The First Ever Markmasters Trilogy Cosplay Ever (Ever)!

Sonja Carter and Dee G. are two lovely ladies I became acquainted with through cosplay. You may remember Sonja as the lovely lady who took the pictures of my friends and I in our Suckerpunch costumes at Dragon*Con 2011. She is SoulFire Photography, and she is amazing and generous.

Dee is not only absolutely gorgeous, but one of the most fabulous cosplayers I've ever met. (Seriously, go look at her Facebook fan page and you will be amazed.)

In early drafts, Arianna wore a white dress at her Ceremony of Womanhood, where her hair was revealed to everyone (including herself) for the first time. The white dress is a single line in the new opening, but you can get a sense of how I eternally picture Arianna from Alukale (a mysterious observer at her ceremony):

The crowd hushed, and the silvery keen of a bell hung across them like ice--the time had come. The four handmaidens reached for the headdress, and the princess's hands clenched in her heavy white skirts. It took all four women to lift the fan of silk and gems. 

A heavy rush of ebony tumbled down the girl's thin shoulders, catching on the beaded bodice of her dress. 

A flicker of pride tugged Alukale’s lips as his brother's descendant stared at her waist-length black hair, as though she were unable to comprehend it. In a few years she would be lovely as the Maiden Moon. Her foreign father had given her his obsidian hair, and if Alukale were to guess, all that makeup covered skin tinted with Danaian gold. That, at least, was lucky -- a princess needed to be unique.

In my head, Arianna is always wearing a white dress, and she always has her waist-length black hair down.

So when I saw Dee post a progress picture of her Princess Garnet (Final Fantasy IX) cosplay dress, I immediately typed a frantic, typo-ridden plea for her to take pictures in it before she painted on the ivy.

Within days, Dee and Sonja had sent me an entire picasa folder FILLED with pictures of PRINCESS ARIANNA OF RIZELLEN DEE.

I'mma have to make a new cover.

AND NOW, IT'S TIME FOR ARIANNA PICSPAM!

Dee, looking so very much like Princess Arianna.

Arianna heading out to the stables to ride Star, because royalty doesn't think about silly things like getting white dresses covered in horse hair. Also, this is such a gorgeously framed and lit picture. Sonja is awesome.

This, on the other hand, reminds me of Arianna at the end of the first book, full of determination and a newfound understanding of her own power.

"She spun around, her silk mourning gown snapping at her ankles, ebony shards clicking in her loose hair as purpose drove the anger and sadness into the back of her heart. She would pull them back out later, probably, when she tried to sleep and sleep would not come, but the Princess of Rizellen could not revel in grief just yet. She had to act, and to act, she needed to have a clear goal. "

Reminds me of the cover for Ruins of Ambrai! Which means I love it.

This picture is perfect BECAUSE of the unfinished hem. It looks like Ari has been running around. :) Have I mentioned that Dee is gorgeous?

This is pretty much exactly how I envision Arianna at the beginning of book one, when she's still so naive, and has no idea of her own strengths.

There's no longer a scene with Arianna in the garden, though there used to be. Maybe I'll just stuff her in a white dress again in book two, just so I can have an excuse to say this picture is totally canon.

I couldn't not put this picture in. Dee's smile is so natural and so beautiful here, and there needs to be more Smiling!Ari

Book II. Thinking about a certain missing slave boy...

Just the right amount of mischief in that smile. Princess Arianna has quite a reputation for listening at doors, and her extremely accurate aim with tossed teacups.

The hills are alive~

Have you or your friends ever cosplayed original characters? Who? Pictures? Links? Have you ever cosplayed a character from a book?

A Manuscript's Journey - Part II

In case you missed the first part, this is where I tell the story of completing my first book...

GET A LIFE

6-inch platforms, books, chair...still, I could barely reach the ceiling.

My freshman year in university, my roommate, Jennifer and I had a whiteboard on the front of our door. When it wasn't covered in acidic orange Halloween cobwebs, people often left messages there. We wrote down some of the things we'd be doing that day, as well as giving updates on some of our projects.

Jennifer was an interior architecture major, and usually noted when she'd be in the studio (which was usually). I was usually in the coffeeshop, but kept a running word-count for my book. Occasionally, people would comment on the word-count, though usually it was just how I kept myself honest with progress.

Then one day, after a particularly productive weekend, someone wrote "Get a life!" on the board, with an arrow pointing to my word-count.

