The Forgotten Monk

A 13th Age Novel

by Greg Stolze

Published by Stone Skin Press 2015.

Stone Skin Press is an imprint of Pelgrane Press Ltd. Spectrum House, 9 Bromell’s Road, Clapham Common, London, SW4 0BN.

Pelgrane Press Ltd. is co-owned by Simon Rogers and Cathriona Tobin.

Copyright ©2015 Greg Stolze

13th Age is a trademark of Fire Opal Media. This work published under license by Pelgrane Press Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 978-1-908983-15-2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Printed in the USA.

This book can be ordered direct from the publisher at

www.stoneskinpress.com

CHAPTER ONE

He awoke as if he had never done so before.

Reaching for memories and grasping nothing was instantly terrifying. He lifted his eyelids but moved nothing else. His heart raced, but it was no effort of will to stay still. It was instinct.

He was reclining beneath an evergreen, its needles clustered in feathery sprays. He rolled his eyes carefully, looking around.

It was morning. The temperature was cool and balmy. The fresh scent of growing forest filled the air, undercut by the faint odor of running water. Straining his ears, he could hear the thrum of a river, not too distant.

Carefully, quietly, he sat up and took stock of himself.

Male. Swarthy skin, tanned on his arms, deepening to hands that were nut-brown with a reddish tinge. Blunt fingernails, no rings or grooves from rings. Heavy calluses on the palms and, strangely, on the first two knuckles. A leathery pad at the base of the hand, on the side opposite the thumb.

He frowned.

That heavy spot on his wrist blended to a line of toughened skin that extended up his elbow. His veins were thick and his muscles were dense. Coarse black hair ran down his arms, thinning at his rounded shoulders before returning lightly on his back and more heavily on his chest.

Running his hands up his neck, he felt short, thick curls, giving way to weathered baldness. Part of his left ear was missing, sheared off at the very top and matched by a line of scar on the scalp beneath. He was clean-shaven, his cheeks dusted with scars from some youthful pox.

Muscular thighs. More callus on his shins, almost waxy. Gnarled, flat feet that bespoke an entirely shoeless life.

He stood. He’d slept in a linen loincloth, on top of a woolen cloak, its color an undyed gray. Hanging from a broken-off branch, as if from a garment hook, was a plain cotton robe. On the ground, beside the cloak, was a dagger. He gave it a long look, but turned his attention first to the clothes.

He sniffed himself, then the robe. It smelled like him — sweat, campfire, and a hint of incense. He put it back on. A rope belt was under it on the twig. He doubled it around his waist and tied it with the ease of long practice. Only then did he pick up and examine the weapon.

It had a heavy ring on the pommel, a well-used grip and thick quillons nicked and scarred from parried impacts. Unsheathed, the blade was black, smooth, longer than his hand. A diamond-shaped cross section at the handle narrowed to a needle tip. It was slender along its whole length. Its metal was naturally dark, marked with kinked whorls and waves. He touched the edge. It was razor-keen. Tiny scratches and notches on its surface told him that, well maintained as it was, it had seen use. Small grooves on the guard indicated that it was a little worn down from being turned, from grinding against something hard, metal or stone.

This was not a knife for cutting bread. He holstered it at the back of his rope belt.

Leaning against the tree was a plain, straight staff, fire hardened, perhaps six feet long. Beside it lay a leather rucksack, and his heart sped up. He reached, then paused.

He opened it.

Inside he found a loaf of brown bread, six red apples, and a large sausage. These were wrapped in white cloth and he set them aside. A purse beside them held a jangling blend of coins, golden and well worn. He counted out twenty-five, struck in cities all across the Empire.

Beneath the food and money, and wrapped in another cotton robe, was a casket made of silver. Though he had no idea what priceless things he might have owned in the past, he had to think that this outshone them all in its clear, clean luster and intricate, abstract workmanship. It was quite heavy and showed no sign of a latch or keyhole. He shook it and it felt as if something massy shifted within, but there was no sound of a rattle.

For a moment he stared. Then, with a shrug, he put down the casket and went to the river to drink.

# # #

When he returned, he held a wriggling fish in both hands, and its struggles — the soft, wet slaps as its tail struck his forearms, the rasp of scales in his hands, the effort of not letting it squirm free to fall in the dirt — distracted him. It was not until he reached his campsite that he realized a woman was sitting on his cloak, devouring his provisions, and examining his silver casket with a great deal of interest.

He watched her for a moment before she jerked her head up and stared in his direction. She stood.

She was ten feet tall, almost twice his height.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, and bit off about a third of his sausage. Only a tiny end remained.

“There’s little I can do about it,” he replied. To his ears, his voice sounded just right — deep, low, fairly quiet.

“That’s behavior I like,” she said, and smiled. Her plain features were marred by blackened eyes and a smashed nose, with a small smear of blood dried beneath it like a mustache. Her dress had once been lavish, but its brocade was stained from her nosebleed, and its hem was torn and muddy. On each wrist she had a heavy iron manacle, but the chain between them was broken.

“Why don’t you make a fire and cook that fish? The others should be along presently.”

“Do you know who I am?” the man asked, tilting his head in genuine curiosity.

“Should I? But you, little man… do you know me?” She popped the last of his apples into her mouth as if it were a grape.

“I don’t know anyone.”

“I’m Ugmar Thurlby!” she said, spitting out the apple core in his direction. “If you hesitate with that fish you might take its place on the breakfast menu! I’m no great digester of human flesh, but my sister Ognutt is positively mad for man-ham! Lucky for you we’re in a hurry.”

A left-handed toss landed the fish in her lap. A small cracking sound came from the man’s right hand as he clenched it and rotated it on the end of his wrist. “I’ll give you the fish and the gold if you leave the casket and go on your way.”

“You’re bargaining with an empty purse.”

He sighed.

“It seems very likely,” he said, “that I know the Deadly Arts.” He stepped forward, his arms gently forming curves in the air with the pure smoothness of a butterfly fanning its wings.

“You know what I know?!”

With her gesture, a violet bolt flickered from her hand and crashed into his chest with bruising force, but it didn’t stop him. It didn’t even slow him much as he charged forward and leaped into the air. He jerked his right knee up for extra height at the apex of his leap, and then his left foot smashed into her jaw.

Staggering back, she tried to grab him, but he performed a lazy-seeming backflip, somersaulting through the air to land on his feet. His right hand fell on the staff as if he were casually leaning on it to rest.

“I tried to warn you,” he said, dodging a wild punch as she spat words he assumed were oaths. Then the timbre of her voice changed, producing the eerie echoes of enchantment. A sharp, actinic pop flung him backward.

Undaunted, he closed in again, spearing with the end of the staff, stabbing it at her and pulling it back like the flicker of a serpent’s tongue. She pivoted away to the left, then flinched back as it feinted at her face, only to give a full-throated howl when it smashed down onto the top of her foot.

But her flailing arms caught the wooden shaft and jerked her enemy close. With a snarl she raised the weapon up over her head, pulling the wiry fighter up off the ground.

He walked a series of kicks up her body, culminating by wrapping his thighs around her throat and squeezing with face-crimsoning force.

“What? No magic words?” he panted, hanging from the weapon between her hands.

She lurched forward, trying to drive him into the ground, but his legs untwined in a twinkling. Instead of smashing back-first into the turf, his feet came down running and, before she could even think to let go of his stick, he’d pulled her down onto her knees.

He was preparing to feint at her head with a kick, then stab her in the face with the pole, when he heard something behind him.

Specifically, he heard a booming voice say “Ey, ’ave off at our sister then!”

He looked back just in time to see a rock the size of his two fists flying at him with great speed. A gazelle leap backward saved him from the impact and, indeed, left the rock unimpeded on a trajectory right into Ugmar’s stomach.

“Gah!” Ugmar bellowed. “Hetricia, you slattern, you did that on purpose!”

“Didn’t!” replied a higher tenor, but the denial was marred by giggles.

Turning, the man could see a family resemblance between Ugmar and the two newcomers. For one thing, one had manacle chains dangled from her forearms too, but they also had similar faces — broad foreheads, rounded noses, wide-spaced eyes. Hetricia was shorter (merely four feet taller than him), with more refined features and long, glossy auburn hair. The third, whom he guessed to be man-ham fancier Ognutt, was the biggest, and while Hetricia was tittering at her sister’s discomfort, Ognutt’s lumpy visage, ill carved by nature, was convulsed with open hilarity. As he watched, she literally slapped her knee with mirth. She was the one with cuffs still on, and the broken chain between them rattled in counterpoint.

The man looked from Hetricia and Ognutt to Ugmar, and sprang toward the casket. He scooped it up and began sprinting full out as Ugmar shrieked, “Stop him, you fools! Treasure!”

“Ooh, shiny!” From the deep timbre of the words, he knew it was Ognutt chasing him, crashing through the forest on legs as long as he was tall. He didn’t look back, he simply put his head down and ran.

“We don’t have time for this!” came Hetricia’s voice in an exasperated whine. “Those miserable Comet cavalry will be here any minute!”

He dodged left and right at erratic intervals, as if waiting for another rock to fly toward his back. Hearing the nearing noises of pursuit, he planted the pole behind a prominent root and vaulted up onto a low-hanging branch. He rapidly scrambled upward, scarcely slower than he’d run through the brush.

“Dere ’ee is!” cried Ognutt, and he felt the branch beneath him shake as she launched herself into the trunk.

“Drop the silver, little man!” Ugmar was close behind, and with a gesture and a word, another violet bolt surged unerringly into his thigh. He dropped a few feet before catching himself, barely managing to keep hold of his prize.

“I can do this all day!” Ugmar shouted, following it up with another stinging enchanted assault.

“No yuh can’t,” Ognutt replied, “We gotta go ’fore them cavalry get through the woods.”

“Shut up, you imbecile, I’m trying to get him to come down!”

“Listen,” Hetricia called up, her voice dishonestly sweet and bright. “We’re in a touch of a hurry, so why not just drop the chest and we’ll leave you be? Honest, it would be best for everyone!”

Clinging to a branch and unable to ascend further, the man shouted back the most obscene suggestion he could generate, in the circumstances.

For a moment, the sisters were silent, looking up with surprised expressions. Then Ognutt shouldered the tree again while Ugmar used her magic directly on the limb from which he hung. He tried to catch a branch on the way down, but Hetricia had found another rock and she shied it up into his ribs, forcing out a yelp as his property tumbled from his fingers.

Ugmar caught the glimmering prize with a greedy cry, and Ognutt grabbed the plunging man with a similar sound of gladness. He tried to crack his head back into her nose, but she just laughed and bear-hugged him with rib-popping force. When Hetricia stepped forward to grab his legs, he kicked her right at the base of her throat and reared back, but then she had his ankles.

“Ooh, ’ee’s all stringy,” Ognutt said in disappointment as he struggled in her grasp.

“Make him stop squirming!” Hetricia demanded.

Ognutt shifted her grip on his arms and then, with a deceptively small movement, broke both his shoulders.

He screamed, loud enough to send birds flying out of bushes for a great distance around, until Hetricia punched him in the stomach. Then he was too busy gasping and vomiting to shriek any more.

“Kiss your fortune goodbye,” Ugmar said with an evil grin. Then she swung the silver casket into the side of his head and everything went dark.

# # #

The second time he struggled back to consciousness, he was somewhat reassured to find recent memories, at least. The black gulf where his life to that point had once been was still terrifying, but that fear was offset by relief at being alive at all.

“What’s your name, stranger?”

He blinked, and worked his mouth around the strange taste of mint, and astringent, and enchantment. A green and purple flavor. Judging by the way his shoulders had shifted back into place, he’d been fed a healing draught. Nonetheless, his body ached.

“I wish I knew,” he replied, sitting up.

“Easy. You’re still a fair step from full function.”

The voice was a pleasant tenor, and the hands that steadied him were warm, blunt, firm, and strong. Blinking and focussing, he saw the face of a dwarven woman looking at him with concern… and just a shadow of suspicion.

“Did you catch them?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head. “How did you know I was chasing the sisters?”

“They mentioned a cavalry unit in pursuit: your boot-toes are tapered to fit a stirrup, with a heel to catch it.”

“Anyone could wear cavalry boots,” she said, helping him to his feet.

“But the worn streaks on yours show they slide in and out.” He cocked his head. “No spurs though. You must be an exceptional rider.”

“Commander!” cried a voice from the river’s edge. “We found their tracks… they made it to the water.”

“Curses.”

“Can’t you follow them along the shore?” the stranger asked.

She shook her head. “There’s a cliff, and falls, not far downstream. The Thurlby sisters can descend it easily enough, but we’d have to leave our horses, and without mounts they’d easily outpace us.” She stamped her bandy legs in frustration.

“I’m sorry if I delayed you,” the monk said. “But thank you for the gift of healing.”

“Hm? Oh, think nothing of it. I could hardly leave you to die in the forest!”

“Had they not paused to break you, they’d have escaped us in any event,” said a thin human soldier with sallow skin and a curved scar on his cheek.

The monk rubbed his eyes. They cleared a bit more, and he took in more details of the dwarf woman before him: a serious face, two braids the color of wet slate, obsidian eyes taking his measure. Long, thick eyelashes and a plump mouth. She smelled of clean horse, and iron, and oiled leather.

“I really don’t remember anything,” he said. “Anything at all.”

“Not true,” she replied. “Clearly you can talk.”

“I recall how to do things, but not events.”

“Not even your own name?” the scarred soldier asked.

He shook his head.

“Hmph,” the dwarf rubbed her chin. “Well, you can come to the muster house and we’ll see if anyone’s posted a watch-for about you… it’s not likely, most watch-fors are criminals, and people important to wizard-folk…”

“I could be either one of those things,” the stranger said.

“I’m Gruttla Hammerheart,” she said, shaking his hand. “I command a cavalry troop, Roundwell’s Comets. Can you ride, brother mystery?”

“I’ve no idea.”

It turned out he couldn’t.

# # #

It also turned out that the casket and his money were gone. He’d expected nothing less. He shook leaves and specks of bark off his cloak and draped it around his shoulders.

“You’re either a monk or you’re dressed as one,” Gruttla said, looking him up and down.

“I think I am… this ring of hair, the skin under it is pale?”

She leaned in. “Yep.”

“And the top of my head is tanned like my face. So I’ve worn my hair this way for some time.”

“Did your reflection look familiar at least?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure I know what it would feel like, to have a thing be familiar.”

“Probably under a curse,” offered the scar-faced soldier, who’d been introduced as Sergeant Horm. “We could take him to Lyr…”

“Don’t,” Gruttla said in a warning tone. Her eyelids lowered like the head of an angry bull.

Horm raised his hands and looked away, then helped the monk onto a horse.

“I don’t think I’ve ridden one of these before,” he said.

“No, I don’t figure you have,” Gruttla said, critically eyeing his posture and adjusting the stirrups for him. “Well, Rainbow there’s as docile a mount as we have on offer, she’ll follow Brute here if you leave the reins limp… you aren’t to hold them like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, you’re the one who’s going to be sore. Lucky it’s not far.”

# # #

After conferring with Horm and the other soldiers, Gruttla dispatched them in several directions to alert other Imperial units, and to pass on the bad news that the three half-giantesses had escaped. She, she said, would ride back to their own headquarters with the forgotten monk and see what could be learned.

As they rode (as uncomfortably as she’d predicted, despite the flexibility of his hip joints), they settled on the name “Brother Cipher” for him, and she finally asked him about the dagger.

“Is it yours?”

“Er… it was in my possession when I woke up. Why? Do you recognize it?”

The road before them was a narrow dirt track with deep wheel ruts. Even though it was clear and straight, she looked down at it, rather than at him, before saying, “The Crusader’s people bear knives like that. So either you are one, or you were one, or you took it from one.”

“The Crusader?”

That got her eyes back on him.

“You know the icons,” she said, voice flat.

He said nothing. To the left, the forest came up thick and close, dense shrubs with waxy, dark green leaves creeping over the tall grass, arching hemlocks and cedars behind them. To the right, a thorn hedge guarded a tilled field from animal mischief.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I’d like to hear you talk of them.”

She snorted, but complied. “The Crusader styles himself ‘the fist of the Dark Gods’ and this region, the Burnished Prairie, was… good enough, at least when I first arrived. The Thurlby sisters were here, bullying lesser criminals and getting their noses into everything, but it wasn’t worse than elsewhere.

“Then a hellhole opened up — a little hole-poke through to the Abyss, right down there along the banks of the Silverwine river — so there were demons everywhere. Just… you can’t imagine, fire and carnage and the Emperor’s forces were on it pretty quick. But… closing the hole, they couldn’t do it. We had them in a standoff, and then in comes the Crusader and he says he can take care of it, him and his soldiers march on the hellhole and break the demons to saddle, near enough.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

Her lip curled. “Anyone that can make a demon bend knee and cry ‘master’ isn’t someone to trust, even if he saved your farms. He’s real open about the Dark Gods and their plans, or he says he is. Says everything has to be burned down, stripped, swept clean… and then, once we’re all the starving, shackled slaves of his masters, they can start to rebuild the world. If we prove our loyalty and devotion, they will gradually loosen their grasp until we barely even know we’re unhappy.”

“I don’t recall it, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be how he’s been described, to me.” He frowned.

“Well, no, most people haven’t seen his army up close.” Gruttla was warming to her topic, easily keeping a comfortable balance on her horse while gesturing with her right hand. “They haven’t heard one of his little lackeys — and my, does he have an absolute passel of lickspittle officers who can’t say his title without sounding full of admiration! Those fools, they talk about the Great New Order, and how we’re livestock and will be happier with boots on our necks because then things will finally make sense.” She shook her head, voice peculiarly balanced between disgust and incredulity. “And people follow them! There's talk of letting them build their, their fanes and dark temples in the holy city of Santa Cora! People volunteer and line up to devote themselves to these ‘Captains of Evil’, because at least when you’re on the Crusader’s side, you can schedule when you’re going to suffer and know exactly how much. And they don’t like to let people die if they can get something from them. Too many folks are willing to be miserable as long as it’s the misery they know, and that’s what the Crusader promises. Safe, unhappy security.”

They rode on in silence for a moment. They were nearing the outskirts of a small town, and then a green woman burst from the shrubbery at the side of the road.

“Oh officer! Oh, do stop, help, my husband… he is dead!”

CHAPTER TWO

Gruttla reined in her great steed and furrowed her brow. “Nagatia, what happened?”

“I returned home from marketing in Farfield and he… he…” She burst into tears. “He killed himself!”

Gruttla looked at her, then at Cipher.

“I can wait,” the monk said. “I… am in no hurry and going nowhere.”

“I have to inspect any deliberate death… seize and purify any deodands, look for occult symbols…”

They dismounted, and the monk tried to be discreet as he rubbed sensation back into numbing buttocks. He frowned at the green woman’s flowing hair and svelte figure as she led them into a cozy cottage of two rooms.

“I’m… I apologize for…” she stammered at him as Gruttla frowned at the room.

“If anyone needs be sorry, it is I,” the monk said softly. “I would not intrude on your grief.”

Her tears welled up again. Close, he could see that her skin was generally the bright green of a spring leaf, but darker freckles the hue of pine needles were scattered across her nose and cheeks. Awkwardly, he put an arm around her shoulder.

Eventually, she calmed and excused herself and offered tea. The kitchen was detached from the house, to keep it cooler in the summer, and Cipher visibly relaxed when she left.

“Pity you’re getting dragged into this,” Gruttla said, fidgeting. “I joined the army to ride horses and smite a few orcs, not to get involved in people’s private sorrows. Nagatia and Perdu have lived here for decades, he makes tools…”

“I can see that,” Cipher said, glancing over the workbench that occupied most of one wall of the house. “Mostly wooden handles and spinning wheels, I’d say?”

Gruttla shrugged. “Well… on with it.”

She opened the door to the second room. A wide double bed greeted their eyes, its headboard elaborately carved with fruit, grains, trees, and twisting vines. The bedspread was a nice piece of quilting, but the room’s pleasant design only enhanced the horror of the aged form sprawled within. Perdu was in his fifties at least, and he was crumpled against the bed, eyes open, legs splayed on the floor, perfectly still.

“Damn,” Gruttla muttered. In death, the old man had soiled himself. “You don’t have to be here for this, if you want to wait by the horses…”

“No,” Cipher said, “it’s fine.”

Gruttla glanced from the body to him. He didn’t look horrified, but terribly intent.

“I guess you’ve seen the dead before,” she said.

“It seems so. May I…?” he gestured.

She shrugged and he came closer.

“I think I found our deodand,” she said, sniffing at a small, rose-colored bottle next to the bed. “Cackshorn concentrate. Pfaugh, what a stink.”

He was bending over the corpse, frowning.

“Did Perdu seem unhappy?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Old man, steady job, fair wife… but humans often seek out reasons to be miserable in the heart, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“About her… she’s…” Cipher seemed to be struggling to phrase his thought.

“Well, she’s easily as old as he is. Was. I don’t know the whole story, she’s of some lineage… doesn’t show the years, lucky thing. Makes oils to revive weary fields, sells them throughout the district. What are you doing?”

Cipher stood up from a stooped posture, nose inches from the dead man’s chest and mouth.

“Do you see… ah, there it is.” A shelf of small sculptures and a few books occupied a wall beside the bed, and he reached out for a small clay pot with a cork in its wide neck. He opened it and sniffed, nodding. Inside was something thick and gray-green.

“What? That’s… crowroot salve, right?” Gruttla asked.

“Smells like it.” Cipher pointed at Perdu’s chest. Over the topmost pajama button, a thin residue of the same substance was visible. Gruttla frowned.

“Lots of people use crowroot salve,” she said. “Eases congestion, loosens the chestly humors… I’ve used it myself once or twice.”

“And you haven’t killed yourself.”

She put her fists on her hips and gave Cipher a level stare.

“I’ll not have you play the ass with me, stranger. Not over a sad, dead old man.”

“I don’t think he drank the poison,” Cipher said. “Who puts on medicine and then kills himself?”

“Perhaps… he drank it by accident?” She sounded uncertain.

“Did you not say crowroot clears the nose? If he could smell the poison’s stench, could he take it in error?”

“This makes no sense,” she growled.

“None yet.” Cipher paced the room, looking at the body from several angles, then squatted down. “Are you familiar with the venom? You recognized its scent.”

“Cackshorn grows in the forests nearby. People use it on unwanted scavengers, rats and possums.”

“How does it kill?”

“It depends. If a person eats a little of it over days, just illness… stomach wind and bellyache and fever. But this,” she said, picking up the rose-glass bottle, “it’s concentrated. That’s why it makes your nose burn. Even a few drops and you die, fast and hard.”

“Convulsing?” Cipher asked. “He looks like he threw himself out of bed.”

“It does look that way, doesn’t it?”

“It takes effect immediately?”

She shrugged. He squatted down and peered beneath the bed.

“Well?” Gruttla asked.

“Someone swept up recently,” he said, reaching under the bed and revealing a dust-free hand. “Missed this, though.”

Lying in his palm was a shard of clear crystal.

# # #

“Can you think of anyone who’d have a reason to hurt your husband?”

“No!” Nagatia said, her lovely eyes wide. “No, we were both well liked! Why, no one’s said a harsh word to us in years. We’re inside the Repel here, so there’s… there’s really nothing to…”

“The ‘Repel’?” Cipher asked.

“Oh, not long after the hellhole opened up, some wizards set up a ring of warding stones around Belton’s Hill. Demons can’t cross it.”

Cipher glanced at Gruttla as she shifted uncomfortably and looked away, but Nagatia seemed not to notice.

“Did he have anything anyone might covet?” Gruttla said.

“Well… no, honestly. We put most of our money back into the business…”

Cipher and Gruttla exchanged a look.

“Do you really think my husband was murdered?” Nagatia asked, voice low and pleading.

“All I know is that this situation makes little sense,” the monk replied. “Clearly some tragedy is at play, and we have yet to see its full depths.”

After a few more fruitless words of condolence, the dwarf and the man covered the body and carried it outside.

“I would have let you take the ankles,” Gruttla said, idly untangling the mane of her massive black steed. “I can carry a load and my shoulders weren’t broken this day.”

“I wanted to sniff his mouth,” Cipher said. He leaped into the saddle, then winced.

“Gents do say it’s wiser to mount slowly,” Gruttla told him.

“I am pleased to know anything about myself, even that I am no horseman.”

“So what did you smell on his lips?”

“Not cackshorn concentrate, that’s for certain. Who’d have it?”

“Anyone could get the roots, but for the concentrate? The village alchemist. His name’s Amblard.”

# # #

The alchemist’s home was conveniently close, and when asked about cackshorn concentrate, he regretfully said he’d sold his last dram the day before.

“There’s usually little call for it this time of the season. I can start a distillation… mm, I’m using the prime athanor and the secondary would need time to heat up, but tomorrow morning, unless you need a great quantity…”

He was a young man, soft spoken and deferential. He was short and thin, with brown hair and spectacles. He stood behind a sturdy counter. Its top was a slab of granite, stained with the residue of countless potions and elixirs. Shelves behind him held an array of herbs in clay jars, glass bottles of distillates, pestles for grinding, and scales with delicate brass weights. One shelf near the top held small, pink glass bottles.

“Can I ask who bought it?”

“Old Mr. Perdu up the way,” the alchemist said, turning away to return to grinding a fine yellow powder. “Poor fellow’s been under the weather lately…”

“Did he say what he wanted it for?” Gruttla asked, but the monk interrupted.

“I’m sorry, but do you have an outhouse or a chamber pot I could…?”

“Sure,” the young apothecary said, offhandedly gesturing out a side door. “About twenty paces downwind there, just past the midden-heap.” As the monk left, he turned back to Gruttla and said, “I think he mentioned something… but I can’t quite recall it, sorry. You know how it can be, where you pay imperfect attention?” He gave her a wry, conspirator’s look.

She didn’t return it. “When you say he seemed under the weather… were you treating him for anything?”

“Oh, the usual stuff, aches and pains… had a summer cold he couldn’t seem to shake… old man bowels…”

“Is there anyone else to whom you sold the concentrate?”

“Just about anyone who farms or stores grain, at some time or another. Except people who go out and harvest their own, but the concentrate’s better, a lot faster so you don’t have them crawling back into the walls to die and stink up your storeroom…”

“Is the concentrate hard to make?”

He frowned. “Not very hard, no. You’d have to be wary. If you don’t know what you’re about, you can get a dose of fumes, faint away and knock your head.”

“What about wine?” the monk asked, coming back into the shop.

“Mm?”

“In wine. Would wine cover the scent and taste of cackshorn?”

“I… have no idea. Why would you ask?”

Gruttla looked over at Cipher, then back at the alchemist. “Perdu is dead, and we suspect cackshorn poisoning.”

She watched his reaction closely. He paled, stared, then looked away. “Perdu… dead? Are you sure? I mean, he was just… just here. I saw him only the other day!”

“When he bought the concentrate,” the monk prompted.

“Yes, exactly, he must have…” He put his hands to his mouth, eyes getting wide in horror. “Oh, he can’t have. You don’t think he bought…? No, I mean, he was sad but I never thought he’d…”

“Me either, and I never met him.” Cipher’s tone was sharp and hard, and Gruttla twisted her head to look at him. “I think you put it in a bottle of wine and went to see him while his wife was at town.”

“What! I would never… how dare you? Who are you to come in here and accuse me of, of… Perdu was my friend!”

“Then why was the bottle that killed him in your trash pile?” Cipher held up a few clear crystal shards, gripped carefully through his sleeves. “This piece in my left hand was the one you missed in his bedroom. It fits right here. I reckon this part was the bottle neck?”

“No. I don’t know what happened, but I did not kill my neighbor!”

“Stranger,” Gruttla said, “maybe the killer just threw away the bottle on Amblard’s garbage.”

“Those red bottles, those are for dangerous potions? An empty one was found by Perdu’s body, but if he’d poisoned himself he’d have broken it in his convulsions. The way he broke a clear bottle of wine, the one you gave him!”

“Look, I think I see where we’ve become misled,” Amblard said earnestly, reaching below the counter.

“Hands on your head!” Gruttla barked, but the young man had ducked down. Cipher dropped the shards to charge, but a single scrawny hand hurled something in a looping arc into the room and the cavalry woman tried to catch it.

The object was two thin bottles lashed together, and they broke when she caught them. As soon as the essences inside combined, they exploded violently. There was a flash, a crash, and a force like the fall of a mountain.

Brother Cipher didn’t quite fall unconscious, but he was momentarily dazed as he watched Amblard emerge from cover and unsteadily climb up the shelves, pushing aside shattered bottles. At the top, he crawled out through the back wall’s window.

Swearing most foully, and unable to hear his own oaths, Cipher lurched out the side door and around the building’s rear. A steep hill descended toward an edge of light forest, and Amblard was already picking up speed as he ran, but Cipher’s legs reacted with a burst of strength, ignoring the powdering of cuts from the blast, unimpeded by the unfamiliar aches of riding. He was catching up fast, and after a glance over his shoulder, Amblard realized it. He pulled up and, panting, bellowed “STOP!”

In each hand he held a glass jar.

“These are… dragon ichor,” the alchemist panted, eyes wide. “Red and white. You saw... what happened in the shop. That was… thirty grains of each.” He huffed for a few moments, gathering his breath. Seeing that the monk was no closer, he added, “This quantity will leave nothing of us to bury. I don’t care. If I can’t have her…”

“The wife,” the monk said, and edged a step closer.

“STAY BACK! Yes, her! It was all for her! He didn’t make her happy, how could he? There was nothing of him left!”

“You don’t have to do this,” the monk said.

“BUT I WILL!”

For a moment, they stood frozen, each immobilizing the other. Then there was a muffled metallic ‘clang’ from the hill behind the monk. With a shriek, the alchemist spun, blood arcing from one arm, but Cipher had already moved. He sprang, covering the five paces between them in an instant, his whole body curling in midair around the jar in the young man’s left hand. He hit the ground rolling, desperately striving to keep the fragile container intact.

“Next one’s through your head if you try any more nonsense!” Gruttla’s voice was raw and very angry. She was stalking forward with a brass tube held in both hands, aiming down it as if it were a crossbow. Against her shoulder, it ended in a square chunk of yellow metal.

“Don’t let him break the jar!” Cipher shouted, carefully setting his own bottle on the turf. It held something crimson and felt warm even through the glass.

“We’re trying this again,” Gruttla said, now at close range, still aiming her weapon. “Put. Your. Hands. On your head. Or you’ll be fishing for a bolt in your eye-hole.”

# # #

The young man sobbed as Gruttla ordered him onto his stomach and lashed his hands behind his back. When Cipher pointed out that one of her plaits had been singed, she cursed and tightened the bonds until he cried out. She bandaged the bolt wound in Amblard’s shoulder, but was ungentle about it.

“If I’d known I was facing a foe, I’d have worn my helmet,” she said, fuming.

“Are you all right?” Cipher asked.

“Angry more than hurt,” she said, wiping blood from her nose. “A few days’ rest and some strainwort ointment, I’ll be good as new.”

“Does someone besides him sell medicine?”

She sighed. Marching the prisoner to the mounts, she tied his wrists to a ring at the base of her saddle.

“You’re bound by law now, you lascivious wretch,” she told him. “You’ll cool your arse in prison until a knacker-priest comes to call.”

“No!” he cried. “But…!”

“Murder by deception warrants the axe,” she said, gesturing for the monk to take the steed. It was the lighter horse, Rainbow, and Cipher suggested he’d be just as happy leading it.

“Please yourself,” she said, easily mounting her own huge animal. “If he makes a break for it, I’ll mallet his head.” She was manipulating the brass weapon she’d used on his shoulder. As Cipher watched, the tube telescoped into a handle, and the block at the end rotated around to present a hammer face.

“What did you… um, fire at him?” he asked, regarding the device curiously.

“The Weapon That Is All Weapons,” she replied. “That’s its title, in any event. Fourth Age clockwork, family heirloom, magic…” She shifted the weight of the long warhammer easily from one hand to the other. With a few well-practiced twists, the handle shortened, and the head changed position again until she was holding a nicely balanced mace. A soft, mechanical click, and half the haft seemed to dissolve into chain, leaving her swinging a heavy flail. Then with a half twist, a shake, and the press of a button, it was the warhammer again.

“Versatile,” Cipher said.

“Nothing with a blade,” she said, “but there’s a mechanism in there that fires bolts like a heavy crossbow.”

“I’ll be good,” their prisoner said. “Please… if you have any pity, can you get me something for the pain?”

“Could have done, if someone hadn’t turned the local alchemy store into a heap of jangled trash.” With that, she gestured down the road and Cipher started pulling Rainbow forward.

They trudged and rode in silence for a quarter of an hour, before Gruttla said, “Just how long were you planning on murdering your friend, then?”

“Planning?” Amblard said. “I had… the thought for years. I mean, I lived right by her, saw her… nigh daily. Started timing my trips to the stream by what I knew of when she’d fetch water. She favored me, I knew it! She wouldn’t have wanted him to die, she’s too kind for that, but… she’s a young woman, tied to an old man…”

“She’s his same age at least,” Gruttla said. “Her children are close to your age.”

“You lie!”

“You’ve seen how we dwarves age, and the elves,” she said, impatient. “What makes you think a woman green of skin isn’t long-lived as well? It’s really only humans and orc stock that have such brief, mayfly lives.”

“Oh Bright Gods,” the alchemist moaned. “She probably thought I was ridiculous!”

“She may have had a point,” Gruttla replied. “When did you decide to poison him?”

“I… got a glib-tongue potion,” Amblard said, eyes now staring down at Rainbow’s rear hooves. “That was when I realized I could truly… do it. I mean, I’d been thinking about how for so long, but I didn’t think I could lie to her about it. But a draught that makes one a convincing liar! With that, I… I dared.”

“And then you had to use it on us,” Cipher said.

“I got scared,” Amblard whispered.

“Rightly so.” Gruttla’s voice was brisk, and she urged Cipher to hasten his pace.

# # #

When they reached the muster house, Amblard was staggering but seemed numb to his misery. He answered no questions, just trudged, peering at his own feet.

The building was on a promontory outside a pleasant market town, looking over it like a lovably ill-tempered doorman watching a lordling’s children in a courtyard. A square stone wall surrounded it, with each corner holding up a wooden outlook. A bell tolled as Gruttla came into view, and the outpost’s gate creaked open as she neared.

Inside, a mule walked in a circle to fill a cistern by water-screw, the constant trickle a pleasant counterpoint to the clop-clop of the animal’s hooves. Rainbow immediately turned toward a well-tended stable, but a click from Gruttla’s tongue brought the mare up short.

“Who’s this then? Amblard the alchemist?” A lanky woman with pointed ears and green eyes emerged from the two-story fort at the center of the enclosure. Like the soldiers who’d pursued the Thurlby sisters, she wore leather and a breastplate.

“Amblard the murderer, more like,” Gruttla replied, dismounting. “Take him up to the cells, will you?”

“What? No, who’d he kill then?”

“Perdu the tool-maker. Crime of thwarted love.”

“Please, could we…?” Amblard began, but a flick to his ear from Gruttla’s finger ended his plea with a yelp.

“Quiet, you. I’m still in ire about my hair.”

A quick glance from Cipher showed barred windows on the second floor, and a crenellation around the entire top to make its roof a platform for arrow-fire. As they walked to the stable, Gruttla pointed out a horse trough.

“We can drink inside, after them. I’ll have Tark see to the horses… I doubt you know how to tend one.”

Cipher nodded.

“So…” Gruttla continued, “how did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Know all of it! Know that Perdu didn’t die by his own hand, and that he drank poison wine, and that the real bottle was on Amblard’s trash heap?”

The monk shrugged.

“Listen… I don’t know what we may learn of you tomorrow, or what you may recall in time, but you’re penniless and homeless now. Is that fair to say?”

“Most fair,” he agreed.

“I have soldiers under my command, but… their duties are, um, very clear. They are direct implements, if you see what I’m saying. As an officer, I’m very well served, no complaints.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Cipher replied.

“But as a magistrate, I oft have need of…” She shrugged. “I know not what. Something you seem to have, though. Discernment. A hunting mind.”

“Perhaps just a nose to smell ointment on a soiled body?”

She chuckled, but her eyes were serious. “Magistrates can deputize people to help maintain order. It’s no official position, just a personal assistant, like hiring a butler or groom. I… don’t have a deputy right now. The pay is one gold coin of Axis per day, a berth in the barracks, and dinner with the soldiers. Everything could change with a sunset…”

“Spoken in sooth,” the monk chuckled. “By morning, we could learn that I’m a wanted man.”

“But assuming it doesn’t, shall we consider it? You seem to have the skills for it.”

He looked her up and down, then nodded.

“Aye.”

# # #

Dinner was beef stew, black bread, and bad news.

“No tell of the sisters,” Horm said, jabbing at the dregs of his meal as though his plate had let the prisoners escape.

“They’ll be well aground now,” said the pointy-eared woman, whose name was Mursei. Her hands had archer’s calluses and her walk bespoke a life in the saddle. “Tomorrow we can roust the gamble-shack and ask at Pibor’s distillery, but they’d be fools to go there directly.”

“At least Ugmar will have to get her reagents and magical whatnot back into shape before working anything of note. Lyridel saw to that,” said a young man with a blond beard. This was Tark.

“Lyridel?” Cipher asked, voice quiet. “Why do you look to the commander when you speak that name?”

A wary glance traveled around the table. The bearded youth lowered his voice and said, “Ask when we're alone.”

Cipher nodded, eyes neutral.

“So, stranger,” Tark continued at natural volume. “I hear you acquitted yourself well against the sisters, and armed with no more than a looped dagger.”

“I don’t know how well I did,” Cipher said, reaching past the ale for the water jug. “They ate my breakfast, took my goods, and broke my shoulders. If that’s a victory, I’d hate to see a loss.”

“Aye, you would,” Horm said. “Had you lost, you’d be halfway through Ognutt’s belly by now.”

“In sooth?” Cipher drank, then wiped his mouth. “I’d thought the wizarding one just said that to scare me.”

Mursei shook her head. “I’ve seen too many gnawed bones and known too many who took a bite to the thighs by that great monster.”

“Yet if death offered me one taking for free, I’d spend it on Hetricia,” Sergeant Horm said.

“Indeed?” Cipher asked. “Over the cannibal and the enchanter?”

“Ognutt you hear coming,” Horm said, “and Ugmar can only cast her weaker spells without her wand and her toad-eyes and… accoutrements. Hetricia though, she’s a shapeshifter. Anyone you don’t know could come all tall and tricksome as soon as you turn your back.”

“That’s who’s going to be slipping into and out of town,” Tark said.

“If they stay about,” Mursei said. “Who’s to say they won’t decamp for Shadow Port or Drakkenhall?”

“Start all over? Nay.” Horm topped off his ale cup and filled Mursei’s at her gesture. “They have friends here, and hiding places, and debtors. They’ll stay on this land until they’re buried under it, I’d wager my toe on it.”

“Wouldn’t the magic on the town keep them out?” Cipher asked. “The… um, Repel?”

“That’s for demons only, more’s the pity. Crooks, goblins, servants of the Dark Gods, madmen, fools, and biting flies? All such pestilences can pass the stones as they please.”

“Hm.” Cipher sat back from the table and adjusted the rope across his stomach. “How long have the sisters been troubling this region, then?”

“Since before any of us got stationed here,” Mursei said.

“They’re pure local,” Horm told him. “Mother was some kind of regional witch, or enchantress, or sorceress. Mad as snowfall in a hat, too. I don’t know what kind of woman conceives a grand passion for a hill giant…”

“I heard it was a stone giant,” Tark said. Horm made an irritated gesture, like waving off a fly, and continued.

“Whatever giant it was, she had some kind of size-changing device, or spell, or… implement. So she used that to… conduct her seduction.” His lip curled.

“I expect the townsfolk found this disagreeable,” Cipher said.

“Dunno.” The blond soldier wiped his beard with the back of his hand and said, “Maybe the villagers were happy the giants were distracted.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Mursei said, and rapped him on the back of the head with her knuckle.

“The mum was a proper crazy witch-o-the-woods and the daughters are just worse,” Horm said. “Started with banditry when they were barely six feet tall and gradually every other miscreant in the region either got killed, knuckled under, departed, or died of miscellaneous causes.” His scar compressed with a smile that never reached his eyes. “They were sitting pretty, crime princesses for a year or two, before the hellhole gaped wide.”

At that moment, the dining hall door slammed open and a tall man with broad shoulders and extraordinary white teeth stormed in.

“How in all hells did the Thurlby sisters escape?” he demanded.

Along Cipher’s bench, everyone’s shoulders dropped an inch or two.

“Meet Sergeant Dovestrom,” Mursei whispered to Cipher.

“He did ask the question I was wondering,” the monk murmured back, watching curiously as Dovestrom stomped over to Gruttla’s lone table and dropped a hand onto it hard. Her ale mug, crafted from the dome of an ogre’s skull, jumped and sent a tongue of foam down its side.

“Compose yourself, Sergeant,” she said, without standing.

He reared back to his full height, turning crimson.

“We chased them for years,” he said through clenched teeth. “How…?”

“Do you suppose it was carelessness?” Gruttla asked, looking levelly up at him. “Horm nearly perished before we could get a potion down his throat, and Tark’s horse had to be put down.”

“But… you had them manacled! You had them on neck poles and…”

“There was an ambush,” she said calmly. “Farnbarr’s sons. They’ll do no more bidding of the sisters, nor of their old man either.”

Realizing the gravity of the struggle, Dovestrom took a step back and sank into a chair. “Was anyone else injured? Where’s Lyridel?”

“Lyridel chose not to accompany us.” Gruttla looked down at her plate, trimmed a line of fat off her pork chop, and ate it.

“What do you mean chose…?”

“The elf’s duties were not as yours, nor did they extend to prisoner transport. Our… association was always a voluntary one. Lyridel, in this instance, saw greater profit in other tasks.”

Her voice remained calm throughout, but Cipher could see how tightly she was gripping her knife and fork.

“She was in on it,” Dovestrom said. “I don’t believe it, but… I can’t bring myself to disbelieve it either.”

Gruttla stood at that, eyes flashing. “Perhaps a week on prisoner rations can bring about your disbelief! I’m as angry as anyone that we lacked magical reserves, but there is no evidence to ground your accusation!”

“You have to admit, the timing is awfully suspicious.”

“Lyridel would never collude with Farnbarr’s get, nor would they be fool enough to suggest it. I daresay my old deputy will know great anger and regret for failing to contribute to their deaths.”

“Probably had a fit of hot dice,” Tark muttered. Horm nodded.

“I misspoke in anger, Commander,” Dovestrom said. “I beg your pardon, pray.”

“You have it for the asking, in the form of prison rations for two days only.”

He opened, then closed his mouth and went to sit heavily at the table with the troops. Gruttla returned to her dinner after a deep quaff at her tankard.

# # #

“Lyridel was Gruttla’s last deputy, then?” Cipher asked Tark as the soldier led him to the empty bunk under his own. There were twenty-four beds in two ranks, and theirs was closest to the door, farthest from the fireplace.

