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She scrubbed herself mercilessly. She may be a rogue stonewiser, but she had always abided by the Guild's cleanliness rules. Besides, she liked to smell fresh.
    Clean and fed, she clad herself with a fresh shift from her pack and sat down on the pallet to examine the banishment bracelet. It was an object that defied reason. Its mysterious power evoked the stones, yet it was obviously a thing of the Domain. A number of Domainer coppers could be seen engraved in Generosity's link, a Domainer buckler was emblazoned on Pride's link, and two Domainer half-moon swords were crossed on Courage's link. She found no trace of the hinges and clasps that had been there before. She tried to pull the thing over her knuckles, but it wouldn't fit. On the contrary, it seemed to tighten in proportion to her efforts. Strange. Was her imagination playing tricks on her? Nay. When she fiddled with the bracelet, it stuck to her arm with the grit of a thousand suckers.
    Nine links. Nine months. That's all the time she had to find the tale that the executioners' required. At the breaking of the wall, Mistress Grimly, the Guild's Prime Hand, had appropriated the seven twin stones that contained the tale of the Blood's split. By now those stones were buried or worse, destroyed. But what Sariah needed now was different. She needed a tale that would help unify the divided Blood, heal the wounds of a broken world, and build consensus among the fiercest of foes. By Meliahs, she needed a miracle, a stone tale capable of fostering peace on a warring world.
    She didn't have much in terms of promising leads, only the work she had done this last year and the fragmented information she had wised from other stones. She also had Zemi's words, the final ranting of the intrusion created by Zeminaya, the most powerful stonewiser of her time. The justice of the execration ends with me , the intrusion had said. The Shield dies with me. The Blood we split and the proof is with the bane of the pure. The rot we made ourselves, because we created simmering fire and flesh, we broke Meliahs’ pact, we forsook labor and sweat.
    She remembered the shock of realizing the truth, the desperation of knowing what neither one of the Bloods was likely to accept—that they were both part of the same blood. Old Blood wisers had created the New Blood to labor in its stead. But as the rot destroyed the Old World, the oppressed New Blood had turned on their creators, expelled the Old Blood from the Goodlands, and condemned them to die in the Rotten Domain under the false belief they were the New Blood.
    She had known then that the revelation would be hard to accept for both Bloods. What she hadn't known was that both Bloods would find her discoveries beyond disagreeable, untenable. Far from crumbling, the powers that had ruthlessly ruled the world survived to terrorize it. Her formidable foes had doubled and multiplied. The Guild. The Shield. Mistress Grimly. Master Arron. In the throes of a changing world, her enemies, and yes, even some of her friends, favored her death for different if valid reasons. The executioners' bid for her life was just one example of the dangers that stalked her. Kael, the inveterate cynic, had seen it for what it was. Sariah had to be careful. She didn't have Kael's battle-honed instincts.
    Was there a lost tale out there, a forgotten stone capable of bringing unity to a divided world? And if there was, would she be able to find it before it was too late? She had one sentence from the intrusion to guide her. The Blood we split and the proof is with the bane of the pure. Who were the pure? What and where was their bane? How could it lead her to find the tale she sought?
    Unable to find a way to undo the bracelet, Sariah fetched a needle chisel from her tool basket and began to probe the clasp for a weak point.
    “Ouch!” She dropped the chisel. Had the bracelet just stung her? With the pain fresh in her mind, she couldn't blame her imagination, but she