Oh, what was it this time? “Stazya, Stazya! Help!” One of the children had no doubt called another a Name. They had disturbed me all that morning, when I had really needed peace. And they were supposed to remember to call me Miss Morandau, now. I was Mistress of the House, for the next three days still. But the book I was reading was pitiful; I’d have more satisfaction flinging it down and stalking angrily downstairs than I would in pretending not to have heard the little monsters. Who were yelling a bit more urgently than usual, I realized, just as I reached the doorway.

It wasn’t a Name. It was a man. A native man, a stranger, big and ugly. He reeked, too. He had one of the Minden twins under his arm, screeching, while the other clawed and scratched at his leg, also screeching. He must have grabbed the one and chased the other as she ran to the House for help. He had a big knife in his free hand, and he looked angry and unsteady. He had a crossbow slung on his back, and his clothes were reinforced with pads of boiled leather, to make a kind of armor. Less than a soldier but more than a warrior, he fit the type we called a raider. The twins were rightly terrified. I didn’t like how he was looking at me, myself. Remembering something Mother had told me, I wondered if he might be thinking of raping me. But in the very doorway of Morandau House? Could he really be drunk or crazed enough for that?

I tried to speak to him calmly. Many of the natives know some words of Vocal, our speech. We trade with the nearby settlements. “Man,” I addressed him, in as low a tone as I could manage, “this is Morandau. Do you not fear?”

He did fear, I could see, but he was also quite drunk, or crazed with the leaf that nomads chew. He spat, and barked, in much clearer Vocal than I expected, “Your men are gone. We watched them go.” That was true. I was the only even nominal adult left in the House, the first reason being that as the youngest my complaints were least heard. But it took me a couple of blinks to interpret his answer, because although I knew that the women of many native tribes did nothing but tend fires or stitch cloth, I had not expected that any natives might think Morandau was like them. He was here because I was defenseless.

There were hoarse shouts from beyond the courtyard wall, quite a number more. Uncle Yerzy’s instructions had been gnawing in my mind all the time I was trying to read that stupid book: in case of any serious trouble, I was to remember that I was a lady of Morandau.

The man lifted his knife and looked quickly at the Minden girl on his leg, in just the wrong way. So I remembered I was a lady of Morandau, and shot him down.

I had never tried to kill anyone before, but the parents of half a continent quell their unruly children with legends of Morandau ladies, legends which are mostly true, and I am Morandau to blood and bone. I would not have you misunderstand my people for mere sake of suspense, reader, so you should have this clear from the beginning of my story: my part in it will not be that of a victim. My new birthday revolver was my first fifty caliber. It had taken me a week to get used to the weight and the recoil, but I hit the man’s breastbone from thirty paces, shooting from the draw. The second reason I was left behind was that I am our best shot in two generations.

The Minden girls scrambled away from the body as it fell, and stopped crying immediately. They live here. They knew what to expect. They didn’t search the corpse or even take the knife or crossbow, though, as we would have done at their age. They ran up the stairs, and dashed past me into the hall without a word. When it was all over, I found them in the kitchen eating apples, and made them help clean up the mess. That’s part of being a child, here. But I was no longer a child. After my shot, the shouts beyond the courtyard quickly stopped, but I heard horses neighing madly, and bolting around. Raider horses are normally quiet, but gunfire spooks any animal that isn’t used to it. So the rest of the raiders were still there. I would have to make some more mess.

Frustratingly, I had to get a look beyond the wall, to see whether there were any children in the square. The Minden twins normally run around with a group. If they had by chance been caught alone, and the square held only more raiders, I still couldn’t fire the mortars or trigger the ground mines without knowing where the rest of the children were. On the other hand, even if other children had been caught by the raiders in the square, I might nonetheless release the exotic fume we call nightfog, which makes people faint. It is sometimes lethal in high concentrations, especially to children, but if I could kill the more distant raiders myself, I could use a smaller cloud on the rest, and any children would probably recover. Keeping out of the line of sight through the gateway, I slipped over to the left flank periscope and panned it around. There they were, all right.

Nearly two dozen. They were standing around the big black monolith we called Stone Kelvin, shuffling and edging away, probably frightened by my shot; but one of them was holding up something pale and head-sized, and haranguing the others in their language. He had a shaman’s bone fetish headdress, but I couldn’t recognize the tribe from a distance. He seemed to win them over. Some shuffled closer to the monolith, and took up ropes, while others whistled in the horses, and backed them up to the rock spire. Why, they were either preparing to climb Stone Kelvin, or trying to pull it down!

I insist that it didn’t occur to me that the monolith could be damaged. Stone Kelvin had always been part of the earth itself. All that angered and worried me was that they might damage the contraption I had mounted on top of Stone Kelvin five mornings ago, as soon as the elders were all out of sight. The contraption was my joy and my defiance, though I meant to take it safely down before anyone returned. If I was to be left at home from the meeting, to defend the House that no-one would dare attack, I would at least defend it my way.