“A wizard,” Tark replied.

“Ah.”

“They’re not known as mighty respecters of orders and authority.” The bed was a wooden frame, strung with a web of ropes. “And, well, Lyridel has a weakness for cards and dice.” Tark fussed with a rush-stuffed mattress and showed Cipher a battered footlocker. The monk’s empty bag and unused cloak looked woefully small in its corners.

“Who are you, then?”

Cipher turned to see Sergeant Dovestrom before them, hands on hips.

“Would that I knew, sir,” Cipher said. “Or is it ‘your excellence’? Among my other lacks, I’m unclear how to address a duke, or earl, or baron, and I don’t know which you are.”

Dovestrom squinted at Tark, who held up his palms. “I said nothing.”

“I guessed,” Cipher said. “By your teeth.”

“My teeth,” Dovestrom repeated.

“Most present and clean,” Cipher said, stepping closer and looking up at the taller man. “So you ate much meat in your youth. But your skin shows none of the wear of the outdoor hunter, not like Mursei. So either merchant or nobleman, and merchants don’t wear signet rings.”

“I am an heir of Wheatgirt, but as long as I serve, you can call me Sergeant. That’s honor enough. And you? No titles?”

Cipher’s dry grin was snaggle-toothed. “I have the mouth of a pauper.”

“And recall no childhood?”

“No, none.”

“Hm! It seems you are a perfect fool then.” The sergeant took a slow half step forward, as if idly.

“Judged by the company I’m keeping, maybe so. But my forgetting is real.”

The saber at Dovestrom’s hip had a clean, efficient design and no excess decorations, but was clearly of superior manufacture. The nobleman’s hand fell on it with familiar comfort.

“You claim to be adept in the Deadly Arts?” he asked.

“I claim nothing.”

Dovestrom’s nostrils flared and Tark looked uneasily between the two men. They were now decidedly close, the narrowing space between them unfriendly.

“Should I make a fire, sir?” Tark asked. “I could kindle one and take the brother out for more wood…”

“Fetch wood on your own,” Dovestrom said, never looking away from Cipher. “I think I’ll evaluate our guest’s skill at arms. Unless you’re disinclined?”

“No, I’m as curious as you.” A soft crackle arose as Cipher clenched a fist and twisted it at his arm’s end.

# # #

The sun was low in the sky as they left the watch house palisade. Cipher had a wooden practice sword from a rack in the common room. The sergeant took a more detailed replica from the box at the foot of his bunk.

“Is that balanced like your real sword?” Cipher asked as they walked. “It hangs the same.”

“A gift,” he said. “Made from southern shred-bark… it’s what the black desert tribes use for their lances. They call the trees ‘the axe-breaker’.”

“Whereas this is… local?” Cipher made a few experimental stabs.

“Hm, a saber doesn’t stab like a straight sword,” Dovestrom said with a small grin. “It’s for slashing and cutting. Hence the curve.”

“Noted.”

Behind them walked a small cluster of soldiers, including Mursei and Horm.

“We can trade, if you think it’s an unfair advantage,” Dovestrom added.

“I have no basis to guess who has the advantage.”

“Remember he survived an encounter with a hungry Ognutt,” Horm called.

“So he says,” Dovestrom replied, then turned back to Cipher. “Would you be more comfortable with a dagger, perhaps? We could use that black one you have. Just bind it in its sheath so that you don’t stab me… by accident.”

“I would never stab you unless I intended to, Sergeant.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. I hear those Crusader knives are sharp and strong, but I’ve never had the chance to try one. How did you…? But of course, you conveniently don’t remember.”

“I don’t find it convenient.”

They reached a flat patch of open grass.

“Right,” Horm said, stepping between them. “Two hits of three, start at five paces. You want to start sheathed or drawn?”

“I’ll defer to the sergeant,” Cipher said.

“Sheathed then?” Dovestrom asked.

“Like nobles, I suppose.”

“I just feel you can get a glimpse into a man’s character, that moment when he’s struggling for the moment’s advantage.”

“Get on with it,” Horm snapped, positioning them and stepping back. “On my word.”

Both put hands on hilts. Each had one foot forward, poised.

“Go.”

The pair swept forward, like water to the bottom of a dry streambed when the rains come. Dovestrom’s wooden blade cleared its sheath in an instant, but Cipher left his in his belt. Instead, his empty hands snapped forward, clenching into twin fists just as they struck the side of the mock sword slashing viciously into his side.

He uttered a cry that seemed loud and sharp enough to break the world, and Dovestrom was holding a hilt with splintered shards of wood in it.

“Halt!” Horm called.

The two fighters stared, and then Cipher stepped back. It looked easy and casual, but he cleared ten feet in an eyeblink.

“Clearly that hit goes to you,” Cipher said, in a calm voice crueler than any mockery.

“You…!”

“’Twas your blade that struck my flesh, I admit it. Though apparently your replica got the worse of it.”

“Again!” Dovestrom snarled.

“Careful. Your visage is true crimson, I’d hate to have you fight at the disadvantage of apoplexy.”

“Easy,” Horm said, spearing the monk with a glare.

“Let’s try that exchange you mentioned earlier,” Cipher said, pulling out his own wooden sword and tossing it to the nobleman. “Sword on dagger. Perhaps I’ll avoid a touch in that crossing. We can start with blades out. Like commoners.”

With an oath, Dovestrom charged. Cipher gave way, blocking with his sheathed dagger. Dovestrom recovered quickly and slashed again, more reserved but just as intent. This time the monk blended with the movement. Dovestrom tried to sidestep, to create the space where his weapon would be unbound and work to his advantage, but as soon as his weight came off his close foot, Cipher kicked it out and the officer crashed to the ground.

“Wait, dammit!” Horm barked.

Cipher backed off, again moving smoothly and with perfect composure. Dovestrom, to his credit, regained his feet quickly, though with less grace.

“Does a knockdown count as a touch for me?” Cipher asked. “Are we tied?”

“You’re good, I’ll admit that,” Dovestrom said, panting.

“Possibly just lucky. Especially since that crude wooden cudgel isn’t balanced like your fine saber.”

“Fists then,” Dovestrom said.

Cipher raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

“Wait, both of you,” Horm said, giving each a glare. Then he went over to Cipher.

“Don’t humiliate him,” he said, voice low. “He’s a man who wears his cruelties on a banner and hides his virtues close, but the virtues are there. You’ll win no friends or admirers by breaking his bones.”

“We’re just having a simple match so he can gauge my skill.”

“If you believe that, you truly are head-touched.”

Then Horm crossed the field and spoke with the other sergeant. Cipher couldn’t hear them over the surge of his heightened pulse, but he put no effort into catching the words. Instead he concentrated on stilling his breath, keeping his body supple and ready.

When Horm had backed away from Dovestrom, the pair again took their positions ten paces apart. Now Cipher stood with one hand high and one low, weight back on his left foot and his right leg poised to strike. Dovestrom crouched, hands raised in the guard position of a cestus gladiator. He shuffled forward, head down, jaw clenched.

Cipher flicked out his forehand, and Dovestrom twitched back, but immediately adjusted and closed. The monk’s forward leg snapped out in a quick, easy kick, but Dovestrom raised his own shin to block it, wincing at the impact and staggering as he came down, but still advancing, now starting to swing. A flurry of blows was exchanged, with Cipher flowing and dodging while Dovestrom blocked with grunts.

Horm, eyes keen, watched, but called a palpable hit for neither one.

Dovestrom, bigger and with greater reach, kept the monk back but couldn’t seem to land a jab or round swing. The monk darted in, back, never quite making a solid strike, and then as one they both seemed to decide on a clinch. Their arms entwined, they tilted one way, then the other, and it seemed that the larger man would overpower the monk and bear him to the ground. Then, with a move that looked deceptively easy, Cipher twined his legs around Dovestrom’s thigh and rolled onto the turf, his weight sweeping across the hinge of Dovestrom’s knee and sending the sergeant sprawling. In a trice, Cipher rolled on top and laced his hands into the nobleman’s shirt collar.

“I think you’re a bully,” Cipher whispered into Dovestrom’s ear. “I think you like being stronger than others, making them submit, breaking them to your will. I think that is your joy.”

The other man couldn’t reply. He was being strangled. He clutched at Cipher’s hands, but he could no more break their grip than he could pulverize stones with his fingertips. He tried to fling the smaller man off him, but Cipher was like a limpet, seeming to easily guess Dovestrom’s every twist and desperate turn.

“Halt!” Horm cried, then lunged in to seize the monk around the ribs and pull him back. Cipher released his hold so easily that Horm tumbled backward, sitting heavily and then flopping to the turf, while Cipher did a tidy back somersault and got to his feet.

“You’re right. It is a joy.” He said it loud enough for everyone to hear.

He wasn’t even breathing hard.

# # #

Cipher walked away then, into the woods and through them, until he came to a hill. There, he sat and stared at the sky.

He could remember things to do, things with his hands and his feet, things with a knife. But there was something else, something he knew how to do with his thoughts.

He stared at the sky, and through it, and calmed himself. His heartbeat began to slow.

The mastery of the body by the mind was the first step to mastery of the mind by the soul. He didn’t remember learning this, but he knew it. His breathing became gentler, shallower. Something had altered his mind, some demon or god or sorcery, but he was more than his mind and his reflexes. He breathed in only a tiny sip of air, stilling the body, letting the spirit rise.

What was the shape of his mind? What was the mask, behind which his past hid? Words would not help him here. He let his heartbeat weaken, his mind pass from thought to dream to dreamlessness, probing for what had been taken. If his memories were gone, perhaps he could find the shape of the hole they had left.

His breath was nearly still. His heart had nearly stopped.

There had been a city, proud and rich, and he traveled through it with the monks. A boy joined them there, younger than him. Soft. He had some fat on him, clear brown eyes, skin unmarked by the sun. His fingernails were perfect, and so were his teeth.

His heart was still for some time, before giving one more lazy pulse.

“You’re exactly the kind of person who is best to rob,” he said to the soft boy, who just looked back, eyes wide and afraid. He looked at everything that way, except the master, who did not wish for his fear. If the master smiled at you, it was almost impossible to resist smiling in return. All the monks around him bent to his moods and will, but not the soft boy and the lean one. They were not monks yet.

“I am going to name you Escape,” the abbot told the new child during the ceremony where his thick chestnut hair was shorn off and he exchanged his rich brocade clothing for a simple robe. What had the abbot named him?

His breath would not have made a single blade of grass flutter.

They had called him ‘The Master’s Project’, and later, at a dinner of simple, wholesome foods, he had demanded to know why ‘Escape’ was crying.

“I miss my parents,” the boy said.

“I never had parents,” the Master’s Project boasted. “They call me ‘Project’ but my name is really .”

“You’re no elf. Why is your name the Elven word for ‘Tool of Dishonor’?”

“That’s not what it means! It’s their word for ‘Weapon’!”

“Yes, but a specific kind,” Escape said. “Didn’t they make you study ? There it meant something like… mm… ‘The Weapon to Discard’ or ‘The Knife That Only Strikes the Back’?”

“I’m going to eat your dinner,” Project said, grabbing the other boy’s plate.

“I’m not hungry anyway,” he sighed.

At some level, down below words, he faced a choice: to learn more, or to restart his heart.

# # #

Later, after full night had fallen, Mursei found him on the hill, a mile from the muster house, lying on his back and staring up at the sky.

“Cipher?” she said.

“Who else would be at the end of my trail?” he asked.

“Never can tell.” She emerged from the undergrowth. “Some of the soldiers are talking about your dagger. Dovestrom still thinks it’s suspicious that you were there right after the sisters escaped.”

“Ask your commander about my broken shoulders,” he said. “What fool would trust those monsters to wound and not kill?”

She sat next to him.

“The Crusader has people on edge,” she said, looking down at his face. “Dovestrom especially. He thinks the Crusader wants to supplant the Emperor. He’s probably right, unless it’s worse.”

“Then why does the Emperor tolerate him?”

“What choice is there? Hellholes are speckling the country. The stories about orcs of the north don’t inspire optimism. So far, anyhow, the Crusader has only acted against demons. No one can fault that. No one who’s seen one, anyhow.”

Cipher said nothing.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Meditating.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

She lay beside him.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“Please, you took no pains to hide your trail.”

“Does a barefoot man normally need hide his trail at night?”

“If he wants to hide from me he does,” she said. “Are you watching the stars?”

“I’m looking at the void between them.”

“Why?”

“Meditation,” he said, “is meant to clear the mind. Empty it.”

“I thought that was entirely your problem,” she said. “No offense.”

“None taken. But for all my forgetting, there’s still a ‘me’ who forgot. That’s what I want to be rid of.”

“But why? What’s so offensive about your… ‘you’?”

“It’s not offensive, it’s just a barrier. It hides the real.”

“Without a ‘you’ in you, what good is the real to you?”

For a while, they sat and stared in silence, one watching the stars, one watching the dark.

“Meditation is meant to clear away distractions like unhappiness and confusion and easy assumptions,” he said. “When you go to track, is it not easier if you don’t already think you know where your quarry is going?”

“No, I want to know where they’re headed,” she said. “Then I know where to start looking.”

“You would probably make a poor monk.”

They were silent for a while more.

“They say the Crusader has monks,” she said. “Or… there are rumors. Worshippers of the Dark Gods, tucked away in mountains to train. To empty themselves so that only the will of their masters remains.”

“That could be me,” he said.

“If so, what happened to your memory? You weren’t struck on the head,” she said.

“Maybe I’m lying. Servants of the Dark aren’t known for their honesty.”

“Don’t joke about such things.”

“But how do you know if I’m telling the truth?”

“I guess I’ll have to watch you,” she said. “Are you done meditating?”

“I think so.”

“You’ve figured it out?”

“Meditation isn’t about quieting questions by finding answers. It’s about quieting questions by ignoring answers.”

“Why would you ignore answers?”

“Men are flawed,” he said. “Our questions are flawed and therefore our answers are always false, at least a little bit. Meditation is meant to subsume me before the unknowable… if only for a while. Because, after all, to cease to be imperfect is to cease to be mortal.”

“Doesn’t sound like so bad a deal, if we’re all broken.”

“I meditate to forget my wounds for a while, my errors and absences. The more often I do it, the more quickly I can set aside doubts and fears and distractions. Some can do it in an eyeblink…”

“Then what?”

“Perfect action… walking on fire as if it were cool earth… knowing the enemy’s attack before the enemy even decides… striking with the swift sureness that shatters stone… all manner of things. Surely you’ve heard of warrior monks and their miracles?”

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about a lot of things,” she said, standing. “So much I don’t need meditation to rinse them out. Shall we go?”

“Let’s,” he said, taking her hand and pulling himself to his feet. “I wasn’t entirely sure how to find my way back.”

# # #

Back at the muster house, Cipher saw that most of the bunks were empty.

“You’re on no duty,” she said, “but I recommend you get some rest. Tomorrow, if you act as deputy, you’ll see some toil indeed.”

“Oh?”

“Tonight she rides with Dovestrom and half our strength to rouse old Farnbarr and tell him his sons’ fates. There’s no love between that old sorcerer and the Emperor’s law.”

“Sorcerer?”

“They say he was fed dragon blood in his youth, that he might grow strong with magic. He’s a wild one.”

“And his sons? They had some conflict with… Lyridel, the old deputy?”

“That’s a tale too long for bedtime, and not mine to tell. Get some rest.”

# # #

He woke up tumbling, rolling out sideways and pivoting to his feet. Before his eyes and mind had cleared, he’d automatically wound his blanket around his arm as a makeshift shield and taken a fighting stance.

Horm, arm raised, looked nonplussed.

“I was about to wake you,” he said.

“Ah.” Cipher straightened up and uncoiled the blanket onto the bed.

“Next time, I think I’ll just call out.”

“Perhaps that’s best.”

“Were you asleep? I mean, soundly out?” The sergeant’s head was quizzically tilted.

“I, uh, was, yes.”

“Then how did you know I was about to touch your shoulder?”

“I could not say, sir.”

“You needn’t call me sir, ‘Horm’ is well sufficient. Breakfast mash awaits. I let you sleep in a bit.”

“Thanks.” Cipher hurriedly washed his face and put on his only other robe.

He was facing a bowl of cornmeal muck and a mug of hot, bitter tea when Gruttla trudged into the hall, eyes bagged with weariness and hair plastered down with sweat. She was still in her armor.

“No breakfast ale today,” Gruttla said to the table attendant. “Tea only.”

Surprised, the servant nodded and cleared off the commander’s morning mug (crafted from a goblin skull instead of the full-sized ogre-skull dinner goblet), then hustled off to fetch provender. As other weary soldiers began to enter and eat, Cipher asked what had happened with the sorcerer.

“Fled,” Tark said, disgusted. “We’ll be watching our back for that one.”

On her way out of the dining hall, Gruttla paused by their table and blinked slowly at Cipher.

“No word on you yet,” she said. “And I’m for a lie down before I fall down. You… um, you’re at your leisure.”

“Very good,” Cipher muttered in response. “I hope you sleep well.”

She smiled back. “Exhaustion’s no exciting bedmate, but it is a comfortable one.”

# # #

Horm found him an hour later, hanging a freshly laundered robe on the line beside two dripping loincloths.

“How are your shoulders?” the sergeant asked.

“Stiff, but on the mend.”

“Aye, those potions,” Horm said, idly glancing over toward the stables. “You’d think they could take all the pain, as well. Like a holy touch.”

“I suppose that’s the difference between the medicine of the gods and the medicines of mortals.”

“You a godly man then, brother?”

“It would seem so,” Cipher said, indicating his tonsure.

“Surely you know by your heart more than your hair?”

“Wish it were so.”

“I respect gods as much as is respectable,” Horm said with no irony. “The Bright ones anyhow.”

“Of course.”

“But I can’t have with all that praising all day and night. If they’re so great and I’m so wee, why would they care aught for my admiration?”

“One argument is that worshipping them helps them not at all, but burnishes the soul of him that prays,” Cipher said, falling in with Horm as the sergeant began to walk.

“Hmph. I’d rather burnish my soul with deeds, and leave the pestering of heaven to prettier voices. You want to see our prison?”

Cipher had already familiarized himself with the guard towers, the armory, and the farriers, but now (apparently) the Comets trusted him enough to take him to the heart of the muster house.

“Coming up!” Horm called, and was rewarded by footsteps as another armed guard — this one with a crossbow — came down to unlock the metal bars between the lower level and the jail.

“There’s a variety of keys for the top and bottom, you’ll learn who has what when the time comes. Mostly, we’re trying to keep the prisoners close and contained.” The steps were so narrow that they had to squeeze past the guard chest to chest. There was a right turn halfway up, and a stout partition with a small bench behind it.

“How goes the watch?” Horm asked the guard.

“All quiet, save for the weeping.” As he mentioned it, Cipher started to hear a muffled, heartbroken chirp.

After opening another fortified grating at the top, Cipher and Horm entered a narrow passage between eight cells.

“Prisoners usually get a room to themselves… we only hold those whose crimes are serious enough that Gruttla can’t send them off with a fine and a flog,” Horm said. “With your catch yesterday, we hold four testing the patience of the Emperor’s axe.”

The first cell on the left was empty. A thin horizontal window gave its only light, about six feet above the floor. The outside wall was thick wood, while mortared stone separated it from the next enclosure. The mattress was the same type Cipher had.

On the right, an identical room held Amblard the alchemist. He was curled in the corner, the source of the sobbing.

“What ho, Amblard?” Horm said, but got no answer.

“Can you not stop his pitiful mewling?” came a rough voice from the other side of Amblard’s stone wall. Stepping closer, Cipher saw a man of the north, pale and muscular and wreathed in veins. His arms looked like maps of deltas, only each stream was the scar of a defensive wound. His hands were as marked and gnarled, and his face… it had been handsome once, but now looked as if the skull had been smashed and reassembled a little crooked.

“I thought weeping was music to your tribe, Karvak,” Horm said, and Cipher noticed the sergeant didn’t get too close to the bars.

“Only the tears of foemen and goblins,” Karvak said, contemptuously. “Were it you sobbing like a child, that would please me.”

Horm laughed, then turned to Cipher. “Karvak here had a falling-out in Pibor’s and punched a man right into death with one strike.”

Karvak gave a dismissive snort. “He was a city man, unweathered and fine. I could have laughed him to death. Who is this one beside you?”

“We don’t know,” Horm said. “Do you recognize him?”

“He stinks not of horse-flesh and looks like he could deal a blow worth the name. What is your name and your father’s name, stranger?”

Cipher shrugged.

Karvak seemed to approve. “You’re not of the north, but you keep your name close. That’s wise. Stay out of my path and I’ll work you no ill.”

“Thank you,” Cipher said.

Horm’s aspect lightened as they moved along to the next prisoner, a tidy gnome with a silvered beard and ponytail. He was blowing on a hollowed-out pork bone and, as they watched, he cocked his head and ground the bone against the stone wall for five or six vigorous strokes. Then he blew it again.

“Sergeant Horm,” he said, in a mellow tenor. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Berry here is the most skilled thief in the county,” Horm said.

“Patently untrue!” Berry said. “If I were a thief, which I shall deny until my final breath, modesty would still compel me to defy your statement.” A small pile of pork ribs of varying lengths lay at his feet, lined up like a panpipe. He tooted one, nodded, and replaced it. “For even had I committed all the thefts that have been calumniously laid at my feet, I am still moldering here. A truly skilled thief would avoid persecution and, indeed, all suspicion!”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Horm warned. “He could steal the beard off a dwarven wizard.”

The prisoner, in reply, blew each pipe in turn and then set them gently aside.

“Where’d you get the bones, Berry?”

“Would you believe I found them in my pallet?” he said. “Truly remarkable! I wondered what it might be that was poking my nethers and, behold, the remnants of someone’s midnight rib snack.” He held up his hands, eloquently suggesting amazement at the absurdities of the world.

“That’s contraband, you know,” Horm said, hands on hips.

“Oh, let the runtling have his whistle!” Karvak cried. “If for naught else than to drown out the maundering snivels from my other side!”

“Watch this one closely,” Horm told Cipher. “This is not his first durance here. He’s the reason our guests have a guard at the stair-turn all day and night through.”

“It is the imperative of mortal life to seek freedom,” Berry intoned. “One cannot blame prisoners for seeking unshacklement. It’s a fundamental principle of Imperial justice.”

“But not of the Dark Gods,” Horm said, and his scar made his smile look, briefly, malevolent. “Berry claims to have escaped from Rivernaught as well.”

“Do you see how eagerly he impugns my honesty?” Berry cried to Cipher. “Were not these bars between us, Horm, I’d strike you with a glove and demand the satisfaction of a duel, if I had a glove.”

“No escaping, Berry. If we catch you at it, we might just give you back to Rivernaught.”

The bantering brightness dropped, slowly, off the gnome’s face, and for just a moment his eyes were hard.

“You wrong me.” His voice was quiet. “Now pardon me, these pipes won’t bind themselves.” He began to pick at loose threads on his trousers, pulling them out and laying them neatly aside.

“What is Rivernaught?” Cipher whispered to Horm.

“The Crusader’s local fort,” the soldier replied. “Now watch yourself with this next one, she’s foul.”

As soon as they stepped into view, the fourth cell’s chamber pot flew against the bars with a clatter.

“Devils eat your eyes, old hag!” Karvak cried. “Those have lids for a reason! We’ll smell it all the night!”

“Better than your man-reek, northern wretch!” a high, grating voice replied. A tiny woman in a filthy black dress rushed the bars and spat at her captors, giving Cipher a glance at one mad blue eye and one dry socket. Her hair was wild and graying, falling in her face, and her teeth were as filthy and twisted as the perverse suggestions she spewed at Cipher, at Horm, and at Karvak.

“Our mad madame necromancer, Figlit,” Horm said. “Imprisoned for crimes against the hereafter.”

“The Dead King will gnaw your souls!” she screamed at them. “I am a bride of the grave! Your disrespect shall be expiated thousandfold!”

“Cease your prattle!” Karvak bellowed.

“I am beloved by the Lord of the Crypt, I am his implement, I was forged in the icy flames of…”

“Ugh, ask him why he put your head right at kicking height then,” Horm said, rattling her bars. “Come, let’s depart,” he said to Cipher, raising his voice to add “out into the sunshine and open air where we may wander at our will.”

This provoked a chorus of curses from Karvak and Figlit, and more sobs from Amblard. Horm only paused once, outside Berry’s cell.

“Do not let her touch those bones,” he said.

“I’m no fool,” Berry replied.

# # #

The next day, the Imperial Post rider came to the town of Belton’s Hill, and Dovestrom told Cipher he was going to come along to fetch it.

“Perhaps someone in the town knows your face,” Dovestrom said. “Or mayhap it will appear on the new watch-for pages.”

Dovestrom’s eyes were narrow at first, as he watched Cipher try to saddle a horse, then started rolling.

“Cinch the girth thus, you truly are ignorant of the mounted arts.”

“A little less so now, I hope,” Cipher said through gritted teeth.

“Hmph. If you’re to stay with us, study quickly.” For all his impatience, Dovestrom explained what he was doing and why, as he fitted the bit and adjusted the stirrups. “You’ve strong arms — well I know it! — but use no force on the reins. Steadiness, ease… these are the marks of a good rider.”

The monk made an effort to relax himself into the saddle, but discomfort still showed in his posture as Dovestrom had him take the lead down the road.

“Brought your knife, did you?” Dovestrom said, seeing it poking from the back of Cipher’s rope belt.

“I might have to open a knotted sack.”

“Hah!” Dovestrom gave a light tap with his heels and caught up. “We’re coming to a flat stretch of road, let’s put you in a gallop.”

“Please no.”

“We’ll be all day at this rate, take her up to a trot at least.”

Under Dovestrom’s instruction, Cipher urged the horse forward.

“Stand up in the stirrups, just a bit, cushion the beats with your knees!” Dovestrom called, and Cipher obeyed. “All right, gently pull back on the reins… good. We’ll go along this turn here at a walk. What did you think?”

“I feel bad for the horse and worse for myself,” Cipher grumbled.

“Well, you’re hardly dressed for mounting,” Dovestrom admitted. “In town, we’ll fetch you something more proper to wear.”

“I’ve no money to pay for it,” Cipher said.

“Mph. I have.”

# # #

Cipher looked at the pages delivered for the muster house from every end of the Empire, slowly sounding out the words on them.

“Dur… rand… Elf… ins… peety?”

“Durand Elfinspite,” Dovestrom said. “Not you.”

The pages from the dwarves were stark white, pulped from tree roots underground, smelling vaguely of mushrooms and the coal and rust used in the ink. They were struck through some mechanical press, names and crimes spelled out in rigid, repetitive runes. The notes from the men of the surface bore portraits of pirates, death-cultists, and false-wivers, painted in sepia by oracular artists whose brushes were enchanted to move a thousand others in mimicry, creating multiple copies on yellower papyrus held steady (with general success) by legions of scribes, who then hand-lettered the deeds and aliases, the rewards, and identifying marks. As for the posters from the elves, they were made by painting and writing on a single plane of wood with spores from variously colored fungi, which were pressed onto thick parchment and sealed with resinous sap.

None of them, however, showed a picture of a man in his twenties with monastic hair, beggar’s teeth, and weaponized hands.

“Next week, perhaps, someone will miss you,” Dovestrom said, not meeting the monk’s eyes but giving him a clap on the shoulder. A stranger might have said it was companionable.

The town of Belton’s Hill was a busy one, big enough to host a tavern and support a distillery on its outskirts, and to have a market square bustling every day. It was a crisp spring day, and farmers adorned early produce with boughs of flowers, bound in fragrant vines.

“Slirma the weaver does the best work,” Dovestrom said, catching a fat strawberry tossed to him with a greeting by a gray-haired woman in a straw hat. “Nothing fancy, not out here, but we can get you some trousers and a couple tunics…”

His voice trailed off, and not just because he was sucking strawberry juice from his fingers. He was staring.

Cipher looked and saw three warriors in black breastplates over blood-red tunics, helmets tucked under arms. They had sweeping cloaks like bat wings, crimson-lined. Each carried an arming sword in a shoulder sheath and a dagger at the left hip. All their gear was black iron, the surfaces marked with peculiar kinked whorls and angles. Their daggers each had a ring on the pommel.

“Lackeys of the Crusader,” Dovestrom said, nostrils flaring as he stalked forward. “Follow my lead.”

Closer up, each could be seen to bear a black armband with a red mailed fist on it. Two, a woman and a man, sneered as Dovestrom neared, one going so far as to put his pointed iron cap back on his head, though with its snarling face mask still raised. The third gave an easy smile under a graying mustache, his teeth clean but slightly crooked. Unlike the others, his helm had a plume and his breastplate had a single flame enameled over his heart.

“Sergeant, isn’t it?” he said, his voice low and raspy but with a touch of play in it. “From the Imperial garrison… Develin? Devestorm?”

“Dovestrom,” the cavalry soldier said, looking at the other’s extended hand but not shaking it. “You have me at the advantage.”

“Captain Grossthorn. Pleased to meet you. I’d say ‘at your service’ but those to whom I’ve pledged fealty take easy offense.”

“Even when it’s a meaningless pleasantry? I thought the Dark Gods favored falsehood.”

“Some more than others. My personal lord and master prides himself on… indisputable truth.”

As when he’d first met Cipher, Dovestrom was now close to the other man, unpleasantly so.

“What sort of a name is Grossthorn, anyhow?”

“It’s the captain’s name,” said the helmeted subordinate, flipping down his war mask.

“At your ease,” Grossthorn said, gesturing for his followers to step back. They had room for it: as Dovestrom had approached, the townsfolk had gradually retreated, with the exception of the cobbler whose home and workplace had attracted the trio’s attention. (Before Dovestrom, the captain had been examining a pair of bedroom slippers.)

“Did your mother look in your crib and say, ‘Ah, this prick deserves the name of thorn, so gross is he’? Or is it a family name?”

“It is a name of initiation.” Grossthorn’s eyes seemed to glitter red for a moment, like embers in a fire that just wants breath to blaze forth renewed. But with a blink and a sardonic smile, they seemed to be once more a pedestrian brown. “One cannot fault a god for having a sense of drama.”

“Hmph. You can be called ‘Pudding-Pate’ for all I care,” Dovestrom said. “I have a few questions for you.”

“Certainly. It’s always amusing… I mean, always a pleasure to speak with those whose swords are pledged to that charming mortal monarch.”

“Are any of your troops from Rivernaught missing?”

“Missing? No.”

“You don’t recall any who walked off the job recently?”

“One does not simply ‘walk off’ a pledged duty to the Crusader,” Grossthorn sniffed. “We face the forces of hell as equals. While there are many challenges to our enterprise, cowardice is not one of them.”

“Sure it isn’t…”

“Restrain your envy, Emperor’s man,” the woman said, in a thin and uneven voice. “Oaths to our masters, and to the Crusader, their priest in this realm, are no light things.”

“But you’ve no unexplained absences? It needn’t be a man under arms, it could be a servant or associate…”

“For menial tasks, we bind the spawn of the Abyss itself. Why do you ask?”

“Part of a magistrate’s investigation,” Dovestrom said. “Do you mind if I see your dagger there?”

Wordlessly, the captain drew it and handed it over, hilt first. A leather thong, thin like a bootlace, was knotted around the pommel ring.

“Nice balance,” the sergeant grudgingly admitted.

“Iron is easy to monger for those whose blood and breath is furnace fire,” the captain replied. “We call them , which, in your language would be… mm, coarsely translated as ‘doom bleeders’. Once disciplined, they make all our metal gear.”

“Do weapons ever go missing?”

“About as often as soldiers fall in fight,” Grossthorn said. “So… more often than we’d prefer.”

“This ring on the end, the strap… can you explain its purpose?”

Grossthorn looped his thumb through the thong and deftly twisted his wrist. The blade twirled around and slapped into his palm. “Now it’s harder to lose, harder to take away,” he said. He opened his hand and it dropped out, dangling. Then he laced his fingers a different way and clenched his fist, leaving the dagger almost tied in a stabbing grip. “Some like it thus, saying it spreads the force more evenly through the hand.” He shrugged and put it away.

“What about pilferage?” Dovestrom persisted. “I doubt many locals have tried to enter Rivernaught with light fingers.”

“There was the one, but he didn’t get far,” the captain said. “He wasn’t stealing weapons, however. Why do you ask? Specifically, that is: I’d like more than ‘it’s pertinent to a magistrate’s inquiries’.”

“Just bear with me a little longer,” Dovestrom said. “Your… Dark Gods. Are there monasteries to them?”

“The Emperor has forbidden such things!” Grossthorn smirked. “Just as he has forbidden cemetery cults, forbade the northern orcs to pester his borders, forbidden theft and adultery…”

“Bandy words with me as you will, but do not mock my Emperor. If you understand loyalty, you know dogs bite when their master is taunted.”

Grossthorn took a half step back, not breaking from Dovestrom’s gaze but aware that the other man’s hand was on his sword hilt, while both his own troops had helmets on, masks down.

“Well said,” Grossthorn said. “But I know little of monasteries.”

Dovestrom snorted, then turned. “I ask on behalf of this man, whom we call ‘Brother Cipher’, for he…”

The sergeant trailed off in confusion, looking at the empty space behind him, while the masked warriors began to chortle softly.

Then a piercing scream sounded in the distance, followed by voices of outrage, and Dovestrom broke into a run.

# # #

As soon as he’d seen the soldiers in black, the ignorance that clouded Cipher’s mind had fluttered, and when the one with the plume had turned, Cipher felt a moment of recognition.

“Take the knife,” the captain said, holding it out. “I’d wish for you to never need it, but that’s not a prayer my god would answer. Besides, I wouldn’t mean it.”

He’d taken the dagger, the sheath, and placed them in his satchel without another word.

“The gods play their games,” the captain said. “Some of us are pawns, others are pieces of great utility, but most are simply scenery, decorations on the gaming board. You, though… you lucky man,” he said with a snicker. “You get to be one of the dice in their cup. They are shaking you now, and who can say what face you will show when you fall?”

Then the curtain was drawn and, without really considering it, Cipher had used his lightest step to move away, around a corner and out of sight.

He’d moved, quickly but quietly, across two more streets before he happened to see something especially interesting.

# # #

“Make way! Magistrate’s man, make way!” Dovestrom bellowed in a well-practiced voice. He’d instinctively mounted his steed, and the powerful animal pressed forward as he smacked heads with his sheathed saber to loosen the clotted crowd.

He started swearing as he got close enough to see above their heads. An elderly woman in gray robes was kneeling in the street, keening, bleeding from her side. Two young men — the smith’s apprentice and a husky farmhand, Dovestrom knew them both — were attempting to restrain Cipher, with about as much success as a child trying to capture fog in a cup.

“Cipher, stand down!” Dovestrom howled as the monk wove away from the blacksmith’s grasp, ducked under the farmer’s blow, and rolled at a runner’s pace toward the fallen old lady. The black knife was out, and bloody.

Dovestrom found that his saber was bare, and he spurred his horse into a lunge.

“It’s her!” Cipher cried, pawing down her beseeching arms with his left hand and slicing across the woman’s forehead with his right. Dovestrom raised his sword, guiding his steed, and seeing in his mind how the blade would sweep down and across and through the monk’s body…

Then the woman stood up, lifting her attacker with one arm. She rose and kept rising, driving the top of Cipher’s head into the underside of the horse’s jaw, hard enough to knock the animal down.

She was ten feet tall, the old woman’s ragged long dress now hanging above her knees and tight around her hips and shoulders. It was Hetricia Thurlby.

“I just wanted some produce, you FOUL MONASTIC MEDDLER!”

Dovestrom had leaped free of his knocked-down horse, but he was still off balance when she hurled Cipher at him. The two men fell in a tumble as she charged the crowd, which started to scream even as she shrank and changed, trying to join them.

“Are you hale?” Dovestrom gasped, wiggling free and standing.

“... dizzy…” Cipher said, blinking and clutching his head.

“Run it off,” Dovestrom said. His steed had staggered upright, and he seized its reins, then stared into its eyes.

“Shh, good, good,” he said. “We must chase.”

The horse whickered, and Dovestrom slung himself into the saddle without ever letting go of his sword.

He charged off after the crowd, but it was dispersing, fleeing in all directions. He scanned, trying to find any woman in a bloodstained black dress, but the first thing to catch his eye was a knot of people, clustered by the mouth of an alley, looking in and down.

“Move aside, move… what happened?”

A whey-faced, middle-aged woman was face down beside a barrel of rubbish. She’d been stripped to her shift and petticoats, and a black dress was crumpled beside her.

“A giant ran up, punched ’er, den jerked ’er dress right off!”

“Clear off you lot!” Dovestrom dismounted and checked the woman’s pulse. “What was she wearing?”

“Dat black dress right dere.”

“No, I mean… what is she wearing now?”

“Dat other woman’s dress.”

“What does that look like?”

“Um… ’s a dress… brown, or maybe blue… long skirt? Some kinder sleeves?”

“Right.” Dovestrom pulled a potion bottle from his pocket and dumped it between the woman’s lips. As she sputtered and sat up, he remounted and charged away. “Cipher!” he called, returning to where he’d left his companion, “I need you to…”

But he could say no more. The monk was sprawled in the dust, bleeding and still, a heavy stone beside his broken skull.

# # #

As he came back to consciousness, Cipher groaned, and then whimpered a little.

“Shalt live,” said a voice clear and pure as a winter wind, and just as consoling. “’Tis but ye phantom pains where my finest healing draught has acted.”

“Once,” Cipher said, “I woke up because I’d fallen asleep. I remember that with great fondness, and hope it will not be a singular event.”

He opened his eyes and found himself lying on a floor, atop what he recognized by feel as a rather nice cloak — wool of tight weave, with a strip of something slippery soft and smooth where it would touch the neck. It was now, however, crusted and sticky.

“I assume this blood is mine?” He gingerly sat up.

“I did not want it fouling my rugs.” The speaker had a thick elven accent, alien in the monk’s ears.

He was in a small, elegant home, the aforementioned carpets atop waxed wood, a fire burning in a small hearth that somehow managed to be more stately than cozy, with tables of peculiar implements fighting for space with cases full of books and scrolls.

An elven man stared down at him, as if he were a stain that no scrubbing would remove. His cheekbones were astonishingly high and, while Cipher had seen pointed ears and chins among elves, this one’s angularity surpassed them all. His eyes were bright violet, and his hair was blond like straw in a drought. He wore fine boots of eelskin with pointed toes, flared trousers with a vertical line of brass buttons above the ankle, and a matching coat of midnight blue, brass again at its wide cuffs. His shirt was white linen with a generous froth of lace at the throat, held in place with an opal pin. He accessorized with an elaborate silver nail guard encasing and lengthening his already spindly left forefinger, and a golden belt that seemed to have glittering black flecks floating just beneath the surface. An unadorned willow wand, tucked through the belt where a courtier might place a fan, completed the picture.

“Sorry if I troubled you, magician,” Cipher said.

“My trouble was with ye sergeant, not thou. Canst stand?”

Cipher did. “You have my thanks for the healing.”

“Lord Dovestrom staggered a’ my abode, bearing thy broken frame, and without a word o’ courtesy begged my aid while he hared off after Hetricia ye giantess.”

Cipher groaned.

“How he thinks a’ find her is quite beyond me,” the elf continued.

“I should have told him. It’s the ground, it’s just firm enough… she can change her shape but not her weight.”

The elf twisted his head to peer more closely at the monk. “Explain.”

“Look, let’s say a regular five-foot human weighs fifty logs,” he said, laying his hand on a lead weight calibrated to the ‘half-log’ Imperial standard. “So if she’s twice as tall, that’s a hundred logs. Twice as wide? Two hundred. Twice as thick too? Four hundred logs of weight, on normal human feet. On mud, she’d sink pretty deep, but these conditions, no… the ground’s firm enough that normal people don’t leave good prints, but our horses did. That’s how I noticed… and I saw one set of footprints, bare, in the dirt. Followed it to her.”

“And then she did crack thee thy skull?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What quarrel hast thou with ye Thurlby sisters? Lo, they are no light foes.”

“They stole something from me, a silver…” Cipher’s eyes widened. “It looked like that!”

He was pointing to a book upon the shelf, its leather spine chased in swirling, graceful angles.

“Interesting,” the elf said. “’Tis a tome in , the language of the Bright Gods.”

“I had a silver casket with that language upon it,” Cipher said. “The sisters took it.”

“Where didst thou acquire such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed, then explained his lost memories.

“So… Gruttla Hammerheart hast sheltered thee under her wing?” the wizard said. Cipher squinted, for even through the accent it was clear to hear that there was much going on in the enchanter’s heart and mind when he spoke Gruttla’s name.

“You know the commander?”

“Well.”

“Should I trust her?”

The wizard turned away, and his shrug conveyed slight petulance. “Why trust me on matters o’ trust? Thou knowst not even my name.”

“Lyridel, I reckon.”

He turned back. “Do they speak o’ me o’ermuch a’ the muster house?”

“No, very little. They speak around you ‘o’ermuch’. But how many elven wizards can this small town accommodate?”

“True enough. Gruttla is well?”

“Weary. Up all night chasing someone called Farnbarr after killing his sons.”

“What?” The elf’s eyes sharpened, as the silver nail-cover rose to caress his thin lips. “Farnbarr’s boys, both dead?”

“That’s what they said,” Cipher replied.

At that moment, a knock came at the door. When Lyridel opened it, Dovestrom was there. He immediately looked down at his feet.

“Lyridel,” he said. “Sorry. I used my only health draught on another victim. Thank you for… watching this one for me.”

“You speak as if he were thy child.” Lyridel glared, frowning.

“With his mind askew, it’s… well, we ought go. I hope we did not, um… disturb…”

“You did,” Lyridel said, picking the cloak off the floor. With a sigh, he muttered and crooked his silver-clad finger at it. “,” he intoned, and the dried blood and stains sprang off it into clouds of dust, which swirled themselves into the fire with a brief flare of sparks. “This cloak is thy favorite, is it not?”

“Yes,” Dovestrom said quietly, still not meeting his eye. “Cipher, if… if you’re ready to go, I should alert the muster house. I regret that we can’t get those clothes I promised you…”

“I should like this ‘Cipher’ to stay with me,” Lyridel said crisply. “If ’tis garb he needs, I can supply. Perhaps I can address this lackwit curse under which he seems to labor.”

“Oh… I couldn’t ask you…” Dovestrom said.

“’Tis not for thee,” the magician replied.

“Besides,” Cipher said, “I’m still sore… I’d only slow you down.”

“How did you pierce Hetricia’s disguise?” the sergeant asked. His whole face seemed to become more round with surprise as the other man explained.

“That is… why didn’t I think of that?”

Cipher shrugged.

“Well, your mount is tied here. Ride back to the watch house when you’re ready. Good luck with… er, recalling yourself.”

