Iconic Encounter: Returning Home - Part Three Wednesday, February 9, 2022 THE SPLINTERING OF BONE Branum and Oska muttered to each other as Amiri prepared. She did her best to ignore them. She couldn't understand them, anyway—they were talking in an odd, garbled tongue, and suddenly she remembered that, too. The twins with their private language, infuriating Maruk because he thought his children were making fun of him. He'd always been going on about how his son was going to be as mighty a...

Sometimes, when Amiri was bored, she considered all the ways she could have died over the years. Not that she had any desire to analyze them strategically, as one companion had suggested. Nor to contemplate the inevitability of death and its philosophical implications, as another had asked.