Archeus heard the news before he saw the man: a stranger in Crawford. An Elthabin stranger, tall and good looking, speaking the pidgin-tongue of traders and soldiers. More likely the latter, so the rumour went, with war on our doorstep. Archeos ignored the worry that stirred up in him. It would be nothing, he told himself, a routine check ordered by General Malthus. So it had been for the last seven years.

As it turned out, he should have worried.

"Archeus? Madeline Archeus?" The call came while he was in the back of the smithy, and it startled him. He bumped his head on the lower bar of the Kite and cursed, coming out from the gloom with an oil lantern in hand.

"Who is it?" He lowered the light and pinched the wick to save oil. It wasn't cheap, but he couldn't risk opening the slatted windows for light when the rain could come any day. They were waiting on it; Madyeva had predicted it would reach Crawford by the sixday of Janus, the first spring month. But the tempestuous changes in weather that had often brought rain in the past only left them with frost and wind, a bone chilling wind.

Archeos rubbed his hands together to bring the feeling back to them. The Kite's engine was too delicate to work in this cold anyway.

The door hung ajar. "Archeos, is that really you?" A man stepped forward, his features lit by the morning. He was indeed tall and handsome, if Archeos disregarded the livid scar that spread like a starburst across one side of his face. Such were the marks of war.

"Yes," he said slowly. "It's good to see you, High Commander Ibbar."

"By Janus, man, it's been five years and that's all you have to say?" Commander Ibbar laughed and drew him into a tight embrace. "When they said you were still here I didn't believe them."

Archeos returned the embrace, the familiar feeling almost overwhelming him. "Still here, Ibbar. There aren't many other places where I'm welcome."

Ibbar pushed him back, placing a hand on Archeos' cheeks, his piercing blue eyes seeming to search for something in Archeos' stunned expression. Then he grinned and kissed his forehead. "Oh, I think you'll find that things are a bit different nowadays. We have much to talk about."

"Come inside," said Archeos, placing a hand on his back to escort him from the smithy. He shut the door behind them and pushed the locking stone into place; a boulder about the size and weight of a young child, not enough to deter the truly persistent, but enough to stop theft of opportunity. Not that he expected the townspeople to thieve from him, but—it was always best to take precautions.

"Still throwing about all that muscle, Madeline?" Ibbar laughed. "It always astounded me to watch you in courtyard competitions, you know. You were the biggest bull in the yard."

"There is no opportunity to let myself go to seed here," Archeon replied shortly. "It's a busy life. I till the fields in Janus and harvest them in Lemnus, build and fortify houses during the summer and repair their tools in winter. Life as a civilian is never easy."

"And yet you chose it over the city," Ibbar mused, glancing sideways at him. Archeon ignored it. They were almost over the hill to his house, a one-person affair that he had built his first summer. Everything in Crawford was wooden, something he had yet to become used to. In Elthabin everything had been stone in the central city, and the surrounding areas were limestone concrete. It was the heat, too—Crawford was cold, the winter months nearly unbearable for him. The houses here were built for it, doubly insulated and strong against the winds that came in late winter months.

He had left the house unlocked. There was nothing of value inside. He pushed the door open, beckoned Ibbar in, and stoked the fire. The goats near the back door complained mildly about the weather, and he patted their heads in condolence. "It'll turn to summer soon enough," he said to them.

"Goats, Archeos? Truly?" Ibbar sat at the table, setting his cap on the table. "Inside your home?"

"They die out in the cold," Archeos replied. "I need them for milk, or else I, too, would die. Likely of disease. They carry cures in their milk, that is how young goats survive. Henceforth the kids are immune to some diseases."

Ibbar chuckled. "I've never heard such tripe. Disease is the will of the seasons, and to say otherwise is to blaspheme."

Archeon lifted a goatskin flask from atop the fireplace, where he had set it to warm earlier in the morning. He took a draught, the grassy taste as unfamiliar as ever, and passed it to the High Commander. "I will take my chances with the goats, if it's all the same to you," he said. "At the very least, they make quieter companions than people."

Ibbar made a face at the taste. "That they do," he said.

"Now." Archeos sat across from him. "Tell me why you've come. I am sure it's not because you miss me, after all these years. Not dressed in your finest golds and blues."

Ibbar patted the chest of his dress jacket with a grin. "No, indeed." Then he sobered. "I've come to ask a favor of you."

Archeos leaned forward. The military didn't ask favors; it commanded. Even had Archeos been a hero instead of a disgrace, the military would not have hesitated to command him. So was it Ibbar the man asking a favor of him, or High Commander Ibbar disguising his orders with sweet words?

"As you may be aware, the eastern border we share with the Bezmel state has come under conflict with the Belafusin army." Ibbar folded his hands on the table. "Forces have been dispatched to reclaim the territory, but there have been reports of a greater amassing in Belafus."

This was about the war, then. Archeos felt the life he'd been holding on to for the past seven years slip away, just like that, and Ibbar must have seen the dismay on his face for he moved quickly to reassure.

