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touched the water, they could all breathe easier. It was as if, in that instant, some smothering cloud had lifted, a numbing fog blown off by a honey-flavored wind.
    Ilbei staggered backward, stumbling as if he’d been in the midst of a tug-of-war when the rope broke. He landed on his backside at the top of the riverbank and sat watching as the naiad, Jasper’s potameide, knelt at the water’s edge, winding the honey around her finger as the current stretched it like a rivulet of molten gold. She pulled her hand out and slipped a slender digit into her mouth, sucking on it slowly—sumptuously by Ilbei’s account. Her breast swelled with contentment, also sumptuous by Ilbei’s account, and she smiled at Jasper and reached for the jar. He handed it to her, and then she slipped away, melting back into the water as if she were made of the stuff.
    Jasper watched after her for a moment more, then turned back to Ilbei, who was still staring into the place where she had disappeared. “You see,” Jasper said. “A potameide.”
    Four full minutes would pass in silence before Ilbei nodded, acknowledging that Jasper had been right.

Chapter 4
    W ith Kaige collected from the opposite shore and Meggins revived with a splash of cold water, Ilbei’s squad made their way downriver to the landing point. They found the other raft hauled out of the water at a place just above where the Softwater River joined the Desertborn. As expected, Ilbei and his raft mates were late enough that the occupants of the first raft were not only out of the water, they were well underway setting up camp. Someone had a fire ablaze, so Ilbei sent Hams scurrying to do his part in preparing the evening’s meal for the platoon, near two dozen fresh-caught trout flopping on a line over his shoulder as he ran.
    Ilbei helped Kaige pull the raft up the bank, and then the two of them made their way to the camp being erected on a modest rise a few hundred spans from the river.
    Soldiers worked in pairs to put up small two-man tents, and Ilbei had paired Kaige with Jasper despite the obvious intellectual conflicts. He was fairly sure Ferster Meggins would have tormented either of them to no end, and if the wiry warrior angered the giant one, Ilbei suspected Meggins would be mangled straight away. And perhaps worse, if Meggins upset Jasper, well, it was hard to tell what the magician might do. Despite over a day on the river, Ilbei still hadn’t found out what the wizard was capable of.
    He’d thought about asking, but there wasn’t a polite way to do it—not that Ilbei bothered with that sort of thing when it came to his men. The truth was, magicians always left Ilbei a little unsettled, no matter how many years he’d worked with them. Most times they were useful enough when need arose, but that was, being completely honest, relatively rare. There just wasn’t that much fighting anywhere these days. It had been a long time since the Orc Wars were won, centuries, and the occasional flare-ups that did happen were always just that: flare-ups. Some clan of orcs or another, emboldened by an imbecile chieftain, would come pouring out of a mountainous pass somewhere, hack into a farming village, fishing town or mining camp, and then kill everyone, eat some of them and burn the rest. Shortly after, the savages would be annihilated by the overwhelming forces of Her Majesty’s army, which she could get teleported into the area on nearly a moment’s notice upon receiving word of the attack. And that was pretty much it. The simple truth was that only in small seams along the edges of the duchies and marks—where boundaries were gray and enthusiasm for authority meant not spitting when someone spoke a noble family’s name—was there much cause for regular army work: situations like the mission they were on. If Ilbei could have had his way, he’d have come without a mage. Without any mage, not just without Jasper. He hardly needed a wizard to deal with simple highway