Page 1 of Warrior’s Mate

Prologue

The first thing Maelis Torren heard each morning was water.

It moved beneath Wasaytu before the sun reached the eastern ridges, whispering through the old irrigation channels under the agricultural exchange and out toward the terraces. Her grandmother claimed the channels had been cut when the settlement was still small enough for every family to know who had planted which orchard. That was probably an exaggeration. Grandmother Neris had considered accuracy a lesser virtue when a better story was available.

Maelis had never cared whether the story was exact. She liked imagining those first families standing in the red-brown soil with tools in their hands, deciding that this place would feed children they would never meet. The exchange had grown around that promise, layer by layer and generation by generation, until the old irrigation channels ran beneath warehouses, offices, market stalls, and landing pads without ever quite losing their place at the center of Wasaytu's life.

By dawn, the central yard was already crowded. Grain haulers floated between loading bays on low grav plates. Orchard drones returned in neat formations for battery changes. A boy in a school tunic chased a stubborn ruda away from a stack of root crates while its owner shouted contradictory instructions from behind a produce stall. Above them, translucent inventory banners hovered in the cool morning air, updating weights, destinations, and transport priority as fast as clerks could approve them.

Maelis crossed the upper gallery with a cup of bitter leaf brew warming her hands and watched the district wake. A military shuttle passed overhead without drawing more than a few glances. That was Farseek: warships in orbit, children late for lessons, soldiers buying sweet grain cakes from the same vendors who had sold them cakes when they were children.

The Brigade belonged to the landscape almost as much as the irrigation towers did.

Maelis stopped at the eastern railing and looked over the valley. Beyond the exchange, fields stepped down the slopes in broad green bands. Flowering fruit trees broke the geometry with pale clouds of color. Farther out, the first sunlight touched the roofs of Wasaytu homes, many of them built around family hearth rooms older than the people who lived in them.

Her own family's hearth wall carried twenty-seven names, her mother's the newest. Maelis had carved it herself the winter after the fever took her, and even now she could see the final stroke that had gone uneven because her hand would not stop shaking. A message chimed against her wrist.

DISTRICT EMERGENCY ROUTE REVIEW — 0800. MILITARY LIAISON PRESENT. ATTENDANCE REQUIRED.

Maelis stared at the words for a moment, then looked toward the landing field, where another dark Brigade shuttle was settling onto the pad.

"Of course," she murmured.

The universe had apparently decided her morning was going too well. Behind her, old Sera Vantin called, "If that's another officer coming to tell us where our own roads are, charge him consulting fees." Laughter rolled across the records desk. Maelis smiled despite herself.

"I'll put it on the district account."

She drained the last of her brew and headed downstairs. At that moment, the greatest problem facing Wasaytu was an evacuation map designed by someone who had never tried to move three thousand people through harvest traffic. Before the day was over, Maelis would remember that problem with longing.

Chapter 1 — Wasaytu

By eight hundred, Captain Kaiven Daratu had discovered three things about the Wasaytu Agricultural Exchange. First, the civilian emergency maps were outdated. Second, everyone knew they were outdated. Third, no one appeared sufficiently embarrassed by this.

He stood at the end of a long planning table while six district coordinators argued over a projected road grid. The map showed evacuation routes in clean amber lines, each one tagged with capacity estimates, shelter destinations, and estimated transit times. The display was orderly enough to satisfy any command review, which made it all the more irritating that, according to the woman across from him, it was nearly useless.

"Route Nine doesn't exist during harvest," Maelis Torren said.

Kaiven looked at the projection. "It's a paved transport corridor."

"Yes."

"Then it exists."

"In the philosophical sense, perhaps." Maelis's expression remained perfectly serious, which only made the answer worse.

A couple of coordinators coughed into their hands. Kaiven let the silence settle rather than rewarding the joke. Maelis met his stare without apology.

He had been warned about her, though not formally. No officer had handed him a briefing that read Civilian registrar: troublesome. But Lieutenant Hessantu had smiled in a way Kaiven disliked when assigning him to the readiness review.

"Torren knows every family and drainage pipe in the district," Hessantu had said. "If she tells you a road is wrong, check the road before you check her."

Kaiven had assumed that was exaggerated respect for local knowledge. After less than an hour in the exchange, he was beginning to reconsider.

"Explain," he said.

Maelis expanded the map with two fingers. The amber line widened until the eastern farm corridor filled the table.

"This section is paved. This section is technically paved. And this section hasn't carried public traffic in eleven months because the west retaining bank is under repair." She marked each point as she spoke. "During harvest, fruit haulers queue here, here, and here. If you put evacuation transports into that stream, you don't get nine hundred people through in forty minutes. You get nine hundred people parked behind six kilometers of produce."