The fire did its best to roar, but the pitter-patter drizzle dampened it.

  Elaine sat on one of a couple logs set in front of it. Scolt was beside her; she didn't like anyone else being that close. The siege of Sandtsel had now been going on just long enough that the log was slowly being made to resemble an actual bench, starting with the sitting surface being flattened and cleared of splinters. Scolt pressed a meaty hand to Elaine's forehead. She flinched.

  "Sorry." Scolt frowned. "Kid, you should definitely be resting. Better to bring yourself up to full strength."

  "No, Scolt. I'm fine. I like it by the fire, anyway."

  "I know, but you should definitely stay in bed for one day at least." He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "You don't need to push yourself like this."

  Elaine simply shrugged and gazed around.

  On the opposite log sat Slick, the head of their mercenary outfit. He was wiry and tough with eyes that screamed danger and short hair darker than the ocean bed. Money turned his wheels; he was not a complex man as far as Elaine knew, but it kept them all alive and fed.

  Beside him was Merlin, a well-built man on the far side of middle-aged. Elaine had been getting used to his half-bushy beard, but he appeared to have shaven. Aside from Elaine, he was one of the only magicians in the group.

  It was a minor miracle she wasn't the only one, come to think of it. There were barely a few thousand magicians still alive today, and so Merlin would have stood out if only for that.

  Yet it wasn't just that.

  He always seemed out of place wherever he was. His clothes were only slightly disheveled, but they were worn at odd angles and sewn together in all the wrong places. His expression was at times entirely distracted and at others, eerily focused. Sometimes, he walked or skipped or prowled around, and he seemed to always appear when least expected, as though to constantly catch people off guard. His weapons were not the typical spear, or the elegant sword, but a quarterstaff - currently leaned against the log - and a baton, which he used at his leisure. Elaine had seen him perform magic before, and while it had been intense, he did so infrequently.

  On the whole, Elaine would have called him twitchy if not for the fact that he was almost physically well composed. Maybe just a little magically insane, inside and out, then.

  Scolt leaned forward toward her, and she felt the weight of his cloak rest upon her shoulders. With the difference in their sizes, Elaine was surprised the log didn't tilt itself completely upright.

  Now that they were months into the siege, many of the trees had been cleared to make space for the army's encampment, and the rippling hills of the land, along with the ridges and stains formed by the Ramparts, were more apparent.

  The Ramparts themselves seemed old; the earth looked to have grown around it. She could see the hill where she had almost died the previous night; the incline led up to a segment of the Ramparts that encircled a portion of the woods nearby. Yet if the nearby city of Baliem were to be believed, the Ramparts were young, no older than the Titan's Fall.

  It was hard to say if the conflict really qualified as a siege.

  With a normal siege, the bulk of conflict was usually surrounding a castle, and surrounding a castle usually meant you could see it. But the Fairy Circle was merely a patch of land, a little point of spiritual presence where things around it seemed to be swallowed up, and from which the Fae emerged in droves. If there was a circle, she could believe it was alive.

  The siege was at most, a search for the Circle; a search for a spot of the world that had woken to far more than it ought. The earth around the Ramparts and even parts of the encampment had crumpled and shifted over the course of the siege - no one knew if the Circle grew or if it simply sucked in the soul of the World around it.

  Or even if a Circle existed here.

  And unlike a human entrenchment, it wasn't clear which, if any, Fae grew hungry. A traditional siege may not have been worth anything at all.

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  All in all, it was probably more accurate to call it an expedition, with enough Fae blood spilt to pay back the human blood spilt, and to satisfy the Crown back home. For the Crowns back in August, this probably meant all of it.

  Elaine looked out at the numerous tents in the darkness, lit only by the night sky and campfires of their own. With a hundred beacons in a sea of darkness, it was as though they meant to mirror the stars and fell far too short - a constellation of war fatigue.

  When the Fae had begun running rampant in the nearby countryside, an excursion had been sent to look for the cause, and when that had proved perilous, a full contingent of troops had been rallied and sent to what the Crown believed to be a Fairy Circle.

  And now here they were months later still. Encamped around a ghost castle, invisible to all save a few select magicians.

  Elaine couldn't imagine that finding the Circle could be this difficult. It must lie somewhere within the effects of the Fairy circle. The Fae, while vicious, weren't constantly on the offensive, and the effects of the circle, while a strange, unpredictable phenomenon, didn't stretch very far.