I didn't take it seriously, of course, but "getting a life" did halt me in my writing progress somewhat, and probably in a good way. I was making new friends, getting involved in different activities, riding my bike to the park on campus, and spending more time talking at the coffeeshop than writing. The girls across the hall and I had costume tea parties in the middle of the hall. I got second-place in Dormitory Survivor. I completed my Undergraduate Honors.

It was a great time for me, socially, but my relative progress on word-count suffered.

 I wrote a lot that year, but it wasn't always on The Mark of Flight. I wrote a lot for school (both fiction and schoolwork), was heavily involved in an online RP forum, and wrote quite a bit of fanfiction. It wasn't until the following summer that I actually made real progress.

THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

Rural, but comfy!

The Summer between my freshman and sophomore years was miserable. My parents had moved from the city where I'd spent most of my life to the rural county about an hour and a half east, where we had a family farm. I'd never lived there, but my parents had spent the previous three years renovating a tobacco barn into a livable (and quite comfortable) home, so it was obviously where I would be spending my summer.

I knew no one.

It felt a lot like I was the princess in the tower, stuck without a way to get back to everything that was familiar. Occasionally, my knight in shining armor (read: Adryn) would come rescue me from isolation, but not quite often enough to keep me sane. Also, my trusty Gateway desktop was dying a slow and terrible death, and I wanted something more portable, so that I could take it with me to the coffeeshop. I managed to get a job as a server at a local sports bar, where I wore cheerleading shorts and wasn't allowed to write anything down. I was 19, which meant I also didn't know the first thing about alcohol.

Imagine my surprise the first time some guy asked me for a blow job in front of his date. Pro tip: it's a type of shot.

So, because of my bad memory and relative lack of expertise, I was relegated to the afternoon shifts. This meant I made crappy tips...but I had a lot of time to write. At first I wrote on napkins. I have about three chapters (original chapters 9, 10, and 11) all written out on napkins, receipts, and tiny note-pads.

Photographic evidence!

By the time the summer was over, I had a new laptop, 75,000-ish words, and a healing cut near my ear from where a drunken Good Ol' Boy chucked his shot-glass into my full bus bin from about 10 feet away.

Awesome aim, to be sure. Awesome judgement? Not so much. It shattered a martini glass, which flew up and cut my face. Small town - no one got in trouble.

THE WORD-COUNT WAGER

Sophomore year went much the same as my freshman year, except I didn't manage to take the writing workshop classes. After a disastrous attempt to double major in music and English, I had a lot of credits to make up for. My GPA was limping off the honor-roll, which irritated the crap out of me. Also, I had to take a math class (just shoot me).

Some time the previous year, I had bowed to the undeniable fact that the single-book-of-epic-proportions I had at first envisioned was going to need splitting up. I'd immediately decided on a duology, but after a few more months, I was slowly beginning to understand my own ratio of plot-point to word-count. Two books wasn't going to be enough; I was going to have to write a trilogy.

Luckily, there were natural breaks in the story arc for three books...and one of them wasn't too far off. Maybe it was suddenly, maybe it was totally by accident, and maybe it didn't really count in my head...but I was really close to finishing a book.

That's when Skrybbi made me a deal: if I could finish the first book of what I was now calling The Markmasters Trilogy by the end of the summer, she'd buy me Indian food. If I couldn't, I'd treat her.

So I drove myself toward the end of my book. For the first time, I didn't let myself look back, I didn't let myself edit. I didn't let myself post the chapters onto the online forum and then sit there, not writing another word until I got a response. I wrote like a madwoman, and by the end of summer, I wrote the last line:

"The last thing Shiro saw when he glanced over his shoulder was the painting of the Apprentice, whose green eyes followed him until the great maw snapped shut, closing him into darkness."

Then I got my Indian food.

Traditional Publishing

A few weeks ago, I spoke with "a friend of a friend of a friend" who wanted to interview aspiring authors about publication needs and choices, and what authors might be looking for. He and a friend are planning to open a website that can act as a resource for writers looking to bypass the "gatekeepers" of the publishing industry by giving writers a link to other "indie" editors, artists, typesetters, etc. I think there's a great market for that, and I told him everything I thought would be helpful to those looking to do self/small/indie publishing.

