They spent a while longer digging, blissfully unaware of the shifting deeper in the forest.
After some time, Vivi reached into her overall pockets and produced a handful of seeds. She handed one to Uma and pointed to the holes they'd just dug.
"You first!"
Uma tilted her head, looked at the hole, looked at the seed, and dropped it in.
Like that?
Vivi burst out laughing and knelt down to fix it properly — burying it at the correct depth, patting the earth down carefully around it.
If Vivi wasn't such a genuinely sweet person, I might actually feel humiliated about not being able to put a seed in dirt correctly.
They filled each hole with a seed. Uma laughed silently at her own joke — seedy business — and did not share it with the class.
Eventually, they left the clearing, Vivi talking the entire way back.
She talked mostly about how incredible plants were, a subject she apparently had unlimited material on. Uma nodded along, only half following, mostly watching her.
She's adorable, Uma thought, and made a quiet internal promise to be the kind of best friend who judged every man who came near Vivi without mercy.
They arrived back in the village just in time to hear shouting.
Getting closer, Uma saw Serosa absolutely tearing into a fat older man who had the look of local authority — a heavy chain of office around his neck, fine clothes, the slight sweat of a man who had not expected to be yelled at today.
Two guards flanked him.
Both of them looked like they desperately wanted to intervene.
Both of them had clearly decided against it the moment they'd clocked Hamaron standing directly behind Serosa like a very large, very calm wall.
"YOU STUPID—"
Uma's dialect wasn't advanced enough to catch everything. Based on Vivi's face, which had gone slightly pale, it was excellent.
"—the NERVE to ask me if a festival is ready when men are dying — what kind of brain-dead, inbred, self-important—"
Uma was pumping her fist silently in the air.
YEAH. GET HIS ASS, MOM.
She had no idea what the man had done. He absolutely deserved it.
The man yelled something back, puffed up with as much dignity as his current situation allowed.
Hamaron cracked his neck — just once — without raising his voice, without stepping forward, without so much as looking directly at him.
The man reconsidered his entire life and retreated at a brisk, unhurried walk that he was absolutely trying to disguise as a stroll.
Uma pushed through the small crowd that had gathered to watch and looked up at Serosa, batting her eyes in a tell me everything expression.
Serosa laughed — the sharp, sarcastic kind — and said something Uma translated as no.
Uma slumped.
Vivi appeared beside her, pulled her into a quick hug, waved goodbye, and headed back in the direction of her shop.
Uma wanted to ask Hamaron what had just happened, but it was going to require vocabulary she didn't have yet. She shrugged and walked inside, where she found Serosa already huffing and puffing — rearranging books with aggressive energy, dropping one, swearing under her breath, picking it up, moving it, getting more frustrated with each one.
Uma inched toward her slowly.
Like a hunter approaching a bear.
She tapped Serosa gently on the shoulder.
Serosa snapped around — and softened the moment she saw Uma's face.
"Hey, dear." She let out a long breath.
Uma signed — partly to communicate, partly to show off — you good?
Serosa threw another book on the floor.
Uma jumped.
Then Serosa started to rant. Something about the mayor. Something about festival funds. A mock impression that Uma pieced together as a general contempt for the man's entire existence.
Serosa finished her rant, marched upstairs, and — before she disappeared — turned back long enough to kiss Uma on the forehead.
Then she was gone.
...What just happened.
Uma shook her head and started gathering the scattered books.
She had to look at each one carefully to figure out where it belonged — but she figured she might as well learn the system now, if she was going to be working here properly.
One book caught her eye.
Fantastic Floras for Finding, by Fantastic Flora.
She flipped it open. The words scrambled on the page the way they sometimes still did, but the illustrations were clear enough — it was an information guide on flowers, specifically how to cultivate them quickly.
She pocketed it.
Another one caught her attention.
This one was handmade. Rougher. No publisher markings.
How to Make Your Own Fighting Style.
No author. Which was strange.
Uma flipped through it, and immediately imagined herself doing something cool and vaguely anime — a spin kick, maybe, or a finishing move with a name in two languages — which made her shoulders shake.
She pocketed that one too.
She settled onto the library couch with the flora book first and was a few pages in when the bells started.
She looked up.
Then to the window.
Guards were running past in formation, moving with purpose toward the forest road. And there — leading the charge — was Hamaron.
Not in his blacksmith clothes.
In a guard uniform. A giant war hammer slung across his back. Moving at a pace that made the men around him look slow.
...Hamaron?
Serosa came running down the stairs behind her. She saw Uma at the window, crossed the room in three steps, picked her up bodily, carried her to her room, set her down on the bed, and turned in the doorway.
Her face had gone stern.
Completely, totally, no-warmth serious.
Uma had never seen that face before.
"Stay inside."
Then she was gone.
Uma sat on the edge of the bed for about thirty seconds.
Then she got up.
Then she started pacing.
Then she threw a pillow at the wall.
...I'll just go get my books.
She bolted downstairs, grabbed the two books off the couch, and then stood at the window facing the direction everyone had run. She could make out faint shapes in the distance, but nothing clear.
Okay. I won't leave the house.
She jumped out the window.
She pressed herself flat against the outer wall of the library and leaned as far over the river as she could without falling in. The distant clash of steel reached her ears. That was it.
Okay. I won't leave the premises.
She crossed the bridge.
Bush to bush, low and careful, she crept forward. The sound of clashing steel grew louder. Shapes began to resolve out of the chaos — men fighting Hollowmen, outnumbered by the look of it, holding their ground with a kind of fearlessness that made Uma stop and stare.
Then she heard something else.
Serosa's voice. Sharp. Clear. Cutting through the noise like it had been born to.
My mom is such a badass.
She was still thinking it when she noticed that her own feet had been moving without her permission — bush to bush, closer and closer, pulled forward by some instinct she hadn't okayed.
...Where's Hamaron?
She scanned the fighting. Couldn't find him.
Where—
The breathing behind her was uneven.
She turned almost too late.
Shit.
It swung.
She ducked.
Her heart vaulted directly into her throat.
It swung again. She dodged. Barely.
She grabbed a stick off the ground and used it to block once, before it was knocked clean out of her hands.
No. No no no not again—
It scraped her cheek on the next pass. Not a clean hit, but close enough to sting and close enough to bleed.
Not again. Please, please not again.
It pulled back for a clean shot.
The shot didn't land.
What landed instead was something moving at speed — crashing into the Hollowman hard enough to send it straight into a tree trunk, which cracked down the middle on impact.
Uma opened her eyes.
Hamaron.
War hammer in one hand. Chest heaving like a bull's. Eyes lit with that same quiet, deliberate fury she'd seen outside the library — that unnerving stillness underneath the fight.
Then he saw Uma.
His face shifted completely. The storm cleared in an instant. He held up one finger — shh — and then jerked his head firmly in the direction of home.
Go. Now.
Uma caught the memo and ran.
She looked back once over her shoulder.
Hamaron was already gone.
Five more Hollowmen were down in the time it took her to turn her head.
His silhouette disappeared into the tree line, moving toward the fighting like he'd never been there at all.