  Their fire began to falter, and Slick readjusted the firewood with a long stick. "Merlin, you ever plan to join us with a real weapon?"

  "Let's not go around comparing weapons, my dear Slick." Merlin let out an odd, almost hooting, chuckle. "Unless you speak of minds, I have no interest in comparisons. The mind of a Fae, for instance... have you thought about what the Fae think of us sitting on their doorstep?"

  Slick frowned and slapped him with a cold length of stick. "What is there to think about? It's a simple fight. There are Fae bastards that are swallowing up our land and eating our people, and we're here to make sure they don't."

  "The Fae are perhaps are hungry. But they are young. Do you deny a child a meal?"

  "Don't go putting words where they don't belong. A child? They're animals. If an animal is wild, it's hunt or be hunted. If an animal goes feral and attacks you, you put it down. You can mourn it later when you're still alive and not in its jaws." Slick snapped the stick in two and fed it to the fire. He glared at it as if it were a mortal enemy. "Maybe you haven't thought about this, but I bet you could give any of those leashed wizard dogs a run."

  "Ah, a Fairy Circle does excite the mind, but I can't understand them."

  "There's nothing to understand with the Fae. They kill us. We kill them. What I'm telling you is that you ought to do some big magic and find the Circle."

  "Do some big magic." What started as a cackle turned into a deep-throated laugh. "How simple."

  "I thought you knew some magic," Slick retorted.

  "Magic is as magic does. Magic is my friend. I do not force it to take a size it does not wish to be. Maybe if you were friends with the Fae, you could find their little hidey hole. They'd show you when they wished."

  "I don't need to be friends with the damn Fae!" Slick's expression had been growing unpleasant, but now turned sour. "You think they're different from any of the beasts that came out of the Corrupted Lands? While you play pretend at dancing and making starfall wishes with the Fae, they eat us and our land. That Fairy Circle might be a graveyard of our losses. If it was your daughter in there, you wouldn't be making jokes!"

  Merlin grew quiet. The fire flickered, the last outstretched arm of a dying dusk. Merlin moved as swift as a cyclone and as savagely. Elaine nearly jumped as Slick was caught in his hands. His right wrapped around Slick's neck. Merlin's eyes were the cold of winter. "I thought I'd warned you, Slick."

  Slick scrabbled and squeaked out, "I'm sorry, Merlin. I'm tired. We're all tired. We're in a shit-fucking siege. If we weren't being paid for this, I'd have taken us to... North. Somewhere North."

  Merlin didn't move. His grip loosened, and Slick slipped out. Slick dusted himself and readjusted his collar.

  "We're here while we're getting paid. And we're getting paid." Slick stood. The sour expression on his face flickered. He turned toward the tents. "I'm going to go get dry."

  As he walked away from the fire, a quite silly, quite stupid idea began to sprout like invasive weeds in Elaine's head.

  Merlin sat back down and grinned at her; the heat of his previous mood had vanished as though he'd tossed it into the fire to burn. His eyes met hers in an uncomfortably knowing fashion. Not for the first time, she wondered if he was peering into her head.

  "How about you, 'laine? Anything friendly to give the poor, poor fairies?"

  "I'm not about to be friendly to them. I'm here because we're all here."

  "Just waiting around to die?"

  "Merlin." Scolt's voice took on a warning tone. She felt the tension of his body next to her.

  Merlin chuckled. "I'm not dragging anybody through mud here. We're all waiting our turn to die. The dirt is for us all. Some on a battlefield, some in a bed. Me? I just hope I'm buried in my home in Tavusha. But I still have to wait. How about you, 'laine? What are you waiting on?"

  Elaine's sigh was soft enough to escape everyone's notice, even hers. "I don't know what I'm even doing here, Merlin. I'm trying to make the world around me safe. But most of the time, it feels like I'm just getting my sword bloody."

  "I don't mind." Elaine realised she was holding Guram. She had been since Merlin had threatened Slick.

  Merlin eyed Guram for a long time. He half-smiled.

  "Then hang up your sword."

  Her answer bubbled up, but it didn't reach her mouth.

  Later, she was in her tent with the others and her answer sat in her mouth like rotten wormwood. Guram was laid by her cot, sheath and all, and she turned and turned, trying to sleep. She whispered, "I can't."