Then the conversation got a little awkward. When I suggested resources and necessities, such as formatters for the various e-readers, cover-artists, and editors all willing to receive payment from revenue rather than up front, things were fine. Then he asked: "So, if you could take down all the barriers to breaking into publication, and have complete control of your work, and receive a huge portion of the revenue, would you do it?"

Clearly, he didn't expect me to answer, "No."

"But you would make a lot more money, and you'd have artistic freedom, and (blahblahblah)." He was scrambling, knocked off-kilter by the fact that I hadn't given him the answer he expected.

"I think your idea is awesome," I said. "A resource like that would make a significant difference to people who are looking to self-publish or for small-presses looking to find new talent. But it's not for me. I still want to do traditional publishing."

I explained that I wasn't interested in having 100% artistic control. As long as they don't make Jaesung, the Korean love-interest, blond and blue-eyed on the cover of HELLHOUND, I trust that the cover-artist will do a good job. I know for a fact that a professional editor will tear apart my story and find the nuggets of potential, probe the sore-spots in the text, and challenge me to make my story better. I explained that the marker of "success" I've got for my own career is to walk into a Barnes & Nobel and be able to buy my book off the shelf. Most self-published authors can't do that, nor can any small-press without a contract with the proper distributors. A Kindle version of my book isn't good enough for me to feel "I've made it" - I want to flip the pages, smell the ink and glue and paper of a physical book. My book. In print. Now, I don't hold other authors to this - there are plenty of indie press authors I consider extremely successful, but different people have different desires, expectations, and markers of success with their own writing. B&N is mine.

Still, he argued. I started to get irritated, but I maintained my ground. Being able to keep 70% of the profit from each sale doesn't make up for having to do all the marketing and advertising myself. If I can provide the raw, creative material and work (till I'm sweating marrow) with a team of professionals to make it into something awesome, THAT'S what I want to do. Because to me, in the end, "artistic integrity" isn't about having complete control over the end-product. It isn't about not "selling out". It's not about receiving 70-90% of the profit from my work. It's not even about B&N. It's about making these stories that I care about so much as fantastic as they can be, and about getting them in the hands of as many people as I can, and traditional publishing is unarguably the most effective way to do that.

And I'm not sure how many willing, pro-level resources there will be for translating THE MARK OF FLIGHT into Japanese.


Today, David B Coe of the Magical Words blog wrote a post on why he continues to choose traditional publishing over the e-pub/self-pub/small-press models chosen by a few of his fellow bloggers. Aside from the advance an author receives upon acceptance of their manuscript by a publisher, he gives us a list of ten things a traditional publisher will provide at no cost to the author:

1) A professional editor who will read through and critique the manuscript, suggesting changes that will, without a doubt, make the book better. They will also shepherd us through the revision process, providing free online and phone-access technical support for our writing. No extended warranty purchase necessary!
2) A professional copyeditor who will further refine the manuscript, taking care of typos, syntactical errors, inconsistencies in plot, character, setting, etc.
3) Professional proofreaders, who will finalize the editing of the manuscript.
4) Jacket art by a professional artist.
5) Jacket design and layout services, as well as jacket copy (those plot summaries that we see on the backs of books) to help lure readers to the book.
6) Formatting, typesetting, and printing and/or electronic generation of the book, again by professionals.
7) (and the importance of this one simply cannot by overstated) Review copies compiled, printed, and distributed to journals, magazines, professional reviewers, and other publications often of the author’s choice, in order to garner reviews in advance of the book’s official publication. In addition, earlier in the process, publishers will send out review copies, or even bound manuscripts, to established authors in order to get cover blurbs that can be helpful in drawing readers to the books.
8) Advertisements of our books in magazines, journals, newspapers, and other print and online venues.
9) Nationwide (and at times worldwide) distribution of our books to physical bookstores, online booksellers, and ebook vendors.
10) And finally, accounting of our sales, shipments, returns, etc.

(You can read David's full post here.) Just the first point - the professional editor - usually costs somewhere in the ballpark of $1,000, often more, and I don't believe in half-assing anything when it comes to beating my stories into shape. If I did, I would have given up after the first draft of MARK OF FLIGHT.