# # #

At Slirma’s home and store, Cipher noted the stiff formality with which the gnomish weaver addressed the elf, a touch of reserve — suspicion, even? — that cast a shadow over her dealings with the monk himself. But he nonetheless acquired cotton tunics of gray, black, russet, and a subtle lavender that the elf insisted would “soften his features”. To accompany them he was also given a small quantity of gray, brown, and undyed cotton trousers.

“Shouldst shave thy scalp entire as well,” Lyridel added, “As ’tis, thy head resembles aught so much as a grubby mushroom.”

“I’ll consider it.” Cipher waited until the wizard had paid for the clothing before he asked, “What’s between you and Dovestrom?”

“What makes thee think…”

“Oh, please,” Cipher said, following him out of the shop. “He won’t meet your eyes and you glare daggers at him. It’s not dislike, not from him, I’ve seen how he treats those he suspects. I’d guess that he feels he’s wronged you, or failed you somehow.”

“La, I could not possibly care enough a’ that man for him to offend me. He is, forgive me, typical of his type — proud, inflexible, and curiously determined to defend his parochialism!”

“Your voice rises,” Cipher observed. “You show a little flush. This seems, if you’ll forgive me, a curious way to not possibly care.”

“Who art thou, human, a’ comment upon me? I wielded eldritch powers when thy father was still an itch ’neath thy grandam’s belt buckle!”

Cipher shrugged. “That seems likely.”

“Indeed, and shalt be wreaking enchantment when thy toothless and eldered corpse molders forgotten i’ the soil.”

“Not to mention Dovestrom’s.”

The elf gave a hiss of ire. “Art curiously vulgar and forward, monk, a’ one who has gifted thee garments and promises a’ tidy thy addled brains.”

“I think you like solving puzzles,” Cipher said.

“I’ve had my fill of mysteries standing beside Gruttla while ye denizens of this rural backwater scrabble to steal one another’s paltry goods, grope one another’s wretched spouses, and shorten one another’s already too-brief lives. Nay, if I’m to toil over thy curse, I would be repaid.”

“A mercenary then?”

“If you like.” They’d arrived at the wizard’s home, and he muttered at it with the queer resonances of magic before the door opened of its own accord.

“And a gambler?”

One blond, thin eyebrow rose. “I’ve been known a’ tumble and toss a pair.”

“I heard.” Cipher smiled. “I would think a wise man would not dice with a magus.”

“You ought not fear gambling with magi o’ermuch. ’Tis a fool wizard who is cavalier with the domain o’ ye gods of chance. What is thy wager?”

“I know nothing of my past,” Cipher said. “I could be rich or poor.”

“Art poor,” the wizard said, in tones of great authority. “Thou hast ye look. Ill-breeding and coarseness infect every syllable that passeth thy lips.”

“Going solely by numbers, that is the wise wager,” Cipher said. “But I did own a fine silver casket. Not to mention this dagger.”

“A bagatelle o’ ye Crusader,” Lyridel said. “Think’ee that thou walked ’neath his banner?”

“I hope not. My oldest friend Gruttla seems to mislike the notion.”

“Oldest friend.” Lyridel turned and pulled up a tall, straight-backed chair.

“It’s true,” Cipher protested. “You have a thousand memories — childhood days, family fights, loves, envies, horrors, and delights. I have… yesterday. Battling the Thurlby giants is the worst thing I have ever experienced. Meeting Gruttla, Horm, and Tark? That is the best.”

“Dovestrom is a notable exclusion from thy list,” Lyridel said, leading him to the seat.

“We fought.”

“Oh aye?”

“I may have choked him a little.”

“But a little? Thou art a forbearing man. I doubt ye Crusader has great use for such.” Lyridel tipped up Cipher’s chin, had the monk open his mouth, then made some show of recoiling from Cipher’s breath. “What o’ thy wager?”

“Half I own, should you restore my mind,” Cipher said.

The elf’s laugh was surprisingly jolly.

“Boldly said, but if thou art a pauper?”

“More misfortune for us both. But if I am rich, ah, what a score for you!”

“I greatly doubt thy wealth.”

“Well, if you can’t do it, that’s a shame. I’ll go tell Dovestrom you disappointed me…”

“Sit.” Lyridel turned back to his table and began grinding up a mixture of blue cobalt and something that smelled like bacon grease. Soon, he was daubing glyphs onto the monk’s face and scalp. He frowned, then cleaned his hands with the same incantation he’d used on Dovestrom’s cloak.

“That’s awful handy,” Cipher said. “My old robes are simply stiff with blood…”

“Hush.” The magician pulled a book from his shelf, paged through it and nodded. Then he reached a jar down and pulled its cork.

“Put this under thy tongue,” he instructed.

“What is…?”

Lyridel made an impatient face and flared his tiny nostrils. “A scorpion of ye Red Wastes, encased i’ copper, ’tis is a commonplace implement for detecting thaumaturgical… just put it ’neath thy tongue.”

With his client’s mouth indisposed, Lyridel puttered about his lab, placing a stuffed lizard in Cipher’s hands, nodding and taking it away, consulting a compass and a sundial, nodding, then opening a high cabinet without touching it, simply by gesturing with his silvered finger.

“So far I have ruled out brain vapors o’ ye chaos imp, residual mandragora fever, Koru hypnosis, Feddington’s Mischief, and river nymph bewitchment,” he announced. “Those are ye most common causes of thy symptoms. Now we delve deeper.” Another gesture, and a wooden framework that looked something like a tiara flew from the shelf to his hands. Its summit was an entirely pedestrian dried walnut.

“Shalt but put this a’ your noggin,” Lyridel murmured, fitting it over Cipher’s tonsure. “Now….”

There was an immediate and deafening crack, along with a burst of actinic vermilion light. The chair tipped violently backward, though Cipher rolled with the impact and was on his feet almost before Lyridel finished soaring across the room, clearing a table in a crash of glassware, and slamming into a scroll shelf that collapsed on him, spilling ink and papyrus everywhere.

“OWWWwww…” the elf cried.

Cipher darted to Lyridel’s side just in time to see a small flame flickering out in the middle of the elf’s forehead, leaving a crispy, blackened wound.

“Aroo uh...” Cipher started, then spat out the copper scorpion. “Are you all right?”

Since the Elven language has no curse words, Lyridel’s reply was borrowed from Orcish, Dwarven, and several human dialects.

“Should I fetch a healing draught?”

“’Tis naught!” the elf said crossly, pushing away Cipher’s helping hands and levering himself to his feet. “I’ve already had one potion guzzled this day, I’ve not so many that I can be profligate. Sit!”

“Your wound doesn’t look grievous,” Cipher said.

“,” Lyridel replied.

“I don’t speak… whatever that was.”

“Elven, thou great human brute. ’Tis a saying from ye Sixth Age historian Tiradon of Iron Leaves. ‘Great sensitivity to pain is the mark of a wise life’.”

“Oh.”

Lyridel drew his wand as if he were ready to stab someone. “This time, with a touch more caution. Where’s your scorpion?”

While Cipher picked that up from the floor, Lyridel looked at his walnut headgear and went ‘tsk’. It was cleanly broken, and the walnut had transformed to cloudy gray glass.

“That was my grandmother’s,” he said, before pulling a rolled-up rug from beneath the bed and unfurling it in a cloud of dust. A terse wave of the wand and those syllables again sent the dust to the fire, and another gesture sent the broken glass after them.

“What,” Cipher asked, “happened?”

“’Tis no easy jest of a curse, be assured,” the wizard said. “You labor under an epic ungirding o’ thy brain.”

“Um… what does that…?” The monk shook his head, as if driving away pesky flies. “What can I do about it?”

“There are innumerable ways a’ break curses,” the elf replied. “Alack, ’tis different each time. This one might ’scape fate by flossing with unicorn mane, another by eating a full set o’ armor…”

“All these involve consumption,” Cipher said, leaning in. “Is that what it takes? To… to unlock the jaws of my mind?”

“Nay.” Lyridel scowled and strode off toward a far door. “I hunger.”

The wizard helped himself to a salad of dandelion leaves and cherry tomatoes with a light dusting of salt. He didn’t offer any to Cipher.

“A’ the rug,” Lyridel said when he finished, gesturing with the wand as, with a rap of his silver finger against a table, candles swept through the air to surround the monk, four white ones in front and a gray one behind. With muttered invocations, sparks spat from wand and nail guard to ignite them. “Shalt see if we cannot a’ least find a task for thy spell’s undoing.”

Cipher obeyed, closing his eyes and wincing.

“Now,” Lyridel said, color high and mouth set, “!”

The room around him went black as Cipher’s eyes darkened to the present, as the sounds of the current day were snuffed out, as the sense of his body evaporated…

The woman with the scarred arms was called Arquith. The boy once made the mistake of assuming that was her name, but she clarified that he was not to know her name, but only call her Arquith. She made that point quite forcefully.

For the first time in his life, the boy was adequately fed and housed in reliable warmth. Winters had always been sad times with Hatchet’s gang. If you were one of the favorites, you got to be in the middle of the room, where everyone else served as your blanket. The ones on the rim rarely died in the night, but it happened. Especially to the ill. Hatchet didn’t believe in coddling the sickly.

But no matter Hatchet’s esteem, some urchins just didn’t come back. The younger ones believed their parents found them, and perhaps that even happened. But by the time the boy left, he knew that it was far more likely that they’d gotten hurt and immobilized, and froze before they could get to a barrel fire. Or they’d been scooped up by the authorities for doing something too stupid to ignore. Or they’d just been killed.

“Try to lift a wizard’s purse?” Hatchet called.

“You might die from wizard curse!” the children chorused in return. Not that everyone who looked like a wizard was one, and nor did every genuine magus advertise the fact.

So the boy was, all told, glad Arquith purchased him. Food and lodging are powerful bribes to one who hasn’t had enough of either. He might have come to love her if everything else hadn’t been so dreadful.

“The knife,” she said, “is no tool for the amateur killer. I’ve seen a half-orc stabbed thirty-three times by a wood sprite before finally breaking its neck. Being stabbed won’t kill you.”

Then she stabbed him.

“Don’t squeal!” she exclaimed. “That was a shoulder, that’s nothing, on a real mission that undisciplined cry is more likely to end you than a butterfinger scratch like that. I’ll give you that one bit of whinging because you’re young and unshaped, but after this, any complaining? You’ll earn something to really cry about.”

She looked at him. He nodded.

“The reason so many people survive stabbings is that few really want to stab killingly, so they never learn how. They hit shallow. They let the target block.” Here she gave a wintry grin and raised her own forearms. “If you want a killing stab, you need a blade that is long and thin, and very sharp at the tip. A stiletto.”

The boy nodded and pointed. He used his left hand, because his right was busy clamping on the blood of his stabbed left shoulder.

“Right, that’s the stiletto. Good. To finish someone with it, you have to hit the heart or the brain. You have to drive deep. You have to avoid getting it caught on any bones. You have to strike from the shoulder. You have to push with your hips.”

She bandaged his arm and they spent the rest of the afternoon with a straw dummy, stabbing, striking from the shoulder, pushing with the hips. After an hour with his right hand, she made him do the left. He tried not to cry out with the pain of each attack. He succeeded almost every time.

Other days were spent learning how to conserve his strength, slicing the arms again and again to bleed and weaken a victim, before delivering a finishing stroke. He learned how to hamstring, and how to deliver an agonizing stab to the belly if you felt someone was being less than truthful with you. In passing, he learned how to spot a liar, how to deal with a pickpocket, how to recognize a false coin.

When Arquith had decided his stabbing was “not entirely hopeless”, when he knew three paths to the brain and three to the heart, she switched to a short-bladed knife with a single keen edge.

“Cutting,” she said, “is a different matter. You can cut arm-strings and tendons with a stiletto if you’re swift and you mean it, but it’s easier with a trimming knife like this one. These are built to disembowel.” She taught him the transverse cut that spills a man’s guts, and where to stand to get the best throat-slitting angle, and how to bleed a man out through his underarms or the insides of his thighs.

He never asked why she was teaching him to kill and she never explained it.

“Ggggh!” Cipher choked, convulsing forward as his teeth clamped on his own lips, as blood cascaded from his nose in a violent spray. The flames on the candles blazed a foot high, liquefying the wax instantly and then snuffing out. Lyridel cried out as the wand in his hand quivered and then shattered. The whole day seemed to go dark, not as if a cloud had passed the sun, but as if all light and color had briefly cowered away from something older and more powerful.

Then it passed, leaving Lyridel staring dumbly at his broken wand and Cipher stanching his bloody nose.

“I think,” the wizard said, “thou shalt keep both halves o’ thy fortune.”

“No,” Cipher panted, drooling gore. “I saw something! An elf, her name was… was Arquith. Wait, that wasn’t her name, she was just called that…”

“Sounds near enou’ to our word , for elves who defy ye word o’ the Great Queen.”

“I was in… in a city, I can’t remember its name. Ah, it’s all fading like a dream when you wake.” The monk uttered an ear-shriveling soupçon of blasphemy. “Whatever that was, you must do it again! Re-cast the spell!”

“Nay, I’ll not risk engaging a curse o’ that potency again. Besides, my mystic might is expended for the day…”

“Tomorrow then! I got a piece of it, I can… I can bring paper and have someone take notes…”

“Human,” the elf said sternly, “we ’scaped with our lives due in main to luck. If that curse is o’ the worst nature, as it shows every sign of being, it learns and adapts. I’ve lost my grandam’s fine shew-nut diadem and a handsome wand o’ Bronze River willow. The next thing broken could be my skull. Like any half-decent gambler, I am quitting while I can.”

CHAPTER THREE

As Cipher plodded toward the muster house, a trio of galloping cavalry charged away from it, forcing him to awkwardly steer his shying mount off the road. He recognized one rider as Mursei, who gave him a wave before the three peeled off in separate directions.

Within the palisade, he found many stable stalls empty, but was slightly relieved to see that Gruttla’s mount Brute was still present, munching hay. The great black stallion spared him a cool glance before returning to its food. Cipher, in turn, tried to reverse the movements Dovestrom had so assuredly made to saddle and equip his steed.

The horse wasn’t quite panicky when Tark came in. “Let me help,” he said. “Dovestrom said you stabbed Hetricia!”

“Yes, but then she cracked my head with a stone. I think it was a big roof tile, actually. Not completely sure.”

“Well, you give a little, you get a little. Hand me that currycomb, will you please?”

“I also met Lyridel,” Cipher added.

“Oh? What did you make of her?”

Cipher blinked. “… Her?”

Tark froze, then continued tending the steed. “What?” he asked.

“What?” Cipher countered.

“Um, did you…? Um. I think… one of us misheard the other?”

“Did you say ‘her’?”

Tark led the horse back to its stall, but when he turned around, Cipher was blocking his path with crossed arms full of laundry.

“I met an elf,” Cipher said, “who bought me clothes, made snippy talk with Dovestrom, and caught fire while trying to restore my memories.”

“Is he badly hurt?”

“… He?”

Tark sighed. “It’s… complicated.”

“Everyone seems to agree about that. Can you at least try an explanation?”

“Well, sh… he was wearing that belt, right? Gold links?”

“Yes.”

“It’s magic. It lets him become a her or, you know, the other way.”

Cipher blinked. “A belt that changes the wearer’s sex,” he said flatly.

“Well, not every time, but… yes. Lyridel uses it. Now and again.”

“So is… he?… actually a male or…?”

“Of course he is!” Tark said, heading out with Cipher following. “Except, of course, when she’s actually female. It’s not really that complicated.”

“But why would he want to change…” Cipher trailed off, glancing downward then quickly looking forward again.

“I’m sure you’d have to ask her. Him.”

“Dovestrom and Lyridel… they were together?”

Tark looked back with trepidation, and then a voice behind him said, “That is, I’m sure, their business and theirs alone.”

It was Gruttla.

“You’ve been a busy monk,” she said. “When you get your new wardrobe squared away, come see me. I have a thought.”

# # #

It was the first time the monk had seen Gruttla’s private chamber, and though it was cramped and windowless, it had a casual messiness that made it more welcoming than the elf’s house. There was a musky scent, like the clean soil right below an apple tree, mixed with the smolder of beeswax. The Weapon That Is All Weapons leaned in a corner, configured as a warhammer. A pair of kobold-skull goblets sat on the mantle beside a decanter of deep amber liquor. On a shelf above the bed were three dwarven life masks, one male, two female. The typical footlocker yawned at the bottom of the bed, revealing a number of practical riding outfits and one thin glimpse of something red and jet-beaded. The bed, unmade, had a bearskin pelt flung across it.

“Sit,” Gruttla said, gesturing at the one chair. It was a bit low for Cipher, piled with ledgers and a few dwarven books. “Just put those on the floor.”

He complied, and she took a seat on the edge of the bed.

“What happened in town?” she asked.

He explained that he and Dovestrom had seen some Crusader soldiers, and then he’d realized Hetricia was present and attacked her.

“It… sounds like you just walked up behind her and stuck her with the dagger?”

Cipher blushed. “Well, it was more of a slash…”

“What if you’d been mistaken?”

“I wasn’t mistaken.”

“But what if you had?”

“But I wasn’t.”

Gruttla looked away, mashing her lips together, forehead folding down.

“If you’re going to be a magistrate’s deputy, you can’t do that. You can’t stab on suspicion, no matter how bad you suspect they are.”

Cipher turned his face to the floor. “I just… I knew it was her and I didn’t think much more than that. She hurt me. I had to get her back, and I had to do it before she saw me.”

“She’s hurt a lot of people, and if you’d gotten Dovestrom to help you…”

“Yeah, is his horse unharmed?”

She looked back at him. “Dancer? Seems fine. What happened?”

“Hetricia hit it in the jaw with my scalp.”

Gruttla shook her head and took the name of an ancient dwarven deity in vain. “You need to be more careful.”

“You think I might be a rash person?”

“If you are,” she said, “you will never have a better opportunity to change.”

“Speaking of change,” he said, “I met Lyridel after that.”

“Oh, did you.”

“Dovestrom took me there and asked the elf to treat me.”

“Oh, did he.”

“He did,” Cipher said, “indeed.”

She sighed. “Things with Lyridel are…”

“Complex?”

“That’s a good word for it.”

“Because she and Dovestrom were lovers, only he didn’t like her body-shifting, and she wouldn’t quit, and he made it intolerable for her to work with you?”

She folded her arms. “Why ask questions that are, essentially, their own answers? Was she able to help you remember?”

He shook his head. “Only in part, and it faded quickly. I learned I was poor, which Lyridel already guessed, and that I was taught to fight, which is no great surprise. I knew an elven woman who was an… arquith? Or…? At any rate, that’s what she had me call her.” He thumbed his lip pensively. “Now I’m wondering if I wasn’t a woman.”

Gruttla laughed.

“Why is that so funny?”

“There is nothing feminine about you, Cipher,” she said.

“If a curse can lock away a whole life from the man who lived it, why not make him a woman as well?”

“I’m only ninety years old,” Gruttla said, “but I lived in the deeps and I lived in the roots and now I live on the surface. I’ve only seen one piece of magic that changes people’s bits and bobs about. And Lyridel is not cavalier with its use.”

“Why does… she…?”

Gruttla shrugged. “Elves live long. They get bored easily. That’s why some of them are so cruel and some are so curious. But really, you’d have to ask her.”

For a moment, they just sat in silence.

“I like the new shirt,” Gruttla said at last. “That pale blue makes you look… a little gentler. Or happier, perhaps.”

“It softens my face?”

“If you like.”

“Lyridel insisted.”

Gruttla laughed. “Such a clotheshorse,” she said. “Well. I looked through the watch-fors after Dovestrom brought them back…”

“I saw them too,” Cipher said. “None of them resembles me very strongly.”

“Are you sure?” She showed an illustrated face that was mostly woolly russet sideburns under a shag of brown curls.

“That… could be anyone.”

“If you had a beard and long hair, we could tell,” she said.

“Hmph. I have neither.”

“Not yet.” She bent down into her locker and began rummaging. “Where did…?” A small stuffed marmoset on a stand went to the floor, along with a fancy corkscrew (broken), and something that looked like a cube abacus instead of the more typical accounting square.

“What are these?” Cipher asked, holding up a set of small, springy tools that looked like they might be for dentistry, or perhaps decorating soft clay.

“Hm? Oh, read the handles.”

Squinting at the tiny grips, he saw the name “Berry” carved into the varnished wood. “Lockpicks?”

“Made to fit a gnome-sized hand. Just drop those anywhere, he’s not getting them back. Ah!” She pulled out a small pottery jar wrapped in cloth. “Recognize this?”

“Recognizing things is not something I’m good at.”

“I might disagree. In any event, it’s genuine dwarven beard tonic.” She pried off the lid, revealing a waxy, salmon-colored substance with a heavy musk, like sweat and cheese.

His eyebrows rose and he leaned back a little.

“Will it work on the children of men?” he asked.

“Just who do you think I borrowed this from? I’ve seen it grow hair on frogs.”

“All right…”

“Dab a bit on your chin and head and we’ll see what you look like.” She ducked back in the box and rummaged around for a mirror. “Just be careful to use the rag to put it on and…”

“Um…” Cipher’s voice sounded muffled.

She turned back and laughed. A beard, growing like foam on the top of hastily poured ale, overflowed his collar on the left side, making it look like his mangled ear had grown a large fluffy tail like a brown fox. But Cipher’s wide eyes were on his right hand, the fingers of which were equally hirsute.

“It works fast,” she said over giggles.

“… and on every surface, it would seem.”

“Well, no, not on the rag that I handed you with the pot.”

He sighed. Then, with a shrug, he wrapped the new hair around his hand and dabbed a lighter smear on his right side.

“Familiar?” she asked, propping the mirror on the table by the chair.

He shook his head.

“Before you do the head, let’s cut this down to a more manageable size. I have scissors in here somewhere… ah.”

With a smaller beard, he looked more wary and uneasy, as if he were about to start telling an implausible lie.

“I don’t like it,” he declared. “Moreover, I don’t think I wore one. My throat isn’t toughened against the poking hairs.”

“Maybe it isn’t toughened against the scrape of a razor,” Gruttla replied.

“Do you really think that the people who stole away my memory went so far as to shave me, too?”

“Weren’t you suggesting — and not too long ago — that they’d reversed your body?”

He grumbled, but decided to rub some on his scalp too, though this time he was far more cautious with the application.

“I don’t look like the poster,” he finally said.

“No,” she admitted. “I’ve seen flyers like this with terrible inaccuracies… eye color, mole on the wrong side, halflings mistaken for gnomes… but usually the big details like ‘red beard and brown hair’ are right. Yours isn’t red.”

He stared into the mirror. “Can I borrow those scissors? I want to get this hair out of my face.”

“I’ll do it.”

In short order, he had short curls, softening the sweep of his forehead and making him look less severely monastic.

“I like it,” Gruttla said. “You should keep the hair, not the beard.”

“Do you have a razor? I should have gotten one at market, but…”

She snorted. “Why not use your dagger? It’s keen enough.”

“It was in Hetricia’s flesh not six hours ago.”

Gruttla shrugged. “We’ve established that you’re a little bit finicky, then.”

“I don’t think it’s overly particular to draw a line between my grooming tools and… um…”

“I understand.” She sighed. “Ah well, I had high hopes that you might recognize yourself with whiskers, but I am happy you’re not this fellow.” She picked up the paper and frowned. “Two counts of murder from advantage and one by deception. They’ll behead him for that.”

“Should I return the rest of the salve?”

“No, I will. The fellow may not want anyone to know that his beard needs a little extra help.”

Cipher rolled his eyes. “Why would anyone care?”

“I do think you were a monk,” Gruttla replied. “That attitude could only come from a man whose fellows all dressed and shaved and looked alike.”

He stood to go, then turned back to say, “At least you could repair your lost braid with it.”

“What?!?” Her eyes were wide and her skin paled slightly. “It’s for beards, Cipher!”

“Sorry…”

“Clearly you never spent much time with dwarves!”

“I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right, just… ignorant. Honestly. Too good to shave with a dagger but beard daub on a woman is just fine!”

She was still staring incredulously after him as he gently shut the door.

CHAPTER FOUR

Two weeks passed. Horm and Dovestrom and Gruttla led expeditions through the swamp and the hills and around the villages. They made empty threats against Pibor the distiller (whom the locals valued too well to really menace) and Jayeer, the proprietor of the gamble-shack, who quite convincingly protested that she had no further knowledge of the sisters’ whereabouts. For two weeks they rode and searched, Cipher with them sometimes (gradually becoming accustomed to horses), finding a few old camps or big footprints, but the sisters were obviously on the move, in the wild, and alert.

(In the process, Roundwell’s Comets accounted for seventeen feral troglodytes, eleven ground-born orcs, an owlbear, a dire boar family, and some nameless thing of the heights that had vaguely the shape of a hawk, the fur and teeth of a wolf, and the mass of a heifer ready to slaughter.)

In all that time, Cipher did not recall a single day of his prior life.

# # #

Gruttla came to get Cipher when he was at the forest’s edge. She was on Brute, leading Rainbow, and Cipher was throwing his dagger into a tree from ten paces. He’d tied a cotton cord to its pommel ring and, after each throw, would give a hard jerk to retrieve it, the line hissing through his hands until the knife was back in his grip.

“Better than the chain?” Gruttla called.

“Yes, but still heavy.” Cipher had gotten the idea of tethering the knife after hearing about Dovestrom’s conversation with the Crusader’s troops. Initially, he’d figured that if a six-inch length was good, a six-foot length would be better, but his experiments with metal links had persuaded him that he needed something much, much lighter if he wanted to retrieve it quickly. “It makes it hard to aim and slows it down.”

“Hmph. You know, some people fight with a chain, nothing on the end, and are quite happy with that.”

“I could,” Cipher said, “but that would rely on weight, and that’s really just strength. I’ll never be stronger than Ognutt.” He made one last throw, sighed, and jerked it free.

Gruttla dismounted and saw that the other end of the rope was attached to the dagger’s sheath. With graceful, automatic motions he wrapped the cord around his waist. Sheathing the weapon held it in place, like the buckle on a belt. He was wearing a tunic and trousers, but still carried no other weapon and showed no interest in shoes.

“Feel like a mystery?” she asked.

“Heh. Always.”

When he sprang into Rainbow’s saddle, he almost looked like he belonged there.

# # #

“What do we have?” he asked. “I notice that you’re lightly armed, and it’s just the two of us, so I assume the damage is already done?”

“Correct. Woodcutters found a dead body, one thinks it was done by a giant.”

“Did he say why?”

She shook her head.

“Aren’t you worried?”

“About one poxy giant?” she said. “Have you ever fought…? Well, you wouldn’t know.”

“Alas, I would not.”

“The reason the Thurlby sisters are dangerous is that they are smart. Even Ognutt could win a battle of wits against a hill giant nine times out of ten. If it’s a stone giant, we’d see it coming and have a chance to avoid or ambush it. If it’s a fire giant, we’d smell smoke a mile off. But I don’t think it’s a giant.”

“Why not?”

“The Silverwine’s between us and the mountains where the big ones breed, and why would they wade across a river if they don’t have to? I’m guessing this was the work of a bugbear at worst.”

As he queried her, the details emerged. Two foresters, a father and son, had found a wrecked body. While the father stayed with it, the son went to the village of Tarrowhenge, where he sent someone to fetch the magistrates.

“I hope we settle this quickly,” Gruttla added. “The knacker-priest is coming at sundown, and I ought to be present for his rites.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Cipher said quietly.

‘Knacker-priest’ was the soldiers’ slang for the traveling circuit judge who pronounced sentence on prisoners. In the case of capital crimes, he also performed the executions.

“Fine,” she said. “Feeling a little reverence toward religion then?”

“No, honestly. But if I was a monk — presumably still am one? — it feels like I ought to be more respectful toward the Bright Gods.”

“With that dagger you carry, maybe to the Dark Gods, too.”

# # #

A youth quick-walked toward them as they approached the settlement. He was scrawny, rangy, with long hair and a long nose. His skin was the burnished brown of someone who lived in the Empire’s heart, far south of the pale northerners and far north of the black southern tribes. He wore a tunic, a straw hat, and something one might call ‘shoes’. They were simple cured sheets of deerskin, pouched around his feet and tied with thongs around his ankles. He carried a felling axe, cradled in his arms like a pet.

“At last!” he said as they rode up, his eyes on Gruttla alone. He didn’t say it as if he were exasperated or impatient, but absolutely relieved.

“You found the body?”

He nodded.

“What’s your name, then?”

“Bandarhalp the younger.”

“If I pull you up on this horse, you won’t fall off?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You needn’t be formal, I am but a soldier.”

He shrugged. She reached down and easily hauled him up onto Brute’s withers, where he sat, awkward and limp, like a sack of produce.

“Where’s your father?” she asked.

“Stayed with the body, ma’am. For to keep off the crows and such.”

“Can you lead us to him?”

“Ayuh. Um, yes ma’am, that is.”

His directions led them a fair stretch into the forest, at times dismounting to lead Brute through thicker stands of hemlock or pine. When the trees were choked with ivy vines, he cleared a path with practiced efficiency.

“If you came this way before, wouldn’t the path be clear?” Cipher asked.

“Going a little way ’round, sir. Didn’t have horses. Climbed the steep riverbeds instead of going north’ard.”

Cipher stayed alert nonetheless, but in time they came upon a man whose long nose, crude footwear, and gloomy features made him an aged reflection of the boy.

“This Bandarhalp the elder?” Gruttla said.

The father stepped forward and touched the brim of his hat.

“Everything still in place?”

“Ayuh, as near as I found it, madame magistrate,” he replied. “’Tis a proper mess though, and no doubts or disputing.”

It didn’t take Cipher long to find the corpse. First he heard flies buzzing, then saw them dancing in the air, like the shimmer of heat over a desert. As he neared, the smell rode in, ripe and rancid on a stray breeze. He winced, appreciating the woodsman’s upwind position.

Seeing the state of the corpse, he began to swear, at great length. It was indescribably profane, and Gruttla slowly turned from the body to him as the curses unspooled from his mouth, relentlessly, no two alike.

“Are you quite finished?” she finally asked, when he paused to take a breath.

“Not quite,” he said, circling the dead man (or was it a woman?) while blighting the names and sacred sites of two Dark Gods and three Bright ones before trailing off.

“And you were the one who disliked the phrase ‘knacker-priest’.”

He blinked, hard. “That is a contradiction, isn’t it?” He kept scrutinizing the body.

“I see why you thought it was a giant,” Gruttla offered to the witnesses, who were gazing at Cipher with awestruck bemusement.

“Ayuh, what else would do this and eat naught?”

The body was in a depression in the ground, and filled it like scraps of stew in an empty bowl. The four limbs were broken and tangled like knotted thread, and a spray of gore-meat radiated from the ruptured torso. All in all, it resembled a fly that has been most thoroughly swatted, only much larger, and redder, and wearing the remnants of nice powder-blue clothes.

Cipher squatted and frowned. “There’s no mud on the bottom of his shoes.”

“How can you tell?” Gruttla asked, nose wrinkling.

“Come here, see for yourself.”

Reluctantly, she did.

“That’s road dust,” Cipher said, his bare feet squelching forward as he reached out with a finger and dragged it on the bottom of the sky-facing sole. “Not much of it, either. Look at the bottoms of your own feet, what do you see? Mud, leaves… wet stuff.”

“You think a giant carried him here?” Gruttla asked.

“Maybe… he certainly was killed here, don’t you think?”

“That seems likely,” she said, looking at the radius of carnage. “Although… this doesn’t actually look like a giant’s work.”

“Oh aye?” the woodcutter’s son asked.

“Er, if your graces don’t mind, can my boy and I be gone?” the elder Bandarhalp asked.

Gruttla was about to give permission when Cipher said, “We may have to ask you some few things. What would be best… if I may?”

“We… will help the agents of the Emperor, a’course.” He shifted his axe from one shoulder to the other.

“If you could go back to that little open space over there, maybe start up a fire? It’ll keep back the stink and flies while we ask our few questions.”

“We don’t want to stay here after dark, ma’am,” Bandarhalp said, turning to Gruttla.

“You won’t,” she said.

Once they were away, she turned her attention back to the dead man and her living companion.

“Doesn’t look like robbery,” she said. “He’s still got rings on two fingers and… yes, I think that’s an ear with a jewel.”

“What did you mean it’s not ‘giant’s work’?”

“The… size of the blow? It looks like a wall fell on him. Giants punch or use a club. Big, but not like this. To do this, a stone giant would have to… to belly flop on him.”

“And do it on hard turf,” Cipher added. “No, I don’t think this was a giant.”

“It looks like a cave-in, almost,” Gruttla said, forearm over her wrinkled nose.

“What about a fall?”

She looked around, her eyes speculative. “The canopy up above is still intact, and even if the branches bent, I don’t think the trees are tall enough for this kind of… burst.”

“Hm.” Cipher had that look in his eyes again, like a seeking hound. He paced back and forth, ignoring the stench. “Look how he fell, piled up face-first. You can see the turf is torn up behind him… loose sticks all around.” He squatted, looking at broken branches, picking them up to sniff at the split ends, shaking his head in resignation, then testing whether they were still springy or if they were brittle and dry.

“I think I have it,” he said, showing her two thin boughs, one with fresh-budded leaves, the other with evergreen needles. “He fell from above the treetops, but it was at an angle. He went through one tree up high, another a bit lower, then landed here and plowed forward.” He took a position a few steps behind the body, squatted, took a few steps forward. “Here. Stand just here and look up at an angle… you see?”

Gruttla nodded. There was a tunnel through the branches.

“I see where that one broke off,” she started, but her companion was already scampering up a trunk with the nimbleness of a monkey. He clambered outward, toes gripping like stubby fingers, and examined a splintered end. “Yes,” he called down. “It’s fresh.” Then he turned and leaped to the next tree on the trajectory.

“Has he got some kind of squirrel blessing?”

Gruttla started, then glared at the woodcutter’s son, who was staring at the monk openmouthed. “It’s rude to ask such questions, go by the fire,” she said.

When Cipher dropped back to the turf, panting lightly, his eyes were bright with interest.

“First off, he was already moving at a fair clip when he hit the first tree. You can’t see from down here, but it snapped off, and it’s thick as your wrist… well, Mursei’s wrist anyhow,” Cipher said, looking from the dwarf’s mighty forearm to his own.

“So clearly he was… flying? High up?”

“Indeed. Up high, moving forward, and then he got… upended? Dismounted?”

“He’s no dragon rider,” Gruttla said, glancing at the dead man. “Not in uniform, anyhow.”

“And if one of the Empire’s most elite warriors was cruising around our skies, no doubt we’d have heard of it,” Cipher replied.

“You might be surprised. They can go awfully high, above the cloud layers even, and if it was by night…”

“Too bad his hands aren’t in better shape,” Cipher said, rubbing the sides of his own leathery mitts. “We could see if he had cavalry calluses.”

“Och, regret in one hand, spit in the other, and see which overflows first,” she said.

“Um, madame magistrate?” the senior Bandarhalp called.

They turned to look. He was turning his axe handle around and about in his hands. “Are we going to be done soon? It’s only, you promised that we’d be out of here by nightfall…”

“It’s hours until sundown!” Gruttla snapped, then softened at the look of fear on his face. “What is it in here that worries you so?”

“They say the Thurlby sisters escaped,” he muttered, looking away.

Cipher strode over to their fire and said, “Have you seen any sign of them?”

“No,” the boy said. “If we knew they were knocking about, we’d find elsewhere to cut.”

“Wise youth,” Gruttla said.

“Is there anyone else who frequents these woods?”

“Hm… old Nana Batwach, she comes here to scavenge mushrooms and herbs. There are a couple hunters and trappers, one’s called Emptor, the other is Clay. Emptor has a wife in the village, he comes home every night or three.”

“Everyone from Tarrowhenge comes into the forest for loose wood, kindling and such,” the boy added, “but we’re the only ones who go deep to cut.”

“If the villagers get their own wood, why is there even work for you?” Cipher asked.

The woodsmen rolled their eyes.

“People can gather branches for small fires,” the older Bandarhalp explained. “But to fell a tree proper and not get hurt? Oh, a farmer with many sons might send some out to do it and save a wee purse, but ’tis a false saving if one gets hurt, or if they pick a crookedy tree. The boy and me, we know where the straight trees for good timber grow, and there are few left growing nigh the village. Too, some lack the patience, or the sinew, or the inclination to bring down and cut their own logs when winter is coming. There are enough who are rich, old, or feeble.”

“Does anyone else go deep into the woods?” Cipher asked.

“I saw the Crusader’s soldiers once,” Bandarhalp the younger began, but his father glared so fiercely that the boy stopped in mid-breath.

“Excuse me?” Cipher asked.

“The boy thinks he saw them,” the father replied.

“How far away were they?”

“Pretty far,” young Bandarhalp admitted.

“What did they look like?”

“Just… men? In black armor? They were off in the distance and father said we should move away.”

“Wise elder,” Gruttla said.

“Anyone else who goes in the deep trees?”

“Not so many,” Bandarhalp the elder said. “Never know what you might find. Owlbears and worse.”

“Worse indeed,” Gruttla said, glancing at the dead body. “Well, we’d better gather this.”

“Ugh,” Cipher said. “You brought sacks?”

“Alchemical ones, made against leaks.” She began to unpack her saddlebags.

“Let’s hope Amblard was a better sack-proofer than murderer,” Cipher said.

“Don’t forget that he did fell his target,” Gruttla said. “If you want to… undress it, aye, go ahead. I’ll pack the… pieces.”

“We’ll wait by the fire,” Bandarhalp the elder said, with his son nodding wide-eyed beside him.

As she bent to the grisly task, Cipher quietly said, “The branch breaking wasn’t all I saw up in the trees.”

“No?”

“It was an old path, but someone was moving through the woods near where this poor soul first hit the treetops. It’s not much of a trail…”

“See if you can follow it,” she sighed. “I’ll take these folks out, along with the remains. If you think you can handle yourself.”

“It’s hours until sunset, isn’t it?”

“Can you find your way out of the woods?”

“Leave me Rainbow,” he suggested.

“The horse is not a compass,” Gruttla said, frowning.

“Leave blazes on the trees then. I’ll be fine.”

“You’d better be. There’s owlbear, he said.”

“And worse.”

# # #

As it happened, Cipher caught up with them before they’d even left the woods.

“Cold trail,” he said. “Whoever it was had some craft. Made for a stream and broke tracks pretty quickly, I think… Mursei could have followed perhaps, but not me.”

“Hmph. You had the cleaner task,” Gruttla said sourly, huddled in a cloak. “We stopped so I could have a wash, but undressing that sticky pile was no pleasant task.”

“Do you think anyone from the village was involved?” he asked, after waving farewell to the Bandarhalps and warning them to send a message if they remembered anything.

“Don’t see how they could be,” Gruttla said. “We have a flying man in fine clothes and nice city boots… who’s going to knock him out of the sky?”

“But how was he flying? A wizard? Don’t they have…?”

“If Lyridel was here, we could ask her,” Gruttla sighed.

“I think someone saw what happened. I think someone saw him fall,” Cipher said.

“Why?”

“That trail… it wasn’t that old, and someone came directly to one spot near where he dropped, then immediately went to the stream to break the path. That’s the act of somebody involved.”

“Maybe it was just a hunter who saw something big in the sky, went to see, witnessed the man’s fall, and then turned around to go when it was clear there was no help to offer.”

“Was the water cold?” Cipher asked.

“Icy,” Gruttla said, giving him a dark look.

“If the witness did nothing wrong, why go wade through a stream full of snowmelt? It was running quick, and those stones were poor footing. He was risking a fall, a braining, and a drowning, not just a chill or an ague. That bespeaks guilt, to me.”

“What guilt? The witness wasn’t the killer. Anyone who could take down a flyer from there would need some kind of powerful spell or weapon, and if you had that, wouldn’t you want to make sure you’d killed your man? Maybe take proof, if it was murder for hire? At least loot the body?”

“That is strange,” Cipher admitted. “Maybe I just want there to be a witness because I’m so curious. Who was that flying man? We may never know.”

# # #

“The flying man was Dubrois Varver,” Gruttla announced a few hours later. They were back at the muster house, and Cipher was carefully washing blood off the dead man’s possessions so he could inspect them.

“What?”

Gruttla showed him a printed notice. “Fettleting brought a new handful of watch-fors. Black skin, gold ring inset with a tiny pink coral rose? Last seen wearing blue?”

“How did you pronounce that name again?” Cipher said, scratching his head and looking at the poster. The impassive man pictured on it had a gem winking from his ear. Cipher held the very ring described, though it could never have fit his sausagey fingers.

“So this Dew-braws is missing?” he asked.

“Wanted for enchanted theft,” Gruttla said, eyes sparkling. She pointed at a line on the page.

“Sus… pee… peektid?”

“‘Suspected of unlawful acquisition and use of an enchanted item,’” she read. “‘To wit, one black and red carpet possessed of the gift of flight.’”

“How do you read so fast?” Cipher muttered.

“So I guess we know how he fell.”

“And if we want to know where the flying carpet is, we need to ask the person who broke trail in the stream,” Cipher said. His oaths were brief, but quite efficient in their depth of filth.

“Oh ho, there’s a man who swears with confidence,” said a loud, resonant voice. It was manly in its phrasing, but high, and as Cipher turned toward it, he saw a broad-chested halfling, black-skinned, with a curly beard.

“Sir Fettleting of Santa Cora, meet our mystery man,” Gruttla said.

Cipher stood and shook the knight’s hand. Fettleting’s hand was tiny, but had a grip of stony strength.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing a paladin?” Cipher asked, for the little man’s breastplate bore the crossroads symbol of one of the Bright Gods. It was picked out in copper inlay, verdigrised by time and nicked by battle, but still visible and, somehow, more beautiful in its green age than it must have been when bright and new. The swirls and arcs of it were the same graceful proportions as the inlay on Cipher’s lost silver chest.

“Good guess,” Fettleting said.

“He excels at guessing,” Dovestrom said, entering from outside. “We’ve buried the remains,” he told Gruttla.

“I’ll consecrate the grave,” Fettleting said, in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t an offer but a statement of fact.

“I thank you for it,” Dovestrom replied. “I don’t want anyone who died untimely rising up out of our barrow-yard.”

“He wasn’t murdered, at any rate,” Gruttla said, pulling Dovestrom aside and showing him the flyer. They exited together.

“So,” the small knight asked Cipher. “Whyfore said you paladin, not priest?”

“That would have been my second guess, but you have the look of the battlefield, not the cloister,” he said. “Look at the grip of your sword. That’s a working man’s tool, no ceremonial weapon or affectation.”

“This rude world has need of many war-priests,” the knight countered.

“But does a god of compassion and release?”

“My master calls few paladins,” Fettleting admitted. “But the lines walked by judge and executioner are exceedingly fine.”

“It’s a curious calling for a man of a merciful faith.”

“There is great evil in this realm,” Fettleting said simply. “In hearts gnomish and human and elven, as much as in any demon. There is no better option than death for the utterly degraded soul. But I would see that executions are distributed only to the deserving. I am proud that no mortal sentence has befallen through my blade, save to the irredeemably vile.”

For a moment, the two were silent.

