The Wrens Fly Away

As any Wren or Softfoot will tell you, a lie works best when it has part of the truth.

The Wrens were promised a life better than they had left behind in Kerek City.  So they climbed in Ngahuru's settler wagon and found themselves in the middle of a war.  When the Empress of Vikland offers them only a soldier's pay for a year, they are dismayed.  There are no plans to educate them, teach them a trade, or learn to thrive in Vikland.  This is their reward for the time and danger spent helping the Viklanders win a path to the sea?

But the Wrens have had a lifetime to learn to count only on themselves and each other. And what Zren and the others at Manumina believed happened during the war had as little in common with the Truth as the promises made to them by those in power who needed their skills and talents.

So the Wrens make their own plans for the future and they aren't going to share them with just anyone.

The book, The Wrens Fly Away, is the fifth and last book in the Tales of Zren Janin.  These stories are told through the wrens' viewpoint as they scatter about following their own path to their future.  We learn of their decisions, and cost of their dreams through travels and letters crossing from one end of the known world to the other.  This may be an alternate world of multiple cultures, languages, political intrigue, and mythology, but some universal truths remain.