He won the war. He won every war after. He sat in his fortress and the north belonged to him and nothing changed, because you cannot outlast someone who doesn’t end.

The cold has been sitting behind her eyes since she was fourteen. It tells her how close someone is to the edge of dying. She has hidden it for ten years.

She is bound to the river. The water responds to her.

Loyal to the bone. The man Kazimir trusts when the patrols go quiet and someone has been seen on the ridge where no one should be.

He arrived uninvited, standing at the edge of the firelight like something the forest had exhaled. He offered an alternative. The alternative lasted three centuries.

He has held the territory together for twenty years. He is right about almost everything. He is wrong about one thing. The wrong thing almost kills his nephew.

Four centuries of tending. She has forgotten what it means to let something die.

He listens. He doesn't argue. These are his two best qualities.

Eleven words of instruction. No idea what he was mapping.

Their father's mother. She came down from the eastern ridge on the day their own mother walked into the forest, picked up Piotr, made tea, and stayed.

He walked the bank for three days. He placed four stones in the riverbed. He spoke the terms. The woman repeated them. The river took her.