“Can paladins truly weigh the hearts of men?” Cipher asked.

“Yes,” the halfling replied without hesitation. “But no more than any other man, using our eyes as the scale pans and our faith as the balance post.”

“So you can’t tell by inspection if I am… sinful?”

“Give me a month by your side and I’ll know your heart. Before that?” He shrugged.

“Worth a try,” Cipher muttered.

“In my experience, people who care deeply about whether they’re good or evil are rarely so bad. The most dangerously evil foes are those convinced their morals are unassailable. Or the ones who just don’t care.”

“I am under a curse,” the monk said quietly, setting aside the dead man’s jewels and wiping his hands. “I remember nothing of my life before this season’s start.”

“That is a heavy burden.”

“Can you cast it off me?”

“With faith, all things are possible,” the paladin said, but he sounded doubtful. “Kneel and I can lay hands on you, but it is far commoner to cast out ills of the body that way.”

“I should warn you,” Cipher said, “a wizard who tried to break the curse faced some sort of… difficulty.”

“Oh?”

“His head caught fire.”

The paladin gave a slow, solemn nod. “Then mayhap I’ll refill that jug with clean water first.”

Unlike the elf’s elaborate reagents and devices, the paladin’s prayer required nothing but that Cipher kneel with the halfling’s dark hands on the monk’s chestnut curls. The paladin said a low prayer.

“

.”

… he was at the monastery, kneeling on the stones, head pressed to the floor as the master stood before them. “Give someone a chance to disappoint you, sometimes they do that,” the abbot intoned. “Give someone a chance to impress you, sometimes they do that.”

Having delivered the day’s subject of contemplation, he sat back and watched. After an hour, he rose and tapped the acolyte on the shoulder, drawing him out to the back terrace. He handed the younger man a broom.

“Why did you pull me out?”

“You weren’t meditating.”

“I was trying to!”

The master shrugged. “Your chi remains small. Your efforts will be more productive out here.”

“What, sweeping?”

“Yes,” the older monk said, sitting himself on a bench to watch.

After a moment, the youngster began to brush out a cobwebby corner. “I thought I was your special ‘Project’,” he said.

“Should I then take it easy on you?”

“Maybe you are. Maybe I’d prefer to push dust around than look within myself for something that’s not even there.”

“Your jest is wiser than you know. Only when you find the void at the center can you act and think without reservation.”

The younger man sighed.

“Or perhaps,” the older one said, “I’m just giving up on you. Would that annoy or relieve you?”

“Both, somewhat. But I don’t… I want to be as good as the others! I won’t catch up by doing less!”

“Your first mistake is judging yourself by your fellows. They aren’t you and you aren’t them. You’re barely you.”

The young man stopped and leaned on his broom for a moment. “Why do you teach monks to fight?” he asked. “Who are our enemies?”

“We have many,” the old man replied. “But the discipline of the Deadly Arts has value even to one with no one to battle. Toning the body refines the mind. Focus under duress transcends physical conflict and can show the way to remain tranquil even during turmoil of the heart. Look at this mountain,” he said, gesturing.

The young man did.

“Is it not beautiful?” the old man asked. “Yet it is an indifferent beauty, as well you know. It does not care if you thrive, or perish wolf-bitten. The world is harsh. One who cannot be bothered to prepare himself is a fool if he expects others to exert themselves when he would not.” He gave a small grin that was almost sly. “But the way of the fist is no challenge to you. Not like Escape. Your test is to become something more than a mere survivor.”

“And how do I do that? By trying harder to meditate?”

“By learning to do without trying.”

Then both men lurched back, gasping nearly in tandem.

“I cannot do that again,” the paladin said, eyes round.

“But I remembered!” Cipher cried. “I was in a monastery, in the mountains… They called me ‘The Master’s Project’!”

“I hope your gathered thoughts give you comfort and joy,” Fettleting said, but he stepped back from Cipher.

“When I did it with Lyridel, it was like… like a dream, there briefly but foggier moment by moment. This is clear! I would know the abbot again, if I saw him!” But the look of simple joy on the monk’s face quickly clouded. “Although… I was young then and he was old. Even if he still lives, he could have aged into a completely different face.” He finally focussed on the paladin. “What do you mean you can’t do it again?”

“I don’t know what holds your mind captive,” the little man said slowly, “but to transgress it again would not just be dangerous, it would be wrong.”

“You think it was your patron god who did this to me?” Cipher demanded.

“I can’t say who did it, goddess or man or devil, but it is not my patron’s will that I make another assay. I am truly sorry. I wish I could give you the healing you want.”

“But it’s nothing I deserve?”

“Please don’t…” the halfling began, but the monk had already turned and stormed out.

# # #

Later, as Fettleting prayed over the fresh grave of Dubrois Varver, Cipher approached him to apologize.

“Think nothing of it,” Sir Fettleting said. “Living without a past is no easy thing.”

“Still, I should have kept a better temper.”

The halfling frowned. “I meant what I said about walking beside me for a month. If you’d like to come on my circuit with me, I can take the measure of your soul.”

“I have a place here.” Cipher smiled. “Besides, would you want the company of so accomplished a swear-smith?”

“Some monks and clerics believe words are just air, and sin is done by hands, not lips.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I believe we are far too inventive when it comes to wrongdoing, and can enact it with mouth, heart, feet, hands, and other parts as required.”

# # #

Not long before sundown, armored soldiers strode up the stairs, shackles in hand, to bind the prisoners for judgment. Cipher, unarmored, did not accompany them, so he was down in the courtyard when he heard the uproar from the jailhouse floor.

He hurried toward the front door and yanked it open just as Berry the gnome pushed it out. Cipher’s balance was far too good to be lost, so he blended with the movement and flowed around the wooden edge, grabbing the little thief by the collar.

“Where are you…!” Before he even had time to say ‘going’, Berry had slipped free, leaving the monk clutching empty cloth as his captive bolted at full speed toward the palisade exit. Cipher leaped in pursuit, dropping the shirt, but his tiny quarry was already halfway up the wooden gate.

“Stop him, stop him!” cried Dovestrom from the door, rushing in pursuit and then pulling up short as a crossbow bolt from one of the towers slammed the turf before him. “Hold your fire!”

Meanwhile, Cipher had seized the fugitive’s ankle and yanked, expecting the gnome to kick or cling, but instead Berry leaped back, popping free, rolling as he hit the turf, and came up clutching his discarded garment.

“Thou squirmy, foul…!” Dovestrom bent, like a man seeking to seize a child, but no child moved with the craft of the wily crook, who curled up, pushed between Dovestrom’s knees, and then stood up as hard as he could.

Dovestrom howled and flew forward, forcing Cipher to leap aside instead of grabbing the escapee. By the time he’d corrected his course, Berry had his shirt back on and was running toward the rear of the encampment.

“Shoot him!” Dovestrom cried, “I’m clear!”

“He’s after the barn!” the monk shouted. Berry didn’t bother pausing for the door. He took one leap and dived through an open window the height of Dovestrom’s head. It was too narrow for Cipher’s shoulders, so he had to slow down before wrenching open the door.

With a wild whinny, one of the mounts charged out. Too fast for thought, Cipher dived between its legs and rolled up in the barn, just in time to spring away from a second steed. He could see the gnome leaping from stall to stall, opening them and panicking the horses with shouts and rump-slaps.

“Berry!” Cipher bellowed. The tiny felon glanced over at him, then flung a loose horseshoe through an unlit lamp, spilling its oil on a bale of hay.

Cipher looked at the runner, at the oil-soaked hay, at Brute and Rainbow, and decided to get water. He managed to lift the animals’ drinking trough and stagger a few steps, when Berry shot out of the barn on Fettleting’s riding hound. A lean, coal-black creature, it wasn’t as fast as a horse at gallop, but it was quick to start and could corner hard. In an instant, they caught up with the three-horse stampede, driving them toward the front again.

The monk realized he was cursing again as he pulled the water inside to find that Berry hadn’t bothered to light the fire. He dropped the trough, wrenched open Rainbow’s corral, and leaped on the horse’s back.

“Go!” he called, kicking his heels into his steed’s side. Rainbow obligingly surged forward, but without reins, the monk had only a slight influence on the mare’s direction. He charged out and tried to head after the other galloping animals, but Rainbow had other ideas and tore across the turf, in front of the forge, and around the side of the muster house. Soldiers were running everywhere, crossbowmen in towers were trying to draw a bead on Berry, but he was much lower than the horses and they did not want to hit their own mounts.

“After them!” he cried to Rainbow, hands on the sides of her neck, vaguely pushing as he clung with his knees, and she obligingly charged at the other steeds. Berry, however, was the superior rider. As Cipher neared, he saw the robber grin, pull both feet up onto the dog’s back, and leap up onto the horse in front of him.

Cipher pulled off his rope belt, casting a loop through the air as Berry repeated his crouch. The line sang through the air, a circle dropping over the fleet gnome’s shoulder, Cipher pulled it tight… and Berry leaped up, off the horse, out of the entangling cord, and over the top of the stone wall.

“Shoot him! Shoot that little wretch!” Dovestrom, red-faced, paused in his shouts to give a piercing whistle. In a trice, his own horse (which had not left its paddock without permission) trotted to him. He clutched its mane with his left fist and drew his saber while pulling himself onto it bareback. Two soldiers pulled the gate open as Dovestrom’s mighty gray stallion reared, then charged the opening, with Cipher right behind.

“Where’d he go?” Dovestrom bawled.

“West! West!” a guard on the tower cried.

The two horsemen turned and saw a short figure zigzagging through the grass. It was silhouetted perfectly against the sun for only a moment before being lost in the glare.

“He went right!”

“No, left!”

Dovestrom and Cipher were cursing in jagged syncopation when Mursei’s voice cut through the shouts and singing bowstrings. “He cut hard to the south! TO THE SOUTH!”

Cipher and Dovestrom charged, and it wasn’t until they reached the forest’s edge that they remembered Mursei had been sent out to reconnoiter near the site of the flying man’s death. By the time they realized they’d been tricked by ventriloquism, the sun was down and the gnome was gone.

# # #

“I would never speak ill of the Emperor,” Gruttla said, arms crossed, “but in the realm of the Dwarf King, it is a crime to escape from durance.”

“To seek freedom is the soul’s noblest goal,” Dovestrom muttered.

“How did the little monkey get out of his cell?” Cipher asked.

“We think,” Dovestrom said slowly, “that he dug out the mortar around some stones between his chamber and Karvak’s.”

“So he could get into an adjoining cell?”

“Karvak’s is a compression room,” Gruttla said. “The front wall of bars slides back along four tracks in the ceiling and floor, with a ratchet-and-pawl to keep it from reversing. When we release it, we can push the wall and shrink the cell, compressing prisoners when they are… noncompliant.”

“Karvak made a fuss?” Cipher guessed.

“Very much so. When we pushed the wall in on him, Berry shoved a section of stones forward, went through the hole and down the hall. Tark was on guard, but he got past him on the staircase and… well, the rest you know.”

“Do you think you can catch him?”

She shook her head. “Not while he’s watchful. Give him a couple months to get back in the bottle and we’ll find him again. And next time…” She cracked her knuckles.

“But escaping isn’t a crime.”

“We can try him in absentia for his thefts, not to mention cattle rustling…”

“He only drove those horses half a yard!” Cipher protested.

“… vandalistic behavior, contempt for the crown, dognapping… I’m sure I can think of a few others.” She shook her head. “I can only hope that nothing else goes wrong during the sentencing.”

“Are we still doing that?” Dovestrom asked.

“Oh, aye! ’Tis a propitious date for the paladin’s patron, and the hours of sunset and dawn are… special, somehow, for lifey-deathy magery and priestcraft. So we’re to hop smartly to the crossroads, where such spells and prayers are properly wrought.”

With a clank and clatter, Karvak the killer, Amblard the poisoner, and Figlit the death priestess were brought out into twilight, their hands bound together and their feet manacled onto a shared chain.

“What did he promise you, Karvak?” Gruttla asked as the warrior strode past.

“Naught to concern you, root-dweller.”

With riders on all sides, the prisoners marched out to the road, and then to an intersection where a stump, well stained, attested to its use for Imperial justice.

“You first, northman,” Sir Fettleting said. “By our laws, murder and civic affright are actionable deeds. Do you deny your brawl?”

Karvak shrugged. “Would it make a difference if I did?”

“Yes.” The halfling’s word was frank, and his gaze did not waver.

Karvak frowned, and then his brow seemed to clear. “I admit it,” he said, and somehow, some of the fight and anger was gone from his voice. “It was a tavern-stomp. I think the man brained me with a bottle — someone did, from behind — and when I turned, he was there. I struck him, he died.”

“His name was Alphond.”

“I don’t care what his name was,” Karvak replied.

“He was a merchant of Torgid’s Gulch.”

“He’s a dead man now, dead by my hand.” Karvak fidgeted with his chains.

“He paid his taxes. He served the Emperor.”

“As a carter of grain and wine? All well I suppose, but what is that to me?”

“Because he had use. His death wounds the Empire.”

“Use? Speak you of use? What use was the Empire when the Orc Lord came from the frost-rims, singing songs of ruin and mayhem? What did this son of Turgid Gulch do of use when my people fought, and when we fled? Your land is green and rich with charm, halfling, but all its useful bread-bakers and shoemakers and oath-takers shall flare like chaff in the fire without men of strength and blood. The Empire is not a thing built on use, but on power. Your dragon steeds, your war-mages, these horse-loving saber-wavers,” he said, gesturing at the soldiers, “they do not spin, nor craft, nor build, nor reap. What is their use? None, save warfare.”

“And you, then? To fight is your use?”

“To fight,” Karvak said, “is my destiny.”

Fettleting nodded. “Your words have merit. You have great anger, northman, but you are no coward.” He tilted his head. “You made a pledge to the thief, didn’t you? And kept your word, though it cost you a pressing.”

“I have my honor.”

“For that, I give you a choice. You can go to Axis and fight in the gladiator pits until you find death or freedom.”

“What choice is that?” Karvak cried. “To spill blood that delicate ladies and their fine-mannered men might laugh and delight in my pain or skill? I am nobody’s gore clown!”

“Your other option is five years’ infantry posting, along the northern border.”

“Five years?” Karvak tilted his head. “I’d not have given you five minutes for that milk-breath merchant Alpond. But I am in chains and you owe me no choice at all. Fine. Half a decade in a prison unit.” He shot a glare at Amblard. “At least I’ll be shut of weepers.”

With that, the paladin gestured for Karvak’s feet to be unshackled, though he made sure that the man’s wrists remained bound and tied to the pommel of Brute’s saddle.

“Now you, poisoner,” he said to Amblard.

“Oh please, sir, show mercy! Show mercy!”

“What have you done?”

“I… I have been foolish! Yes, foolish and selfish, but I was in love!”

“Were you?”

“Oh, if only you could have seen her,” Amblard whined, dropping to his knees. “It was wrong, but I, I couldn’t help myself, I was overcome by my passions!”

The witch chained behind him snorted.

“Did you speak to her of this?” Fettleting asked.

“I… we talked, but not of… I mean, we did speak of love. We did, in general…”

Fettleting was silent, but tipped his head to one side.

“I knew she felt as I did! That, that she knew love is all that matters, that it’s worth dying for!”

“Are you certain that’s what you want to be saying at this very moment in time?” Gruttla asked.

Amblard paled.

“Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered. “Oh please, I know I deserve no mercy, but it, I was mad with, with…”

“With lust for a beauty you barely knew,” Gruttla said. “I’ve spoken to her, as you didn’t. She knew you, but said you prattled of inconsequentials, trifling and nervous.”

“She maddened me!” Amblard shrieked.

Fettleting sighed. “This one,” he said, pointing at Karvak, “he has use left in him. You? By your own words, you’re a madman, willing to die for lust.”

“Love!”

“I know love and that isn’t it.”

Amblard’s shoulders sagged and his head dropped.

“Please don’t kill me,” he said. “Please, oh please, I beg you.”

“I find little stomach for it,” Fettleting admitted.

Amblard looked up and, still on his knees, moved closer to clutch the halfling’s ankles. “Don’t send me to the army!” he wailed. “That’s as sure as death! Please, I can’t go north!”

Karvak laughed. “Indeed, do not! The army has little use for a sad, weak, sniveling bag of guts and tears! It would do him a world of good to get blood on his blade, but he’d do any fighting force a world of harm until he did!”

“I’m useful!” Amblard babbled. “I’m an alchemist, I, ask the commander! She came to me for potions, I have skills, I’ll do anything but die a slow death in the army!”

“Have you heard of the Ice and Crystal Temple?” Fettleting asked.

“I know it,” Gruttla said.

“A place of healing,” Amblard said hopefully. “Yes, they could find a place for me there!”

“I have it in my power,” the halfling said, “to lay a geas upon you.” He reached behind his breastplate and drew forth a fold of rich vellum parchment. “Your sentence falls thus: you are to travel to the Ice and Crystal Temple and remain within a mile of its environs for the rest of your natural days.”

“I can do that!” Amblard said eagerly.

“There you shall serve with alchemical skill, and perform any other task required of you by High Priest Ost or his successor.”

“Of course!”

“Each day you spend outside your designated place of penance, you shall sicken.”

“I shall…?”

“You shall have headaches, fever, cramping joints, and a rustling in your bowels. Food you will love not and you will dream of dark things,” Fettleting intoned, “these ills beyond cure, culminating in death after five days, unless and until you return to the Ice and Crystal Temple. Do you requite and accept these conditions, that I may lay this geas upon you?”

“Cramping, you say? And a, a one-mile limit? I… is there…?

“Do you requite and accept these conditions?”

“Is there no other punishment?”

“Oh, indeed, there could be,” Fettleting said impatiently, and in a twinkling his sword — a leaf-shaped blade the length of his arm — flashed free and was upraised. “Simply put your neck upon the stump.”

“I accept the geas! I accept and requite! I accept and requite the conditions!”

There was a blue flash from the parchment, which surged up toward the stars in a shower of sparks. Then Amblard hunched over and vomited out his supper with a groan.

“Heaven has heard,” Fettleting said. Then he turned to Figlit. “Now for you.”

She started with curses upon his god specifically, blaspheming rapidly through an entire Bright pantheon. Fettleting stepped forward and delivered a stinging slap with the flat of his blade, hard enough to knock her down.

“Enough of that,” he said, voice cold. “You stand accused of giving yourself to an enemy of the Empire, enemy of natural death and, therefore, enemy of all life. How plead you?”

“The One-Eyed King is the true Emperor!” she shrieked. “First, last, ruling forever, builder of roads, binder of dragons, master of men, tyrant of graveyards! I serve him weakly in life and in death shall serve greatly!”

She staggered to her feet, bound wrists tangled in her filthy, voluminous robe, and launched a gob of brown spit onto the holy ornament on Fettleting’s chest. “I welcome your sword, paladin fool!” she cried. “Deliver me from this prison life into the boundless rewards of my king!”

“Oh, I’ll not strike you yet, no matter how you provoke,” he said. “You could rise indeed, as some vile unholy thing, if I relished your death so much I forgot to bind and purify your path. But I do not hate you, Figlit.”

“I hate you enough for us both!”

“I see in you only the wreckage of a life wasted,” he said, tracing out a symbol in the dust of the crossroads. “I wish you could be turned from your path of destruction, but you embrace your own doom..”

The hag tried to get to his design and scratch it out, but Horm pulled on the chain at her ankles and dragged her, shrieking, back.

“The passage from life to death is a holy thing, Figlit. I’m sorry I must be your road, but I will hold you up as you tread upon me.. You will leave this world and haunt it not, even if the destination you choose is hell.

.”

“Nooooo!” With a convulsive movement, she revealed her hands and, clutched within them, Cipher saw a set of panpipes. “Blood and bone!” she shrieked, spitting crimson from gnawed lips. “Ornaments of the Darktakers! ,!” As the knight’s words had rung with celestial tones, Figlit’s words, snarled in a language ill fit for mortal throats, seemed to crash and groan like a mountain rent by a quake.

“Where did she get bones?” Dovestrom shouted. He drew and made to strike, but Gruttla was quicker, her hammer rising and falling in a single, deadly blow.

“No!” Fettleting cried, but it was too late. Figlit’s body dropped, moistly.

There was a moment of silence, ultimately broken when Karvak said, “Good riddance.” Then, in an explosion of dirt-clods and nightcrawlers, the stump shot into the air and a string of white spirits flowed forth, howling.

“Ghosts!”

There were three of them. One, a woman with elven features too sharp and arch for beauty, was picked out in radiant edges over absolute blackness. Around her throat, a necklace of glowing blood showed where her head had been taken. Beside her, a spectral half-orc waved a spike-topped axe, his fatal wound bleeding dark where hers was light. The third, a pale gnome in wizardly robes, clutched his severed head by the hair like a grisly lamp.

For a moment, they simply moaned and howled before two voices formed the word “Revenge!”. Though the gnome’s lips writhed on his face, the squeaking tones from his neck were an inarticulate ululation.

“Get on the horse!” Gruttla told Karvak, boosting him with one hand while hoisting her weapon with the other. Dovestrom leaped toward the warrior spirit, shouting “One death not enough for you?!?”, while Horm drew his weapon and took a defensive stance, eyes wide but hands steady.

The night elf chuckled and closed in, ignoring it entirely when Horm swept a perfect disemboweling stroke through her stomach. It was no better than striking fog, but when she laid her hand across his face, nails like icy starlight, he screamed in agony.

Dovestrom, too, found his weapon unable to harm his foe. Unfortunately, the ghostly axe, moving with the speed of a night chill, proved equal to mortal flesh. Dovestrom gasped and leaped back, bleeding from a cut that crossed both his biceps and left a shiny scratch across his breastplate.

The headless gnome neither fell back nor approached, but simply waved his slack and gory face, eyes rolled back, while gesturing and piping eerily through his severed throat. A bolt of something that was both light and dark commingled arced out and struck Gruttla, who staggered.

As for Sir Fettleting, he had a problem of his own.

He had closed in on Figlit’s small body, chanting and praying, when a fountain of eldritch light spewed from it like a geyser of icy fog, snow sparkling within. It formed a shape that was barely recognizable as the aged hag, for this was Figlit young and possessed of a terrible, unearthly beauty. One eye blazed blue like arctic lightning, while the other howled with a dark vortex and, unlike her frail mortal shape, this towered over them all.

“Face now a wife of the Death King on her wedding night,” she intoned, her bone-white bridal shroud glowing like moonlight, or like the phosphorescence of decay. Then she swooped, and Fettleting was encompassed in her necromantic glory.

Cipher watched, staring, perfectly still. He was remembering.

… a night in a mountain valley, its dry floor choked with ancient bones, human and horse, and other things jumbled together, the wreckage of a battle from some age long ago. He and Escape had been left there, each with a knife wound to the left hand, warned that the blood would draw ghosts at sundown.

Escape had said something to him, words he couldn’t recall, but when the bones began to rattle and steam, the refined and scholarly monk had been the one whose hands had flared with power. Escape had been the one to master the Balancing Mudra that made life into life and death into death, the esoteric technique that was anathema to death-in-life and the living dead…

The image slipped from his mind but his body did not forget. He began to move his hands in strange, flowing patterns. His features etched in high relief by the harsh glow of the spirits, he started moving forward with formal steps, almost as if dancing. His hands burst into flames as he got near to Horm.

“Little freak!” Gruttla had reconfigured her Weapon into a massive flail. After two swings around her head, she sent it crashing into the side of the ghost gnome. His disconnected face stayed limp, but his body language bespoke surprise as he was flung aside, his right arm crumpling with the impact.

Horm had dropped to his knees and seemed to be aging before Cipher’s eyes, as the black ghost turned to the monk and coolly said, “This is none of your affair, stranger. Begone or be hurt.”

Without hurrying or speaking, he reached one orange-burning hand forward. It passed through her robes as if it would be as ineffective as Horm’s sword… but when he clenched it, her eyes widened and her mouth opened. Flames squirted between his fingers as he closed his right fist and delivered three crisp, rapid jabs to her face.

“!” Fettleting’s voice pierced the dark and dimmed the undead light. Figlit’s spirit was flung back, expanding like a soap bubble before popping into a diminished, gaseous apparition. No longer beautiful, her face turned into a skull and her fingers to bones, she lunged at her foe, clawing as if to flay him into pieces. But as she touched his armor, green light burst out from the verdigris of its inlay, sending her wailing back.

Dovestrom was dodging and ducking, but his enemy pressed the attack joyously, recklessly. They both knew that Dovestrom could not respond, and that the dead warrior could advance far longer than the mortal could retreat and defend. The specter laughed, a coarse and brutal sound, abruptly stopping when Gruttla’s flail crashed into his shoulder from behind.

The phantom elf dug at Cipher’s face with her nails, but they clearly did far less to him than they had to Horm. He continued to pummel her with strikes that looked as cleanly delivered as an expert doing half-speed practice. With each flaming blow, her darkness eroded and the white bone beneath glowed through, until she was a skeleton, scrabbling and twitching around the hand that clutched through her chest and seemed to have a grip on her very soul.

“Hammerheart,” the half-orc snarled. “You could barely beat me when I was alive!” He turned, swinging his axe. “What hope have you against me immortal?”

Gruttla ignored his taunts, blocking with the haft of her weapon, its chain entangling his axe. With a twist and a touch, it changed back into a warhammer — snapping his weapon in half. It crumbled like dust and blew away like smoke.

“Your strength was all flesh.” She shoved him back hard, raising her maul to strike. “Now? You’re only shadow and fear.”

Before she could land her blow, the gnome struck her in the back with a flare of something that looked like lightning, except it was sooty black.

“Farewell, man of faith!” Figlit hissed, her bitter voice like a saw rasping through pine. “I go to my liege and consummation!”

“No!” Fettleting shouted as she took to the sky, floating to the southwest, but a shrill cry of terror distracted him.

“HELP MEEEEE!” Amblard the alchemist was screaming as the dead gnome, wheezing and hunched over, came upon him and set its icy hands on his face. Steam rose from its touch.

The half-orc pressed its advantage against Gruttla, springing upon her when she staggered and bearing her to the ground. She held the hammer between them and he laughed, lacing his powerful hands around her neck. Gritting her teeth, she slid a thumb up to a cog-switch on the side of the Weapon and depressed it.

With a loud “SPANG!” all the bolts held in the hammer’s head shot out of its face, ripping through the ghost’s neck and chest. He blinked stupidly, then faded away.

Cipher kept methodically punching the skeletal wraith as it scratched and scrabbled at him, until it, too, evaporated like mist in the dawn.

Fettleting made his choice and lunged at the phantasm assaulting his prisoner. “!” he declared. “!”

With a hiss, the gnome spirit flung up one arm — a curious gesture from someone headless — and then dissolved.

# # #

The conversation as they returned to the muster house was fragmented at first.

“Potion? Anyone? Anyone have a potion?”

“I can’t feel my face…”

“That could have gone better.”

Gruttla and Dovestrom produced flasks of health elixirs, and Fettleting closed wounds with just a touch, but Horm remained shriveled. From just a few seconds’ touch, his hair had whitened, and his skin had sunk on his cheeks.

“This is beyond my power,” Fettleting said gravely. “High Priest Ost, however… I think he could restore you.”

“So we know who’s escorting this one,” Gruttla said, giving a tiny tug to Amblard’s tether, then hissing in exasperation as he stumbled and coughed again.

“You couldn’t have taken me to the temple and then laid this curse upon me?” he asked, glaring at the paladin.

“Your mouth truly aches for a slap,” Gruttla said, and after that the alchemist was quiet except for his cough.

“This is getting embarrassing,” Dovestrom muttered.

“What?” Gruttla turned on him, nostrils flared.

“All the escaping,” he said, being careful to bite off each syllable. “In the past month we have had seven prisoners bound by law and all but two managed to get free!”

“Night’s still young,” Karvak said, smirking. Horm gave him a shove.

“Three if you count Figlit,” Cipher added. “Is it the same tally if she escaped after dying?”

“How are we supposed to fight ghosts?” Horm asked. “I’ve no weapons of magic. We could have paid to have them anointed with runes or oils, I suppose, but…”

“What happened to that wizard you had?” the paladin asked. “Lyrigus, Lyridor, something like that?”

There was a moment of silence so awkward that even the prisoners noticed, before answers floated out of the night.

“That’s…”

“It’s complicated.”

“’Tis a bit of a… tale…”

“Forget I asked,” Fettleting said, as Gruttla sighed.

“So, brother,” Dovestrom said, turning a furrowed brow to Cipher, “what in all hells was that sorcery you did to the Hemlock Widow?”

“Who?”

“The dead elf,” Horm said. “I’sooth… I’ve seen monks handle hot coals and even walk on them, but that… when did you learn such magic?”

“It’s not magic,” Cipher said. “It’s… balancing. Their undeath caused an imbalance, and I was able to draw life-force to restore it.”

“Not magic?” Dovestrom shrugged. “I had too many roundabout conversations with the elf, so if you say so, I leave you to it. I know swords and horses.”

“If you meditate long enough, your palms get fiery.” Cipher shrugged. “I had no idea I could do that.”

“Until you did it?” Gruttla asked.

“I… I know I did it before, in a valley. With a friend. Someone who showed me how.”

“Who was this friend?”

“He was called ‘Escape’. Together, we served an abbot in a mountain monastery but… I know nothing more than that.”

“That’s still something!”

“Is it? I remembered learning to fight.” He snorted. “We already knew I could do that.”

“You also remembered that you had a friend, so now we know you can do that,” Dovestrom said with a small, twisted smile.

“We knew he could do that too,” Gruttla said.

They were nearing the gates of the muster house.

“Commander?” Cipher asked. “May I go to the temple with Horm and Amblard?”

“Why?” she asked.

“This High Priest Ost… he’s a great healer, isn’t he? Mortal magic was unable to break my curse, but Fettleting’s prayers helped. Perhaps it’s time I trusted the gods.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The next day was absolutely beautiful, warm and breezy and smelling richly of early summer. Clouds gave the dawn a canvas for a wild display of orange and pink, then blew aside, except for a few cheery white puffs to lend the sky some interest and promise shade when noon rolled around. It was altogether delightful, except that Amblard dismounted to vomit forth his breakfast before the watch-house walls were even out of sight.

“Uggghhh,” he moaned, trying to spit the taste from his mouth.

“Come now, remount,” Horm said, armored and wrapped in a heavy cloak. Despite the cheery day, he was still touched by the previous night’s necromantic assault. “The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can all be set right.”

They had settled Amblard upon gentle Rainbow, while Cipher was now deemed fit to ride Thunderhead, a great brown destrier-bred gelding. Thunderhead was fairly calm, despite his name, and a graceful palomino mare called Willow followed behind with a light load of provisions. Horm was on a stallion named Mandolin, a spirited animal with the quick strength prized by the southern tribes. His secondary mount was named Blister and was an ugly beast, with crooked teeth and a broad frame better suited to the icy north. But the white-splashed chestnut horse was as calm and stalwart as he was homely. Five horses for three men seemed sensible, especially since they’d only travel between settlements on the first day.

“Just how far is this Ice and Crystal Temple?” Cipher asked.

“Well, we’ll head to Farfield by way of Tarrowhenge. From there, there’s a track that pilgrims use. That goes to the Old Scary Bridge.”

“The what?”

“The Old Scary Bridge,” Horm repeated.

“Is there a New Scary Bridge?” Cipher asked with a smile.

“No, don’t be ridiculous.”

“My apologies. Is it truly scary?”

“It looks like it was built by devils with headaches,” Horm said. Then Amblard pulled up on his reins, dismounted, and waded into the weedy ditch beside the path.

“What are you doing?” Horm called.

“Just a moment! There’s graddle-grass here!” The miserable concocter was seizing handfuls of tufty silver-green sedge, stuffing a few long blades in his mouth while tucking the others into his belt.

“What the hells is ‘graddle-grass’?”

“Settles the stomach!” Amblard said around his full mouth. Soon, with a disappointed frown, he’d picked all there was to find and remounted.

“You do understand that you are the one who will get sicker and die if we are delayed?” Horm said.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not a very common plant! Do you want me expulsive and smelling foul this whole sojourn?” His breath had a curious tang to it, slightly acrid and anise-like, but not unpleasant.

“Very well,” Horm said. “Don’t delay further, though.”

“I’m as eager to be shut of this illness as you are to be shut of me.” Amblard coughed hard.

“After the Scary Old Bridge, where then?” Cipher asked.

“There’s a pass north through the hills, off the road. It gets steep for horses, but nothing these steeds can’t handle. We bushwhack north and northwest, until we see a hill with a shining rim. It’s not hard to spot.”

“How long do you think it will take?” Amblard asked, chewing more grass, then belching. “Excuse me.”

“We should make Farfield by nightfall, cross the bridge tomorrow afternoon if we ride lively, then another day and a half to the temple if the weather holds and there aren’t any delays.”

“I have five days, starting from last night,” Amblard reminded them.

“We are clever enough to count,” Horm said, “and this one probably even remembers.”

“Jest as you wish, but one day to Farfield, one to the Bridge, and then another day and a half after is cutting it awfully close for my tastes.”

“And yet, you stopped to pick flowers.”

Amblard belched again. “Excuse me. It’s the grass, it voids the pressure as wind. Better up top than down low. I just want to make sure we don’t run out of time! What do we do if the weather is bad or we do get delayed? Have you thought about that?”

Horm shrugged. “I guess you die, and we put rocks on your corpse and there’s no monument for your mourners. Not that I’d expect you to have many.”

# # #

The road to Tarrowhenge was broad and firm, so they made good time, patches of conversation between the monk and the soldier breaking up stretches of pleasant silence. They paused for lunch by an opalescent obelisk, a tapered egg that came up to Cipher’s ribs.

“What’s this?” Cipher asked, looking at it curiously. “Some device of the Archmage?”

“A Repel-stone,” Horm said. He laid a hand on it, and its greenish-blue surface rippled ice-white and gray before settling back to its normal color. “Abhorrent to anything of the realms below.”

“Indeed?” Cipher reached out a fingertip, then pulled it back as the stone’s surface blackened like toast too near a fire, the blotch of the contact red-rimmed.

“Did that hurt?” Horm said, leaning close.

“It did and did not,” Cipher said, staring as the black blotch faded once more to jade. “What do you think it means?”

“I’m no magic-worker. Hey, Amblard, try touching this thing!”

“I have no devil taint,” the alchemist said, wiping his running nose.

“Just do it, you foul little sparrow.”

Rolling his eyes, their prisoner obeyed. The stone roiled a sickly green at his touch, but then a golden swell seemed to rise from within it and consume his stain.

“Magic,” he said with a shrug, then set off to eat his food away from his guards.

Lunch was the black bread of the plains, golden pears, and a thick slab of salted beef.

“Horm?” Cipher asked. “Know you much of the dwarves?”

The sergeant shrugged. “A bit. Farfield has a fairly large settlement of the tunnelers. Why?”

“What happens if you put beard salve on a lady dwarf?”

“Hm… my guess is she launches an axe into your crotch.”

“Ah.”

“I did notice your sudden hair a few weeks back. Gruttla’s treat?”

“She said one of the men had the ointment…”

Horm laughed. “I reckon I know which one too.” He shook his head.

Amblard started coughing, and his two escorts squinted at a cloud of dust on the road ahead.

“Oh by the Dark Gods’ plunder,” Horm said. “We haven’t time for this.”

“Is that a cattle drive?” Cipher asked, squinting.

“A small one. If we’re charming or officious, they might move aside and let us pass. Click your heels and look impatient!”

As they neared, the drovers waved their hats and Horm spurred Mandolin forward to speak with their leader. Their exchange was brief enough that by the time Amblard and Cipher had reached the trailing end of the black and white herd, the cowpokes were cracking lengthy bullwhips and the stock were starting to mill out of their way. Amblard went on to catch up with Horm, but when the sergeant looked back, he saw the monk in conversation with a herdsman. As he watched, the monk borrowed the lash, tested its springiness between his hands, and then gave it a crack, before nodding and handing it back.

“Come on,” Amblard said, looking back with a frown. Horm favored him with a rude gesture while Cipher returned.

“What was it? Did the whip recall something to you?”

The monk shrugged.

“You couldn’t ride, so you were no rancher… perhaps a flogsman on a ship? Or perhaps the oarsman who heard the crack? Though your back doesn’t have the marks of galley toil…”

“Nothing like that, I remembered nothing,” Cipher said irritably. “But watching those herders gave me an idea.” He patted the rope at his belt. “I’ve been… trying out some techniques with a tethered dagger. Rope is adequate, but I want something more pliant.”

“You think whip-leather’s what you want?”

“They said Farfield is an abattoir town, and that I could find a thin thong peeled off the carcass continuously — that’s what they use.” He shrugged. “They recommended a dwarf who crafts in top-grain, if I can afford it.”

“Oh, and can you?” Horm asked.

“Gruttla paid me for a week of soldiering this morning,” Cipher replied. “I guess she felt my toil yesterday was worth the coin.”

# # #

At Tarrowhenge, Cipher asked after the Bandarhalps and was told that the younger was at home with his mother and ‘a half-elf cavalry wench’. Despite Amblard’s half-hearted protests, they got directions in hope of finding Mursei. And indeed, she was sitting on a bench before the cottage, a plate of eggs and sausage in her hands.

“What ho, Sergeant!” she cried. “What news?”

As they neared, she took in Horm’s grayed hair and sunken countenance, and her smile faded. She stood.

“What happened?”

“Touch of a grave-wight,” Horm said.

“And this dispenser of mixtures?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Amblard.

“The judge sent me to the Temple of Ice and Crystal.” He coughed.

“Surprising,” she said.

“He saw use in me still,” the alchemist sniffed.

“What do you make of the woodcutters’ find?” Cipher asked.

“Well, I never would have guessed he fell from the sky,” Mursei said, sitting back down and lighting back into her lunch. “Congratulate yourself on that. Any idea who he was or why he stopped flying?”

Horm quickly filled her in on the dead man’s name and crime, pausing only to wipe his lips when the scent of cooking meat started drifting out of the house.

“Dubrois Varver? Sounds like someone from the middle-south,” Mursei said, chasing the last bit of meat around her plate while Amblard stared at it longingly. “Where’d the watch-for come from, Horizon?”

“Yes.”

“So we have this… what do we think, mid-grade layabout nobleman? Steals a flying carpet and flees, only to fall off and die. That right?”

“That’s his tale,” Horm agreed.

“Someone here sees this and nicks the carpet.”

“I thought people were entitled to any magic items they found… you know, out in the wildness,” Amblard said.

“Don’t let a dwarf hear you say that,” Horm said, with a glance at Cipher. “All the treasures of the land, forfeit to the Dwarf King, blah blah, that’s their law… but the Empire’s position is actually more complicated than people believe.”

“Complicated.” Cipher sighed. “There’s that word again.”

“What’s the law called? ‘Drakken-grab’, something like that?” Amblard asked.

“‘The Emperor’s Law of Drakken-Gelt’. Literally ‘Dragon-Gold’ in the old language. In general, ’tis applied thus: should you be outside the boundaries of civilization, and overcome some person or being acting against the interests of the Emperor…”

“Even to the extent of general banditry and despoilment,” Mursei added.

Horm nodded. “Should you dispose of that unwanted person, you are entitled to claim their possessions as your own.”

“The hero claims the dragon’s trove,” Amblard intoned, then sat up as Bandarhalp’s wife emerged with three trenchers of steaming food. He tucked in while Horm offered money, which the woman declined. Amblard continued to munch graddle-grass every few bites.

“Got stomach ails, alchemist?” Mursei asked, sitting back.

“You have no idea,” he muttered, mouth full.

“Well,” she said, seeming to enjoy the spectacle of the dining men, “the drawbacks emerge when people try to claim Drakken-Gelt after killing some thief in town, or try to say that a peer of the realm was acting against the interests of the Empire…”

“Or that said peer’s castle is ‘outside the boundaries of civilization’, remember that one?” Horm said, spraying small bits of greasy gristle as he spoke.

“So… could you claim that on my shop?” Amblard said.

“What of it?” Cipher said. “You’re never going back.”

“I know, but… still. It was mine.”

“It was yours to ruin, as you did, which is more than can be said of my body or Gruttla’s,” Cipher replied.

“I’m sorry,” the alchemist replied, voice soft. “I never did apologize for that, did I?”

Then, with an oath, he stood and ran to vomit in a nearby stand of petunias.

“I almost pity him,” Horm said.

“He didn’t fling dragon ichor at you,” Cipher replied. Then he turned to Mursei and said, “What about the hunters, Emptor and…?”

“The other local hunter is named Clay, and he’s been out in the woods for months, which is not, it seems, unusual for him.”

“What about the scavenging woman, Nana Batwatch?”

“Batwach,” Mursei corrected. “I’ve spoken to her, she’s hilarious.”

“Oh.” Horm idly scratched his scar. “Too hilarious to be a thief?”

“No one who knew Berry would say you can’t be both,” she sighed. “But I don’t think she’s the one. She’s a frail old thing, outlived her children, making do with wit and work and the kindness of neighbors.”

“Emptor, then?”

“He was in and spoke to me, and his wife testified that he’s found nothing in the woods beyond game. He was bleeding out a deer and seemed most concerned with his hunting dog’s pregnant bitch.” She shifted. “Did Gruttla ever voice an opinion on puppies?”

“Hmph, you think you could raise a tracker?”

“Its lineage is fair. Might be worth it.”

“Did you see anything that proved the man’s innocence?” Cipher pressed.

“How can I prove he did not take a magic rug?”

“Better by far to find the one who did steal it. Hm. You’ve told neither that it was a carpet?”

“Until you came just now, I didn’t know anything about a carpet.”

“Good, good,” Cipher said. “Continue to watch them, mention the dead man’s name and the punishments for stealing enchanted goods, then wait and see if one of them slips up and mentions the rug before you’ve told them about it.”

“That could work,” she said, but she sounded dubious.

# # #

“Horm,” Cipher said once they were back on the road, “what led you to cavalry fighting?”

“Ah, I was a rancher. It was a fine life until our cattle got blackleg.” He slumped in his saddle just a bit, remembering. “Lost all but a third, maybe a quarter of them. There just weren’t enough for my brothers and me, and the Emperor was calling for troops to besiege Castle Acrid.”

“Wait,” Amblard said, “That’s what became First Triumph, right?”

“Yes,” Horm said, glaring. “It’s where I got this little memento,” he added, gesturing at his cheek. “We had the demons there… contained. Mostly. But the walls and floors… you couldn’t touch them unburned. The air itself would scald our lungs. The dragon riders, they could maul any flying demons that got too far from the hellhole, but even they started to suffer, flying in its corrosive fumes. They’d do daily sweeps, breathing whatever they had, but fire and acid and poison aren’t terribly harmful to beasts of the Abyss. Lightning fared better, and ice best of all, but the demons quickly started focusing their ire on the white riders. So it was a stalemate, save that every few months some lord or mage or inspired priest would complain that we were being too hesitant! And then the infantry would make another assay against the gates, or dwarven sappers would try to tunnel underneath or collapse a wall — collapse a wall weeping with acid!”