There were no children near the raiders, but I was sure that some were watching from peepholes around the square. The braver of us always used to sneak up and watch. In truth there would have been small risk from the nightfog. The vents are around the edges of the square, and I would have had to pump to high concentration in order to reach the nomads around Stone Kelvin, but the children know to run from the hissing sound. Still, fear of hurting a watching young one was my first reason not to use the fume. The second was that the raiders had their horses right with them, and nightfog can take a bit of time to act if it is not sprayed directly in the face. If one of the natives were to mount and ride fast, as soon as he began to feel strange, he might get away. Our secrets must remain secret, even if we are forced to use them, and so from battles with Morandau only legends and superstitions can escape.

One of our own superstitions, taught to us in the nursery, is that everything happens for three reasons, and the first two are false. The third reason I left the nightfog valve, and ran out into the square with my revolver in my right hand, was that I didn’t want the raiders to touch my contraption. I stopped sixty paces from Stone Kelvin. I could see the brassy ball of my device still perched on its tripod base up there, its listening wire still upright. I took straight-arm aim at the ranting shaman, and fired; and my shot went wide. In disbelief, I fired again, and saw rock chips fly from Stone Kelvin, several paces aside. Around the shaman, the horses reared, but the men stood their ground. The shaman held up his pale totem; it was some kind of skull, but I couldn’t tell the species. He looked straight at me and shouted, in a strange accent, “Your spells are weak! Our ghost is strong!” He was taunting me before my very House, and I fired to shatter his precious white totem. I could not have missed it, but I didn’t see where the bullet struck, and a ricochet sang from an impossible direction behind me. Suddenly I felt like a seventeen-year-old girl facing twenty violent men armed with crossbows and long knives. That was not what I was supposed to be remembering.

So my left hand brought up the small second part of my contraption, and squeezed its lever. Strong springs inside it drove a hammer onto a sparking crystal, and the crystal’s inaudible cry fled out through the ether. The listening wire on my contraption caught the note; valves and shells swelled it into a pulse; a thin rod of iron jerked in its tight coil of wire. Acid trickled through an opened valve, into fulminate. The brass globe burst with a roar.

The raiders flinched, or ducked, or dropped. There were just a few screams. The blast was a shock. But the only actual effect my contraption had made was a cloud of glittering mist that now hung all around Stone Kelvin, drifting down. The shaman had not even moved, but he grinned now, and shouted something in his own tongue. I should have hit the ground like the other natives, but I couldn’t help watching my cloud. I was just recognizing that it might be a bit big, when the delayed flash in the tripod base fired, and my cloud of glittering mist became an upstart sun.

Suddenly I was further away, looking up at the sky, everything quiet. Lying on the ground, and hurting. I twisted and rolled, found I could move, and struggled onto my hands and knees. I looked up just in time to see the entire front face of Stone Kelvin slide off, hit the ground, and silently break in two. Then the top of the remaining back side toppled off, and broke when it hit the ground, without a sound. Only a jagged shard remained upright, barely half its old height. I was deaf, and a bright red after-image blocked the center of my vision; I watched Stone Kelvin fall by looking aside. The raiders were gone. The ground around the ruins of Stone Kelvin was strewn with charred lumps. The larger ones must have been the horses.

Beside one black heap near the ruins the pale skull lay intact. Not even dirty. My revolver was still clenched in my fist — I was proud of that later — and I brought it up to shoot, as soon as the after-images faded. Then I lowered my arm. Evidently the strange skull was something eldritch. My father would need to examine it.

As my vision finally cleared, I looked at the remains of Stone Kelvin. It had been outside my door all my life, and all my forebears’ lives before me, since the foundation of our House. I had broken it. I had also just killed twenty men, with my own strange contraption. I was sure they had meant me no good, nor the children in my care; but no doubt they had families of their own, however far away, perhaps young children, who would look to see them back, and they would not come.

We are taught to remember that, and because I had been taught so, I did think of it. I didn’t seem to feel anything for it. What had happened was what had to happen. Nonetheless I had to dash away sudden tears. Doing that hurt. My face felt sunburned.

The children started scrambling out from their boltholes. That was my best sign that I had caught all of the raiders. The youngsters here run around everywhere, and somehow there are always a few of them looking whenever anything happens, and then somehow they all seem to know about it immediately. I remember it was like that for me when I was younger, but I can’t remember how. It’s just sharp little eyes and constant chatter, nothing esoteric, but the big people always found it astonishing how much we used to know, and now it amazes me, too. When did I lose that connection?

Reif Sather and the third Jelt boy, Mischa, ran up to me screaming so loudly I could just hear them, and I was relieved to learn that my eardrums weren’t broken. The boys couldn’t contain themselves, but I couldn’t tell whether they were overjoyed or heartbroken, and I’m not sure they could tell, either. They had had no faith in me, barely a year older than they were, and without fully realizing it, they must have been gravely afraid that the raiders would take them or kill them. They had seen the one I shot chase the Mindens. They must also have been sure, though — of course they were all sure — that Morandau would protect them. It had. I had. They were tremendously pleased with my explosion. But they mourned Stone Kelvin. Reif had finally scaled it the week before, but his best friend Mischa hadn’t yet made it to the top, and now he never would.

