Veris nodded; she had almost said What are guns? but in fact she had seen drawings of them a few times, and in person seen a small one, disassembled, during the war. Intricate as a clock, deadlier than any arrow, if it was to be believed. Something so dangerous it seemed like magic itself: a token like hers, but instead of being carved from wood or forged from metal, a shape pressed out of the poison some said you could make from century weed, so that a cube of it the size of her own piece of coal could kill ten thousand people or more. Imagine that: passing it from hand to hand and the hand
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