“Bright Gods,” Amblard murmured.

“When times were just, the loudmouthed gentry or overzealous clerics or arrogant wizards died leading their attacks, but just as often it was some politician who doomed his prestige, but suffered nothing worse than a disappointing letter delivered to his feast hall in Axis. I know you’ve had your tumbles with Dovestrom,” he told Cipher, “but he’s no game-board conqueror sending peasants to die. If he starts a fight, he’s at the front of it.”

“I believe that.” Cipher replied.

“So, were you there when the Crusader conquered Castle Acrid?” Amblard asked.

“No,” Horm said, voice grating. “No, he insisted that all Imperial troops fall back before his handpicked soldiers could lay their siege. He deigned only to use the Emperor’s supply lines and dragon flyers. I was reassigned to count tolls on the Bronze River.”

Amblard and Cipher waited attentively, but it seemed that Horm was satisfied with his tale’s end. Finally, the alchemist said, “It must have irked you that he went on to conquer the hellhole.”

“I’m pleased someone did,” Horm insisted, “but I’ll admit to being galled. It was best for the Empire, I suppose. Friends who served in the baggage trains saw… disquieting things. The Crusader had a vast force for that fight. Not just mercenaries from the Red Wastes either, not just crazed plunderers from Gorogan’s Maw. Golems of iron and clay, and as the battle wore on, more made from the flesh of the fallen. Manticores and gargoyles were chivvied into service, and even a mass of goblins. A goblin army, in the heart of the Empire! How he brought them to a week’s march of Axis, Glitterhaegen and High Dock is a mystery no one wishes to discuss or contemplate for too long. Perhaps their numbers were overstated… certainly no great quantity of them survived the attack, for he spent his forces as if they had one chance, and one only, to win or die.”

“Perhaps they did,” Cipher said. “Had he failed, would the Emperor ever have trusted him with another such task?”

“I imagine that would depend on how desperate the situation became,” Amblard replied.

“Hush, varlet,” Horm said, but Cipher noticed that he did not directly disagree.

# # #

Farfield was an orderly town, as could be seen from the stony ridge that shielded it from the wind. Laid out in a grid around a central market square, its edges were demarcated by four thick stone towers at its corners and eight smaller ones in between. Each was topped by a high chimney, billowing smoke. Yet despite this almost severe design, dirt tracks and wooden houses had spilled out beyond the stone borders as the settlement grew, and once beyond the clear grid, the streets began to narrow and curve, adopting the contours of the terrain and switching in accordance with convenience.

“There are probably twice as many dwarves living beneath Farfield as there are humans atop it,” Horm said. “Those smoke towers are the entryways to the undertown, where much of the quarrying and forging and mining is performed.”

As he spoke, they passed through a channel of carved stone, cut from the hillside to make travel simpler, and on its far side the road turned to smooth, flat, close-fitted cobbles. The workmanship was so precise, weeds only squeezed up through cracks every twenty paces.

“There are parts of the town below that no human has seen nor visited,” Horm continued. “None of the topside residents really knows how deep the delving goes, though they’re assured that the dwarves keep the ‘lower border’ secure.”

“I’ve never been here,” Amblard said in a small voice. “Though Nagatia spoke fondly of it. She found it confusing, not like the haphazard streets of Belton’s Hill. No, those roads made perfect sense to her, but they look like a plate of noodles on a map…”

“What are you babbling at?” Horm asked.

“Nothing,” Amblard said, even as Cipher said, “He speaks of his love.”

“Why say it like that?” Amblard demanded, wiping his running nose on his sleeve. “Perhaps if you had someone worth remembering, your mind would be clear!”

“Perhaps if I were hearing uncivil discourse from a murderer, I would knock out his teeth,” Cipher said, glaring. “Oh wait, I am.”

“Don’t batter the prisoner,” Horm said. “Let his life do that for you.”

“Why can’t my fists take turns with fate?”

“Let us please just travel to Fenton’s Jolly Wayhouse, where we can enjoy a cold ale and a second hot meal, which are no small things on a traveling day.”

“You can enjoy a hot meal,” Amblard sniveled. “For me it just backs out, still hotter.”

“And whose fault is that?” Cipher asked.

“That self-righteous black halfling,” Amblard replied.

“And not your own for earning a curse? Which, I’ll add, you accepted,” Horm said.

“At swordpoint!”

“More choice than you gave Perdu!”

At the name, defiance seemed to leak out of Amblard like air from a pricked bladder. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

They rode in silence down from the hill, until Cipher’s keen ears picked up Amblard’s quiet sobs.

“Oh Bright Gods,” he muttered.

But it got worse once they were in town.

# # #

The sun was sinking as they rode into the market. Horm had just pointed out the wayfarers’ house when Amblard pulled up short, hard enough that even Rainbow lifted her front legs.

Amblard was pale, and staring, and Cipher was disgustedly certain he was about to vomit again, when he followed Amblard’s gaze and realized that a woman in a booth was staring back at him.

No, not just any woman. It was Perdu’s widow. It was Nagatia.

At first, Cipher barely recognized her. Where once her hair and skin had held the vibrant greens of fertile summer, her head was now crowned with red, orange, and gold. Her skin had deepened to a woody brown and, in the process, lost its smooth texture. Even at a distance, he could see that its surface was something between the wrinkling of human age and the corrugations of a tree’s bark. Her features were still even and elegant, but the blush of youth was gone. Only her eyes retained a vivid emerald tone.

He started swearing, soft but strong, and wheeled Thunderhead around so he could grab Rainbow’s reins. Cipher began to urge the two horses forward when Amblard lurched over and threw up on him, both steeds, and himself.

Cipher’s curses went from a mutter to a roar, echoing off sturdy stone buildings, shaking soft-sided merchant stalls. The small group staring at the sick man expanded as more turned toward the rising torrent of foul language directed at gods, men, heavens, hells, and alchemists.

“Almost,” Horm said, pulling up Mandolin’s reins as the stallion bolted back, snorting, to circle its befouled stablemates. “We almost made it to hot food, cold drinks, and soft beds. I could see it.”

Cipher stopped swearing to take a long breath. “Nagatia is here,” he said.

“What? Where?”

“Here,” she said.

Horm looked down at the widow. A small group of citizens followed her, frowning and crossing their arms. On the fringes, people pointed at Amblard and whispered behind their hands.

Horm dismounted. “I didn’t know you were traveling,” he said.

She glanced at him, then did a double take, as if realizing for the first time that, like her, he had aged deeply. “What happened to you, Sergeant?”

“The defiling touch of the undead,” he said. “And… are you… well?”

“The defiling touch of grief.” She turned back to Amblard, who had clumsily dismounted, keeping the horse’s body between him and her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes wide. “I’m so, so… I’m so very sorry.”

“I do not understand you at all.”

“This is the one?” The man who asked had a bushy beard, a lanky frame, and the tanned flesh of a farmer.

“We are taking him to his punishment,” Horm said.

“I thought poisoners got death,” a dwarven woman with a flour-coated apron said.

“I was… it’s… I’m still useful?” Amblard cringed back.

“Useful?” Nagatia cried. “The Empire needs lovesick poisoners?”

“Cipher, take him away to the inn,” Horm said. “Clean him, tend the horses…”

“What? No,” Nagatia said. “You bide at Fenton’s?”

“Yes, but it won’t be jolly,” Cipher said, trying to inch forward. The crowd was denser, though the vomit-reek created a small buffer.

“I will not sleep under the same roof as my husband’s killer,” she said. Her hands rose, still crossed, now as if she were hugging herself for warmth. A stray strand of red hair drifted down to her shoulder, like an autumn leaf detached from its tree.

“Nor should you have to,” Horm said. “But… listen, all of you, back off!”

The grumbling of the crowd took a darker tone.

“We’ll go,” Cipher said. “We can make a few more leagues tonight and camp.”

“We were going to resupply,” Horm muttered to him. Without quite intending it, they’d formed the horses into a defensive block.

“We can go without or hunt.”

“What’s all this, then?” The mob sullenly parted to admit four dwarves. Their mail was spotless, their helms identical, and their marching was brisk, precise, and somehow indicated that they were going to continue with the same heavy, tromping footsteps whether people got out of their way or not.

“Emperor’s business,” Horm said. He shrugged back his cloak to show the seven-sided gold and purple seal embroidered on an armband. “You know me, Dunbridge.”

“I think I do not, sir,” said the dwarf with the longest beard.

“Sergeant Horm! I’m Horm of Gruttla’s unit!”

“I know Horm,” the dwarf said, “and he lacks your dimmed eye and gray locks.” With a quick move, he seized the axe-handle projecting above his shoulder and, in an instant, all four had spread out, weapons drawn, hunkered down into wide-legged chopping stances.

The crowd rapidly backed away. Amblard collapsed on the cobbles.

“We are on a pilgrimage to the Temple of Ice and Crystal,” Horm said, keeping his hands lifted and his eyes on the dwarf Dunbridge. “I was struck by a grave-wight. By the spirit of the Hemlock Widow, you remember her I trust? Dunbridge, listen to my voice, ’tis I, ’tis Horm!”

“Those are the horses of Gruttla’s people,” one of the other dwarves said, “But what of the one with no sword? I know the cavalry folk, and he’s not among their number.”

“Please! Listen, I beg you!”

The dwarves edged at a slight angle, to get a view of this new speaker. It was Nagatia.

“I know this to be Horm, I believe him. You have seen me, a longtime friend of your town and farms, and the sudden change wrought on my hair and person.”

“Aye…” Dunbridge said, voice filled with doubt.

“The other man is the one who uncovered Amblard’s deception. Without him, Perdu’s killer would be free and unsuspected. Is this not so?” she said, turning to point at Amblard.

He groaned. “Oh yes, it was him who caught me.” His body shook with coughing.

“The Emperor’s judge, acting for the Bright Gods, put a geas on this man,” Cipher said. “He is cursed to sicken if he is away from the Temple of Ice and Crystal.”

“Hm,” Dunbridge said. “If what you speak is true, I owe you an apology.”

“It is,” Horm said. “And I accept…”

But at that moment, he was interrupted by a jingle of harness and the clatter of weapons. While the crowd had thinned with the drawing of the dwarf axes, it now melted away entirely as eight armored knights of the Crusader rode up and casually encircled both the dwarves and the travelers.

Their leader reined up and lifted the mask of his helmet.

“Good evening,” he said pleasantly, one gauntleted hand toying with the end of a graying mustache. “I’m Captain Grossthorn. What seems to be the trouble?”

# # #

As the sun set, two men strode through Farfield’s marketplace, faces set like flint and bodies marked with battle scars. One bore a weapon, and the other walked like he was a weapon. Strong men stepped aside as they neared, without shame, for the thunderous looks on these travelers’ faces told any but the foolish that they were not to be angered.

The wicker baskets each carried, high-packed with fruits and smoked meats, only slightly mitigated their warlike demeanor.

“It’s an insult to the Emperor,” one of them, a leathery old man with a scarred cheek, said after many silent paces, seemingly in response to nothing at all. But the other, missing part of an ear, nodded grimly, acknowledging the point.

Horm and Cipher (for of course it was them!) stalked back from shopping into the great room of Fenton’s Jolly Wayhouse, which went still. Only after they’d climbed the stairs and closed the door to their room did the sounds of merriment gradually return.

Grossthorn had taken their prisoner.

He’d laid no legal claim upon them, nor had he drawn weapon and struck. No, he’d only spoken amiably, and discussed fine points of Imperial law, and made some trenchant observations about the treaty rights of dwarven borderlands. He had never stated, nor even implied, that it would dishonor Dunbridge and the dwarves if they didn’t take Amblard into custody for at least a night while verifying Horm’s story. But somehow, while following the course of his words, that idea arrived, as if entirely independent, in the minds of each hearer.

Horm and Cipher’s appeals had been useless. Weary, smelling of horse and puke, they were in no shape to bandy wits with the captain. Even at their best, they suspected they’d be overmatched. Even when they protested that he’d die of his curse unless he hurried to the temple, Grossthorn insisted that, “if all went well”, Amblard could be released in the morning.

“I shall send my fastest rider to Tarrowhenge this very evening, find Mursei and, if she vouches for your story, return in equal haste. Effithaq’s steed bears a blessing of swiftness, and she doesn’t mind missing a night of sleep. Do you, loyal Effithaq?”

The masked rider he addressed, who bore a curved blade on each slender hip, just shook her head.

“Whereas, if we do not get that confirmation, our good friend Dunbridge will have done the Empire yeoman service by restraining a dangerous fugitive. ’Tis but one night, after all.”

With no arguments left to muster, they’d watched Effithaq race away, while the shivering Amblard was half-carried off to imprisonment.

“What’s your game, Grossthorn?” Horm asked, once Dunbridge’s men were away.

“Game? No game, Sergeant.” The Crusader’s man leaned down and whispered, “All I do is deadly earnest,” before spurring his horse away with a wicked laugh.

There had been nothing for Cipher and Horm to do except register themselves in Fenton’s inn, where Cipher cleansed himself of Amblard’s sick, while Horm took their horses for the same service.

# # #

The hot dinner Horm had expected was a luscious chicken, cooked crisp in ham-fat and rosemary. But neither it, nor the cellar-cooled Old Town ale, brought him joy. After their meal, they provisioned themselves for the next stage of their voyage, though both confided their doubts that Effithaq would return with good news from Mursei.

Back in their room, Horm levered off his boots and laid himself down on one of the three beds, groaning. Cipher, however, was busying himself with his dagger.

As Horm stared at the ceiling, Cipher flung the blade hard, sinking it in the fireplace mantle. He jerked its new tether — a long strand of oiled leather, bought from a whip-maker — and returned it to his hand with a satisfying smack.

“That’s more like it,” Cipher said, repeating the throw and retrieval. On his next cast, he aborted its flight with a sharp tug, sending it slicing through the air in arcs as he reeled it in, winding it around his body like a spiderweb before sending it in an unexpected direction, shearing off the top of a candle on the windowsill, curving around the top of a chair in a diminishing spiral. He jerked the chair to him across the floor, stopping it with an upraised foot and disentangling the leather strap with a single twist of his wrist. His hands swam through air and leather like diving fish, and wide loops hung artfully in the air. Then he stepped right into the pattern and, in an instant, it was cinched around his waist like a belt. He slipped the tied dagger into its sheath at his hip.

“Yes,” he said. “That should do quite nicely.”

“Well, if you’re happy with it then perhaps we should get some rest,” Horm said.

“I hardly see how you can.”

“It’s no great challenge. You lie down. You close your eyes. Sleep comes. Why, even a child can do it!”

“No, I mean, how can you rest with Grossthorn making mock of you? Of your army?”

“There are worse things than mocking, and the Crusader knows them. We will recall Amblard from the dwarves in the morning and go on, with or without Grossthorn’s blessing.”

“What if your friend Dunbridge won’t let him go? It’s enough to make my head spin, in sooth. By defying the word of an Imperial soldier, Dunbridge hopes to prove his loyalty to the treaty between his liege and the Emperor?”

“It’s what the Dark Gods’ followers do,” Horm said, rolling over to douse a lamp. “They make up seem down and wrong seem right. They’re famed for it.”

The monk was washing off his callused feet and preparing to retire as well, when a knock came on the door. He exchanged a glance with Horm, who quietly picked up his saber, loosened it in its scabbard, than nodded.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Nagatia!”

“… Enter.”

The brown and gold widow slipped inside. “I hope I’m not disturbing you at your rest,” she said, glancing at Horm.

“Not at all,” Cipher assured her. “You mentioned you were… umm, also staying here…”

“Yes,” she said, looking down. “Before.”

All were quiet for a moment.

“I spoke with one of the Crusader’s men,” she said, staring at the floor.

“Did you?” Horm sat up.

“He… told me I would not have to wait long for my revenge.”

“What do you think he meant by that?” Cipher asked, igniting the lantern and trimming its wick.

“Well… is it true what you said? About the curse, and the illness?”

“Yes,” Horm said, gesturing for her to sit on the third bed. She continued to stand.

“So if Am… if he stays in jail for just a couple days, he’ll die from his geas?”

“That’s how we understand it, yes,” Cipher said.

“He was saying… he didn’t think that their rider would return in time. Or that she… she might not find Mursei. That was how he put it, she ‘might not’. And… and he said that even if she came back, there would always be a way to delay, and that then it would be too late. That it would be no one’s fault.”

“What do the dwarves have to say about this?” Horm asked sharply.

“Farfield is outside the Repel,” she said. “Many of the demons that escaped the hellhole disliked daylight and, when they learned of the mines and caves under here… some got very deep before they were stopped. The Crusader’s peace on Rivernaught is valued as much in Farfield as anywhere.”

“More than the Emperor’s rights?” Horm asked.

“Will the Emperor war with the Dwarf King over one man, a murderer by stealth?”

“What of Dunbridge?” Horm pressed. “He has an honorable heart.”

“Dunbridge is only… I don’t remember the Dwarven word, but now that Amblard is in the undercaves, Dunbridge has no authority. Dunbridge is meant to keep the peace between the surface and the caverns, but the prison… they say it’s deep.”

For a moment, the three of them were still, in the silence of their own thoughts.

“How do you feel about it?” Horm asked Nagatia.

“I just wish it hadn’t happened. All of it. I can’t… help feeling guilty.”

“Wait, did you give your husband the poison?”

“No!”

“Did you tell Amblard to kill him?” Horm continued.

“Certainly not!”

“Didn’t imply it? Didn’t encourage him?”

“I loved my husband!”

“You don’t sound guilty to me,” Horm said. “Cipher? You think she’s guilty?”

“I place all blame on the alchemist,” he said.

“He seemed such a good friend,” she whispered, staring into the fire’s embers.

“He… he does seem to regret it,” Cipher said. “I don’t suppose that eases anything.”

She shook her head.

“But I don’t think you want him to die, do you?”

She was still for some time… then shook her head again.

CHAPTER SIX

“Hey ho, tall man, what brings you here?” The question was punctuated with a deep belch, and the smell of beer soured in a belly. The speaker was a dwarf with armbands and a series of small, almost decorative throwing axes through his belt and bandolier.

“I’ve never been to an undertown before,” the man replied. He wore a simple robe tied with a rope, and a shag of short curls fell over a mutilated ear. His hands were hidden in voluminous sleeves. “At least, not that I recall.”

“Watch your step and watch your head. You find a low tunnel, you don’t go down there. The places where men are welcome, we keep the ceilings high.”

“I’ll mind that. I don’t suppose there’s a tavern about?”

“Hm, Huddlesack’s is clockwise through there and down the ramp. Take it easy with our ales, daylighter,” the dwarf said with another burp and a playful finger wag. “They’re stronger than you might ’spect.”

Cipher nodded and started off in the direction indicated, when the sound of chimes and tolling bells began in unison, before ceasing after nine tones.

“What…?” he asked, and his axe-bedecked associate laughed.

“Well, without the lazy recourse of consulting the sun, we keep time by bells. ’Tis nine bells — the nightcap hour of honest toilers, and when the dishonorable just get up to drinking speed.”

“They ring upon the hour?”

“Aye.”

By ten bells, Cipher was squat-walking through a lower tunnel in the company of two drunk and disreputable dwarves befriended at Huddlesack’s. They promised to take him to an “authentic” dwarf bar where he could get the underdark tar ale forbidden from sale in some of the Empire’s daintier towns.

“How much farther?” the monk asked.

“Ach, impatient are ye?” The one-eyed dwarf, who’d introduced himself as “Kundernack”, gave a short cackle.

“You’ll get your taste of the underworld soon enough,” said the other, who was short even by dwarf standards and had managed to avoid giving his name.

“It’s dark under here, but a fine shortcut,” Kundernack said, turning into an ink-black tunnel that was even lower than the previous. Unlike the top layers where he’d met them, their steady downward progress had become smellier and less orderly, culminating in this unnamed alley.

When the dwarf behind him seized his elbows and jerked them behind his back, Cipher didn’t hesitate. There was a squawk of surprise, and the sound of a heavy soft body hitting unyielding stone.

Kundernack spun in the dark, as planned, and made to seize the human’s legs. That was where the plan disintegrated.

“Ug, ow, Kundernack, he’s cut me, HE’S CUT ME!”

Kundernack started swearing, but only got out a few oaths before a bare foot knocked out two teeth and forced his jaw open. He got a taste of man-sweat and road dust before it withdrew, replaced by a toe at the join of his knee. Kundernack tumbled to the ground and retreated, drawing a shortsword as he got back up. He could see the human and his companion lumpenly moving back toward the wider tunnel.

“Right.” He spat out the teeth. “We were going to beat and rob ye, but you just earned a tour of a genuine dwarven bone-pit!”

He lunged forward, only to see his accomplice’s arms forced up and behind his neck. Their intended victim had somehow tied both the dwarf’s wrists into painful knots, using the dwarf’s arms as rope, along with his own left hand. His right was holding a black blade against his prisoner’s neck-beard.

“Drop the sword or I bleed out your friend.”

“He’s really more of an ‘associate’.”

The captive dwarf squealed indignant insults as Kundernack restarted his charge, and then the dagger flew into Kundernack’s eye socket. The surviving robber only had the time for one shocked oath before a taut crack of leather brought the knife back to his throat.

“I begin to suspect you are familiar with the jail down here,” the horrible human whispered. The weapon had transfixed Kundernack’s eye patch and pulled it off. The dwarf could smell the blood on it.

“I would nod,” he replied, “but it would cut me.”

“You are going to give me directions to the jail, and draw me a sketch of its layout.”

“Yes! Yes, I am, I am going to do both those things!”

“You are also going to persuade me that my life will not be easier if I kill you and stack you atop Kundernack in that stinking tunnel.”

By eleven bells, Cipher was outside the prison, creating a distraction to draw the guards away from the front gate. That done, he unlocked it, cursing under his breath at the tiny picks he used. They had “Berry” inscribed on the handles. He’d been warned about several traps and the presence of a large number of guards. He was tempted to swear more loudly, but remembered that it was Kundernack’s oaths that had led his foot to the dwarf’s mouth. He ceased muttering altogether.

At twelve bells, however, the monk was lying in a cell, disarmed, clutching his broken ankles and trying to meditate his way through the pain. He barely noticed when someone came to the bars.

“Oh, my friend, what are we going to do with you?” Captain Grossthorn asked.

# # #

Cipher swore at the Crusader captain, who laughed.

“,” Grossthorn said, and though the spell was one of healing, it sounded more disgusting than Cipher’s blasphemy. The monk shrieked as the bones in his feet writhed and knit together.

“Sorry about that, chum,” Grossthorn said. “The Dark Gods heal as well as any, but they do tend to conserve the discomfort. Indeed, it’s as if they concentrate a month’s soreness into just a few moments. But now you should be able to walk.”

“Much good it does me in this cage!”

“One thing at a time.” Grossthorn tilted his head, a gesture Cipher found priestly for reasons he could not quite articulate. “What do they call you, at that little Imperial playhouse?”

“I go by Cipher,” the monk replied, sitting up and testing his feet. “They still hurt,” he said, as he gingerly stood and got nearer. Grossthorn drifted back, his demeanor entirely casual, as if it were merely a coincidence that he was staying out of the other man’s reach.

“Not ‘Project’?”

“What do you know of that? What do you know of me?”

“Almost nothing.” Again, his little smirk.

“I don’t know if you’ve been told, but my memories are stolen. Whatever past we have — or lack — you’d be unwise to rely on my comradely feelings.”

“Noted. May I ask why you risked the dwarves’ displeasure to liberate a contemptible murderer?”

“You can ask anything you want, but I don’t feel inclined to tell you.”

“Surely,” Grossthorn asked, eyes glittering, “it’s not from the goodness of your heart?”

“He’s not supposed to die. I have a responsibility.”

“You took an oath to deliver him.”

“In spirit, if not in words,” Cipher said.

“That I can understand and respect. If one can’t be relied upon to abide by a pledge, what hope is there for any kind of order?”

Cipher shrugged.

“Were you aware,” Grossthorn said, “that unlike the Empire, the Dwarves have rather strict penalties for those who attempt to escape imprisonment? Which are extended to those who assist such attempts?”

“I had some idea,” Cipher said, and then sank back onto the bunk.

For a moment Grossthorn just looked at Cipher, and Cipher stared at the floor, head in hands.

“Just as well that I’m having you released into my custody,” Grossthorn said.

The monk looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have reason to suspect you of abetting the impersonation of an Imperial officer.” Grossthorn raised his black-gloved hand to smooth the tips of his mustache, and seemed to be smothering a grin. “That’s certainly a far more serious charge than, say, the vandalization of a prison lock.”

“More serious than attempting to aid an escape attempt?”

“Did you tell them you were trying to break Amblard free?”

Cipher replied with a withering look.

“So you said nothing.” The captain nodded in satisfaction. “Commendable. All they know, then, is that you got into the first layer of jail-chamber defenses and fell victim to the ankle-snapper. For all they know, you could just be a drunken human fool, too illiterate to read the Dwarven runes for ‘forbidden area’.”

“I’ll admit to illiteracy, alas.”

“So they’re perfectly content to relinquish you as my problem and not their own.”

“What, then, are your plans for me?”

In response, Grossthorn withdrew the ringed dagger with the leather strap. “You really don’t remember how you got this?”

“I don’t.” Cipher came to the bars, and this time Grossthorn didn’t back away. Instead he handed over the blade and said, “Then I’m under no obligation to enlighten you. Either you were given it as a gift, in which case I feel inclined to help you. Or you stole it from one of us, in which case I am entirely obligated to destroy you.”

# # #

When Cipher reached the surface, it was the most wretched time of the night, halfway between midnight and dawn. It was so late that glamorous assignations and crafty skullduggery were both either completed or abandoned. Any such projects that dragged on to this hour turned embarrassing. But it was too early for even the most ambitious rooster, milkmaid, or breakfast baker. It was the hour so dull, so dim, so chewed-free of events that both good people and bad were asleep. It was the time when the night died of old age, before the oncoming sunrise was conceived.

Cipher had a makeshift crutch, for his right ankle was still stiff and sore. He trudged across the market square and pounded on the door of the Jolly Wayhouse.

Nagatia opened the door. Seeing that he was alone, she seemed unsure whether to be devastated or relieved. He started toward the step, but she halted him to give a wordless hug.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“At least you tried.”

“Were you waiting up?”

“I was.”

He thudded up the steps and knocked on Horm’s door.

“Sergeant? Open up, it’s me, Cipher.”

“Prove you’re the real Brother Cipher!” came Horm’s voice from inside, and Cipher sighed.

“Fine. Um… when you saw infantry troops moving through Belton’s Hill, you made a joke about their chainmail shirts looking like dwarven ballgowns.”

The door opened and light glinted off Horm’s naked saber. “Can’t be too careful with servants of the Dark Gods.” He looked behind Cipher and his face fell. “No Amblard.”

“No Amblard. I barely… got out myself.”

They cursed, and it just happened to be in unison, but they were too tired to be amused.

“Back to bed, I guess,” Horm said.

“You’ll be able to sleep?”

“I can say with no modesty that I am quite good at it.”

# # #

It was quite a surprise, come morning, when Grossthorn strode into the inn with Amblard on a leash of steel links. The prisoner was rank with sweat and uncomfortable in his chains, but had no visible wounds. Indeed, his color seemed improved over the day before.

Cipher and Horm both looked up at the clatter, and their expressions couldn’t have been more different. Horm was astonished — he actually gaped, mouth open around half-chewed fluffy wheat cakes. Cipher just looked resigned.

“Your story checks out, my friends,” Grossthorn said, for all the world as if he meant it. “Sorry if it was all a bit of bother, but is it not better to check needlessly than regret?”

“Your rider returned?” Horm said.

“Aye, weary and sweat-wet, but bearing confirmation. Take your prisoner.”

“Amblard?” Cipher said. “You’re unmolested?”

“Um… yeah.”

“Indeed,” Grossthorn said, putting a hand on the alchemist’s shoulder, “I applied a bit of my own learning to his condition. I can’t break his geas of course, but I think I’ve eased his discomfort.” His eyes glittered.

“Then… tuck in, I guess? Did they feed you in the jail?”

“I’m not hungry,” Amblard muttered. “Can we take off these chains?”

“Certainly!” Grossthorn grinned. “You’re no longer in my custody.” With a flourish he unlocked the neck-ring.

“Don’t bother to thank me,” the captain said with a tiny edge to his voice. “It’s a pleasure just to do my duty.” He waved as he turned to leave.

“Sit,” Horm told Amblard, just as Cipher rose to follow.

“What?” Horm asked the monk.

“It’s… I just need to ask him something.” Cipher’s feet made soft sounds on the wood floor as he hastened after the Crusader’s officer.

Cipher caught up just as Grossthorn hoisted himself easily into the saddle. His soldiers were mounted behind him, masks down.

“Grossthorn!”

“Mmmmyes?” He looked down from his tall horse at the monk, who winced when he took a step on his right foot.

“What about… me?” Cipher asked, standing in the dust and craning to look up.

“What about you?”

“Am I under arrest or, or in transgression of the law, or bound to your custody? Have you some other legal trick poised over me?”

“Legal trick? What a disrespectful way for a magistrate’s aide to speak!” He leaned down and lowered his voice. “Last night, you were given into my charge, and I released you on your own recognizance. You repaid that trust by not fleeing — thank you.” He smirked. “Now, your crimes against the undertown remain unpunished, but the fact is, you’re on Imperial land now, and it breaks no law of the Emperor to try to get into a dwarf jail. Indeed, now that I think on’t, it’s probably not an Imperial transgression to escape dwarven durance.” He toyed with his beard, as if contemplating an amusing puzzle. “In any event, the crime which I suspected — some malefactor masquerading as Horm — turns out to be uncommitted. Since you can’t be an accessory when there’s no crime… you’re free to go.”

“You claim no hold on me? I can take Amblard to the temple and you’ll do naught about it?”

“As you say.”

“Very well.” Cipher turned back to the inn.

“You’re very welcome!” Grossthorn sang after him, as the cavalry beside him erupted in laughter.

# # #

“Now you can tell us how our cells compare,” Horm said, as their horses pressed on down the road, which was now thinning out to a track through a forest. Every time they came into a break in the woods, the hills before them looked bigger and the trees upon them looked shorter.

“I prefer yours,” Amblard said. “They have daylight. The reek is about the same.”

“I had some small hope dwarves smelled worse. How was the food?”

“All food appalls, now.”

They rode until they reached a stream, where they stopped to water their steeds and for Amblard to complain about his saddle sores. Then he gave Cipher a look.

“Grossthorn said…”

“What?” The monk asked.

“He said you came to get me.”

“That’s true.”

“Why would you take that risk?” The alchemist was genuinely puzzled.

“It’s not because I like you.”

Amblard frowned, then turned away and vomited. If it was possible to regurgitate reproachfully, he did so.

# # #

Two hours later, they were covered in blood.

“I’m sorry,” Amblard cried. “I’m so… so sorry!” He’d shot Horm’s mount, Mandolin, in the throat. But in his defense, he’d been aiming at the monster that was trying to tear Horm and Cipher limb from limb.

“What… was… that?” Cipher had a variety of wounds on his chest and limbs, claw-marks and bites, and things that looked like auger penetrations.

“I think it was a Mantischorgoth,” Amblard said, cautiously inching toward the monk.

“It looked like something the Dark Gods passed after eating a zoo,” Horm muttered, uncorking a healing potion and struggling to get it mostly in the thrashing animal’s mouth.

“Is that…?” Amblard asked, and Horm shot him a look of pure hate as he opened another bottle. “Never mind,” the prisoner squeaked.

“Get one for Cipher,” the sergeant barked, opening a second for the steed.

After Amblard had complied, the monk sat up and said, “How did you even recognize that thing?”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s a Mantischorgoth, but it fits the description. From one of my books.” The alchemist licked his dry lips and gave the monstrous corpse a flinchy look. “Its eyes have medicinal qualities and you can brew a nasty emetic from the venom of its, er, rump-fangs.”

“Well, now I’m glad I only got bit from the front.” The creature — a torso with mismatched heads back and front, two arms that looked like they belonged on different creatures, one goaty leg, and a fourth limb that looked like seafood — was bigger than any of their horses, and had managed to sneak up on them despite its size and ungainly movement. Although profoundly awkward and asymmetrical, it was fiendishly fast and its clumsy, staccato lurches had somehow made it more difficult to strike.

Fortunately, none of their horses had been killed outright. Less fortunately, Willow had spilled much of their provisions fleeing, and Blister had trampled them as it followed Willow.

“I’m so sorry,” Amblard, now the only unhurt rider, said once more.

“You keep repeating that.”

“I mean it.”

# # #

They came upon the Old Scary Bridge at nightfall.

“I see what you mean about the name,” Cipher said, staring, bruised lip curling. Horm had insisted that the monk take the last potion, and though both of them were now in better shape, they were still sore, and their strength diminished.

“You could spot a flock of gargoyles on it by looking for the pretty spots,” Horm said. “Here’s hoping it frights off anything ugly in the region, because we’re sleeping in its shadow tonight.”

“I’ll get firewood,” Amblard said, pausing only to cough hard before stepping into the woods.

“Don’t go far!” Horm shouted after him.

“Have no fear,” Amblard called back. “I’d be a fool to escape.”

“You’d also be a fool to get lost in the forest at twilight!”

“We can find him by listening for coughs and spewing,” Horm said, pulling a canvas off of Blister and hanging it up as a tent.

“He showed courage,” Cipher replied.

Horm opened his mouth, then shut it. He was gathering boughs for a mattress.

“Just between the pair of us, then, I wish he’d been a little more cowardly.”

“It’s a shame about the horse, but it’s no worse off.”

“Aye, but had he missed, those potions could have gone to you.”

“Or yourself.”

“Either way, it was an ill shot.” Horm pummeled their bedding into shape with unnecessary force, then rubbed his arm.

“He tried to do what was needful. He could have left us. He could have shot one of us.”

“Those are foolish things! He needs us to deliver him and that’s all. He protected us because we protect him. Why must you put virtues on him?”

“Why take them off?”

“Because he’s a murderous wretch!” Horm shouted.

“Er,” Amblard said.

Horm slowly turned. The alchemist had come out of the woods, dragging a young, dead tree. It looked like it had gone over in a storm.

“The wood’s well seasoned,” he murmured. “It wasn’t far off the path.”

Horm sighed.

“Do we need set watch?” he asked.

“I think we can, with three,” Cipher said.

# # #

When the night was a third over, he went to shake the alchemist awake, only to have the man sit up as he neared.

“Is it time?” Amblard asked.

“Aye.”

Cipher handed him the cocked crossbow, and Amblard gave a little laugh.

“How many prisoners are trusted with a weapon while their captors sleep?”

“Those who have no other choice, I suppose.”

“So… I just… wait for nothing to happen?”

“I meditated.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“I stared at the sky,” Cipher said, “The spaces between the stars. I watched them and let my mind be empty, until I could forget myself.”

“That sounds lovely.” Amblard sighed, then gave the monk a curious look. “Is that why your… memories are, um, addled? You meditated too hard?”

Cipher gave him a pitying glance. “It doesn’t do that.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.”

Amblard looked away.

“I never thought of myself as a murdering wretch, you know,” he said, sitting by a log and staring at the embers. He reached to stir them up, but Cipher told him not to.

“Don’t watch the fire,” the monk said. “It’ll ruin your night-eyes.”

“Oh.”

“For all I know, I’m a murdering wretch too,” Cipher told him.

Amblard snorted.

“No, really. I have the skills, don’t I? Bodies fail to disquiet me. What life could I have lived, to be thus?”

“Better than mine, I wager. I suppose I just… thought of myself as a decent person who happened to commit one murder.”

“Is that preferable to dozens?”

“I think so. Isn’t it?” He turned and stared into the woods. “Maybe not, if they were invaders or cultists or believers in the Dark Gods. Like the orcs Karvak fought.” He shuddered. “The stories that man told!”

“Better than the witchy halfling, I expect.”

“She just made threats and spoke mad prophecy.”

“Berry? Was he good company?”

“Oh, excellent. We all wanted to hear him sing, or tell a tale, or spin a jest.” Amblard sighed. “I wish he was here now. It would be nice to talk to him without Karvak between us.”

“Maybe in time he will flee to the temple and claim sanctuary,” Cipher said, climbing onto the bedding and wrapping himself in his blanket.

# # #

In the morning, Cipher only awoke when Horm pulled the canvas off him, ushering in a breeze that smelled of frying squirrel and cold pine. He immediately rolled to his feet.

“You should have woken me sooner,” he said. “I could have helped pack.”

“Amblard and I did it smartly,” Horm said. “He even felled us a tree-rat for breakfast.”

“Lovely.”

“I say we dine in the saddle. Amblard…” Horm lowered his voice as he glanced at the alchemist. “He seems worse off.”

Watching as their prisoner mounted and rode, Cipher saw Horm’s point. The young man looked gaunt, pale, and distracted. It was more than his illness — he had a look of commingled uncertainty and despair that had been absent before, even when he was on trial for his life.

“Do… do either of you know aught about this High Priest Ost?” Amblard asked.

“Not I,” Cipher said.

“Oh, of course not. Forgive me.”

“I’ve heard a story,” Horm said. “Can’t vouch if it’s true.”

He fell silent as they reached the edge of the bridge. They all did, except for Rainbow, who gave soft snorts of distress as she shied away from it.

It was black soapstone, or something similar, glossy and smooth like horn. There appeared to be no joins between the cobbles, which blended together like a vine growing to choke a tree. The shapes in it were liquid and smooth, and had a disquieting tendency to resemble faces, but only when the light touched them just so, or when seen with the eye’s edge. There were no railings or walls, just a dead plunge into spitting whitewater far below.

“Ugly as sin in Santa Cora.” Horm cleared his throat. “Right. Forward.”

They slowly stepped out onto the hideous surface.

Partway over, Amblard said, “So. About the high priest.”

“The story goes… you know about resurrections, right?”

“Not much,” Cipher said. “I’ve heard the dead can come back, if they’re rich enough and have friends who worship the proper gods. Don’t expect it to ever make a difference to me.”

“The story says the high priest at the Temple of Ice and Crystal had that power. Even the greatest and godliest, the Priestess herself or the Crusader, they can’t do it often or easily or without great cost. Each time you restore life from the next world, it’s harder and hurts more, and if you try it once too often, it may just kill you.

“But even without resurrectioning, this holy man was a great healer and people came from all over the Empire with curses and enchantments and illnesses and unrighteous wounds that normal clerics couldn’t touch. One such pilgrim was a very poor woman from the north, from the coast of Torin’s Glory, or maybe Calamity Lake. She had the clothes on her back, and worked hard, and she had a child, a newborn who was her only treasure. But the baby got sick.”

At this point they were at the Old Scary Bridge’s apex. Mandolin’s hoof slipped and the animal skittered sideways for a heart-stopping moment before Horm brought it back, patting its neck and muttering soothing words.

“I think I’ll dismount and walk Rainbow,” Amblard said.

“Good idea,” Cipher said, sliding off Thunderhead’s back. Horm shrugged, stayed mounted, and continued his tale.

“She went to Foothold to seek treatment for her son, but the priests there could do nothing. Told her there was a purpose to the ailment, which she took as an excuse. She went to Anvil and consulted the dwarves, but even after the long walk and high climb, they couldn’t help her — or, perhaps, they wouldn’t without payment.”

“That’s not very kind to the dwarves,” Amblard said.

“I’m just telling the story I heard!” Horm grimaced. “Where was I? Anvil. So the child was sicker and sicker, but she heard that the Temple of Ice and Crystal was home to powerful healing, and that it was dedicated to the Bright Gods and asked no payment. So she set out through the Giantwalk mountains after it.

“This woman had few directions, and the Giantwalks aren’t peaceful — hah, well don’t we know! She had to fend off a cougar, and ford icy streams while holding the child over her head, and scavenge for food as the wintry winds started to howl down from the north. But no matter what she found to eat or drink, the best of it was always given to the child, and her love and desperation kept his fever steady. He got no worse, but the red streaks on his chest and throat got no better.”

With three sighs of relief, they left the bridge and picked up their pace, trotting over the secure and normal pathway, their steeds eager to put the black stone grotesquery behind them.

“After traveling for months, she saw the temple, but there, at the bottom of the valley before it, her child worsened and died.”

“You know,” Amblard said, “if you wanted the story to be more surprising…”

“Silence your yap,” Horm said. “You have to know about resurrecting to understand it, now, don’t you? Otherwise, it wouldn’t make any sense.”

“That’s true, it is, but still, it’s all a little obvious, isn’t it?”

“Then why don’t you finish it?” Horm demanded.

“Um… I suppose she went to the temple and the priest brought her boy back to life?”

“Yes, but… ugh, you’ve ruined it, Amblard. When Berry told me this…”

“Oh, this is one of Berry’s tales?”

“Stop interrupting!” Horm gave an aggrieved hiss. “He had this lovely speech about the other people the priest had restored, and one was a saint, and one was a great leader, and another was a brave warrior with nine children or something, and did this woman understand that the priest only had one left? One casting of the spell, and that it would make him ill for a year if he was lucky, and that it might not even work? There was all that, and it made the story very suspenseful, we were all on the edges of our seats, but you, Mr. Clever, went straight to the conclusion. He asked her if she thought her son was worth it, and she said if she could die to bring him back she would, and he cast the spell. The end.” He slapped Mandolin’s flank with the end of his reins, and the horse gladly sped up.

“So… that high priest was Ost?” Amblard asked the sergeant’s retreating back.

“No,” Horm called, without turning. “Ost was the child.”

# # #

The Old Scary Bridge was no handsomer on its far side, and as they climbed the hills, they saw it from above, just in time to see tiny figures approach it and start across.

Horm said a very rude oath.

“What?” Cipher asked.

“’Tis Grossthorn and his crew.”

“What? Can you be sure?” Cipher squinted. “I can only see dots!”

“No, look, the bay? Toward the front? That’s Effithaq.”

“I see a brown spot.”

“It’s a bay,” Horm said, glaring. “I got a good look at it in Farfield. Southern-bred, look at its lines!”

“Amblard, do you see this?” Cipher asked.

“… Maybe?”

“Trust me, it’s them,” Horm said, nostrils flaring and lips hardening. “If they’re after us, there’s something… oh ho?”

Even his nearsighted companions could see something happening down at the bridge. Bright specks raced from the trees, swooping and soaring and clustering around the soldiers on the bridge.

“What are they?” Amblard asked.

“Some kind of… birds? They move too fast, they’re too bright.” Horm had a hand to his brow as he stared at the shining streaks of color that circled the dark riders. Each was a different hue, as if a rainbow had broken into swift, aggressive darts.

“Were they near us in the night?”

“Surely we’d have seen them,” Cipher said, but he sounded doubtful.

“Hah!” Horm cried.

“Oh,” Amblard said with a fearful tone, because one of the horses had reared up, lost balance, and tumbled from the side of the bridge.

“Poor horse,” Horm said, but he had a cold grin.

“Did it have a rider?”