This is not to say that I don't think e-pub/self-pub/small-press are not viable options. In fact, Pendragon Variety is working on a new venture called "Pendragon Express" as a way to try circumventing the distribution problem for independent authors. I've also read several books by small-press or self-published authors that I thought were awesome, but which might have been a little too "niche" to appeal to the current market. Abigail Hilton's "The Guild of the Cowry Catchers" comes to mind. Seriously fun story, but I can see why fauns, foxlings, and other half-beast main-characters battling it out on the high seas amidst a web of intertwining conflicts might not appeal to everyone. And that's before we get to death, sex, slavery, and tongue-removal.

Hey, *I* sure enjoy the heck out of it. But is it mainstream? No. Could Abbie have remained true to her vision of the story and changed enough of it to make the book mainstream? Maybe if it were a manga, but as a novel it definitely feels a little left of the target. I think Abbie made the correct decision in self-publishing her work; otherwise a really awesome story might never have seen the light of day. Now I can listen to Norm Sherman deliver the deliciously cutting lines of Silveo in the free podcast version of the novel.

But let's be clear about something: Abbie pays a lot of money to get tons of artwork for her story. She pays the other podcast talents that read her characters. She's explained again and again that the money she makes from selling the illustrated e-books and short-stories and extras just about lets her break even. And this is a super-popular story.

It all seems to come down to love. Abbie tried to publish through traditional venues first, but her story was "too long" (bah). She loves her story enough to put in the time, effort, and money it takes to bring it to the audience that wants to consume it (read: me). I love my stories enough to do whatever it takes to make them the best they can be, and in my opinion, that is with as many of the services in David B Coe's list as possible. If I end up having to pay out of pocket for them, then I will. It will take me forever, but I will eventually do it.

Of course, I'm going to try to go through traditional publishers first, because that means the cash is flowing towards ME. I hope I don't have to explain why that's preferable.

INTERACT: What form of publishing do you feel is right for your work? Have you looked into various options for publication? Which ones strike you as the most appealing, and why? Do you think a resource for writers who want to self/e-pub is a good idea? Would you be willing to provide a service (such as editing or art) for a percentage of revenue on the back-end?

Sunday Sample #3 - The Mark of Flight

Last week, I shared the opening of my contemporary fantasy, Hellhound. This week, I would like to share the prologue of "The Mark of Flight", book one of The Markmasters Trilogy.

They had known him once, that woman in the teetering headdress, that courtier smoothing his brocade doublet, and that young man in the stained smock. Once, Alukale would have inspired more than a measuring glance or fluttered fan; his face alone would have been enough introduction to any keep from these castle gates to the Centoreinian border. Now it was his name that was known, but not his face. A pity, but at least he didn’t have to cover it. The early summer sun bearing down on his shoulders made the prospect of donning a hood a matter to avoid at all costs, and none of the ceremony-goers in the packed courtyard were even looking.

Their attention was trained on the girl descending the stairs, her arms spread slightly for balance as four gray-clad handmaidens helped her step-after-step. She probably wouldn’t have needed the help if not for the ridiculous headdress that towered well over her head. Its spires glittered in the sun, concealing the hair that would be revealed to all the court in just a few moments. Alukale shook his head in pity—despite the smile on her heavily-powdered face, her magenta aura pulsed like the heart of a hummingbird. To this day, he still did not understand why a girl couldn’t be the first to see her own hair, and he had watched them stuff it into coifs and wraps and caps for five-hundred years.

He shaded his eyes with one hand, the other perched on his sword-heavy hip, and gazed up at the gray battlements, at the royal family’s red and white standard snapping from the bastions. Then the dreaded specter of memory rose, a sickly dream adorning the modern castle in the raiment of his time.

Alukale had left this very courtyard five-hundred years ago, sick with grief, with rage, and ready to tear apart the world itself with his hands, or with his Magic if he could, if only it would stop the war. If only it would bring back what he had lost. But a handful of lifetimes had passed, and he had accomplished neither. Now, the sight of the castle rekindled feelings he had never wanted to face again, scenes he had never wanted to relive. Despite the changes wrought by time and foolishness, it was too familiar.

In the place of steel-latticed oak doors stood a gate of slender pikes, glistening with a web of silver ivy. Such a confection wouldn’t even stop a breeze, let alone an invading army. The keep was no longer a bastion for the people if the enemy were to breach the city’s walls. A few decades of peace and the people of Rizellen thought the war was over.

Alukale snorted. He had felt this ignorant excitement once, and the people of Rizellen would soon discover how wrong they were. Peace had made his country soft, and they would suffer for that weakness. He resisted the urge to leap onto the stairs and call this country that had once been his back to arms and take command of the future once again.