"We don't need soldiers," he said, "not yet at least. This is an exceptional position—we need a mechanic."

Archeos frowned. "A mechanic? Why do you need a man who works with machines on the battlefield?"

Ibbar reached into his jacket and pulled out a small cloth sack. "We have been developing new technology," he said, holding it out.

Archaeus took it. It was weighty in his palm. He pulled the drawstring open and the contents spilled out onto his hand and over the table: stones, tiny blue stones, rough but glimmering with some inner light. He gasped. "What is it?"

"It has no name. It is a substance so powerful that it turn engines a thousand times faster than steam." Ibbar picked up a stone and turned it between his thumb and forefinger. "It is the secret to our future success. We have built machines around it—things of great mass and potential for destruction, but also vessels of protection. They can keep our soldiers safe on the battlefield."

"These machines… is that what has been happening in the city in the years since I left it?" Archeos stared at the stones in his palm. They prickled his skin like tiny gems.

"Yes indeed," Ibbar replied, his eyes glittering, "and it is a shame that you've not been around to see it. These beasts of brass and iron are the most awesome thing to behold. The King rolls them down the streets as often as he can find excuse for—they have built him one especially out of gold and he has named it, like a ship."

"The King." Archaeus murmured, tipping his palm so that the stones scattered out over the table. They seemed to sing as they touched the rough hewn oak, falling as if they weighed thrice what they did, not bouncing like pebbles should. "He is well, then? And Ipselia?"

Ibbar's face turned solemn. "Byroness Ipselia is well, yes."

"Something ails the Diosthene?" Archaeus looked up.

"No physical illness, Madeline, don't look so stricken. No, it is his lack of a son that ails him. Ipselia has given him two daughters, and is with child again—but the whole capital holds its breath through this pregnancy. If it is not a boy, the throne will pass to Ipselia's eldest girl. His line will be broken."

He nodded slowly. "It would be a blow to him."

"He longs to be a father." Ibbar leaned forward. "He is aging; his hair is threaded with white and he fails to shave his beard on some days. I think he will grow a gruff old man, alone, if he is not born a son."

Archaeus narrowed his eyes. "Like me, you mean."

"That is not what I mean," said Ibbar, holding up his hands in defense. "Although—Madeline, if you had come to the capital, you could have had anyone, any family… You are much revered among the youth, though I know you'd never believe it."

"I don't want anyone." He stood abruptly. "So you want me to come along to fix your machines, although I'm nothing but a blacksmith, and I'm certainly not a mechanic. Surely there are others?"

"There are few," said Ibbar evasively. "I came only because I recalled that you enjoyed working with engines and clockwork and things of a mechanical nature—and because I have heard rumours. The people, they say they have seen you… fly. In a machine." He laughed. "I had to see for myself if it was true."

Archaeus froze. For a moment he stood still, caught by this unexpected development. Then he turned, his back to the fireplace. "They are only simple people," he said. "They imagine things they fancy to be true. A man flying, that is absurd."

"They are not so simple as that," said Ibbar sharply. But he let the matter go. "Nevertheless, I know you are more skilled despite your inexperience than many who would call themselves mechanics. The men who worked on our machines cannot be trusted to the battlefield—they would only be a liability. We need a man who understands war."

"And that's me."

"If anyone does, Madeline, it's you." The High Commander smiled sadly. "It's true, we ask much of you. But I know that you desire more out of life than all this."

He gestured around the little house, the wooden floor and the tiny loft, the goats in the corner, and Archaeus felt a wave of some undefinable feeling tighten his throat, that Ibbar could so easily encompass and dismiss his simple life with a wave of his hand.

"And if I don't?" He stood at ease before the man, although his rough, homespun shirt and trousers were like goatskin next to Ibbar's finery. There was more to this life than men like High Commander Ibbar would ever know. More in penance, more in honesty and hardship. It was true that he often hated this life, but that was also penance. "If I choose to ignore your request?"

"I will tell the townspeople your true name."

It was telling that Ibbar did not look apologetic as he said it, and Archaeus knew then that he had planned it just like this. He knew exactly the kind of hatred that Archaeus would bear should the truth of his identity come to light.

The Bezmel called him—the man he had been—Ahkeshi, destroyer. The man made of fire. It was said of him that during the War of the Blue Empire, he walked through the burning fields untouched by flames. That he carried a pouch made of goatskin from which he drew ashes to sow on the green fields, and where it fell the new growth burned and blackened and turned to ash itself. Superstition, but like all stories there was a root of truth. What he had carried was called jash, a powdered tar that had a tendency to explode into flames when exposed to water.

There was little talk of it now, for they hardly spoke of the War of the Blue Empire—the wound of their defeat had scabbed, but it would never completely disappear. Not in his lifetime.

But Archaeus was not a man to be easily manipulated, and he only shook his head. "I will think on it," he said. "That's all I will say. "

Ibbar did not stay long afterward. "I have business to attend to in the Bezmel city," he said, "but I will return in a week. I hope you will have made your decision by then."