One at a Time

Above the city of Arctura, a barricade of carts holds a mountain road against a hundred and twenty villagers who ate the black fruit. They don't fight. They smile, and push, and pull people over the timbers, and every morning at first light they come again.

Behind the barricade, Fabian has a pool larger than any mage alive and not nearly enough of it. Six splashes a night keep one sick woman from turning. The rest must hold a siege. Every soldier who falls has a name, and someone has to write it down.

A boy who carries voices on the wind. An escort who walks out each night to the one woman who knows what she did. A commander counting her brother's light from twenty paces away. And an enemy that is learning the barricade's hours.

Fabian can heal almost anything. On this mountain, he has to decide what it's for.