“I think, but even if it didn’t, they’ll be slowed if someone has to ride pillion.”

“What do they want with us?” Cipher asked.

“They want me,” Amblard said.

His two guards looked at him.

“What?” Horm said, and his voice had the dangerous tones of a dog about to bite.

“Why would they want you?” Cipher asked. “They had you. You were in the prison at Farfield and they let you go. Why pursue you now?”

“Because Grossthorn wants an oath of me,” Amblard said. He couldn’t meet Cipher’s eyes, he could only stare at the tiny battle, so far away.

On the bridge, there was a ripple, like a shadow over the sun, but forming too quickly, radiating from the apex, and the bright attackers were flung back, some spiraling down into the chasm below. A moment later, a crack like thunder hit the trio above.

“They’re on the move,” Horm said. “As we should be.” Indeed, the figures on the bridge were charging forward onto solid ground.

“Did one just fall?” Cipher asked, still looking back as he turned his mount.

“Aye,” Horm said, “and they’re abandoning both mount and rider. They want us very badly.”

He looked up at the path before them. It was fairly straight and, for a mountain path, broad.

“Gallop,” he said, and put in his spurs.

# # #

Their horses had a slight froth when they turned into a flinty defile, the sun directly overhead in a thin strip of blue. Cipher waved for a dismount.

Horm slung himself down, breathing heavily, and Amblard seemed to simply collapse out of his saddle. He fell to his knees.

“Talk,” Horm said, handing the prisoner a flask of water.

“Grossthorn… he came to me in the night. In my cell.”

Cipher walked away from them, stretching his back, then examined a face of stone that looked exactly as flat and unremarkable as the other cliffs about them.

“What did he say?” Horm asked.

“He wants me to kill Ost.”

“What?!?”

“I didn’t say I would!”

Cipher glanced at them, shook his head, then looked at the rock. He took a deep breath in through his nose and blew it out through his mouth.

“Did you say you wouldn’t?” Horm demanded.

“Of course!” Amblard squirmed into a sitting position and looked away. “At first.”

“Why you? Surely the Crusader has plenty of bloody men for such business.”

“But he doesn’t,” Amblard said. “The temple is holy. It’s protected. No one can enter with impure intent… unless the high priest admits them.”

Cipher took a wide stance, his bare feet planted on the stony ground. He made another great inhale and blew it all out again. He started to make circles with his hands, slow but strangely purposeful.

“What are you doing?” Horm asked, turning to him. Cipher’s only response was an annoyed “Shh!”

“He’s glaring at that wall like it slapped his mother,” Horm muttered, shaking his head. He turned back to Amblard. “I still don’t understand. If you agreed to kill the high priest… well, that’s pretty impure, as I reckon it. He could let you in, but why would he?”

“He has to,” Amblard whispered, eyes haunted. “If he doesn’t, my death is on his hands. He… Grossthorn said it was… ‘moral bondage’.”

Horm made a lewd suggestion about what Grossthorn could do with his moral bondage. “Even if you get permission, won’t Ost be on guard? He could just lock you up.”

“I… Grossthorn said I’d get a chance if I was inside. He spoke of… how clever I was.” He shuddered. “He said I’d find a way.”

Cipher’s hand unexpectedly darted from his hip, stopping a fraction of an inch from the stone wall as he expelled his breath explosively. Both his companions looked up quizzically, but he only put up a hand in their direction, never breaking his gaze.

“I guess I grasp the matter,” Horm said, leaning back. “He said he’d let you loose if you agreed to his murderous scheme, and you’d have said anything to get out.”

“He… his eyes… he must have cast a spell, those eyes of his…!”

“So you said you might?” Horm said. “And you even meant it, at least a little?”

Amblard squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

“Enough to make him trust you.”

Another nod.

“But you thought you’d get there and not do it? Because in a holy place, he couldn’t… couldn’t get you.”

“He came to me during my watch last night,” Amblard whispered.

“What? How? How could he catch up…?”

“Not all of him,” the alchemist said, voice low and miserable. “Just his words. In my mind. I couldn’t… I had no choice but to hear him. He said there was an oath I had to take, to his, his master. An oath that none can break, another geas. If I could kill Ost, that betrayal… it would break the power of the temple, and then he and his troops could… take it.” He looked up, and his eyes were wet with fearful tears. “Twist it to their ends. That’s what he wants. To turn the temple dark.”

There was a sound so loud and terrible that both flinched away, and Cipher’s whole body blurred as he twisted his hips, dropping and turning with preternatural speed, his palm pistoning and slamming into the stone with a noise like thunder.

For a moment he was perfectly still, and then they saw a crack spreading from where he’d struck.

“I was hoping this would work with just one blow,” Cipher said, flexing his hand and shaking it vigorously.

“What are you doing?” Horm asked.

“If I can break this, I think I can leave a rockslide behind us.”

“You can’t pull down a mountain! I don’t care how deadly your art, that’s impossible!”

“I’d have said it was impossible for him to make that crack,” the prisoner replied.

“Amblard,” Cipher said, turning to him. “Do you trust Grossthorn?”

“Not for a moment!”

“Then do not do what he wants. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

He turned back to the wall and muttered, “Simple as breaking a stone…”

# # #

Ultimately, it took four strikes to loosen the stone enough for Cipher to hammer in spikes and pull plates of rock across the thin gully, while Horm and Amblard harnessed the horses to drag head-sized boulders and fragments under the obstruction. It took them an hour of toil to construct it and would, by Horm’s estimation, take several times as long for cavalry to clear.

“Climbing over it? Work of a few minutes,” he huffed, shifting another chunk into the barrier. “But if they leave their steeds behind, they’ll never catch us.”

They pressed on, Cipher gratefully scooping up snow for his bruised hands and Amblard now too sick to even comment on the properties of the plants around them. Not that there was much for him to observe. As they rose, the soil got stonier and grayer, the green leaching out as if parched.

They’d left the proper path behind and were cutting through a patch of scrubby pine bushes when they heard a rumble behind them, very similar to the sound they’d heard during the bridge battle.

“Do you think that could crack those rocks?” Cipher asked.

Horm only shrugged. Amblard’s body started to shake, and they couldn’t tell if he was convulsively coughing or dry-heaving. With a wince, Horm let him finish a skin of water before lashing him onto his steed.

“What if I stay back?” Cipher asked.

“What?”

“Ambush them.”

“Are you daft? Grossthorn had a dozen men with him!”

“Had. At the very least, two were left behind at the bridge, and it looked like that battle set some of them bleeding.”

“He’s a cleric, Cipher. ’Tis foolish to assume his soldiers are at less than full strength. As for numbers, ten or a dozen makes little difference against one, save that some might have to wait to get their lick in at you.”

“I’d not strike them direct,” Cipher said. “It’s a new moon, and the weather smells cloudy. When the sun’s down, I can come from the dark like a ghost, hamstring a couple horses, then flee. Pick off a soldier or two. Feed them some fear and slow them down. If you and Amblard push on all night you could reach the temple and be safe within its environs.”

“What of you, then?”

“Leave me two swift horses, Thunderhead and Mandolin. After halting Grossthorn, I can catch up. One light man on two horses can beat ten armored soldiers on ten steeds, even in these steep conditions.”

“I don’t like this, Cipher.”

“Nor I, but I’d rather start the fight on my terms than wait for them to set theirs.”

“Nagatia,” Amblard said, starting to twitch. Cipher touched his head.

“He scalds with fever,” he told Horm. “I think we have little choice.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Night came, and Cipher lay still on an outcrop of stone, listening for pursuers. Cocked crossbow near his hand, he stared up at the clouds above, watching them turn dark gray, charcoal, and finally the black of moonless night. His hands were still sore, and then he heard a hoof on a stone. He rolled over and looked.

Yes, there they were, darker figures against the inky dim. None spoke, so their discipline was considerable. That, or they were just weary. He watched three crest the rim and slowly lifted the crossbow, squinting, aiming.

Despite the vagueness of their shapes, he saw them twitch alert at the bowstring’s sound. By a horse’s pained whinny and the clatter of hooves, he knew he’d struck, and he dropped the bow to grab a length of sturdy rope. He pulled hard.

His plan was to strike a horse and make it bolt, hopefully driving a few of its fellows, then raise a trip line and see how many he could drop. He’d lashed one end firmly to a stubby tree and set the other between two stones, with a knot placed to catch. Scarcely a moment after lifting it, he heard the commotion of a horse… perhaps two?… tumbling over his trap. From the cries and oaths, it seemed they had riders.

He smiled and scuttled back into deeper shadow.

# # #

Grossthorn’s unit had a fire going two hours later, when Cipher returned. He moved as swiftly as he could in silence, breaking his trail, climbing the cliffs to gain altitude. He scouted their position from the heights and saw guards set out while others bedded down on the stony ground. Creeping sideways, clinging to tiny projections on the wall of a granite shelf, he smiled. Two of them were above him, walking along its crest. Even though they tried to step quietly, their smooth-soled boots made noises his keen ears could follow. His own feet, bare and unfeeling on the icy ground, made no such sound.

“… just heal the bloody horses in the morning and ride like bastards after them.”

“The horses are already spooked.” It was a thin voice, cold but feminine. Someone weary with humanity and becoming tired of her own weariness.

“No wonder, he’s giving them no rest, riding them raw and counting on healing magic to restore them.” This speaker, a manly baritone with a dwarven accent, sounded bitter. “Much as he treats us.”

The rise on which they walked was ten or fifteen feet tall, and Cipher pressed himself into the deepest shadow beneath it, looking up. He could see them as they peeked over, briefly, but they weren’t distinct enough. Not yet. When their silhouettes passed out of view, he wedged a toe in a cleft and started to climb, slowly, smoothly, hands gripping tiny exposed roots and transferring his weight gradually, so that no creak of straining wood or rustle of dipping branch would alert them.

“What’s the point anyhow?” The woman’s words were low, confidential. “He put the message on the sick one.”

“Don’t you know how the helmet works? He can’t do it again until he’s touched the fool. He touches him tonight and then can speak words into the temple once this Amblard ponce gets in.” Her companion, too, spoke in the mumble of one who does not wish to be overheard.

“It all seems needlessly complex.”

The deeper voice chuckled, very quiet but still harsh. “If it seems complex to us, when he shares so little, it must be staggering in full.”

Cipher’s head was tilted, rising slowly, ear high to hear, his arc of vision descending, waiting to see the top of a head, to see if they were turned away…

“I just don’t understand why we can’t kill the Imperials,” she continued.

“We can kill the Imperial. The monk isn’t one of them.”

“Chasing three to fight when only one is a fair target… how does Grossthorn expect us to manage that?”

“I, for one, plan to focus on the soldier and try to get someone else between me and that mad fist-fighter. Dembler maybe, or Effithaq.”

“I think Dembler only fights to the death,” the woman said.

“If he kills the monk, all the better. Grossthorn will kill Dembler.”

“Maybe we’d get to watch!” Her voice was delighted. As Cipher’s eye rose, a thin burst of orange light flared in the dim. The smell of tobacco soon followed.

“Maybe we’d get to help!”

They both turned at the sudden sound of movement, and Cipher saw a mushroom-pale dwarf and a black-skinned human with a clay pipe. Her eyes widened as Cipher’s blade flew toward her face. She swore, but was still instinctively keeping her voice low.

“The monk!” the dwarf shouted, no longer muted, springing forward and jerking his dagger clear of its sheath. But with a twitch of his hand, Cipher’s identical blade came soaring back, and its trailing thong twisted around the dwarf’s ankle. Cipher pulled as he stood, and the dwarf’s foot rose, snagged.

Hopping, the dwarf took a swipe at Cipher’s head, a little hair and blood flying in the darkness. The monk lurched in, picked up the smaller figure’s upraised leg, then pivoted under it and drove forward.

The baritone howl faded as the soldier went over the cliff, face first. Cipher dropped to the ground again, having heard the other’s footsteps as she neared, drawing her sword. He twisted under its horizontal stroke, and his foot made a parallel arc beneath. But where her blade cut only empty air, his kick struck armor. It was a contact of flesh on metal, but it was she, not him, who said “Uff!” and staggered back.

By the time she recovered from her half step’s imbalance, he had gone from prone to fully upright and was sending his blade whistling in circles around his head. For a moment, she stared, blade poised, lip curled. But with a frustrated nostril-flare, she spun and started running back toward the camp.

She drew in breath, but never got to shout her warning. A kick to the leather strap bent its trajectory into a loop, and the dagger’s hilt slapped back into Cipher’s hand. A whorl of leather dropped over the woman’s neck, and he leaned back, pulling on the hilt and the sheath.

Her sudden leash jerked her head still while her feet shot out forward. She kept her wits enough to slash at her bonds as she fell, and if the strap had remained taut, she might have severed it. But as soon as he felt her go off her feet, Cipher leaped forward and up, delivering a crushing heel-kick. It failed to kill her outright, but it did dent her breastplate from convex to slightly concave, driving out her breath in a hoarse cry.

She slashed at his leg, but she was on her back, stunned, and her lungs were being pinched. She smelled his blood, felt the resistance of flesh and cloth before her weapon, but as she drew back for a follow-up stab, her left hand scrabbling at the buckle of her armor to release it and let her breathe, the darkness in front of her surged. It felt like a lead pipe crashing into the wrist of her sword hand, but it was Cipher’s callused shin. The sword spun from her grip and the last thing she saw was the flutter of his shirt, darker than the sky above. His dagger slammed down on her throat.

It was the last thing she saw, ever.

# # #

The dwarf lost consciousness after taking a fifteen-foot fall head first, but he was tough. He struggled back to awareness just in time to hear the last noise his partner made, an expulsion of air across tortured vocal cords best rendered as “Hwuuuughhhh!”

He got to his feet and looked up at the edge of the cliff. There was no way he was going up there fast, especially since poking his head above the edge would set it up for a kick in the teeth. Instead, he shook his head once, slowly. It was a gesture as easily read as clearing away dizziness as regret over abandoning a comrade. Then he started walking back toward Grossthorn’s camp, slowly picking up speed as he recovered.

The clang when a rock hit him from above was fairly loud. The sound of snapping bone when a second struck his arm as he fell flat was much quieter, especially since his shout of anger drowned it out. His bellows also drowned out the noise Cipher made as he slid down the nearly vertical cliff, both feet and one hand arresting his fall, until he propelled himself horizontally out, dagger raised, to drop point first on the prostrate dwarf, with all the weight of his falling body.

He tucked, rolled and came to his feet, pulling the dagger free with a squelch and a rasp against a helmet edge. There was a brief fountain of blood, but the heart driving it gave out fast.

Cipher paused to clean his blade on his last victim’s clothes, to flex his hands, and to stretch out his neck and back. Then, silent as a kitten, he crept away from the two dead bodies.

# # #

“Dembler,” Cipher said, voice soft and confidential. “Dembler.”

The Crusader camp had a guttering fire, and as Cipher approached, its orange glow was broken into low, wavering shadows by the bodies lying around it in an irregular circle. He was staying beyond the reach of its light, and his voice was low enough that only someone with ears as keen as his own would hear. It was not his intention to alert them all, but to see if he could lure out one reckless fighter and dispose of him before facing the others.

“Dembler?”

He’d orbited the camp, counting, and the results looked encouraging. Twelve had set out with Grossthorn, giving thirteen foes to face. Two had been left behind, dead or abandoned, at the bridge. He’d hoped to fell at least one with his horse trap, maybe two. With the two slain guards factored in, that was four reliably out of the fight, possibly as many as… seven? By his current count, there were only four sleepers. Did that mean more had fallen in his trap? Were there more sentries than expected? Or were so many out on patrol that he could strike the sleepers, scatter their tethered horses, and head to the temple with a triumphant lead?

“Dembler…”

His own wounds — a shallow cut on the scalp, a nastier slash to the shin, the remnants of bite and claw — were all bandaged. They hurt, but he put the pain away. He worried that the leg would stiffen and slow him, and he wouldn’t be doing any more shin-kicks on that side. The slice on his forehead was mostly an irritant, a source of blood in the eyes to blind him. But sight was of little use.

He listened. There was no sound of movement, either from the camp or behind him. He was nearing the cluster of horses, approaching from downwind. Crippling a few steeds might accomplish his mission without any further confrontation. He squinted, trying to count the mounts. Two were lying asleep, others slept upright, and a few were moving nervously about, keeping watch for predators.

Were all the patrolling soldiers on foot? It was hard to get the numbers straight, but he didn’t see Effithaq’s lean racer among the herd…

He spun around just in time to hear a bowstring. Later, he was unable to explain if he’d heard a rustle of cloth, or felt a slight increase in the ambient temperature from her body heat, or if it was just a moment of pure suspicion that paid off. But he turned in time to catch a crossbow bolt, immediately dropping it from his stinging hand and twirling his tethered weapon as Grossthorn’s elven outrider plunged toward him from the darkness, a curved saber in either hand.

Cipher leaped back, arms waving to cause confusion as he dodged. One of her swords scraped against the dagger, the other slid through sleeve and scar and ground against bone, just above his elbow. But since he’d paid with blood to get close, he tried to entangle her arms, to catch one with his blade like a fish hook, or grip her bicep with the hand of his newly hurt arm… but she was too lithe, too quick, too light on her feet. She moved easily back, in perfect silence, and the best he did was to keep one leather loop around her wrist, jerking her blow off balance so that it whistled overhead.

Her retreat was brief, and she seemed to glide on the stony ground, like a skater on a smooth-frozen pond. With a tight turn, she came back to attack.

“People ask ’s one,” she rasped, in a thick wood-elf accent “Wha’ good ’tis do ’a have flying shoes ’sa dan’t lift ’s one more’a finger-width off the ground?”

Cipher said nothing, just danced back from one curving blow and parried the other, trying to enter, trying a kick to her side… but it just thudded against her armor and sent her sliding back, chuckling.

“’Sa one ney answer,” she continued. “Just come on ’em, footsteps nan’t heard, and leave no trail awast the bodies.”

He circled until she was between him and the fire, and then bounded back. She laughed again, out loud this time.

“You’ll na ’scape ’s one a’ foot!” she shouted. “Or ought ’s one say ‘us’?”

Cipher did not curse, but the speed and certainty with which she darted toward him showed that his discretion had been needless.

As she charged, he waited, then threw the dagger and dived to the side. The tip struck true, sinking deep into her leg just above the kneecap. She cried out and snarled as he yanked the strap, collapsing her leg. He gave her no respite, sprinting forward to trample her wrist with one foot and kick across her face with the other. But though she’d dropped one blade, the other whipped across her body at him, chopping into his thigh. His leap away from it kept the wound shallow, but gave her the space to get to her feet.

He glanced at the other forms from the fire, rushing closer. “Something we’ve both forgotten,” he said, voice loud in the dark, “is that you have orders not to harm me.”

With that, he jumped at Effithaq, high and open, making no attempt to hide or defend, dagger upraised…

… and she struck with the tip of her sword, sliding it between two of his ribs and through the lung beneath, levering him away midair — the pain was shocking! — as she deftly ducked under his stab.

“Nay, ’tay orders nae kill ye.”

He lay on the ground, panting splashes of blood, and then light blazed up around them. The last thing he heard was Grossthorn’s voice, speaking words of evil enchantment. Then the agony of blasphemous healing surged through his body, bad enough to sunder his consciousness.

# # #

He woke when a casual backhand concussed his cheek, and was alert enough to try to bite it, getting a taste of leather glove before Effithaq yanked it from between his teeth.

“I’faith, monk, thou’st arn bittern like a true knaval dagger-mate.” Her helmet mask was up, and as she waggled a reproving finger at him he could finally see her face in the orange glimmer of a greatly raised campfire. She was beautiful, of course, ethereally fine-featured and timelessly elegant, except for a broad and warted scar that wound down from the pointed center of her hairline, curving right through one snow-blond eyebrow, before lurching left to ride down the side of her flawlessly proportioned nose, then cutting right again to transfix thin, sculpted lips and end at the very base of her pointy elven chin.

Cipher flexed against his bonds as she stood up, grinning. He was tied with exceptional skill, and even attempting to dislocate his own shoulder gave him no room to slip the loops and cross-woven knots that bound his forearms behind his back, his wrists to his elbows, and his ankles to his waist.

Despite the slapping and bondage, he felt remarkably well. The aches in his side, hip, elbow, scalp, and shin? He recognized them all as the sting of curative magic, and despite the discomfort he could tell that all his limbs had full functioning.

“Don’t toy with the captive, Effithaq.” Grossthorn’s voice was smooth and cool as oil on ice. “He needs his wits about him.”

The cleric came and squatted near Cipher. “You have annoyed me,” he said.

Cipher spat toward him and added some jeering curses.

“Your oaths sit strangely in the mouth of a man in monk robes,” the captain said. “I do not need to blaspheme and bluster, of course. I serve the Flayer. My life curses the world.”

“It’s a curse you dare not put on me,” Cipher said. “You’ve lost. If you were saving me for your own murder, you didn’t need to heal me after Effithaq’s strike.”

“Perhaps I want you healthy enough that I can draw out your suffering,” the captain said. His tone betrayed weariness, but he still managed to muster a twinkle in his eyes.

“Better get started. I’ve delayed you long enough that Horm and Amblard have an insurmountable lead to the temple. If I tell you I’m as terrified as I’m going to get, will you believe me?”

Grossthorn laughed. “Ah, you’ve called my bluff. Your death is denied me, no matter how many of my troops you mangle.” He shook his head, like a rueful good sport after a loss in a dice game. “But are you certain that the lead your friends have is insurmountable?”

As if on cue, a sound approached. It was a soft sound, furled, growing, like sails in a brisk breeze. A sound in the sky, of flight. Staring up, Cipher saw only smoke at first, then the clouds from the fire billowed, sparks shifting from orange to yellow, pushed from above by terrible wings.

“What is it?” he whispered, as it broke into the light.

“Oh? Don’t recall a sight like this one?” Grossthorn snickered. “Why, it’s Dembler!”

The creature was like a vast bat, shaggy and leathery and indistinct as it dropped a pale bundle into the dust. Grossthorn stood with a disappointed sound.

“You have left your charge in deplorable condition, and I have been a very busy man with my enchantments. I’ll have to use actual medicine on this one!”

Dembler landed, awkwardly upright, and threw back a maw full of sharp and bloodstained teeth. A deep, sick sound came up its throat, then broke as if it were choking. Something rose from its gullet, at first looking like a tongue but clearly too large. With a crack, its jaw separated and Cipher could see skin sloughing, like a loose robe falling from a bather’s shoulder. As the monster’s throttled gasp died down, a mannish cry of agony rose, and Cipher realized that the thing emerging from Dembler’s mouth was a human head, a man’s face contorted in pain, leading broad shoulders that split the corners of the bestial face.

“Poor Dembler’s blessing is his curse,” Grossthorn said, as he finished pouring a noxious liquid the color of trash, with the smell of lemon peel and burnt hair, into the mouth of the supine figure at his feet. With a cough, the figure sat up and started wailing. Cipher recognized the voice.

“Awww, oh no, noooo!” Amblard cried. But the alchemist couldn’t drown out Dembler’s groans. Now his naked trunk was visible to the waist, his other form seeming to melt and puddle around him. Yet at the same time it pulled and surged inward, as if the mass of it was being drawn up into him, even as he arose from it.

“Is he turning himself inside out?” Cipher asked in horrified awe.

“More or less,” Grossthorn said, nodding.

“Oh Cipher, we tried, we tried,” Amblard said. “We rode… we tried to fight.”

“I assume you mean the sergeant fought?” Grossthorn asked.

“I tried!” Amblard repeated. “I… I tried to cock the crossbow…”

The soldiers around him laughed. Not one of them had risen to help Dembler, who now collapsed onto his knees, sobbing and shaking, covered in dark gore.

“What happened to Horm?” Cipher asked, voice sharp.

“He… he couldn’t…”

Dembler belched, prompting more sounds of mirth.

“Dembler?” Grossthorn said. “I assume the soldier died?”

“Yessir,” the man mumbled, still shaking.

“Hm. Very well. Clean yourself. Effithaq? You have one of those rosewood cleansing potions?”

“Ah’s for ’s one!” she said, sounding offended.

“Don’t care,” Grossthorn said. “Give it to Dembler or we’ll all be riding back with the stench of his change.”

Grumbling, the scarred elf rose to comply.

Grossthorn arranged his cape under him and sat down in the dust, facing Amblard and the fire on his left, the trussed-up monk on his right.

“By the Flayer’s thigh,” he said, “I am tired. I do not recall being so tired before, ever.”

“That’s a shame, because I feel fresh as a spring blossom and ready to shout at you all night if that’s the only revenge I can get for Horm!” Cipher said, wiggling around into a sitting position.

“Urgh,” Amblard said. “Was that gorewood extract and unicorn milk? That’s a really rare…”

“Do cease your prating, Amblard,” Grossthorn said, and his mirth was gone. With it went his cruelty. He now seemed, as he had claimed, simply weary. “I have spent many good soldiers on this mission, and I would have the temple as my prize.”

Amblard was instantly silent.

“Ah,” Grossthorn said. “They’ve dissuaded you.”

“I… I just don’t… I don’t know…” the alchemist said, looking at Grossthorn, then the fire, then at his feet. He was untied, and had shifted into a sitting position, his legs beneath him.

“He won’t do it,” Cipher said. “I believe he won’t.”

“I think he will,” Grossthorn said. “Or you.”

“I won’t.”

“No? As you say. I’ll work on this one, then.” Grossthorn turned to Amblard. “Do you know aught of the Flayer, my patron?”

“I know you… peel… people.”

“Alive,” Grossthorn said quietly, as if correcting a minor error. “We flay them alive. I will flay Nagatia alive.”

“No…”

“Yes. You’ve felt my master’s magic. Nothing of flesh is a mystery to him. Even the geas you accepted and its mortification — even that is set aside, cancelled, and put in abeyance by the power of the Flayer.”

“Not Nagatia, she never… she’s…”

“That is of no concern to me,” Grossthorn said, and sighed. “Do I need to go into details? Describe techniques, duration?”

“I can’t… You, please, you’re a man of, of education and intellect…”

“Do you really think this the place and time for flattery? Darkness damn you, Amblard! Just do the task, and for once be part of something important and genuine!”

“He won’t,” Cipher said. “His regret is too real. I’m surprised he had one murder in him. There’s not two in his soul.”

“All men can murder!” Grossthorn spat. “I know this. Any man can be made evil. Any. I know this more than I know my mother’s touch and my father’s face. You, your soul drowned in sins, you lecture me on regret?”

He stood, grunting, and turned his back on Cipher.

“Take the Flayer’s Oath,” he told Amblard. “Go to the temple. Kill the priest. That is your path. That is happening.”

“Please, no…”

“If you do not, Nagatia will die for a long time.” He tilted his head. “You acted for love, did you not?”

“I… I was a fool, I didn’t understand…”

“What sort of love is it that kills a friend for no gain, but dares not strike a stranger to save the beloved’s life?”

“I am not a murdering man!” Amblard shouted. “Not any more! I was wrong, I know that, I can’t, I can’t!”

“Then your love was never anything? You’d kill to have her, but you’ll do nothing to save her? If you were so deluded and foolish, how dare you assume you know right action now?”

“Don’t listen to him!” Cipher shouted, prompting one of the soldiers to come up and give him a kick to the kidneys.

“You will listen and you will obey,” Grossthorn said. “You will kill that old man and desecrate the temple, and if that’s not done in four days’ time — I’ll know when it falls, trust me — I will seize the woman and give her to the Flayer.”

Amblard turned to look at Cipher. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

“Take the oath,” Grossthorn said.

“No!” Cipher barked. “Amblard, if you make some magical compact, I’ll kill you myself!”

“I am sick of your meddling!”

Grossthorn had, at last, lost his composure.

“You ruin events that are none of your concern and you don’t even understand it!” he shrieked, dropping on top of Cipher and seizing his head by both ears. “You get to be important for no good reason! You stumble into the center of things that your betters struggle to reach for decades, and fail to attain!” He pulled up Cipher’s head and slammed it down onto the ground, over and over.

“He’s… he’s not to die?” one of the soldiers said, taking a hesitant step nearer.

“He won’t die!” Grossthorn snarled. “He’ll barely even suffer!” Then he braced one hand against Cipher’s cheek and, with the other, pulled as hard as he could at the monk’s thick, bulbous ear.

The priest lurched to his feet as Cipher’s skin ripped. Blood briefly fanned the air, while Grossthorn flung the torn ear to the ground and stomped on it, bellowing like a petulant child.

Finally, breathing heavily, he took two steps away from his prisoners. Amblard’s eyes were wide with terror. Cipher just struggled back to an upright position.

“You call that a torture?” the monk asked. “I’m pretty sure I did worse to my own arms and legs…”

“Quiet.” The priest’s voice was again controlled, and so was the kick he swung straight into Cipher’s mouth. The difference in violence — now calm and casual, where moments before he’d flailed hysterically — was remarkable. Cipher tipped down and stayed on his side, but he chuckled, even as he spat out two bloody front teeth.

“Saddle the horses,” Grossthorn said. “We’re going.”

“Captain, Dembler is yet unwell…”

“Dembler can grit his teeth,” Grossthorn said. “We will walk away at a leisurely pace and make camp again in an hour or so, if that meets your needs. We can take that smooth patch by the stream and have fresh water in the morning, and we can restore ourselves and take our time returning to civilization.” He turned to glare at Amblard. “Oath or no, it’s your task to pervert that temple. If it is done, I will know and all will be well for the pretty sprite Nagatia. Fail me, and her suffering will be great, for none but yourself and ‘Cipher’ here even know my plan.” He stripped off his bloodstained gloves with a small frown and gestured for his horse. “You need to get to the temple, lest you perish — and should you decide to perish rather than kill Ost, die assured that it will not delay my fatal design by even one minute.

“The monk,” he said, musingly, as he patted the side of his steed’s neck. “Yes, I suppose you might reach Farfield in time to warn her, if Dembler hasn’t terrified your horses away. So it’s in my interests to leave you unable to pursue. But have no fear,” he said drawing the dagger that matched Cipher’s own. “You’ll live.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Temple of Ice and Crystal was magnificent, and never more so than at sunset. A graceful volcanic mound rose from the rugged and spiny peaks around it, its black slopes split by green-choked crevices. But any viewer’s eye was drawn to the cone’s summit, where jutting spikes of quartz glittered, purple and golden and rose. Atop those shining gemlike boulders, blue and white mountain ice threw even brighter sparks. It was a crown fit for a better world.

The men who approached offered a desperate contrast. Where the temple was vast and timeless, they were tiny and wore their mortality like badges of shame. Instead of glorious colors, they were picked out in tones of mud and dried filth, a dozen stains overlapping on their tattered garments.

One of them was on rough crutches — thin mountain sticks crammed in an armpit, really. His feet were bound with bloody rags, the stains thickest and darkest just above each heel, where a fancy lady of the city might wear a bow on her shoe to draw attention to a nicely delineated tendon. Sometimes he stepped on his feet, and hissed in pain. Other times he hopped awkwardly, or just dragged them.

The other man, of slighter frame, had an arm around his companion’s shoulders. Sometimes it seemed he was helping the lame man walk. Sometimes it seemed that he hung off the other, too weak to stay upright.

When they reached the incline up to the crater’s rim, they went on hands and knees. They crawled as the horizon deepened from pale yellow and rose to vivid pink and crimson, then a purple like Imperial velvet, then midnight blue with a few white stars, and then night.

They made it a quarter of the way up the hill before collapsing.

# # #

Cipher felt warm, for the first time in a long while. He opened his eyes gradually, relaxed and safe. He wondered if he had ever awoken before with such pleasant slowness. Certainly not in the limited span of his memories. It was new. It was the first time he hadn’t woken up wary of threats.

“Hello, traveler. You had a close call there. You’re very lucky for Sister Mullbet’s interest in birds.”

“Birds?” Cipher lolled his head to the side to examine the source of the warm, casual voice.

“She was out amidst the crystals to listen for some thrush or other that sings for a mate at nightfall, this time of the year, this latitude, and so forth. She noticed buzzards circling.” The speaker was a man of middle years, bright brown eyes and weather-dark skin. His white, bristly hair was in the same monk-fringe that Cipher had abandoned. But this man’s soft forearms and second chin showed no sign of martial training. He wore a faded, wheat-yellow robe. Its front was adorned with symbols of the Bright Gods, and also stains from gravy.

“My name is Ost,” he said. “May I know yours?”

“No,” Cipher said, “not unless you can recall it to me. Men call me Cipher.”

Cipher sat up, groaning… and was surprised to feel good. He rotated his feet, realizing that his ankle-strings were no longer severed. He raised a hand to his mouth and found his kicked-in teeth replaced — straighter and firmer than before. His ear, too, was back, but without the puffing and damage from repeated injuries. Hesitantly, he touched the other ear, the one where the top crest had been severed. Now it was restored, the skin soft like a newborn’s.

“What did you…?”

“This is a place of healing, my friend,” Ost said. “You’d clearly seen some rough times.”

“Amblard,” Cipher asked. “The other man who was with me, is he…?”

“He is recovering well. We hardly had to do anything, in fact.”

“He’s under a geas,” Cipher said. “Cursed to sicken if he leaves this place.”

“Ah,” Ost said. “One of those.”

“It’s his punishment for…”

The priest held up a hand. “Please don’t tell me.”

“You should know.”

With a small frown, Ost shook his head. “I respectfully disagree.”

“He might kill you,” Cipher said. “It’s not… it’s not his past only.”

“I don’t think he’ll kill me.”

Cipher sighed. “There was this… this woman…”

Ost put a hand on the monk’s arm. “You should rest,” he said. “I’ll talk to… you said his name was Amblard? I’ll speak with him myself. It’s his story to tell, I think.”

# # #

Despite what the high priest had said, Cipher felt entirely restored and in no need of further repose. Rising, he found a fresh linen loincloth waiting, and a wheat-colored robe in a familiar monkish style. With mixed relief, he found his strapped dagger as well. There was even a pair of soft, pouchy shoes, which he ignored. He was grateful for a white wool cloak, however. True to its name, the temple was chilly once he left behind the fireplace in his convalescent chamber.

Emerging into a narrow hall, he was struck at once by its curves and lack of features. It was not constructed of stones laid in piecework, but a round oval tube, somewhat flattened on the floor, with iron brackets set here and there in the wall to hold guttering torches. Judging by the drift of the flames, he made toward fresh air, and after passing a half dozen closed doors he was rewarded by the sound of distant music. It lay in the same direction as the freshening breeze.

As he approached daylight, the tune resolved into a voice, wordless, but pitched high and sweet and pure. There was some sort of muffled rhythm sounding in accompaniment. Rounding a final turn in the meandering tunnel, he emerged into an early morning of staggering beauty.

The crater’s interior was tiger-striped by outcroppings of colored crystal, radiating from the center to the peaks. The strokes of violet and pink and yellow drew the eye toward the middle, lowest point, where a dozen streams of sun-molten snow collected in a moat around a building that shimmered, twisted, and glowed. It was symmetrical, it had doors and winding stairs, and windows through which silent, transparent bells were visible, but for all that it did not look like a thing built by mortals’ rough hands and transient plans. It had the thoughtless, natural grace and balance of a flower.

The streams flowed through immaculate gardens, a bewildering variety of plants now reaching their fullest summer display, even in the chill that made Cipher’s breath visible. For, despite its beauty, the temple was austere, with a coldness that spoke to the sorrows and cruelty of the world. It was a good place, and beautiful, but there was nothing optimistic in it. It was harsh and honest and lovely.

Emerging from the corridor, Cipher saw the wordless singer, and stopped short. She was an orc.

Not a half-orc either, nor one of the orcs that could be mistaken for a husky man or tall dwarf if the light was dim. No, she was an orc, seven feet tall and broad-beamed, snake-eyed, pig-snouted, with jagged tusks, and knuckles that nearly dragged the ground. Full orcish, combining the worst features of ape and boar, and singing in perfect complement to the graceful, bright structure below. As she sang, she was beating dust from a rug. She, like him, wore monastic robes.

“Hello,” Cipher said at last.

Her song trailed off as she turned and directed what he hoped was a smile in his direction. “Good morning! You look far better than when I found you.”

“I take it you’re Sister… um…”

“Sister Mullbet,” she said, offering a paw to shake. Cipher’s hand was toughened and strong, but enfolded in hers, it seemed as fine and delicate as a newborn’s. “Hungry?”

“I could eat,” he replied.

Soon they were seated at a simple wooden table near a window. A tiny old man, whose eyes were barely visible in his wrinkled eyelids, brought porridge, hot tea, and a collection of firm, fresh berries.

“What brought you to the temple?” Mullbet asked. Her tea was in a serving pitcher, which was a fit proportion for her body and limbs.

“I was escorting Amblard,” he said. “But I… I have some hopes for healing myself.” He blinked, then his eyes widened. “Bright Gods, Horm!” he said.

“Who’s…?”

“Horm, Sergeant Horm! We were bringing Amblard together and he… he didn’t make it.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, and he stared blankly at the table.

“I forgot Horm,” he said softly. He clenched his fists.

“What happened?” Mullbet asked.

“I… we were pursued by agents of the Dark Gods.”

“Oh, really?” She withdrew her hand to cross her arms and give a calculating look at the path that descended to the temple.

Before he thought it fully through, Cipher started telling her about Grossthorn and the Crusader, about his lost mind and Amblard’s duplicity.

“Ost didn’t want to know about that,” he said, after relating the alchemist’s crime. Mullbet snorted.

“He wouldn’t,” she said. “But some of us are more alert to the world’s dangers.”

“I think Amblard has truly come to… to understand and regret what he did,” Cipher said. “But the captain made threats. Serious ones.”

“Explain,” she said, and he did.

“I need a horse,” he said. “What do you…?”

“None in the valley,” she said. “We don’t have a stable.”

Cipher groaned. “Thunderhead and Mandolin must be halfway back to the muster house by now, if they haven’t gone wild. Or gotten eaten by a sphinx.”

“These hills, a hydra’s more likely,” she said absently. “But the old man has his tricks. Don’t let his humble demeanor fool you.”

“Can he save Horm?” Cipher turned and clasped his hands. “I know resurrection is great magic and terrible, but Horm was a good man, brave…”

“I cannot.”

Cipher turned. Ost was there. Cipher’s eyes narrowed, for he had neither heard nor felt Ost approach. It was as if the man had simply started to exist there, as light does when a spark is struck.

“Please, if there’s any way…”

“I’ve been given much, but not that,” Ost replied. “I’m sorry. I can mend the living, but cannot recall the dead.”

“Well… did you hear when I told her of my lost memory?”

“How about you tell it again, for me,” Ost said, pulling up a chair.

Cipher did, finishing with, “… can you help me?”

“Let us find out. Come to the temple.”

# # #

The crystal colors swirled together and seemed to bend all light to a point at the very center, a single blaze of ineffable brightness and terrifying chill. Ost had insisted that they take up fur robes from a chamber rimming the temple’s outer sanctum and, in Cipher’s case, had gone to fetch shoes as well. When they entered, they saw Amblard on his knees, close to the glowing splinter, trembling. Cipher greeted him by name and the alchemist looked up.

“Cipher!” he called. “Oh, thank everything that you’re all right!”

“You look as well as I’ve seen you,” Cipher replied.

“Yes, since the day I tried to kill you with dragon ichor.”

“Better, perhaps. You seemed a little unhappy then, actually.”

Amblard took his hand and glanced over his shoulder at Ost, then blinked at Mullbet. “Thank you for bringing me here. I think… I think I will be well.”

“Certainly you have plenty of plants here to distract you.”

“Oh, it’s a magnificent selection! Given time, and perhaps a good athanor and some glass, there’s little I couldn’t make.” He looked Cipher directly in the eyes and said, “But not poison.”

“No.”

“I’ve been… looking at the light,” Amblard said, with a small shudder. “I… I don’t think I get to find out if Nagatia is safe or not. I think that’s… to be part of my burden.” He looked down, and Cipher thought he could hear tears starting in the man’s voice. “If you see her, tell her I’m so sorry for what I did. I hope it consoles her that I will do no further harm.”

“I’ll tell her,” Cipher said. “And if I can, I will save her.”

He took a deep breath, stinging and icy, and then turned to Ost.

“Well?” he asked. “Can you give me back the knowing that I’ve lost?” He bit his lip, remembering the destruction that had befallen Lyridel’s attempts, and for just a second wondered if this had been Grossthorn’s plan all along — that Ost would try to repair his mind, only to unleash destruction on the man or his holy place…

“I see what the problem is,” Ost said. “I see why your mind is buried. I’m sorry, but only scraps and remnants are left within you. The temple can help you reclaim those, but most of… you… is somewhere else.”

“I suspect I know where,” Cipher said, thinking of the casket.

“Can you compose yourself and look to the light?”

“I reckon I must.”

With a deep breath, the monk knelt, then folded himself into a seated position, hands resting in mudra configuration. He closed his eyes firmly, then opened them and gazed into the crystal…

… and he saw the old man, the abbot, peacefully asleep, his beard on the coverlet like pure white smoke rising on a breezy day. Project stepped closer to the bed, walking on the outsides of his feet and then transferring weight in to remain silent, one with the dark. A stiletto blow to the temple, that would be easiest. The thin blade was in his hand, and his heart was empty of all pity…

“No,” he gasped, falling backward. He scrambled to his feet.

“Cipher, what…?”

“No,” he repeated, then spun and ran from the temple.

# # #

Mullbet found him back in his convalescent room, slamming open drawers and cupboards.

“You’re angry,” she said, stooping to enter. She seemed to occupy half the chamber. The tufts of hair atop her pointy ears brushed the low ceiling.

“Did I have nothing on me when I was found?” he demanded. “No… no pack or pouch or purse? Naught but this dagger of the Dark Gods?”

“You had two crutches,” she said, “and we threw them away.”

“Everything I had is lost to me and everything I acquire gets taken!”

“What did you see?” she asked.

At the question, he stopped. He leaned on the edge of the dresser and his head fell forward, as if he was so weary he could barely stand.

“I… what I saw, it made me… hate myself.”

“We all do, sometimes,” she said steadily.

“No, I was… worthless, worse than that, I was… pitiless. A monster in my own soul. I didn’t know that about me, do you understand?”

“What did you do? What do you remember doing?”

“I was going to murder someone in cold blood,” he said, not daring to look at her.

“If you were so monstrous,” she said, easing herself closer, “would it really bother you now?”

“I always suspected I was a villain,” he said, voice low. “But it’s something else to know it. To remember looking at a helpless man and seeing only meat to be cut.” He turned to face her. “The magistrate… the one who sentenced Amblard, he talked about usefulness. I think I can still be of some use to those around me, but I’m not sure I want to know any more. Is that wrong?”

“I don’t know if it’s wrong. But I’ve always been taught that choosing ignorance over knowledge is weak.”

Cipher was perfectly still for a moment, and quiet. Then he burst forth with swearing so loud, dreadful, and protracted that, when he looked up, Mullbet had covered her own mouth with both hands. Orcs are not, by nature, meant to blush, but she was managing.

