The herding would end soon, and winter would follow. The wind in the evenings had begun to turn cold. Yuma put on her leather coat, mounted Aston, and looked out at the herd of oroxen that had fattened over the summer.
Lysandros, only his head uncovered by his metal frame, was running across the grassland making clunking sounds. As he chased a horse that ran away from him, he shouted something in his native tongue. A little behind him, the silver giant—Fractica, Yuma now knew—was galloping after him on long legs. Yuma made a cone over her mouth with her hands and shouted, “I told you to just give up!”
“No, I will ride it! What’s the use of coming to Merseh if I’m never going to ride a horse? Chief Herder must know I am right.”
She smiled. His was a low, deep voice, completely unexpected from such an emaciated body. Lysandros had picked up their language with remarkable speed over the last few months, though hehad yet to master the complex addressing system of Mersehi. Yuma was aware that other languages were not as complicated when it came to pronouns—when speaking in Mersehi, it was impossible to be polite, not to mention grammatically correct, without choosing the right pronouns to reflect the relationship between the addresser, the addressee, and the person or object being talked about. Like many foreigners, Lysandros resorted to simply not using pronouns except for the simplest form of “I,” referring to people by their names, and to Yuma as “Chief Herder.” Yuma sometimes mimicked Lysandros in jest, calling him “Emissary,” and it grew on her. She came to think of them as nicknames for each other.
“It is not helping the Emissary that Fractica is also running after the horse!” she shouted back, laughter in her voice.
“I swear I shall enter the leather gates of Danras on horseback!”
The horse, which had only been trotting away at first, was now at full gallop. A herder went after it while Lysandros came to a stop. An ordinary man would catch his breath after so much running, his hands on his knees, but Lysandros simply stood like a pillar. Of course, it wasn’t the muscles and bones of his body that moved but the iron frame. The horses were confused by Lysandros, a sentiment Yuma shared. He was a man unlike any she had met, even without the metal frame she always found him in. What was he like without it? Would he still be the same man, confident and vibrant, out of that ingenious machine? Or was the Imperial device an inseparable part of him?
Lysandros cut through the grass toward her. She thought of giving him her handkerchief, but he wasn’t sweating at all. There was a wide smile on his face. A smile so beautiful that she couldn’t help smiling as well. Yuma, sitting on her horse, looked down atLysandros—an uncommon occurrence, since he was much taller than she was even without the metal scaffolding.
“You look completely adjusted to steppe life.”
“I get used to things quickly no matter where I go.” He waved to a group of three herders on horseback who were heading to the oroxen herd. The herder who waved back first was Trudie, the one who had been held upside down by Fractica. Barund, riding next to her, noticed whom she was waving to and waved as well, shouting, “Don’t forget you promised to bring Fractica tomorrow morning!”
“I’ll remember, Barund!”
Yuma asked, “What’s happening tomorrow morning?”
“Oh, Fractica is good at moving the oroxen herd about. I think the beasts feel as if Fractica is their leader. Maybe because an orox and Fractica are about the same size?”
Not only was this man quick to pick up on the language but he also managed to befriend the herders at an astonishing speed. Yuma suspected this wasn’t just because that metal beast was helpful in herding. In the distance, though, Yuma could see that Aidan stroked his mustache, staring in their direction.
“I think that man with the blue face isn’t fond of me.”
“That may be true.”
Aidan, whenever he had a moment, would come over to Yuma and urge her to turn the spy over to the Grim King—did Lysandros know that? Did he even know that the Grim King was after him in the first place?
Neither Yuma nor Lysandros had mentioned the Grim King. To the Chief Herder of Danras and to the envoy of the Empire alike, the Grim King of Merseh was a delicate topic.
But they couldn’t ignore it for much longer.
“We need to discuss something.”
And it needed to be discussed before they entered Danras. Lysandros must’ve guessed the turn of her thoughts, as he stopped smiling. He gestured to Fractica. The iron beast came over to them and lifted him onto its back.
The sun was setting. This was Yuma’s favorite time of day: when she was out on the steppe. The view of the sunset reassured her that even this vast sky had its edge, and if she rode fast and long enough, she just might reach it. The reddening sky would soon melt away into stars, and the polestar would tell her the direction to go. Never had she needed to know that direction more than now.
As the polestar appeared clear in the darkening sky, Lysandros, following her on Fractica, spoke.
“Where is Chief Herder taking me?”
There was a place that could only be visited at the end of autumn.
“It’s not far. Just over there…”
Yuma herself had only been there once before. She led Aston through the unfamiliar path. Lysandros patted Fractica’s back, and the iron beast made a creaking sound the likes of which were out of place on the grasslands, and two beams of light appeared before them. Nothing particular came into view. Yet.
Yuma, staring ahead, whispered, “Turn that light off. We’re almost there.”
Lysandros patted Fractica’s back again. The beams of light blinked off.
“Walk from here?” he asked.