But he could not. She had forbidden interference, and Alukale was discovering that it was the hardest thing she had ever asked of him, and she had asked many things. He had taught, protected, even killed for her; he had shown the ruthlessness she could not, and had been the strength she lacked. And now she wanted him to stand aside.

The crowd hushed, and the piercing keen of a bell silvered the air, hanging across the crowd like ice. The time had come.

The four handmaidens reached for the headdress, and the princess’s hands clenched in her skirts. She didn’t look fourteen, sprite-like as she was, but Alukale knew better than anyone about the discrepancy of age and appearance. It took all four gray-clad women to lift, arms straining, the confection of silver and gems from the girl’s head. A heavy rush of ebony tumbled down the girl’s thin shoulders, and Alukale felt a small flicker of pride tugging his lips as his brother’s descendant shook out a glorious fall of black hair, waist-length and lustrous.

She would be the first Princess of Rizellen to have black hair; her foreign father had given her his coloring, and that was no shame, for a princess needed to be unique.

A groan nearby drew his attention, and Alukale glanced at the girl who had made the noise—unremarkable face, dressed in drab clothing let out at the seams. Her short-cropped hair told him that this girl had not possessed a set of handmaidens to care for her tresses before she turned fourteen. She spotted him looking and flushed, and he hoped she felt some shame in having wished for the princess’s bad luck.

Alukale looked back to the dais, jaw clenched. Princess Arianna would have bad luck enough without having the noblewoman’s curse of bad hair as well. At least the Sisters had blessed her with that much.

“You, boy!” A Warsman in heavy chainmail shoved through the crowd towards Alukale, his blue tabard bright among the peasants’ dull ensembles. “No swords in the bailey!”

“I was just taking my leave,” Alukale said, slipping between the men and women like water. He turned his back to the ceremony, clenching his teeth against the thought that he could do something—right now—to change the course of the future, and he was walking away. But no, he was lucky Lenis had let him come at all, for he knew she had seen a future where he had not controlled himself.

There would be a day when he gave in to that temptation, but it was not today. Today, he had other matters to attend.

Character Starting Points - Going Back

Photo by kevindooly

Sometimes I start writing with a great idea of who my character is, sometimes I start with just a name and a purpose. One of the most valuable things the writing process has taught me is that characters don't have to be perfect the first time around. I've talked a bit about my two books, The Mark of Flight and Hellhound, and as I mentioned in my post last week on characters that cry, I had totally different experiences writing Helena and Arianna.

I created Arianna when I was fifteen, and role-played her with my friends Adryn and Merilee in what I suppose you could consider a very early version of the first book's plot--kidnapped princess who gets help from a slave and a mage, and who risks her own life to save the slave when he is recaptured. I think there were dragons, demonic wolves, and lots of convenient way-houses/caves in some of those early RPs. I'm relieved no longer to have the files.

We moved on to other worlds and characters, but something of Arianna's essence stuck with me, her stubbornness and pride, her kindness and idealism, brewing in my head with her sweet, stuttering ex-slave of a love-interest, who inadvertently learns to use Magic. One day in my senior year of High School (when I was eager to write anything that wasn't a college application essay), I started The Mark of Flight. By then, I had a pretty good idea who Arianna was.

Helena, on the other hand, was little more than a name and a goal. I didn't know what she looked like, I didn't know who her family was or her background, and I knew nothing about her personality. I wrote a version of the opening scene as a writing prompt for one of Holly Lisle's mini workshops, and couldn't get it out of my head. The day before NaNoWriMo, I wrote an outline--at that time I was unemployed and feeling a little worse than useless, so I figured if I was going to be a jobless moocher, I might as well be a jobless moocher with a word-count.

Picture by mrhayata

While writing Arianna, I found there was a disconnect between the girl in my head and the girl on the page. It wans't until I was half-way though the book that I figured out why--Arianna was reacting to the plot, not driving it. I had no outline for the story, and I was still too immature as a writer to think about each scene, and how my character could work in it. I hadn't yet learned that scenes should be a collection of character choices given circumstances, not character reactions to circumstances. That shift in perspective happened only when it had to--when I needed Arianna to make the choice of whether to continue home, or to save the boy who had risked his life for her. After that, she drove each scene and started to become the stubborn, proud, kind, strong girl in my head.