Over the next few hours my hearing came back, and I got salve from the hospice for my face and hands. I hauled the Minden twins out of the kitchen, and had them issue out the remaining apples to everyone, as a restorative. It should have felt strange, the way every one now did my bidding with such a will, toddlers and teenagers alike, and when it was done came right back to me, to see what to do next. None of them had paid me much heed in the morning, not even to stand watches at the walls, or ever before. But it didn’t feel strange.

I also quickly checked that I could still shoot, when I wasn’t being taunted by a shaman with an eldritch totem. The raiders had perched a feathered fox skull on top of our gate, presumably in the belief that it would breach the curse of our magic. I shattered it from two hundred paces, then hit the topmost piece as it tumbled in the air. My gift was intact. I reloaded. We always do.

We loaded the remains onto two wagons, hitched the mules, and drove everything the half-league down the track to dump at the crossroads. That’s another thing we always do, because it helps keep up the legend. Even Morandau can’t really ensure that no-one ever survives our battles, but we keep enough superstition alive that no-one can recognize the truths that rare witnesses tell.

We didn’t dump the shaman’s skull totem. Feeling foolish, I brought up a lead vest from the workrooms, and my arcing mask, and a long pair of tongs. Then I decided I didn’t care about feeling foolish, and reckoned that I still had to be Mistress for two more days. I gravely told Reif to wear the vest and mask, and use the tongs to drag the skull to the inner courtyard. He did so, trying to be careful. He put it in the corner, and then I had him cover it with an upturned barrel. On their own initiative, he and Mischa heaved an anvil onto the barrel, to weight it down. I nodded approval, mainly because I was glad not to have to decide for myself whether that was idiotic or not.

Some younger ones noticed ten more native horses nosing back in riderless along the north track. I set all the youngsters to watch and find them all before last light, so we were sure it was just the ten, while we older ones mopped up the square. I used one of the alarmingly many keys Aunt Lethandra had entrusted to me to unlock the rifles, and we kept an armed watch from the tower all night. But the next day everyone still seemed to want me to give them orders, and with the previous day for a precedent, I’d have felt silly telling them to do their homework and clean their rooms. So we rounded up the raiders’ horses, after stalking them like half-tame deer, and eventually brought them all in. Nothing in their saddlebags was obviously important, but Talitha would want to study their dried meat, clasp knives, and spare buttons, to judge from where they had come. Or Slavin himself might take a look, if he came back with the others this time. So we herded the horses into one of the high-fenced corrals, and I set half a dozen enthusiastic girls to feeding and watering them. The beasts seemed fairly ferocious, but if we couldn’t tame them to our use, we could trade them to local natives for herbs and ore.

On the third day we gathered up all the loose bits of old Stone Kelvin, and built them into a carefully respectful cairn atop the largest fallen slab. My face was starting to itch, but it wasn’t puffy any more. With an hour before last light, we sighted the elders returning. They could see the black flag on the tower, as it always flies, but I sent up the green flare for All’s Well, just for emphasis. Then, without the slightest self-consciousness, I dressed in my formal black gown and went to meet them at the gate. My parents had casually ridden to the front of the line. I spoke the Mistress’s ritual welcome to returning family as a plain matter of fact: “Morandau House stands.” Mother blinked at my casual manner, and started pursing her lips; my father was frowning already, and preparing his remarks. Then some cousins behind them saw poor Stone Kelvin, and soon there were enough people yelling for Anastasia, while galloping right past me, that I almost fired a shot in the air just to make them shut up.

Finally Yerzy and Lethandra came up. They had already seen from the remains at the crossroads that something had happened. Even after three days of vultures and coyotes, the bodies probably looked strangely charred. But the flag and flare had told Lethandra all she needed to know most urgently, and she saw now, too, that I was still standing, so she simply dismounted in front of me, nodded at me, and called me Mistress. I gave her back her keys, called her Mistress, and bowed my head. She nodded back again. By some knack she had of manner, it was natural to fall in behind her and Yerzy as they walked back to the House. She stopped at Stone Kelvin, and slowly shook her head, but then walked on, and I followed. I felt some relief, and some disappointment, at just being young Anastasia again; but not very much. I had done my part for a time, and would keep on doing whatever part was mine next. I was not the girl they had left behind them.

At least not entirely. The third reason I had been left behind was that, just two days before the departure, my first prototype contraption had demolished the grinding shed, killed three hens and a dog, and nearly killed me. It wasn’t likely that being kept back from the grand excursion would have been the full extent of my punishment. Large amateur explosions are not looked on fondly, but with all the preparations for departure, there hadn’t been time to convene a proper council to decide something serious. I had made the second prototype bigger, with a lot more oil, and added a large measure of combustible metal filings. They were what had made the cloud glitter. One cannot normally count on succeeding so well on just the second attempt.