He sighed. “I should go back,” he said.

# # #

He spent an hour gazing at the icy shine at the core of the temple, and when he emerged, rubbing his eyes and shivering, he found Amblard in a nearby garden, plucking leaves off a pale green shrub and sniffing at them.

“I think I can see how this place would turn evil,” Cipher said.

“That is not comforting to contemplate,” Amblard replied. “Still, it might do me good to consider. Just to remove temptation.”

“If he kills her in four days, you’re in the clear.” Cipher squatted in the soil, just as Amblard gave him a sharp glance.

“What a cruel thing to say!”

“Sorry.” Cipher reached out and idly plucked one of the leaves. “Doubtless I’m no good company right now.”

“I don’t have much space to be selective. I believe that’s the first time anyone’s apologized to me since…” He trailed off.

“So, what do these leaves do?”

“Relieve constipation, promote clean breath, and, when properly balanced with the petals of the risk-beet blossom, provide great inner warmth in cold climes.” He gave a small grin. “They grow a lot of both, as you can see.”

“How many people live here?” Cipher asked. “Do you know?”

“I’ve met Mullbet and the high priest, a novice called Bontarde, Sister Allery… there’s the old gent who makes the meals, I haven’t been properly introduced, and I saw a dark elf of great age in the shadows of the temple…”

“The temple has shadows in it?” the monk asked.

“Sometimes. Shadows in terrible colors.”

Cipher stood. “I should go. I should apologize to Mullbet for being rude…”

“She’s above the rim, checking her traps,” Ost said. Cipher twitched.

“How do you do that?” he demanded.

“Do what?” Ost asked.

“Never mind.” Cipher sighed. “Look… I have nothing left, except this dagger you won’t want. I… need to get back. I understand that you can’t do anything for Horm.”

“What about you? Is there more healing I can offer?”

“I’ve seen things,” Cipher said quietly.

“Tell,” Ost replied.

“Like you said, scraps and remnants… there was a woman, an elf with scarred arms, she called me … She called herself ‘Arquith’ and taught me how to kill with a blade. She got me from a man called ‘Hatchet’, but I don’t know when or how I came to be with him. There were monks, an abbot who called me his ‘Project’, and another monk, my friend, who was named ‘Escape’. But I don’t know these people, beyond their faces and names and jumbles of confused emotion. I tried to kill the master, I know that, but not why, or when!” He looked down at his thick, leathery hands. “I was good at fighting and poor at studying. I learned to meditate eventually but… but I had to…” He furrowed his brow. “I had to do something that hurt me,” he said. “I don’t know what.”

“Is it better than knowing naught?” Ost asked.

“I suppose.”

“An… enchantment of that caliber might require your acquiescence,” the old man said slowly.

“What?”

Ost lowered his voice and gently led the monk out of Amblard’s earshot. “I mean that a spell as resilient as yours… you may have asked to forget. Or at least agreed.”

“Grossthorn said I had a soul full of sin,” Cipher said, looking at his hands.

“Pah, men like that say anything, true or false, so long as it wounds. Don’t think too long on poison words from a poison mind.” He turned and gestured at a thick door in one of the valley walls. “You, my friend, have lost far too much. I wish I could restore your friend Horm, and I wish I could ease your sorrows and uncertainty. But at the very least, I think I can give you some aid in the rescue of… what was her name?”

“Nagatia?”

“Nagatia.” They’d arrived at the door, which was burnished steel thickly set with colored crystals. Cipher’s heart sped up as he realized its shapes and runes and decorations resembled his lost silver casket.

“I had something that looked like this,” he said. “The first time I woke, a little chest.” He reached out.

“I wouldn’t…”

But Ost’s admonition was too late, and a stinging pain lanced up Cipher’s fingers, even before he could touch the metal.

“The defenses are… considerable,” Ost said, laying his palm upon a flat octagon that might have been blue jade, or pure ice. He winced and yanked back his hand, shaking it. “Even I get disciplined.”

With a rumble, the door withdrew, revealing a confusing glow of many hues.

“This is the treasury of the Temple of Ice and Crystal,” Ost said. “Please enter.”

Hesitating, Cipher did so, immediately withdrawing his hands into the fur sleeves of his coat, then putting them over his ears. The chill within was devastating, and where his breath had been light mist outside, in here it was cottony steam.

“Objects of real power,” Ost said, “can be difficult to destroy. Weapons and armor and tools of magicians… they fall into the earth, are lost in tunnel collapses, they get entombed with their masters, or are consigned to stony depths by those who rightly fear them.”

As his eyes adapted, Cipher saw that the lights burned from within clear crystals, which pushed up from the floor and in from the surrounding walls. In the depths of one outcrop, a sword seemed to flicker with angry flame. A cracked stony bubble revealed a luminous blue-green necklace, suspended in quartz like a fly in amber.

“Over many years,” Ost continued, “things lost below are drawn here by the power of the temple.”

A plain clay cup of modest but pleasing proportions sat inside a dome that might have been glass, or diamond, and while it did not seem to have any light of its own, all the other light bent toward it. It was just below the surface.

“Don’t touch that one,” Ost said.

“I wasn’t…” Cipher said, trailing off when he realized his hand was already outstretched. The high priest led him on, and he reluctantly turned away.

“It is an evil thing,” Ost said quietly. “The source of much mischief and suffering. For our purposes, I think we want… yes, this.”

They’d reached the back wall — for all its sense of awesome grandeur, the treasure chamber was actually quite small — where projections of crystal jutted like opened drawers in a cabinet. Ost reached for a black, pearly sphere the size of a child’s ball, half-sunk in purple quartz, and it dropped like a ripe fruit into his hand.

“It is my hope that this device…”

But then a musical clang interrupted him. Both men turned toward the sound as a similar noise chimed out again, the notes matching a movement on the floor.

Drawing closer, they saw two metal circles slowly spinning to a halt.

“Now that’s interesting,” Ost said.

“What?” Cipher asked.

“Sister Swift and Brother Brawn,” the old man said, squatting by the now-still metal hoops. “I thought they were deeper in the crystal, but apparently their time has come to return to the world.” He looked up at Cipher and gave a small smile. “I think they want to go with you.”

“Me? No, I’m… what are they?” the monk asked, drawing closer to turn a hesitant eye on the treasures.

“They’re bracelets. Sister Swift is silver and gold entwined, while Brother Brawn is platinum and copper. Pick them up. Put them on.”

So Cipher did.

CHAPTER NINE

There weren’t voices. There was communication as soon as he lifted a slender, delicate hoop and flipped it easily over his hand. It didn’t take the form of words, but he just knew. He knew the bracelet wanted him.

Yes. This is a good arm. This arm pleases me. Put on my brother, too.

The bands didn’t have the cogs and cams and moving parts of Gruttla’s Weapon That Is All Weapons, nor did they have the graceful swirls of his lost silver chest, nor did they possess the strangely seductive ugliness of Grossthorn’s helm and mask. They were angular but not symmetrical, artistic without frivolity, attractive but still inhumanly strange. They were not elven or dwarven or forged in the style of a human nation.

Cipher put on the second.

Ah, sister, I agree. He is not so strong as — and there was no name in the knowing, but an image of a minotaur, bellowing in battle, clutching an axe of stone, both bracelets on its right arm, spattered with others’ blood and entirely unhurt — but I like this one.

He’s no paladin.

Neither is he — again, no name, but the image of a girl, a halfling, so young but without a tooth in her head, leaping from roof to roof through a city at night, stalking an unknowing victim in the street, a portly man, and Cipher could feel searing hate even though it was nothing but a memory, not even his memory but the object’s, not even the object’s feeling, but that girl’s, that toothless girl from so long ago who dropped on the man like a hawk on a field mouse — but there’s trouble in this one.

His sinew. Yes. He moves well.

Oh, this is a body that knows the use of force.

We can carry him to greatness.

Or he can carry us.

“Who are you?” Cipher asked, eyes wide, holding his banded forearms up in front of his face.

I am speed and grace and the joy of perfect movement. I will make every motion certain. I am Sister Swift.

I am power indomitable. With me, your blows surpass stone, flesh, and terror. I am Brother Brawn.

“I hope you both understand who’s in charge here,” Cipher muttered.

“You don’t need to talk to them,” Ost said. “They know you. Just take a strong hand with them. It is an unhappy man who is a servant to his possessions.”

“What are they going to do to me?” Cipher asked.

“The question is, what are you going to do with them?” Ost beckoned him toward the door, and when Cipher unthinkingly shut it, it no longer hurt his hand.

I know what you are wondering and yes, I did protect you from that.

“Brother Brawn and Sister Swift have adorned the arms of great warlords, assassin queens, righteous paladins, and sinister thieves. Greater together than apart, they are found with the good, and the bad, but seldom the unimportant.”

“Are you… do you think it’s good that I have them?” Cipher asked.

Ost turned to him and said, “I think they will give you whatever you need to accomplish as much good as you’ve the heart for. Or as much evil.”

“Doesn’t the Dwarf King claim all magic treasures of the earth are rightly his?”

Ost rolled his eyes. “And King Fanith of Shudder-Oaks claimed the first kiss of every maiden in his realm, until Olia Darktooth cursed him to pucker ever tighter. Eventually, he could only eat through a straw, and then they had to cut a hole in his cheek and knock out some teeth!” Ost shook his head in rueful respect. “By the Bright Gods’ secret dice games, Olia knew how to place a curse!”

“But the Dwarf King?”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Ost held up the small, dark globe he’d retrieved. “This, now, is no treasure of the earth.”

“No?”

“It is a journey.”

Cipher blinked. “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“Sorry, visiting the chamber always makes me a little jittery and excited. I grew up in this valley and was never allowed in the vault until I became high priest.”

“Did any of its treasures claim you?”

“Hah! What use would I be to them? I never leave this place.”

“Well… what did you mean that the gem is a ‘journey’?”

“Things that aren’t things can be made things. That’s a rule of 8th Age sorcery, of which this is an artifact.”

“Things…?”

“Ideas can be made into objects. That was a very serious type of 8th Age spell. They would make love, real love, into small, dun-colored pebbles, but those were all used up before their Age even turned. This, however, is… travel made concretely manifest. By using it, the act of moving from one place to another is enjoined upon the world.”

“Oh.”

“You see?” Ost asked.

“Not even a little.”

“That’s all right. I will crack this over you and you will go.”

“Where?”

“Where you will. I recommend going ‘to Nagatia’.”

Cipher’s eyes widened. “It can do that?”

“Easily.”

The monk stared for a moment, then dropped to his knees, hands folded. “You have my perpetual gratitude.”

“I don’t like the idea of some woman I never met dying because someone refused to assassinate me,” the high priest said, helping Cipher to his feet. “I appreciate you bringing Amblard here.”

Cipher opened his mouth, then shut it.

“One other thing I will do, for you and for him,” Ost said. “There is a chamber at the top of the temple, where ice grows over the bones of heroes and saints. They are honored and remembered for their living deeds, and some say that in times of great joy, they can return to this world to share wisdom from the realms beyond. Some say that in times of danger, they return to defend the temple. I’ve never seen either, but… Mullbet is a good tracker. If she can find the remains of your friend Horm, I will place them in that sacred chamber.”

“Thank you. He would have liked that, I think.”

“I feel keenly that I could not save him,” Ost said. “I wish I had something better to offer than honor.”

“In this place, it will have to be enough. Give Mullbet and Amblard my farewells?”

“You would use the journey now?”

“I want every second I can get,” Cipher said. “I yearn to give Grossthorn a surprise.”

“Very well, but there’s something I should tell you before you go.”

“What’s that?”

“I think you will regain your memories when you find the casket. If it is in enemy hands, that may be when it can hurt you the most.”

# # #

The journey was, from Cipher’s perspective, anticlimactic. He stood while Ost held the small sphere above his head, then said “Take me to Nagatia” while the old man broke it. There was a moment of vertigo, a sensation of being blown by a strong wind… and then, with a profound splash, he found himself in a shallow stream. Immediately, he stumbled on the loose and moss-slick stones…

Careful. Again, the knowledge that flowed from Sister Swift was not a word, but an instant of emotion, firing his nerves and muscles…

… letting him pivot, shift his weight, and dart onto the shore without falling.

Nagatia was screaming.

Cipher unsheathed the black blade, the leather strap swirling around him (and provoking a momentary sensation of approval from the Sister bracelet, while the Brother seemed unimpressed), then dropped into a combative crouch.

And now, let battle sing its song of thuds and triumph!

The woman with hair like autumn plunged under the water, cutting off her cries as Cipher cast about for her attacker. Peering at her murky shape, he could see nothing around her or on her… nothing at all, in fact.

When she raised her head, he called out “Sorry!” and turned his back.

“Who is that?” she shouted in return.

“It’s me, the monk. Cipher. Gruttla’s colleague.”

“Where in the world did you come from?” she demanded.

“Um. Far away. I used… enchantment?”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you!”

“Well, I’m afraid you did,” she said. “Uh. Could you throw me my clothing, please?”

“Yes! Happy to!” Keeping his eyes low, he cast about and soon saw a discarded dress lying on a stone in the warm summer sunlight. He picked it up and, holding it at arm’s length, backed toward the stream.

“I’m very sorry about this,” he repeated, when he heard her rise out of the water, and felt her take the dress from his hand.

“Very well, I’m decent now,” she said.

He turned and let out his breath. She was bent over, wringing a great quantity of water from her red and golden locks.

“I’m afraid you’re in terrible danger,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll explain but… in three days, terrible forces are going to try to kill you.”

She was silent for a moment, picking at her wet clothing. “I wish I was surprised about that,” she said. “Do I have time to return to my home first?”

# # #

It was Tark who opened the muster house gates, and already his brow was furrowed with concern.

“Where are the horses?” he asked. “What happened to… where’s Horm?”

“Give the man a chance to seat himself and drink a stoup,” Gruttla said, bustling up from the main building. Her eyes shifted from Cipher to Nagatia.

“Horm didn’t make it,” Cipher said. “Grossthorn followed us from Farfield, he sent… this thing…”

Gruttla paled. “Come inside now,” she said, taking him firmly by the shoulder. She marched him through the common room and into a chamber of maps, which she’d occupied as a private office. Nagatia, looking uncertain, followed along. Gruttla shut the door and opened a low drawer, pulling out an unmarked clay bottle. She took a short drink and passed it to Cipher, who nearly spit it out.

“S…strong!” he gasped.

Hah, this one needs training up in his quaffing!

Control yourself, Brother, he grieves a comrade.

After a moment’s hesitation, he handed the bottle to Nagatia, who demurred. Gruttla took it back and had another swig.

“Now,” she said, “Horm. What happened?”

Pausing only once to weep, Cipher told her. When he was done, he gestured for the bottle and took another wincing drink.

“Well,” she said when they finished. “We shall have to find some way to dispose of that wretched bastard.”

“The poor sergeant,” Nagatia whispered. “I can’t help but feel this is somehow my fault…”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cipher and Gruttla said in perfect unison.

# # #

The troops took it stoically. No one spoke of it directly, though there was less easy jesting around the stables, and more curt words in the armory. Cipher was treated as a casualty, with the cavalry silently gripping his shoulder in passing or offering him part of their rum rations.

“I wondered how you returned so swiftly.” Mursei was on watchtower duty and gestured for him to accompany her. (Cipher himself, despite his protestations, had not been given any tasks.)

“I wish I’d come back saddle-sore with Horm.”

“Aye.”

They were quiet for a while, looking out over the distant, unassuming town.

“You look better,” she said. “Your new teeth are white as a snapped pine.”

“I hardly know my own reflection,” he said, rubbing his ears. “Though we were barely nodding acquaintances before.”

“The nose is good, too.”

His hand shifted to the middle of his face. “What of it?”

“Before it was all flattened, like a cook-pan. Now it has some curve.”

“I don’t think it changed much.”

“If you insist,” she said.

For a while, they were silent.

“We found the carpet,” she said at last, and launched into a story of uncovering the missing hunter, Clay, a strange and antisocial elf raised by humans. She’d tracked him down, caught him out when he said he’d just caught the fish on his fire (she recognized it as native to seawater), then pursued him when he fled.

“… He leaped on that mad rug and sailed off through the trees but, just like the original thief, it bucked him off. Or he fell, but it looked like it threw him.”

“The magic flying carpet knocked off its own rider?”

She shrugged. “I was riding hard after him, but he went up a hilltop — a steep one, almost a cliff — and kept climbing. As I tried to turn my horse, the rug… it gave a sort of little flip, and then he was falling one way, and it was falling the other.”

“You went after the rug?

“Of course.” She gave a half smile and a self-conscious shrug. “Real, lasting magic? That’s rare. Thieves of opportunity we have in abundance. I got the rug and put it on my horse and tried to find where he’d fallen.” She sighed. “He’s good in those woods, very good. From his trail, I could tell he had a hurt leg, but he… got away.” She frowned out over the sunlit fields, and dabbed her brow briefly. “He got away,” she said again.

“You’re sure his leg was wounded?”

“Oh yes, it was clear from his tracks. He won’t get far. Sooner or later he’ll turn up at a village, people are on the lookout for a limping elf.”

They were silent for some time, before she said, “You should tell Lyridel to come to Horm’s funeral.”

“Why me?”

“Because anyone else will either argue with him, or he’ll argue with them.”

# # #

The next day, Cipher knocked on the wizard’s door with a bottle of expensive wine from the Goldleaf region, which Mursei had encouraged him to purchase as what she termed “heart bait”. He was wearing the lavender shirt, one of his few garments spared the bloodshed of his journey.

The door swung open and revealed a woman who might have been the enchanter’s sister. Eyes flicking down to the belt, Cipher hazarded a guess and said, “… Lyridel?”

“Lo, ye monk of mystery!” she replied, voice the same but a register higher. “What brings thee to my door?”

“Can I come in?”

She tilted her head, then gestured him inside.

Today she wore an elaborate gown, flame red, with gold embroidery along the hem and collar and cuffs. Its plunging neckline was mitigated by a lengthy orange scarf, wound around her tiny neck and tucked in front, behind the fine gold chain that held the sides of the gown’s collar from falling away into total indecency. Her hair was held back in two sweeps by matching gold combs with rubies inset. But the silver nail guard was the same as at their first meeting, and her wand remained tucked in her black-golden belt.

“I have some bad news from the muster house,” he said.

Immediately, her face stiffened, and her eye darted to the wine bottle. “Tidings that call for strong drink? Set it upon ye table.” At a gesture, a fine-stemmed glass floated from a cupboard. She crooked the finger with the claw-like silver tip, and when she flicked it straight, the cork popped free. Carefully, she poured. Then she paused, looked at Cipher and the bottle, and produced another glass for him.

“Is it Dovestrom?” she asked, after her first rapid drink. “Gruttla?”

“Horm,” he said. The beverage tasted like water, but had a faint aroma like spring violets.

Careful. ’Tis much stronger than it seems.

“Horm, alas,” she said. “A man of uncommon character, for all his common heritage.”

“I didn’t know him long, but I will miss him,” Cipher said.

“Far as thou recall, hast known him all thy life,” Lyridel replied.

Cipher drank a little deeper.

“Or hast thee found enchantment to do more than I? I see upon thee marks of new prosperity.”

“I? This bottle claimed much of my free gold.”

“But that bauble a’ thy wrist,” Lyridel said, refilling her glass. “’Tis naught that pearls nor diamonds could buy.”

Cipher realized his sleeve had fallen back as he raised his glass, revealing Brother Brawn. At first he reached to cover it, but instead rolled up both sleeves and showed the pair side by side.

“Ah,” Lyridel breathed. “Treasures of an Age bygone. How came thou upon such rare devices?”

“They found me, at the Temple of Ice and Crystal. Horm had, by then, fallen.”

“A pity.”

“Yes.”

They both looked into their cups for a moment.

“I take it thou has gleaned no new past on thy quest?”

Cipher shook his head. “Little. The priest gave what help he could, but it was far from full.”

“Hmph. Here’s priestcraft bounded up in tidy words, ‘what little help he could’.”

“They took Horm’s bones,” Cipher said, and a tear crept down his cheek. “Or they will. He said. They will seek his bones to put in a place of honor.”

“Little consolation for ye muster-house gang.” Lyridel topped off both glasses, spilling a bit from his.

“I wish it had been different,” Cipher said. “I… went off on my own. To fight Grossthorn and his…”

“What, Grossthorn?”

“Yes! It was him who killed Horm! Or, well, his devil Dembler did it on the captain’s command! If I’d been there…”

“Lo, human, ye path a’ madness is signposted ‘had I but…’ and is best stepped from quickly. Let us drink a toast to Horm, our fallen friend.”

“I might, but you?” Suddenly, Cipher was scowling at the wizard. “Where were you when he got eaten to death? Cozy here, with your…” He gestured vaguely around the workshop, spilling more from his glass. “Your devices and fine gowns and dice and… I don’t even know what that is,” he said, frowning at a puzzling contraption of swinging brass cubes on struts of varying length.

“I care not for thy tone,” Lyridel said, eyes narrowing. “I parted company with Gruttla on good terms…”

“Oh, such good terms that no one speaks your name where she might hear it?”

“’Tis…”

“If you say ‘complicated’, I might well punch you,” Cipher warned.

Aye! Let us brawl with the wizard while she’s drunk!

I am not sure I can offset the liquor-sway, for this drink is of surpassing potency.

“Thou insult’st me and breathe threats afore my own hearth? Thy sorrow has quite unseated thy mind which, like a screw through wear stripped bare, rattles free of ye skull-pan and twitches out toad-like opprobrium!”

“I don’t even know what that means!” Cipher shouted, leaping to his feet and then stumbling a half step.

I warned you.

“Hah,” Lyridel said, rising more smoothly (though with caution, as she put both hands on the edge of the table to hold herself steady). “Hast fallen prey to the Goldleaf assassin, which creeps up unfelt and leaves one’s wit, discretion, and dignity quite dead.”

Cipher straightened himself, subtly bracing his feet as he would to stay balanced on some pitching or treacherous surface. “Half-dead, perhaps,” he admitted. “Your drink of choice is a devil.”

“When drunk a’ mourning, all liquors are, and in joy all are angels.”

“Do you ever speak, and it isn’t vagueness and, and quotes?” he asked, shaking his head, then putting a hand on the chair back.

“’Tis a flaw of how I learned ye human tongue.” She folded her arms. “Is there a service for Horm’s soul?”

“Yes.”

“Would I… be welcome to attend?” One of her combs had come loose, and she fidgeted with it, looking away from Cipher as he considered.

“Mursei would be glad if you came,” he said. “Dovestrom I would not speak for.”

“The lord Dovestrom cares not for me,” she said.

“There’s nothing like the death of a friend to make other struggles of the heart seem petty,” Cipher replied. “That’s my vague quote.”

“And Gruttla?”

“Gruttla misses you.”

The middle of her thin lower lip pushed up. “How know’st thou?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I don’t, or I’m wrong. But in the little bit of life I remember, I’ve been right most of the time.”

“A span brief e’en by ye standards of thy quick-dying human ilk.”

“Do you want me to be right?”

“La, ’tis a shame to quarrel with any Imperial functionary,” she said, fluttering a hand and taking a few steps toward the window with an unconcerned expression that seemed a little deliberate.

“I do know that whatever their opinions of you, they respect your casting prowess.”

“By respect, dost mean ‘envy’, or ‘regret ye loss of’?”

“Probably a bit of all three. But if you’re interested in rejoining Gruttla, you might prevent the next too-early funeral. Maybe even hers.”

Lyridel was staring out into the street, even though it was empty of all but dust.

“She’s angry with Grossthorn,” Cipher persisted, “and he’s dangerous. How would you feel if your friend died when you weren’t there to fight by her side?”

“Do not presume to know my heart.” The gaze she turned on Cipher was cold, her tiny nostrils flared, the finger in the curiously wrought silver cover rose and crooked at him…

Should she fling fire, dodge toward the books. Wizards never risk their books.

We can take her!

But instead of unleashing some baleful spell, she tossed her head, checked her combs, and strode to the door.

“Wouldst accompany me to ye seamstress? I wouldst present well at ye Sergeant’s funeral.”

# # #

“Black, of course, but which black? Ach, I forget. To human eyes, there is but one ‘black’.” Lyridel stumbled slightly, but recovered with grace before Cipher had to catch her (or before she fell into the street).

“What about dwarves? Can they see the rainbow of black shades to which you claim elves are privy?”

“But of course. Gnomes too, though not halflings.” As they neared the market, the roads became more crowded, and she began to make impatient noises in her throat. The first people who heard these sounds glanced behind and exited her path, but once they entered the central square, she had to resort to poking with her claw-like fingertip.

“Are you sure you want to… oh, never mind,” Cipher said.

“Pardon?”

“I doubt my curiosity takes precedence over your privacy.”

“Go on, ask.”

“Well…”

“Speak thy mind! ’Tis hardly credible that my opinion of thy crassness could increase.”

“You’re sure you’ll be… a woman… for the service?” he asked, giving her a sideways glance.

She walked along for a moment before saying, “I stand corrected.”

“As I said, none of my…”

“Obviously I shalt want be feminine for ye occasion.”

“Why? I mean, it’s not… obvious.” Their way was blocked by a small clot of citizens, arguing in front of a butcher stall. “The difference, I suppose.”

“Ye difference a’ women and men is that men have beards which women lack, while…”

“Don’t play the fool,” he said, putting his hands on his waist. “You, alone of anyone I know, of all the people I recall, have experienced both.”

“Here we have it.” She grimaced.

“Well?”

“Whene’er my acquaintance grows a’ sufficient length, then comes ye question. Very well. But once the mystery is gone, it comes not back.”

“Unless I forget everything again,” he said.

A small fistfight had broken out over a cut of lamb, so they moved away behind a bakery stall.

“This belt I bear,” Lyridel said, framing its buckle with her hands, “think thou I tumbled upon it? That the random luck o’ Drakken-Gelt delivered it unto me? Nay. ’Twas a quest to change, and any who come to me seeking it sincerely, them their wish I grant. They come, too. Wealthy ones and paupers, women and men both, each one confused and saddened that nature or divine caprice cursed them with bodies ill-suited to their souls.”

“So you… lend them the belt?”

“Aye, and if they despair of the change after a fit span o’ time, I lend it back. But ’tis not for mere idle curiosity nor jape,” she said, eyes narrow and nostrils wide. “Its use is to right insults of birth. I could jest and say that to be a man is like having a toy o’ which one never tires of play, but i’sooth, this is a deeper matter. Thou, Cipher, addled o’ wit, ought know as well as any the suffering that attends on being alien to thine own self.”

“It’s not the same…” he said.

“Nay, I recall every baffling day before I diagnosed my malaise. But ’twas still ye pain of failing a’ be at one with oneself.”

For some time, they simply gazed on each other.

“Now let us turn our steps toward Slirma,” she said, and they did.

# # #

They said nothing for a few minutes of walking through the crowds, as Cipher with wrinkled forehead contemplated her words. But with a hard blink, he looked up and spoke.

“Wait, what’s that scent?”

“All I smell is ye crush of indelicate humanity,” Lyridel replied.

“No,” Cipher said, eyes narrowing. “It’s like… cheese and… sweat…”

For a moment, he was still. Then, with a fine blend of might and deftness, he pushed his way into the crowd.

“Clay!” he cried, then changed direction.

The elven wizard’s noise of exasperation was lost in the marketplace ruckus. With a sigh unheard, she followed. When she caught up with him, he’d seized a slender man with a shaggy, shabby beard. The man gave a cry and stumbled, a crutch tumbling from under his arm.

“Clay, the hunter,” Cipher said.

“You’ve mistaken me, sir!”

“I think not,” Cipher said, seizing the man’s woven cap and yanking it off.

“La!” Lyridel said, startled. For hidden under the hat was as pointy a pair of elven ears as anyone had ever seen.

“I was told to be on the lookout for a stumbling elf,” Cipher said, giving his captive a little shake. “As were we all. But elves don’t grow flowing beards,” he said, grabbing the man’s facial hair with his other hand. “Not without dwarven beard tonic!”

“Ach, you caught me, fine! Cast me in jail for picking up a rug that dropped from the sky. I wish I’d never clapped eyes on that mad, damnable rag-swatch!”

“Tell it to the magistrate,” Cipher said, pulling him along.

“Whither goest thou?” Lyridel demanded. “Ye seamstress lies along yon street.”

“But… we have to take him back to the muster house.”

Lyridel rolled her eyes.

“I was happy in the woods! Or, well, no, but content enough if the hunting was good,” Clay said. “Then that wicked carpet falls on me, I take it, and soon I’m the quarry of everyone’s chase!”

“Didn’t you take it to the sea to get fish?” Cipher demanded.

“Fishing’s no crime! I hadn’t had a good Midland Sea lunchgobber since I was a child! Then that nosy little minx Mursei showed up with all her questions. Then I had to flee, and that crazed, misbegotten blanket threw me to the ground and sprung my ankle. Fie on it! At least now I can shave off this ridiculous beard!”

“What’s he said to have done?” Lyridel asked.

“Stolen a magical artifact of great value!” Cipher said.

“A flying carpet that fears heights?” the woodsman sneered. “All it wants is to rest before a fire, and when you bid it fly it whines, like a babe with a sore tooth!”

“That’s why it dropped you?” Cipher said.

“Moreover, I stole nothing!” Clay howled. “I found it in the woods! It fell on my head like rain!”

“Under ye law of Drakken-Gelt, he may have a case,” Lyridel said.

“Thank you.”

“He didn’t kill a monster and claim its treasure,” Cipher said. “He just…”

“Just found it,” Clay said, crossing his arms.

“Slirma waits not on custom, not even from one such as I,” Lyridel said. “Turn loose ye poor wretch and let us shop.”

“I can’t just let him go!”

“Why not? On cause of his menace to ye Empire?”

“Well…”

“Trust me,” Clay said, “the next magical gewgaw that crosses my path, I intend to run the other way. All I got from that mighty enchantment was three fish — which, I grant, were tasty and fat — but also pursuit, vexation, and an ankle with tangled sinew. A poor bargain by any measure.”

“Would it be such a trial to see Madame Slirma tomorrow?” Cipher asked.

“She takes no client on ye week’s fifth day. Slirma follows ye Fifth Day Sabbath Church o’ ye Bright Ascending Mender Goddess. If I cannae have a dress fit to my station, I’ll have to miss Horm’s service. I should be passing wroth, were that to transpire.” She gave Cipher a fierce look.

“You could go on your own while I take him back to your house and put him on the horse.”

“Thy steed remains in my stable, a’hind a mage-locked door. ’Twill ope to no hand save mine, and I’ll thank thee not to break down its wall.”

Cipher rolled his eyes. “What if I wait outside?”

“What? Two men attending on my home after sunset? The neighbors are sure to think me wanton. No, there’s naught for it but to cast him free.”

“May the Elf Queen send you sweet slumbers, cousin,” Clay said.

Cipher looked between them.

“Do you two know each other?” he demanded.

“,” she said. “All elves know all elves.”

“Fine.” Cipher gave Clay a little shove. “Go, and sin no more.”

“May the Bright Gods fill your nets and traps!” the hunter called, grabbing his crutch and hobbling away.

# # #

Gruttla wore her hair down for the funeral, though it barely reached her shoulder blades in back and her collarbones in front. Her dress was high-necked, black, and decorated with jet beads around the throat and across the shoulders. Dovestrom’s black jacket with silver threading was several years from the height of fashion, but it fit him well. Cipher fidgeted in his black shirt and pants, but most of the other riders were as simply dressed.

It was tradition to wear black gloves to a cavalry funeral. Dovestrom had riding gloves made from the supple skins of Calamity Bay eels, with silver buttons bearing his family crest. Gruttla’s were silk, with simulated jet fingernails. Some of the others wore dark working gloves. A few, like Cipher, had been given dyed cotton gloves just for the occasion.

They planned the service for sundown, but since they all worked and lived together, there was an uncomfortable dinner beforehand, somber and quiet. Gruttla was pouring a light dessert ale for herself and the surviving sergeant when the guard on duty ushered in Lyridel.

Dovestrom immediately dashed down his drink in one long quaff.

Her dress had a long train and a high neck, but it was sleeveless and tightly laced around her waist, emphasizing an elven slenderness that few healthy humans could match. Its fabric shone like a raven’s inquisitive eye, but the slashes from the waist to the train were not merely a flat black like Gruttla’s dress, but somehow absolutely lightless.

Her black gloves glittered with a line of red crystals, going up her arms past the elbows. Her full-nail cover shone on top of her left forefinger. Silver-set red stones twinkled from her necklace, but her hair was unkempt and in disarray, sticking out this way and that, like straw from a carelessly bound haystack. She looked unusually pale and Cipher realized that, unlike every other time he’d seen Lyridel, the elf’s face was bare of cosmetics. Somehow, Lyridel looked both terribly old and vulnerably young in that state, thin-lipped and pale and raw.

There was a moment of absolute silence.

“Welcome. Thank you for coming,” Mursei said, standing.

“I would honor Horm,” Lyridel said.

“Please… have a seat,” Gruttla said, getting up and indicating her small table. Dovestrom shot to his feet and pulled out Lyridel’s chair, mouth tight and nostrils flared.

Once the wizard sat down, the meal became even more awkward. Nagatia, living at the muster house for her own protection, had made a rice pudding with raisins. Some of the soldiers gazed at it intently as they ate, as if it were the only thing saving them from staring at the high table. Others simply pushed it around their plates, ears cocked toward the officers, straining to hear every stiff pleasantry and formal exchange.

Then the guard returned again.

“There’s another… guest?”

Gruttla cocked her head. “Why didn’t you bring him directly?”

“It’s Captain Grossthorn.”

“WHAT!?!” Dovestrom shot to his feet as if yanked up by a rope. “He dares? Tark, my sword!”

“Easy,” Gruttla said, rising more slowly. “He’s a villain, but no fool. Show him in.”

Dovestrom was reddening. Lyridel watched him. She hadn’t stood, but only Cipher noticed as she fiddled with the gap between two buttons on her left glove, making sure the base of a wand was positioned there, hidden but ready to draw.

The Crusader’s captain entered, his black uniform already appropriate for the occasion, the emblem of his dark god glinting around his neck, carved from obsidian and hanging from a white ribbon.

“My fellow defenders of the realm,” he said, “let me extend my deepest condolences at the loss of…”

The time it took Cipher to rise from his chair, step onto the table, leap over the heads of three soldiers, and execute a flying, spinning roundhouse kick to Grossthorn’s head was less than the time it took the cleric to say “loss of”.

The noise of havoc was immediate.

“Cipher, don’t!”

“What the…?”

“Grab him!”

Mursei acted first, leaping up to seize Cipher’s arm, but it slid from her grip like a snake going into a hole. A burly, farm-raised youth named Homard tried to grab the monk around the waist, only to find himself stumbling and crashing to one knee as his target made a simple-seeming turn and pivot that evaded and redirected him. A few others encircled him, trying to cut off his access to Grossthorn.

“What is the meaning of this assault?” Grossthorn gave every appearance of being confused and offended. “Is this the time to exercise petty grudges, you brain-addled oaf?”

“I’ll addle your brain!” Cipher replied, weaving around the encircling Comets, who had picked up a bench to try and drive him back. He hopped easily over it, beginning to swear. Homard seized him from behind, pinning both his arms, but Cipher didn’t resist. Instead, as the red-faced grappler lifted him, he folded his body into a curl, then extended it with all the power of his stomach and both legs, driving his heels into Grossthorn’s chest.

The cleric crashed into the wall next to the door. “Cease your abuse or I shall have no choice but defend myself!” A purple bruise was already blooming between his ear and his mustache.

Cipher’s response was to struggle further against the five soldiers who had gripped his limbs and waist and head, while bellowing blasphemies against Grossthorn’s Flayer god that turned the cleric’s face entirely pale. Grossthorn gripped his angular holy symbol, his nostrils flared as he prepared to speak…

“Rethink thy spell, licker of god-sweat.” Lyridel had somehow gone from the high table to the entry door without penetrating the scrum between. Her right hand gripped a thin wand of black myrtle, and her left had the pointed silver nail-guard upraised. She was right behind Grossthorn, both implements brushing the back of his head. “This man holds thee debtor for Horm’s life.”

“What… I? That’s… that’s ridiculous!”

Despite Cipher’s struggles, the weight of an entire unit of professional soldiers had restrained him, at least for the time being. Gruttla looked from him to Grossthorn and seemed to come to a decision.

“Cipher! Stand down!” She strode across the dining room to the captain and, though she was unarmed, he took a step back, stopping only when the sharp tip of Lyridel’s silver-clad finger pricked him. “Why are you here?” she demanded.

“I was informed that Sergeant Horm had… fallen before some misfortune. I wished to come and offer my sympathy. The Crusader and the Emperor are not in full agreement, but we are allies in the war on the Abyss. I know not how your man died, but every lost fighter diminishes the crusade, even disbelievers.”

“While I,” Gruttla said, pushing nearer and looking up at him, even as Lyridel closed in from behind, “heard one of your… ‘people’ killed him, at your command.”

“What? That’s… impossible, absurd! Who leveled such slander against me?”

“Choke on your lies!” Cipher shouted.

“Sergeant!” Tark called, entering the room with wide eyes. He lofted Dovestrom’s saber to the officer, who caught it. Tucked under his arm, Tark carried a collection of other swords, which he dropped on a table with a clatter of scabbards. He seized his own and pulled it free of its sheath.

Dovestrom followed suit.

“This is unconscionable!” Grossthorn cried, edging sideways in an attempt to get a wall to his back. He winced as Lyridel’s silver fingertip left a scratch on his neck. “I came unarmed, alone, and in trust! If I’m such a villain, why do you attempt no arrest? Why was I never even given the slight courtesy of an accusation?”

“Don’t kill him. It must be what he wants.”

Cipher twisted to see Nagatia standing in the doorway to the kitchen. She wore a well-used apron, for even though she was a ‘guest of the Emperor’, she insisted on helping cook and garden.

It was now the fourth day of her stay, Amblard’s deadline to desecrate the Temple of Ice and Crystal.

“Why, dear lady, would I crave my own death?” Grossthorn asked.

“No, you don’t want to die,” Gruttla said. “But you are willing to risk it to make trouble, I think.”

“That is an… astounding accusation, and one entirely baseless.”

“Indeed?” Gruttla said. “If we were to wash our floors with your devil-worshipping blood… what then?”

“I had never contemplated…” Grossthorn began, but Lyridel interrupted him.

“I imagine ye Crusader would cry ‘injustice’ o’ ye Emperor, who, with three doughty Crusader citadels within his realm, would be inclined to provide some form of satisfaction.”

“So when you failed to get me,” Cipher said, “and you failed to get Amblard to do your dirty work, and you failed to kill Nagatia…”

“Why would I want to kill this woman I never even… wait, were you in Farfield, madame?”

Nagatia crossed her arms, nodding.

“Then we have met once. I apologize if I gave such offense during our brief encounter that you now fear for your life from my hand.”

“Shut up!” Cipher shouted. “You told Amblard to kill the old high priest and told him you’d kill her if he didn’t!”

Grossthorn met this with a skeptical frown. “I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by claiming kind feelings toward some sop of the Bright Gods. But even assuming that were true — and I assure you, it’s either mad babble or outright lies — someone in that situation has little motive to carry out that threat. The manipulator breaks his own lever if he does it. He fails to achieve his goal and irritates his pawn. Should he spare the hostage, he can always repeat the threat later, though with decreasing odds of acquiescence.”

“How it must disappoint you that Amblard, of all unlikely people, stayed strong and defied you,” Gruttla said.

“Or, perhaps, I never threatened this woman, never followed your thick-skulled friend into the wilds, and never attempted to manipulate that scrawny and unstable alchemist! How,” he demanded, “do you even know that Horm is dead?”

“Cipher told us!” Tark said, his sword no longer in a guard position, but dangling toward the floor.

“Oh, Cipher,” Grossthorn said. “The man who kicked me in the face for no reason? Do you have any testaments to his reliable nature, perhaps from people who knew him in his childhood? No? Is he of a good family whose rearing practices you could trust? No again?”

“Shut up!” Cipher repeated.

“I’m sorry you don’t want to hear it, you mad, daft slab of ignorant aggression,” Grossthorn said, his voice growing stronger with each insult, “but these people have no reason to believe you! They could send a messenger to that temple, I suppose, though given how the last journey went, their reluctance is justified. But even if they did, who would back up your tale? Why, a man guilty of murder by deceit, a crime so despised that under Imperial law — correct me if I’m wrong, won’t you, Commander? — he can now no longer give evidence in official matters, even if he swears by geas or oath-backed enchantment! That is who you have as your fallback from trusting this one.”

“You’ve made your point,” Dovestrom said. “You’ve had your say, you’ve put as much doubt in us as you will, so why not just get back on your horse and trot yourself back to Rivernaught.”

“Are you telling me I am unwelcome at a funeral? I’m a priest!”

“Didst thou not, in only a moment past, question whether ye Sergeant Horm was indeed dead at all?” Lyridel asked.

“If you did it,” Gruttla said, “you’ve had a chance to see us in our sorrows and gloat. We are now letting you leave under your own power, which would make you a fortunate villain indeed. If you didn’t do it, I recommend you respect Horm’s memory by leaving now, before you further upset his closest friends and comrades.”

Grossthorn seemed to shrink before their very eyes, an expression of dismay and dawning realization on his face.

“You believe him,” he said, voice blank. “I bear scars from preserving the Empire from Abyssal beasts, yet you believe him. Your own general called me a hero of Castle Acrid, but I’m unfit to share your grief? Very well.” He turned to the door, coming face to face with Lyridel’s wand and silver nail guard.

“Well?” he asked. “May I go? May I do what was just requested of me?”

“Guard thyself, rogue priest,” the elf said quietly. “Thy evasive words cannot restore one day a’ Horm, a man whose least exceeded thy best.” Then she stepped aside.

As they heard him ride away, the arms holding Cipher got looser, until he was on his feet.

There was a long silence.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Dovestrom said at last, “I’d pay a gold crown to spit in that man’s dead eyes.”

“Well spoken.” Lyridel nodded, straightening her dress and tucking her wand back into her glove. “Now. Shall we proceed a’ the service? Or dost anyone present truly doubt Horm’s end?”

One by one, they stood and filed out to the graveyard.

# # #

The service, though moving, was uneventful.

CHAPTER TEN

“I ’ave come for my carp’et.” The speaker was tall, angular, and careful to hold his head so that he could look down his nose at Gruttla. A waxed mustache flared to the outside corners of his eyes, and a traditional wizard beard — full, unshorn, and woolly — was held to his chest by a second, artificial beard of snowy white fleece on a gold chain. His stars-and-moon cap was tall and pointy and matched the heavily embroidered cloak he wore over a midnight-blue robe.

“I beg your pardon?” Gruttla replied.