Helena was a more active character to write from the beginning, and easier in many ways because she was modern, and had clear priorities. The problem was, I didn't know her. She was gray matter, condensing into something more concrete as my idea for the story expanded, evolved, and delineated specific requirements. By the time I'd gotten to the end...ohh, boy. All the characters were different, but Helena more than anyone. That spiraling mass of gray matter had finally condensed into a star, but her side-winding trail through the first draft of my story left a detritus of obsolete character actions and scenes.

Arianna, on the other hand, had come into her story almost as wise as she left it--definitely not what you want from a fourteen-year-old princess out in the wilds of her own country for the first time.

For both of these characters, I first had to find their ending-points before I could really decide their beginnings. When I was in school, I always wrote my essays straight through, and then pasted my conclusion into the beginning, so that it looked like my meandering path to the point was intentional. Sometimes, I'd even go back and fix the rest of the essay to more concisely reflect that. Thankfully, I'm a more diligent writer than I was a student.

What I discovered for my characters was that, once I knew who they were when they exited the story, I could use that essence of character and take them backwards a few steps, logically, based on what happens in the story. I could decide for them a stage from which to grow, and change, and develop into that character I had finally come to know by the end. In short, I messed with the starting-point of their character-journey to make the road to their destination more poignant and noticeable.

What kind of things do you learn about your characters in a first-draft? How do your characters' personal journeys evolve and change as you write, and from draft-to-draft? Would you/have you made changes to a story because of a character's need to be dynamic?

Sunday Sample - The Markmasters Trilogy

I can't remember the artist for this...

An excerpt from "The Mark of Flight", book one of The Markmasters Trilogy.

Tashda had betrayed her.

 It was like being lifted from a drug-induced gaiety and suddenly dropped back into consciousness. The ethereal brightness of the world faded into simple moonlight, life became less beautiful, and Arianna was suddenly, rudely aware of her mistake. Her terrible, irresponsible, thoughtless mistake. These were no queen’s hands, she thought, opening her fists and staring at them in horror. These were the hands of a fool.

Bay grabbed her shoulders, wrenching her away from the door. “Come, my lady. There is no time. Tashda will have noticed this spell break, and I’m not sure how much time I can give you. Shiro!”

Arianna looked up, remembering for the first time the black-haired young man who had come in with Bay. The Mage thrust her towards him, and she recoiled from his obvious filth. No, she couldn’t think like that. She was worse than him now. She was a war-starter, for her mistake would surely be the catalyst for a fresh wave of fighting.

“Shiro, take her and get out. Take the Grays.”

“What about you?” Arianna asked, head snapping over to look at him. “You don’t expect me to get home with just-”

“There’s no choice, princess!” Bay snapped, turning to the casement and shoving it open.  “Go now!” he yelled, swinging his arm toward the window. The young man flinched, as if bracing himself for Bay to hit him. Arianna, leaned her head out the window. There was a single story drop to the ground, but in the evening darkness, she could see nothing soft to fall on. The sound of footsteps in the big hallway made up her mind.

“Let’s go!” she said. “We’ll have to jump.”

“Shiro, now!” Bay said, grabbing Arianna’s arm. The young man stooped so she could fling her arm around his shoulders, and she heaved her legs over the sill. Arianna’s back scraped against the casement as the two men lowered her out, and she was glad for the years and years of daring herself to look straight down over the castle Rizell’s curtain wall. Her arms slid through their hands, and they caught her wrists with a jolt. Her feet dangled a meter above the ground, and they let go. 

She gave a truncated cry and crumpled under her own weight, but it took only a second for the fighting blood to kick in, and she scrambled out of the way. Her feet stung, but she tore off toward the stable ahead, wet grass lashing her ankles. A thump behind her signaled the young man’s landing. He passed her on his long legs, flung the stable doors wide, and darted inside, Arianna right behind him.

To her shock, the horses stood outfitted and ready. The young man—Shiro—laced his fingers and Arianna stepped into them and tossed herself across the saddle. She struggled with her skirts for a moment before she was able to get her legs situated properly.

He handed her the reins and stepped back, turning his head from side to side. Through his nest of pitch black hair, she couldn’t see his eyes.

“Hurry up, get on the other horse,” she said, words pierced with sharp gasps. Her throat and chest burned from the run.

“I d-don’t know how to ride,” he breathed. “You have to go now. They don’t know I’m w-with you and you’ll be faster w-without me!”

