you are.”
    She laughed mirthlessly. “Besides, however big I grow, I’ll always have my mum to cut me back down.”

    It was a moonless night, and where Leesha and Rojer walked, far from the glow of the greatward, the darkness was near complete. Leesha walked with a tall staff, the end of which held a flask of chemics that glowed fiercely, casting light for them to make their way by. The flask and staff were etched with wards of unsight; corelings could see the light, but they could no more find the source than they could find the two of them in their warded cloaks.
    “Don’t see why he couldn’t meet us in town,” Rojer muttered. “
He
might not feel the cold, but
I
do.”
    “Some things are best said in private,” Leesha said, “and he tends to draw a crowd.”
    The Painted Man was waiting for them on the warded path leading to Leesha’s cottage. Twilight Dancer, his enormous black stallion, was in full barding and horns, nearly invisible in the darkness. The Painted Man himself wore only a loincloth, his tattooed skin bare to the cold.
    “You’re late,” the Painted Man said.
    “Had some problems at the hospit,” Leesha said. “An accident while we were charging glass. Why aren’t you wearing your cloak?” She tried to make the question seem casual, but it hurt her that for all the hours she spent on it, Leesha had never seen him wear the garment apart from the one time she threw it across his shoulders to check the fit.
    “It’s in my saddlebag,” the Painted Man said. “Not looking to hide from corelings. They want to come at me, let them. World could do with a few less.”
    They tied Twilight Dancer to a hitching post in the yard and went inside. Leesha took a match from her apron and lit the fire, filling a kettle and hanging it over the blaze.
    “How are the fiddle wizards coming along?” the Painted Man asked Rojer.
    “More fiddle than wizard, I’m afraid,” Rojer said. “They’re not ready.”
    The Painted Man frowned. “Cutter patrols would be stronger with a fiddler who can manipulate the demons’ emotions.”
    “I can patrol with them,” Rojer said. “I have my cloak to keep me safe.”
    The Painted Man shook his head. “Need you teaching.”
    Rojer, blew out a breath, glancing at Leesha. “I’ll do what I can.”
    “And the Hollow?” the Painted Man asked when Leesha joined them at the table.
    “Expanding quickly,” Leesha said. “Already we have twice as many people as we had before the flux last year, and more come in daily. We planned the new town to accommodate growth, but not at this rate.”
    The Painted Man nodded. “We can have the Cutters clear more land and plot another greatward.”
    “We need the lumber, anyway,” Leesha agreed. “We haven’t sent a shipment to Duke Rhinebeck in over a year.”
    “Had to rebuild the entire village,” the Painted Man said.
    Leesha shrugged. “Perhaps you’d like to explain that to the duke. He sent another Messenger, requesting an audience. They fear you, and your plans for the Hollow.”
    The Painted Man shook his head. “Ent got any plans, beyond making the Hollow secure from corelings. When that’s done, I’ll be on my way.”
    “But what about the Great War on demonkind?” Rojer asked. “You have to lead the people to it.”
    “Corespawn it, boy, I’m not the ripping Deliverer!” the Painted Man growled. “This isn’t some fantasy from a Tender’s Canon, and I wasn’t sent from Heaven to unite mankind. I’m just Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook, a stupid boy with more luck than he deserved, most of it bad.”
    “But there’s no one else!” Rojer said. “If you don’t lead the war, who will?”
    The Painted Man shrugged. “Not my problem. I won’t force war on anyone. All I aim to do is make sure that anyone who wants to fight, can. Once that boulder shifts, I mean to get out