text: After a skirmish with the Dorinah, Natanial generally spent the evening drinking with Otolyn and his fighters. But he was less eager to do so this time. The weary lack of progress the last two months had taken its toll on him.
  
  He spent the late afternoon counting up the dead and ensuring their belongings things were wrapped to send back home. He visited those who had been wounded, and tended to the morale of the company. By the time he was done, it was dark, and he was thirsty and had a powerful desire to be left alone.
  
  Natanial rode his dog into the little captive Dorinah village, Asaolina, that the Tai Mora had turned into their supply base. The tavern there was lit up like a festival square. Tai Mora crowded the street, laughing and drinking and playing games of chance. Many of the games he didn't recognize. While most Tai Mora had the tawny skin and slight features of Dhai, it had clearly not been a homogeneous country like that of the Dhai. The gathered soldiers spoke a dozen different languages, though all shared Tai Mora in common. The hair colors and textures, heights and body types and features, gave him the impression that the Tai Mora had conquered countries with a wide geographic scope on their own world. The more Tai Mora someone looked, the more likely they were to be someone in charge; that bit of petty blood rule was unchanged from places like Dorinah and Saiduan. Natanial had encountered it himself when he traveled from Aaldia to Tordin. Tordinians had always looked at him with unease and mistrust, a foreign man in a foreign land, no matter how exceptional his Tordinian or how many years he spent in their backward little country.
  
  He found a seat at the bar in the raucous tavern, a smooth granite counter that put him in mind of better days. He ordered a beer from the barkeep, a Dorinah woman who looked like she would rather punch him than serve him. He could not blame her.
  
  A Tai Mora group emerged from the back of the tavern, exiting from one of the private meeting rooms that had once been reserved for local magistrates and officials. Natanial recognized the Tai Mora generals, including Monshara. She was dressed down, no armor, just a long gray tunic and sturdy trousers. One of the few Tai Mora who retained a bit of plumpness in her face, she had the gray eyes and pale complexion of a Dorinah. Her broad nose and narrow jaw made it look like she was always staring down her nose at something that upset her. She had scrubbed away the filth and stink of the battlefield. Her hair was a mop of tangled black curls.
  
  Natanial didn't acknowledge her, but she noticed him. She bid the other generals goodnight and came over to the bar, smelling of soap and leather. He stiffened, uncertain. Tai Mora had been known to praise with one hand and strangle with the other. The pay was good, yes, and he enjoyed being on the winning side, but the unpredictability of the Tai Mora was far worse than what he'd endured under King Saradyn back in Tordin.
  
  "Put this man's drinks on my tab," Monshara said, in Dorinah, placing a hand on his shoulder. She was shorter and heavier than him by a good fifty pounds. Maybe she was getting all of her calories from beer. "You didn't have to step in today to cut off that force of Dorinah. I didn't order you."
  
  He sipped his beer, studying her. Warm and flat, the beer made him grimace. He said, also in Dorinah, "You could dismiss the company for not obeying an order, if that's what you'd like."
  
  "Certainly." Her breath smelled of beer, and her eyes were bright; he was uncertain how much she'd had to drink. "That's because there are very few smart soldiers. Smart soldiers become officers, in Tai Mora, and Aaldia, Tordin, certainly. Which begs the question… why are you just a boot-licking mercenary?"
  
  "You have your own assassins," Natanial said. "They are better than I am. This was the next logical career path for me."
  
  Monshara laughed. She climbed into the seat next to him and ordered herself a drink. "You speak very good Dorinah for a foreigner."
  
  "I've spent a lot of time here."
  
  "Working for Tordin?"
  
  "Now and then."
  
  "You knew King Saradyn?"
  
  "In passing."
  
  "Saradyn ever use jistas?"
  
  "There aren't a good many in Tordin."
  
  "Omajistas?"
  
  "You recruiting?"
  
  "Always." The barkeep brought her drink, and she took a long swallow. "You saw the mess out there. With an omajista we'd have won this campaign eight months ago."
  
  "You do seem a bit… understaffed."
  
  "We aren't a priority. The Empress has other projects. I've asked often for an omajista, but… well. She's preoccupied with her temples, and rooting out little Dhai spies. With an omajista you could open up a gate directly into Daorian."
  
  "Surely you've tried that?"
  
  "We did, a few months back, before you arrived. They had wards up. We think we've successfully removed the wards, but it means convincing my Empress that I won't waste an omajista this time around."
  
  Natanial considered that. He took a long swallow from the beer. A few Tai Mora women began a rousing chorus of some bawdy song. They were not so different from Dorinah, some nights. "I wish you luck with that," Natanial said, "though I do enjoy taking your money until then."
  
  Monshara laughed and thumped the table. "You Aaldians will outlast us all. You are Aaldian, aren't you? That's what your second says. You don't look it. Tordinian, certainly."
  
  "I'm surprised the Tai Mora haven't turned their armies on Aaldia yet," Natanial said, moving the conversation away from his own parentage. He had no interest in commiserating with her about his past.
  
  "No need," Monshara said. "There are no living temples there, like in Saiduan and Dhai, and there's no people on our side that mirror the Aaldians. You're unique to this world. Eliminating you would serve no purpose. The Empress is ever the pragmatist when it comes to genocide. Besides, the war for the world has been won. If she gives us a fucking omajista, I could be sitting on a fucking country estate right now. But she's gotten paranoid. She's walling herself in."
  
  Natanial had spent much of his life fighting the Dorinah and the cruelties they had unleashed here and elsewhere in Tordin. Or perhaps he sensed that once this campaign was done, his usefulness to the Tai Mora would end. How to better position himself for the future? He chugged the rest of the beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Was he trying to be useful, or was he just selfish, and lonely?
  
  "I know where to find an omajista," Natanial said, the words spilling out before he had time to consider it further. "He could be… persuaded to assist you, I think."
  
  Monshara raised a brow. "And what do you want in return, mercenary?"
  
  "It's been a long time since anyone asked me that. Anyone with the ability to deliver something other than money."
  
  "Other than money? What kind of mercenary are you?"
  
  "I like to work for the winners," Natanial said. "I bring you an omajista, and you keep my crew in work. I want to be close, to be useful. I want a future in the world that's coming into being. That's all."
  
  "I can't guarantee she won't stab you in the back. She's done it to all of us often enough. That's me speaking frankly after a lot of fucking beer."
  
  "It's all right," Natanial said, "I'm used to working with intemperate tyrants." He asked for another beer to wash away the guilt roiling away in his gut.
  
  He was already a little sorry. But not sorry enough.