Arianna stared at him. She imagined herself tearing through the wilderness, unable to discern direction, with a whole company of Markmasters in pursuit.

“Nonsense,” she hissed. “I can’t do this myself,” she loathed her next sentence, though it rang truly inside her own ears as she spoke. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Though he grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck with one big, filthy hand, he nodded.

She nudged Star toward him. “You’ll have to ride behind me.”

The young man’s posture stiffened, but Arianna wasn’t about to give him a second to protest. They had wasted enough time as it was. They’d have to leave her mother’s horse and hope that either that Bay man made it out alive, or that they could outwit or outride a single Markmaster.

“Come, we haven’t got time to argue!” Her voice trembled, but he jumped at the order as if she had shouted it, vaulting nimbly up behind the saddle. Arianna was, for once, glad of her slight weight, for though the young man was little more than skin and sinew, he was quite tall. She wondered what region he was from, to have such long bones and such strange coloring. Star didn’t like the extra weight, and let Arianna know with laid back ears and a rueful glare, but Arianna spat out a few commands in Danaian and they erupted from the stable.

It became obvious almost immediately that Shiro’s claims about his equestrian abilities were not the product of modesty. Arianna’s legs strained as she pressed her feet hard into the stirrups, struggling to keep balance for two as Shiro slung about uncontrollably behind her. Star—confused by the accidental leg signals—snorted and jerked at the reins.

Finally, Arianna managed to get the mare following the reins alone, and wheeled her around toward the road. They hurtled down the little path, turned, and burst into the open darkness of the road.

Ahead, she saw the festival pole, silhouetted against the boiling, cloudy sky, and a pair of figures running straight towards them, blond heads bright. She gasped, gaze shifting, and saw their smooth auras swelling with energy, spells sparkling at the ends of their outstretched hands. She pulled Star’s reins hard, and Shiro fetched up against her back, chin cracking against the back of her head. She grunted, but ignored the pain, wheeling the mare and digging in her heels. They catapulted up the faded road towards the ruined castle in a wild four-beat sprint. Shiro’s arms crushed her ribs, and if she had been inclined to breathe at all, it wouldn’t have been possible.

They pounded up towards the ruins, and a plume of flame snapped out on their left, flaring hot. Arianna screamed, and Star bolted right, heading straight for the steep edge of the motte. Ropes of blue, translucent Magic ribboned out at the edge of her vision, chasing them.

They couldn’t stop—they would have to go over the edge of the motte.

“Hold on!” she screamed, and drove Star with her heels over the edge. Blue Magic arched over their heads.

Everything slammed forward, and the pommel dug into Arianna’s gut. Shiro was heavy against her back, threatening to push her over Star’s low-bent neck as they slid down the steep hillside. The skirt of the motte flared below them, muddy, rocky, without purchase. Star wasn’t running, she was skidding down. Just when Arianna’s hands slipped on the mare’s withers and she pitched forward, Shiro’s arm tightened about her waist and he reversed direction, pulling her back. He had a bit more stability behind the saddle, and he had somehow managed to get his feet in the stirrups with hers.

            They lurched, Star leapt the last few lengths of the motte, and Arianna barely righted herself before the mare crashed into the ocean of tall, golden wheat.

            “The road!” she yelled, and Shiro pointed, but his feet jerked from the stirrups and he quickly had his wiry arms around her waist again, head bent down into her shoulder. They tore a wide path through the field, galloping for the hulking, broken structures concealing the road.

            Another tail of flame arced over them and splattered like burning grease in the wheat ahead. Star reared, and this time Arianna’s fingers tangled in the horse’s mane. Shiro somehow managed to stay on, and as soon as the mare’s hooves touched down, she took off, skirting the spreading flame and churning a path through the pale wheat.

            There was a roar of thunder from above, and a great rush of wind blasted their backs, bringing a spatter of sparks from the quick spreading flame. Star moved in great leaps, and Arianna realized with a sick trill of fear that the flame was being pushed up around them by Magic. Desperate, she dug at Star, leaning forward, though she knew the mare could go no faster.

Then the sky opened up. First a few drops, then a torrent pelted down over them like shattering glass, battling with the flame. They leapt between buildings and Star pivoted, slinging her riders sideways as she found the road, and hurtled into the tunnel of trees. In the sheet of sudden rain, the gray horse and riders became invisible.