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HESTRA COULD HEAR THE PLOTTING OF THE KING AND his council. When she peeked, she could see their fears flaming from them in every jagged colour, burning like evil lanterns in endless battle with their faith and terror. They would all burn each other, perhaps, if they did not control the fires.

Did she want to help them? Their hopes bound her closer to Arren, entwining them together in the body that had become her home: Fireheart. Sunbringer. Saviour. God.

No. She had her own shrines. She could feel them still, far from the warmth of the king’s chest, in the highlands where the families still held to the old ways. Many of them were cold, now their people had fled from the burning.

Then, she felt one warm again, not far to the northeast of Gefyrton. A flame. A hope, if not an offering. Perhaps it was not so bad. Life came back. Her life could come back.

Hestra went to find it. She manifested smaller this time, a spark, a twist of smoke, a floating crumb of heat, in the hearth that had been her shrine.

She knew this home. She had been here more than once, on cold nights where the winter drew in. A small farmstead had stood here for over a hundred years, its family and its children tending the ancient olive trees that grew silver and half-wild on the long slopes.

The trees were gone.

From the hearth, Hestra could float far enough to see a broken window, its shutters blackened with fire, and beyond them rising smoke against a haze of blue sky.

The other shutters were broken too, charred from the outside by some great blast. Within, much had burned.

The roof had half given way at the left side.

The other shrines the family had kept above the mantle, for health and clean water, were torn apart and ransacked, emptied of all offerings.

But a fire had been lit. Hestra was here. The home was not empty.

Three boys and two girls sat in the part of the building that had not fallen. They looked young, but they had swords on their belts, rusted, bent things yes, but swords nonetheless.

Their jackets were red. Talicians. A roving party most like, looking for food or weapons to forage and bring back to the main army.

Two of the youths, a girl and boy, had salvaged a chessboard from the wreckage, burned beneath but mostly whole. They had swapped some of the lost pieces for bits of rock and stone, and a whittled doll. A child’s toy.

‘ Male kwes ,’ said the girl to the older lad she played with, smiling as she took one of his pieces.

Bad play. Hestra found herself flaring. This was not their home.

This was a place they had burned. But they were barely more than children.

Children played. Their faces were mucky with dust, and wan with lack of food.

One had lost a finger, it looked like, to frostbite.

There was no pot on the fire they had lit in the hearth, only some bones from what looked like a rat.

None of them, it seemed, had been supplied with a bow and arrows.

She became aware of quiet sobbing. There was a boy in the corner where a table once had been, sitting with his back to the wall and his head on his knees, his emotion radiating white flames of grief and heartbreak.

Another lad sat next to him, rubbing his back wearily as he wept and wept and wept. The comforter spoke softly in Talic:

‘ Haare, Tomek. ’ Be well, Tomek. Hestra, of course, understood the languages of all peoples who had made prayers to her. Talicia once had many. ‘ Don’t hurt yourself so. ’

‘ They didn’t have to take my brother ,’ said the one called Tomek, voice hoarse and grating . How long had he been sobbing? Or was this the harshness of lungs that had too long been inhaling smoke? ‘ They didn’t have to. I cannot even mourn in the way of our family. ’

‘ They wanted Hseth ,’ said the boy comforting him. ‘ He gave his life happily for her when all the fool Middrenites ran away. ’ He spat as he said ‘Middren’, as if it were a poison on his tongue, but the action appeared to be more habit than spite. ‘ They needed someone to sacrifice. ’

‘ Is it truly all for Hseth? ’ said the last of them, another girl sitting with her feet up on the sill of another shattered window, looking at the smoking fields and the green mountains.

She looked older than the others, but not by much.

‘ It is her priests who do the taking. They take and take and leave the rest of us with hungry bellies and black lungs. ’

The weeping boy sniffed. ‘ My aunt said the kerl families cared more for us than the priests do. They killed her for the cause as well. ’

‘ Silence, ’ said the boy who played chess, glaring up from his pieces. ‘ Or I will tell Krka Estefin, and you’ll be next. ’

‘ Even the krkas say such things, ’ snapped the girl. ‘ Most of them are from the old families. Estefin as well. ’

‘ Then he chose his loyalty to Hseth wisely. Every sacrifice brings us closer to victory. ’

‘ Is this victory? ’ She gestured out at the smoke . ‘ Is this worth it? Are we to burn everything that we claim? The Three who lead this war sit pretty in Talicia, while they send their maddest to do their bidding. ’

The Three. Hestra had heard this term rarely from Hseth.

She called her people ‘mine’ and ‘my priests’ and ‘my loves’ before she was killed, not the names they gave themselves.

But The Three were the first who pledged loyalty to Hseth over the broken Raider clans, the ones who led her down from the mountains.

They were long dead now, replaced by others who took their titles.

‘ I just want to go home, ’ Tomek whispered, his colours dim and thick with doubt, but soft at the edges with longing.

Then at last the girl at the board spoke. ‘I’m so hungry. ’

This made the angry boy snap. He threw the chessboard at the wall, scattering the pieces, and slapped the other player, hard. Hestra flinched.

‘ This is our home now!’ he said as she fell to the side, gasping. ‘ This is ours. That is what they said when they came for us. ’

Came for us? Were they not volunteers? Did they not come on faith alone? Their shining told her no. Their faith was there, bright and vivid, part fear, part fervour, but there were so many shades, so many conflicts, so many terrors for the children at war.

‘ The old ways are dead. While Hseth is our god, and the priests our leaders, there is no going back. ’

Hestra could watch no more of this. There was no hope here to be found. There was nowhere safe, nowhere where love had not turned to fear of fire.

Nowhere but Arren.