“What’s with the false beard?” Cipher was in the muster house courtyard, stripped to his loincloth to help Mursei bathe her dog. A rangy hunt-hound with enormous feet and a dappled hide, she’d named him Looker and he’d so far demonstrated a prodigious skill at finding the foulest refuse in which to roll. Cipher could temporarily paralyze the animal with a nerve pinch (which, he assured Mursei, didn’t hurt but only produced “a little tingle”) and was therefore essential to the bathing process.

“It’s an honor from one of the magic academies,” Mursei replied, vigorously scrubbing Looker’s flanks. “Top student each year gets a golden beard, second gets silver, other notable achievers get white ones.”

“I ham Chizzelo Morridingue,” the visitor declaimed, “wiz’ard in service of the h’Archmage ’imself! You ’ave a flying carp’et, yes?”

“Just where did you hear that?” Gruttla asked calmly.

“My mystic sigils and portents tracked it here! You cannot ’ide a magic obj’hect from its creator, and I ’ave ’ere a document h’attesting to my ownership.” With a flourish, he brought forth a vellum scroll with tricolor ribbon ties. When Gruttla cracked its elaborate seal, it unfurled until it bounced off the tips of her boots.

“You’d better wait inside while I review this,” she sighed.

“You’ll forgive my fastidiousness if I forgo,” the wizard said, sneering. “My… physician ’as forbidden me to inhale the miasmas of massed soldiery dwelling in h’enclosed spaces.”

“Hey, what’s being implied here?” Dovestrom demanded, emerging from behind Gruttla and glaring.

“I imply nothing!” Chizzelo cried. “I came ’ere for my car’pet and encounter not’ting but obstructions! My papers are in order! I toiled for years making tat marvel, and now some stubby sub-magistrate soldier is trying to steal it from me!”

“Calm down, sir,” Mursei said.

“Do you know the thief’s name?” Cipher said.

“Just ’oo are you?” the wizard sniffed.

“My deputy,” Gruttla said, starting to roll up the scroll.

“It must be a ’ard life, bullying locals and stealing wonders from their rightful owners and, and surrounding yourself with unclad ‘deputies’,” Chizzelo said, backing up a step to keep the Comets in front of him.

“Yes, it’s a sweet deal,” Gruttla said drily. “Now, do you know the name of the thief?”

“Dubrois Warwer,” Chizzelo said.

“Say that again?”

“Dubrios Varwer!”

“You can’t even keep your phony accent straight,” Cipher said, rolling his neck until it cracked.

“Phony… accent?”

“I got suspicious when I saw that the wax on the seal wasn’t quite the right shade of purple,” the monk replied.

For a moment, Chizzelo’s face was a mask of umbrage, before that dissolved into sly amusement. “Well, I tried.”

It kept dissolving, the features running like candle wax when the flame draws near, the mustache falling off to reveal a gaunt visage where the smile lines were all cruel and the frown lines deep.

“Farnbarr!” Mursei cried, turning pale.

“!” he howled, and his entire body erupted in light.

The cavalry troops were unarmed, out of their armor, and unprepared. The spear of coruscating force that snapped between their enemy’s chest and Gruttla arced into Dovestrom as well, flinging both back and knocking the sergeant prone. Under the cloudless blue sky, arcane thunder rolled.

“Archers!” Mursei cried, but the troops on the guard towers were already firing or loading. Quarrels thudded into the turf near Farnbarr, and one tore a hole in his cloak — now revealed to be a shoddy costume. But only one missile hit home, and the enchanter didn’t even seem to realize he’d been hit.

“My sons!” he bellowed. “YOU KILLED MY SONS! —”

But his second spell was interrupted by a tackle from Cipher, who drove a shoulder into the man’s belly while scooping at the back of his knees… except Farnbarr stood unmoved, stout as a dwarf.

“Ugh! Brute.!”

With a violet flare, Cipher flew back. The spell’s power was sufficient to loft him and spin him, and for just a moment he felt weightless and lost track of where he was.

Arch your back and drive your knees to your shoulders, hard! As always, Sister Swift’s advice was images more than instructions, but Cipher obeyed and, instead of landing on the top of his head, managed to flip through and land on one foot, one knee, and both hands, tearing furrows in the turf as he was driven back.

But the archers were getting their range as Gruttla grabbed Dovestrom by the collar and hauled him to cover inside the muster house. As for Mursei, she was running toward the gates shouting, “A bow! Someone give me a…”

“I don’t care about your vendetta against the Thurlbies!” Farnbarr was raving now, and waving a container he’d pulled from somewhere within his clothes. “When I’m done with you, you’ll — OW!” More arrows were zinging across his body, though his ragged blue robe seemed, strangely, to offer some protection.

“Look out!” Cipher cried, for he’d realized that Farnbarr held not one, but two bottles lashed together. With uneasy clarity he could see the sullen red light in one, and the steam from the other’s frosty exterior. “ICHOR!”

Gruttla was in the doorway, Dovestrom staggering to his feet.

Farnbarr hurled his bomb at the pair of them. Cipher tensed…

You’ll never catch it. It’s too far away. If you try, you’ll break it on impact. He knew Brother Brawn was correct and could only watch as it spun through the air…

Then exploded at the top of its arc when Mursei hit it with a crossbow bolt.

Everyone but Farnbarr was flung back. A plume of dust bloomed under the explosion, instantly covering Looker the wet dog with a fresh layer of grime. But Cipher rolled, popped to his feet, and started racing toward the spellcaster.

Farnbarr swirled his cloak, dodging projectiles and…

Oh dear. He has another bomb.

Cipher abruptly reversed direction to take cover behind a corner of the muster house, so he felt the bricks shake as the second detonation went off. Then, hoping there wasn’t a third, he raced back around in time to see another lightning stroke leap from Farnbarr to Mursei, thence to one of the archers on the gate, and then to a third on one of the watchtowers.

He seems distracted.

Voice your battle cry anyhow! After those thunderstrokes, he won’t hear anything.

Good point.

In actual fact, Cipher’s hearing was coming back as he raced toward the attacker’s back, so he could hear Farnbarr’s incantation as the sorcerer crouched…

“!”

… and leaped with inhuman prowess, into the sky out of Cipher’s reach, his trajectory over the fence.

“Oh hell, no!” Cipher shouted, and flung his black dagger with an oblique twist. The tether hit the jumper’s ankle, wrapped, and snapped taut. In a moment, Farnbarr went from looking majestically athletic to comically pathetic, as his body whipsawed into a sprawl and he fell, face first, onto the courtyard dirt.

Mursei staggered toward him, a crossbow cocked in her hands. Dovestrom lurched out of the muster house clutching a poleaxe, followed a moment later by Gruttla, running as she reconfigured her Weapon into its projectile form. Cipher ran up and planted a dirty, callused foot on the magic-user’s face and neck, while Looker the dog ran up and bit him on the calf.

“Don’t you move a muscle,” Gruttla said. “I’m binding you over by the Emperor’s law.”

# # #

“Farnbarr was always this mad annoyance,” Gruttla said later, over a calming ogre-skull of light afternoon summer-ale. “A sorcerer, not a proper wizard. Worse, if you ask me. Wizards you can halfway understand.”

“I respectfully disagree,” Dovestrom said.

“He was a landowner, had this big farm but it was all so… unkempt.”

“To give the daft his due, when the demons showed up he put up a fierce resistance.”

“Aye, he did that. But he was just as fierce with anyone who wanted to drive Farnbarr’s sheep off their land, or anyone who spoke out against his boys…”

“Ugh, his sons,” Mursei said. “The worst.”

“Were they also sorcerers?” Cipher asked.

“No, thank the Bright Gods. Just the sons of a powerful man who saw no reason not to bully everyone, threatening with their father’s magic by proxy. But what they lacked in magic, they made up in cunning and sheer mean spirits.”

“They gave Lyridel no rest,” Dovestrom said.

Everyone looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Cipher said.

“Look, I may not be… entirely comfortable with her…” Dovestrom’s face rapidly cycled through pink and red toward purple “… nonconformity, but it’s hardly any business of theirs. They were disagreeable to her because she was different, and it wouldn’t have mattered if the difference was good or bad.”

“I imagine Lyridel didn’t suffer fools gladly,” Cipher said.

“Oh, I could spin you tales,” Dovestrom said. “Some of them are outside the strict bonds of the law, but they’re all hearsay anyhow.”

“Their cocksure laziness and abuse eventually hurt some people Farnbarr actually cared about, so he kicked them out,” Gruttla said. “Decent people had no use for them, so they attached themselves to someone else vicious and powerful.”

“The Thurlbies,” Cipher guessed.

“The sisters made them work, and they didn’t care much for that, so they got stronger and worse.” Mursei finished her drink. “I don’t regret killing the young one.”

“I don’t regret killing the elder,” Gruttla said. “But what are we going to do with their mad father? Tomorrow morning his powers will be brimming full once again, and he knocked a hole in the outside wall of two of our cells.”

“What was that about? Was he planning a jailbreak?” Cipher asked.

“Probably,” Gruttla said, “and it would have been a modestly sensible idea, had anyone been inside who was capable of surviving the blast.”

Cipher thought through who’d been imprisoned: one sheep rustler and one tax evader.

“So now he’s down for their deaths?”

“Aye, wanton slaughter of Imperial citizens. If we can hold him until Fettleting arrives, he probably faces the axe.”

“Rivernaught could hold him,” Mursei said quietly.

There was a pause, during which Gruttla thoughtfully finished her beer.

“I would sooner,” she said, “have Farnbarr escape than go to Grossthorn for aid.”

That was the end of that.

# # #

But as it happened, Farnbarr didn’t escape. Instead, he came to in a cell and found Nagatia tending his injuries. With no other prisoners present, none could hear all that the two of them spoke of when she went up with his meals and medications, but when Mursei or Cipher were on guard duty, they heard the names of his sons, along with the names Amblard and Perdu. The old man went from fierce and vengeful to sad and wistful, and when Sir Fettleting arrived, he submitted to a geas to serve in the Archmage’s city.

Nagatia stayed with them until the paladin magistrate arrived. Although no attempt was made upon her life, she seemed to age before their eyes. Her hair thinned and fell, and what remained turned snowy white. As she weakened, they sent for her daughter and son. Sir Fettleting agreed to escort all three of them to Glitterhaegen on the coast. From there, they could catch a boat to Santa Cora and then find someone to take her to the Wild Wood.

“In Wild Wood,” she said, her voice cracked as if she were ancient, “I shall rest and try to forget these sorrows. If I can, perhaps in the spring I shall… feel better. And if not, well, even the sorrows grew out of great joys.” She smiled at her brown-eyed son, and at her daughter, whose hair was like a burst of spring daffodils.

# # #

Though she kept her cottage in Belton’s Hill, Lyridel resumed her association with Gruttla, serving as a magisterial deputy but free of general soldiering. Every morning, she rode a dappled gray mare to the muster house to consult on matters of magic or fine discernment. Periodically, as if by whim, Lyridel arrived masculine, which inevitably precipitated shouting from Dovestrom at any troops or prisoners unfortunate enough to fall under his authority.

# # #

As the summer’s heat wore on, they continued to seek the Thurlby sisters. Tales, and obvious gigantic revenges, convinced them the sisters were still around. Rarely, Mursei (who had been promoted to sergeant) found great footprints, or Cipher would.

They also kept an eye on Grossthorn and his soldiers, but a breakout of demons in the northern hills kept the forces of Rivernaught occupied, and the captain himself was not seen in the villages or the fields around them after his appearance at Horm’s memorial.

# # #

The grudge-faced dwarf with pox scars and hands like ham-hocks, all gristle and bristles, crossed his arms and said something to Gruttla in Dwarven. She dismounted, strode unhurriedly to him, and gave him a smack with the back of a gauntleted hand. It wasn’t as strong a blow as she could strike, but neither was it a mere tap. His expression stayed impassive, despite the ruddying mark on his cheek.

“Mph,” he grunted. “Well, maybe I misspoke. But this is unfair, even by human standards.”

“I’m no human,” Gruttla said, and fluttered her eyelashes just a little. “How do you know it’s not the lure of your liquor that brings me back?”

“I thought you preferred elfy wine.” He sneered at Lyridel, who also dismounted and casually combed his hair with the pointed tip of his silver nail guard.

“Step aside, Pibor, or be moved,” Lyridel said.

“Aye,” the dwarf distiller said, obeying. “Another raid, then? For Gruttla… few come to drink with a squad in armor.”

“But the weight gives one such a thirst,” she said, strolling inside to a chorus of dismayed groans.

“Argh! It’s the Impies!”

“.”

“This again?”

A coarse voice recommended something Gruttla could try with her horse, and it was as loud as the non-traditional cavalry maneuver was uncouth. The smack of her fist against a face was quieter, but it was authoritative, since the noise level inside dropped noticeably.

“You can’t just turn out my clients,” Pibor said. “I pay my taxes and despoil no one.”

“Nay, nor dost thou turn aside any drinker, no matter how befouled by liquors, no matter if his coin is his to spend or stolen a’ his family’s meals. Thou truly livest only to serve, and if ye drunkest o’ drunkards get poor whiskies to peel ye flesh a’ their gullets, what o’ that?”

“I make a fine product!” the distiller cried.

“La, so speaks anyone beset by unwanted paint-stains.”

Pibor glowered, then called within, “Did you find anyone from your ‘watch-fors’, Gruttla?”

“None remained within, but let us see who got scooped up by Mursei and the riders who watched the back,” she replied.

Pibor swore, in both high Dwarven and low, and then, as a change of pace, in a few human dialects. This was soon counterpointed by a keener, piercing sound coming from the thin woods behind his drinkery. Lyridel summoned a calm white light with a word, and into its unwavering radius Sergeant Mursei and Cipher dragged a tall elf with skin like anthracite and hair to match. Mursei had a thin, bleeding scrape on one arm, and the captive was clearly limping. The sergeant gripped him by his right forearm, while the monk had his left hand contorted into an implausible position that clearly provoked great discomfort when tightened. Whenever the elf tarried, Cipher made a small movement against his tensioned wrist, and the prisoner would yelp and scurry forward.

“Hard to tell in the dark woods, but doesn’t this fellow look like the poster out of Horizon?”

“In the dark, anyone fleeing the magistrates looks like a criminal,” Tark said. The captive elf spat toward him and said something that sounded like gargling.

Lyridel strode forward and made slurping and coughing sounds in response. The two had a brief, catarrhal exchange.

“This one claims a’ speak only Drow,” Lyridel announced.

“I didn’t know you spoke it,” Mursei said.

“’Tis similar enou’ to High Elven, but adulterated wi’ Abyssal to give it curses. Orcish is similar: debased Elven, though i’ that instance, I reckon ’twas blended with ye sounds o’ rutting wolves.”

“Oh, what fly has stumbled in our web?” Gruttla said, coming out to examine the prisoner. “Might you be…” She paged through a handful of notices. “One ‘Vun-thrall… Ur… Rachet… Bon’?” She looked at Lyridel. “Is that even close?”

“Not e’en close.”

The prisoner made a series of sounds like a sick cat.

“Is that his name?” Gruttla asked.

“No, he doth suggest that thy mother was a prostitute.”

“That just gets funnier every time I hear it,” the dwarf said, returning her gaze to the paper. “Vuntrall, if this is indeed him, is wanted for a remarkable variety of crimes. Animal-baiting with an expired license… under-street affray… customs violations… solicitation of spiritual abduction… conspiracy to commit anti-Imperial activities… and plain old assassination-by-skulk.”

“He did all that?”

“Accused, accused only.” Gruttla gave the elf a speculative glance. “I can’t help feeling that if he’d concentrated on a single crime instead of tasting this and that, he might have prospered more. If he is who we suspect, hm, he should have a pure white, star-shaped scar on his left hip. Cipher? If you would pull up his shirt?”

The captive struggled until Gruttla put the Weapon That Is All Weapons (currently configured as a compact mace) under his chin and gave him a significant look.

“There’s the mark,” Cipher said.

“Bind him over by law,” Gruttla started, turning away, when the prisoner, with a terrific effort, did a standing backflip out of Cipher’s restraining grip. He spun halfway around at the apex to land facing the other direction. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he bolted.

“We’ve got a runner!” Mursei shouted, turning to pursue.

“!” Lyridel cried, and a coruscating glob arced out of his silvered forefinger. Despite the eldritch echoes of his words, he managed to sound exasperated. The glowing snare rushed through the air and entangled the elf’s legs. He rolled instead of sprawling outright, but was unable to stand up before Cipher and Mursei were on him, and this time they had ropes wound round his limbs and throat in an instant. Any pull at his wrists and ankles tightened the strand around his neck.

“Why do they always do that?” Gruttla wondered. “I’d expect an experienced criminal to know better. Maybe he really is innocent.”

“’Tis not for us a’ decide,” Lyridel said.

“So,” Cipher said, as Mursei frisked the now bound assassin (uncovering three concealed knives, a quantity of strong black cord, two diamonds sewn into the seam of his jacket, and a set of lockpicks). “Do you think I might have been a sailor in my old life?”

“A sailor? Hm. You are adept with knots, and foul language.”

“When I was fighting one of those Crusader troops, I think she said something about my ‘naval fighting’ style. She was difficult to understand, though.”

“We should get you on a boat, see what happens!”

Cipher nodded, hoisting Vuntrall over his shoulders. As they tied him onto Brute and told Tark to watch over him, the criminal let out another barrage of Drow.

“Lyridel, could you tell him that no one else understands him, so he might as well keep his thoughts to himself?”

“I could gag him,” Tark offered.

“I shalt mention that,” Lyridel replied, before another short discussion with the discommoded dark elf. At the same time, Pibor’s Dwarven arguments took on an increasingly aggrieved and incredulous tone. Gruttla’s reply was firm.

“Everyone out!” she called into the distillery. “This establishment is hereby closed by Imperial writ, for the crime of hosting a fugitive.”

“How was I to know?” Pibor demanded, following her as she re-entered to a repeated chorus of groans. “I can’t ask everyone who wants a glass of whiskey if he’s trailing paper!”

“Perhaps if your establishment catered to a higher class of drinker, I wouldn’t constantly annoy you and your clientele,” Gruttla said.

“And how do you propose I do that?”

She shrugged. “I’m not in the hospitality game, but you could put out some tablecloths, maybe serve decent food, double the number of candles so it’s not oppressively dank, offer a wine selection…”

“… deny entry a’ ye criminal class,” Lyridel added.

“It’s not as if they walk through my door with a cheery ‘Hi ho, I’m a killer for hire and hobby-level third-floor burglar, glass of the finest’!” Pibor grumbled.

“Turreck, Foul Dog, Munchler…” Gruttla said, ticking off the names on her fingers. “They’ve all been nicked with your bottles in their residences, if not on their actual persons as they waylaid travelers.”

“There is a thriving after-market in my products.”

“This place isn’t quite the nerve center of the Thurlby Sisters’ gang again, but don’t bother denying that they meet here.”

“I deny that they meet here,” Pibor replied. Gruttla rolled her eyes.

“Search the place,” she said. “If I catch one of you so much as pilfering one dirty glass from here, I’ll put that man on rations that will set his stomach at war with his liver. Orc war.”

“Every time your sticky-fingered bully-boys search this place, I not only lose a night’s proceeds, but the stock lightens dreadfully!”

“You heard my threat,” she told him, then casually nudged a full bottle from behind the bar to shatter on the stone floor. “Still, some breakage is inevitable. Pardon my clumsiness.”

Pibor glared.

In a back room, Cipher looked at the sprawl of mismatched chairs and crudely built tables. He frowned and sniffed the air. Then he went to the windows and flung them wide, waving the shutters to clear the atmosphere of torch-smoke and sweat. He paused, totally still.

Tark poked his head into the room. “Find…”

“Shh!” Cipher was taking very slow steps around the room, head cocked, eyes wide. Then, decisively, he shut them tight.

“… anything?” Tark whispered. Cipher made rapid shooing gestures and the soldier backed away.

Near the middle of the room, the monk froze.

“Tark?” he called, “did you break wind in here?”

“What? No.”

He took another glacial step. His nostrils flared. He crept closer to one interior wall.

“GiiiiYAH!” he shouted, slamming an open palm into the wall’s wooden planks.

A foot and a half away, a spar of wood popped loose, gradually drooping to the floor until, with a groan of bending nails, it tumbled down and raised a puff of dust.

Cipher stepped over to the gap and looked within. A brown eye looked back.

“The story how I came t’be inside this wall ’s quite ’musing,” Berry slurred, breath redolent with layers of Pibor’s second- and third-finest.

“I’m sure it will be, as soon as you have a chance to think of it,” Cipher replied. He reached in and, with a certain amount of pulling on his part, and squirming by the gnome, got Berry free.

“Look who we have here,” Gruttla said, having been drawn by the sounds of activity. Berry gave her a hopeful smile.

“I told you we’d catch him once he went drunk again.” She cracked her knuckles.

“Pursuit a’ bod’ly freedom’s a noble thing?” he squeaked.

“I could have forgiven you for fleeing, maybe, if I was in a forgiving mood,” she said, dropping one sturdy hand onto his shoulder. “But giving that mad old death-witch a bone to work with? Less so.”

“Your grip, madame, is somewhat uncomfort’ably tight…”

“That she went on to assault my troops with dead things, using what you gave her? It disinclines me toward forgiveness, Berry.”

“… ow…”

“That one of my men then died on a journey to lift a curse that her ghasty-ghosts put on him disinclines me most severely.”

Berry’s eyes grew wide. “’M sorry,” he whimpered, dropping to his knees and wincing away from her hand.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Cipher said, stepping closer. She nodded and let him go.

“How long were you in there?” she asked.

“Well, I sort of… slipped up t’ the attic when you first arrived and, er, lowered m’self down. Hones’ly, while I’d have preferrered to remain unfound, ’s nice to breathe free.”

“Especially since you were flatulent,” Cipher said, with something of a smirk.

“It seems t’me that the gennlemanly course would be t’ not mention it,” Berry replied.

“While drinking and hiding, did you happen to overhear any discussions by or about the Thurlby gang?” Gruttla asked.

“Oh, y’know my drinker’s shame, Gruttla, once I start chasing the bottle of the bottom…”

“The more you tell us about their plans, the less punitive I feel. Right now, my level of punitivity could be described as ‘absolute’.”

“While you’re at it,” Cipher added, “didn’t you say you’d escaped from Rivernaught?”

The word had a visibly sobering effect on Berry. “Don’t send me back there.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Cipher said, glancing at Gruttla, who pointedly said nothing. “But I would be very keen to see a sketch of its layout.”

# # #

“That went well,” Cipher said, as their steeds walked back to the muster house in the late-night dark.

“Well enough,” Dovestrom replied. They were the last in the cavalry line, while Mursei ranged out before the group, and Lyridel helped Gruttla watch their two prisoners. They’d been reminded to stay alert, to fear ambush most when they were tired and had let down their guard. For all that, the troops surrendered a yawn now and again.

“It was good that Lyridel caught that elf fellow.”

“You’d have gotten him,” Dovestrom replied.

“Possibly.” Cipher squinted into the darkness. “Not so neatly, perhaps.”

“Your trips and chokes and come-along hand grips are tidy enough.”

Cipher scratched his head, his hair now finger-length and frizzy in the late summer humidity. “For all I know, I learned all those spells and forgot I could cast them.”

Dovestrom’s skeptical look was wasted in the darkness.

“If you wish me to say I’m happy the squad has a spellcaster again, I’ll say it,” Dovestrom said.

“Your voice does not bespeak much joy.”

“Hmph.”

They rode on.

“Would you have preferred a different enchanter, then?” Cipher pressed. Dovestrom exhaled with such violence that he sounded quite like a horse himself.

“I made a very foolish and entangling liaison and now I’m paying for it,” the nobleman said. “I thought… that it was one thing, but I was misled.”

“What do you mean?”

“Must we speak of this?” Dovestrom replied.

“No, not at all. Sorry.”

They rode in silence for a bit more.

“Sometimes I wish I could forget the whole thing,” Dovestrom said at last.

“Hm?”

“You know. Like you. Forget it all.”

“I…” Cipher chewed his own lips gently for a moment. “I cannot honestly recommend it.”

“But you remember no heartaches, no… foolishness. Misunderstandings. Humiliation.”

“I don’t think Lyridel wanted to humiliate you,” Cipher said.

“What do you know of it?”

“Having observed hi… Lyridel… and also yourself, I would think the elf could engineer a profound and enduring humiliation, if that was his intention. Lyridel seems to have a bit of cruelty, is what I mean.”

“So some things do escape your notice,” Dovestrom said, very quietly. “Look, the business with the belt, the… change. I don’t like that. I don’t. I wish I could be sophisticated and casual, but it bothers me. But while that’s the problem, it’s not all the problem. When she gambles…”

“Eh?”

“It takes her over,” Dovestrom said, staring at Lyridel’s back. “She can’t go just so far and no further. That’s boring. I could have… come to some accommodation, perhaps, but no. She had to risk it. Risk me, risk us, winner takes all. She could have come by when she was her and, and not when she was him, and we could have made it work. Perhaps. Probably not, really, but it had to be all or nothing. Double or nothing, really.” He sounded very, very bitter.

After another mile, the sergeant said, “Do you think you’re in a better situation now than you were when you… well, got cursed?”

“Probably. I mean, consider my teeth.”

“Pardon?”

“My teeth. I’ve really been thinking about it since Ost fixed the two front ones… I have a grin like a derelict and there’s no denying that. So I probably came from humble origins.”

“Noble blood is no guarantee of a joyous youth,” Dovestrom said.

“Funny how only the gentry say that.”

“Who would know better?” Dovestrom narrowed his eyes.

“It just reminds me of how rarely one hears bromides about ‘all the gold in the world can’t buy a happy moment’ from peasants stretching their last handful of millet.”

Dovestrom leaned back in his saddle and looked up at the stars for a moment. They’d emerged from the woods, and the land in front of them was mostly rolling farms. He took one last rearward look to ensure there was no looming ambush, then began.

“My first father died when I was a lad of three summers,” he said. “My mother went to the local lord’s court to seek another husband, for I was her first and she was still young and had an adequate dowry. The lord at that time looked to settle a border dispute and had tacit Imperial permission. The Dragon Throne prefers a court settlement, but they’re never disappointed when peaceful districts make small wars with one another. It keeps skills keen.”

“If you say so,” Cipher said.

“So the lord brought in this oracle, and there were all manner of preparations to put this seer in a good mood, and in the midst of all this, a child vanished from the court. So when the fortune-teller showed up, she said this missing youngster was a terrible omen, and that the lord should not wage war, nor press his suit in court, and was, in fact, best served to just surrender the disputed land.”

“A disappointment, I imagine.”

“Indeed. Wroth with the prophecy, the lord ejected his followers from the throne room, which had been set out with a banquet and casks and bottles and flasks. They’d eaten before the augury was spoken, and had expected drinking and merriment and games afterward. But instead their master cast them out and made himself quite drunk. Not wanting to tread the stairs to his chamber (for a great drinkled weariness was on him), he recalled a small chamber behind the high seat, where his grandfather had secreted an advisor to whisper forgotten names without being overheard. He entered the hidden room, and what do you suppose he found? Why, the lost boy! The poor tot had wandered off, somehow stumbled upon the secret chamber, lain down to nap, and slept through the meal and the announcement.

“Upon the lord’s entry, the child awoke and wept for his mother. The lord picked up the lad, gave him a sugared roll, and carried him out. The mother, upon finding her son safe, burst into grateful tears and offered her body, her troth, and all her worldly treasure to the lord in return. Seeing with eyes of cup-fuddled fondness, the lord found her appealing and agreed, upon the spot. They were wed that very night, and he set out to make war on his neighbor in place of a honeymoon.”

“I presume you were that child?” Cipher asked.

“Correct! When my second father recovered from his drinking (and from his battle, which was barely better than stalemate), he reconsidered my mother, but rather than set her aside and endure jests about drunk wifing, he made do, as did she.” He shifted on his mount, as if uncomfortable, though he was usually at ease in the saddle. “He was never unkind to her or me, though of course I could not inherit his lands. My uncle is currently Lord Wheatgirt, and he’s… unlikely to father an heir.”

“I have little understanding of dynastic descent,” Cipher said.

“Well, my position is technically high but in practice, precarious. So rather than deal with the schemes of my cousins, I left for the army and never regretted it. At least, not until Lyridel…” He sighed.

“Perhaps if you’d seen more love in your home, you’d have recognized it better, or its absence.” Cipher said, voice hollow. “Deep in myself, I fear I’m just as lost.”

“On the seas of love, we are all adrift without sail or compass. Come, let’s weigh down our bunks. The watch house is barely a mile.”

# # #

In stillness lies your greatest safety.

But soon, let us hope… deeds of triumph!

Cipher was, for a moment, unmoving. The horses were tied up a mile away, and he was easing through the undergrowth behind Mursei. He wore loose brown trousers and a dark green tunic, with his black dagger drawn and its tether coiled around his torso, taut and ready to be propelled in any direction. Mursei had painted his face with coal-dust (“to help you hide”) and had him trample herbs with a faint vinegar aroma (“to mask your scent”). She’d also woven a few leafy twigs into his hair, for the supposed purpose of helping him blend. He’d noticed that she managed to make her obscuring paint and leaves attractive, while he simply looked like a fool, but he had to admit that when she stood still in the forest, even if he was looking straight at her, she seemed to vanish from his sight.

She went forward, slow as dawn and just as quiet, then stopped in the shade of a tall oak and gestured him forward.

Cipher didn’t follow her track, but instead crept from one patch of afternoon shadow to another, watching the wind through the woods and moving when its gusts reached his position. In this fashion he proceeded around the edge of a hill and saw, at last, their goal. It was a cave in the cliff. As he watched, a woman emerged.

She had to crouch down and squeeze, and she muttered foul words. When she stood up in the open, she stretched her back, producing a pipe and a bag of tobacco.

The pipe was the size of Cipher’s forearm. The woman was taller than he’d be standing on Brute’s back. It was Ognutt Thurlby.

He looked back at Mursei, turning his head slowly until he spied her in his peripheral vision, then raised a gradual hand with one finger showing. He looked back in time to see Ognutt trudge into a thicket, hoist up her skirt, and squat. All the time, she puffed her pipe like a miniature smokestack.

Hah! Let us strike her now, from advantage, while she is at her defecation!

That hardly seems sporting, or sanitary.

Does her ilk merit chivalrous treatment? Fling yourself upon her in mayhem!

Cipher looked at Mursei again. He pointed at her, made a walking movement with his fingers, then pointed back toward where the Comets were waiting. He pointed at himself, then down at the ground.

Mursei tilted her head to the side and mouthed a word that might have been “What?”

Cipher tried again, pointing off in the distance where the others were in reserve, then making a gathering or beckoning motion. Then he pointed at himself, at both his eyes, and back over the edge of the hill.

Mursei put a quizzical expression on her face and did a few slow punches in the air, aping the blows of Cipher’s Deadly Art.

The monk glanced back at the giantess, who had completed her task and was now just standing before the cave, puffing contemplatively at her pipe. When Ognutt didn’t know she was being watched, she let her posture slump, and looked like some old peasant matron, back stooped and arms leathered from fieldwork, most of life’s flavor long ago chewed up by toil. She seemed weary.

She’s vulnerable and off guard! Attack, and voice praise to gods of war!

Cipher looked back at Mursei and seesawed his hand. Then he emphatically pointed back to where the others waited. He ended with a finger to his lips.

Mursei put up her hands as if in exasperation, then grimaced. Cipher looked back at Ognutt. She’d seated herself on a fallen tree, slipped off her shoe, and was picking at some horn-like bulge of callus on her foot.

He pointed back toward the others, three firm pokes in the air. Mursei gave a shrug and then seemed to fade like fog into the grass. Cipher breathed a sigh of relief, then turned back to spy on the giantess.

She had her shoe back on and was picking her nose with one hand, while knocking the dottle from her pipe with the other. She pulled something large and sticky from her nostril, regarded it, ate it, then put her pipe away and stood.

Her face was blank and her posture resigned as she started trudging back to the cave, but then she stopped. She sniffed the air.

Cipher almost tensed, but kept himself loose, still, and supple through force of will.

She turned in his direction with one more suspicious inhale.

She knows something’s amiss.

I concur.

A leaping neck-snap with the thighs before she can alert her sisters?

The timing on that is a bit iffy.

This one’s light, but strong, and has the high ground. He could jump, distract her hands with the knife and tether, then catch her neck with his thighs and bear her backward, strangling, before she cries warning.

She’s awfully large and her weight is low-settled.

Ognutt was at the lowest point of her exhale. Cipher jumped.

This is a fine time.

He watched her eyes and mouth both widen, the eyes bloodshot and the mouth crammed with gray, misaligned teeth. She raised her hands to snatch him from the air and he released the dagger. Its leather strap was tight as a bowstring and it cracked as the tension flowed, slamming the weapon forward and into her left forearm. Her head seemed to get bigger and bigger as he neared. Her left arm withdrew instinctively when pierced, and he adjusted his right leg to hit her jaw before encircling her neck, while his left went under her armpit.

“… SISTAHS!” she howled.

Too late to silence her. That’s a pity.

Cipher could smell her smoky breath as he collided with her body, forcing her massive right arm up and back, while entwining his legs around her shoulder and throat. She staggered back and he crunched forward, trying to topple her, planning how he could break her neck.

You’ll want a lift and turn on impact.

Lots of squeezing! Just bring your thighs together…

But she stepped back and their momentum jarred to a stop and reversed. Now she was bowing forward, preparing to slam him into the ground like wet laundry.

He arched back, his head swinging toward her groin, left hand yanking back on the leather strap to lead his right hand to the dagger again. He felt the handle and she twitched with pain. The blade was still embedded in her arm. He was now fully extended, legs around her neck as she bowed, head swinging between her knees, his right hand pulling her left arm down.

This is a bit of a gamble, don’t you think?

It’s bold! I like it!

Ognutt plummeted forward, Cipher straining, and he got his left arm behind her right thigh.

Shove it upward! Up!

Get ready to curl in when she falls!

Cipher’s weight and shifting balance pulled Ognutt forward. She put out an arm to stop herself, but she was falling too hard. She cracked the top of her head and tipped over to crash on her side. Cipher snaked his arm from behind her knee and jerked the knife out of her arm with a parting twist. He sat up as hard as he could.

The giantess was now sprawled on her side with his legs entwined around her neck and right arm. He was sitting up, right in front of her head, and he unleashed a flurry of stabs and jabs to her face.

“GwaaaaFF!” she bellowed, and then her bloodied left arm locked hands with her captured right and she flung him aside.

Did we stab an eye? I think we stabbed an eye.

One at best.

As she struggled to her feet, Ognutt flailed in Cipher’s direction with wild force. In response, Cipher did a hands-free flip over her arm, kneeling on impact to slam the dagger through the top of her foot. She howled in pain, which turned to rage as she realized that during his flip he’d wound the strap around both her hands, and had now jerked them together within the loop. As she turned, another twirl of leather captured her elbows.

She pulled her hands apart, hard, and in response Cipher kicked the dagger out of her foot. As the loop between her arms widened, the blade went into a vertical spin, whirring like a sharpener’s wheel and slicing sideways into her face.

Cipher jumped back, pulled the knife again into his hand, and heard a voice call out “!” Then he got hit in the chest with a lightning bolt.

Ugmar now filled the cave mouth, a wand clutched in each hand, body draped with fetish figures, medicine bags, carved runes, and inexplicably contorted objects wound in colored twine. Cipher was dazed, eyes purpled over from the searing light, his body filled with pain in places that normally weren’t exposed to it — it ached inside his lungs and lights, and all down his left leg it stung and seemed to crackle when he moved, as if some of the muscle within had crisped and burned.

“’EE STABBED ME!” Ognutt hollered, bleeding from arm, eye, and foot.

“And I shall cook him up rare for you, sister,” the wizard replied, still squeezing free. “I know how cranky you become without a taste of manflesh now and again.—”

But before Ugmar could emerge from the cave or complete her spell, Cipher had charged her, stiffly delivered a flying knee to the center of her chest (parrying one of her wands with his dagger in the process), and stabbed the rigid tip of the sheath in his left hand into her throat, below the edge of her jaw.

“—!” Ugmar was clearly trying to speak, but all that came out were gasps and rattles. It sounded a bit like Drow language.

Behind you.

He knows, sister.

Having bounced off Ugmar, Cipher dropped low and ducked, for Ognutt had seized a weighty branch and swung it at him from behind. He winced, his leg and guts in agony as he hit the ground. As she continued to press forward, taking a backhand swipe at him, he lurched to her side. She turned to reorient herself and the dagger zipped up to smack into the underside of her nose. It was only then that he realized smoke was coming out of his mouth — presumably from the lightning — and that his shirt had a charred circle in its center, its edges still glowing red in spots.

Line them up so they have to press past each other to reach you.

Sister, he knows!

Ognutt swung again, as if to fan him back, and he adjusted his position, but she let go of her weapon, imparting a little twirl as it flew in his direction. He ducked low, but it still knocked him back, bruising his spine as he landed. He rolled back and came to his feet to see Ognutt ungently yank Ugmar out of the cave entrance.

“Where’s my silver casket?” he demanded.

Ugmar tried to laugh, but all that came out were painful little wheezing sounds. Then a man popped out of the cave. Being of normal dimensions, he emerged easily, a longbow in his hands. He fired, and Cipher only had to step aside an inch to dodge it, but he could see someone gnome-sized directly behind the archer.

“Is it that monk? Did he bring the cavalry with him?” It was Hetricia’s voice from within.

“’Ee’s alone, seems like,” Ognutt replied, picking up a rock and hurling it at him. That one he had to drop prone to avoid. “’Ee was watchin’ me make me dirties!”

“I assure you,” the monk called, “I didn’t enjoy it!”

That caster’s going for a potion.

Cipher darted forward and tried to smash the bottle from Ugmar’s hand with his tethered dagger, but he missed and the archer did not. The arrow zipped across his ribs as he flinched back, but it left a line of blood in its wake.

You have to be faster than that.

The small figure in the cave was a halfling with a sling, whirring like a deadly cicada as she edged out and into cover.

“Keep him back,” Ugmar said, her lips stained with potion foam, “and I’ll double-wand his carcass back to the Dark Gods!” She crossed her wrists to aim both implements, when through the air came a sound like distant thunder…

It was the rumble of hooves.

“CavalREEEE!” Mursei burst out of the undergrowth atop the hill, mounted on her favorite roan, brandishing her heavy-bladed chopping sword in one hand and a single-headed felling-axe in the other. The descent was steep, a challenge to the most sure-footed steed, but she didn’t hesitate, she stood up in the saddle and shouted “CHARGE!” at bloodcurdling volume.

Ugmar muttered some loathsome blasphemies, then spoke in the resounding tones of sorcery, establishing a defensive shield, waving her wands around in rapid, slashing crescents.

Cipher met her swearing with some of his own as he sprang at the halfling and kicked her hard enough to launch her back into the mouth of the cave, where she tripped a half-orc with a flail who stumbled out into the daylight. The archer fired at Mursei, and missed. Ognutt looked between Cipher and Mursei, and decided.

“Mwaaaaugh!” she shouted, lunging at him with windmilling fists. He ducked, swept one of her feet so that a haymaker landed off-balance and harmless, dodged back from another punch, but didn’t quite avoid a backhanded smack that lifted him off his feet and landed him in a stickerbush.

Oh dear, I’m pretty sure this shrub’s leaves impart a rash.

He’s not concerned about a rash! He cares for naught but victory and triumph!

The archer fired again, and this time his aim was true.

Catch it!

Cipher caught it, dropping the sheath in the process.

Nicely done.

Cipher rolled back and to his feet, re-gripping the tether, as Mursei’s charge ended with the axe impacting some kind of dark, shifting shadow-shield in front of Ugmar’s flinching face, while her thick-bladed saber flensed a disc off Ognutt’s flesh and sent it flying at a tangent into the forest. But the half-orc had stumbled clear of the cave, with a long-legged human traipsing after.

Tactically, it was just a mess.

“!” Ugmar shouted, aiming not at Mursei but at her horse, which immediately calmed, took a few half-hearted steps, and then settled down to put its head on the ground.

“Oh, you dire harlot!” Mursei shrieked, dismounting and charging the enchantress. Ognutt interposed herself, seizing the half-elf like a grown-up hoisting a child. Mursei delivered an axe-chop and a sword-blow in the process, kicking wildly and shouting invective.

The archer shot and missed. The halfling slouched to her feet, casting about for her sling, then drawing a nasty, pointed shortsword instead. The half-orc started a stumpy-legged run at Cipher, whipping his flail-head around until it was just a blur. The other human, a woman in trousers and beaded shirt, regarded the melee and started slinking off between the trees.

Hetricia Thurlby poked her head out of the cave. “We must flee!” she cried, her voice unusually shrill.

Cipher watched as the flail-bearer made his lumbering charge. So did Sister Swift and Brother Brawn.

He is confident, and it is unwarranted.

He prefers to swing right-handed, but he will strike from the left in an attempt to fool you.

You could easily place the dagger in his eye from five paces out, but it’s unlikely to kill him on the spot…

Cipher leaped into the air and hurled the black blade in a downward slant. The half-orc stopped, trembled briefly, then collapsed.

… without a bit of altitude. Well done!

Mursei struggled in Ognutt’s grasp, but the giantess had Mursei’s arms pinned to her sides and was delivering a bone-crushing bear hug. Mursei shouted — more in anger than pain, but pain was there — and her steel breastplate started to groan in protest.

The halfling slipped up behind Mursei, paused to take aim, then delivered a chillingly precise cut to the elf’s ankle. Mursei’s screams switched to outrage and she kicked, but the backstabber easily dodged it.

A second thunder of hooves was gaining volume, and it was not just the noise of one outrider, but a dozen.

Hetricia was out and holding a sword like she wasn’t quite sure how it worked. A brawny dwarf would have used it two-handed, as she did, though in her grip it had the proportions of a longsword. Cipher was racing forward at Ognutt and Mursei as Ugmar aimed her wands and shrieked “!” at him.

There was no light or noise or stench or tingle, but his instinctive grasp of the Deadly Arts fled from Cipher’s head, just as he got close to the small assassin.

Uh oh. Keep your balance, feet under you, back straight, knees bent…

Wave your left hand and then stab her with the dagger!

Cipher struggled to comply, but the half-sized swordswoman parried easily, with a worried and suspicious expression. She riposted conservatively and, following Sister Swift’s wordless advice, Cipher managed to pivot away unharmed.

Hah! She saw you fell the flailsman and thinks you’re trying to fool her!

Mursei squirmed in Ognutt’s grasp, her face crimson, but she managed to kick back again and, since the sword-bearer was engaged with Cipher, the heel of Mursei’s cavalry boot connected with her shoulder.

“Hold her still!” Hetricia said, stabbing at Mursei from the hip and leaving a cut across the base of her target’s spine.

“Dun’t poke ’er arse, put it in ’er ’EAD!” Ognutt bellowed. Then a voice came from the trees above their heads, clear and elven and arrogant.

“,” it said, and the air took on the peculiar, sharp note of a thunderstorm. A streak of white light slammed down through the foliage, blazing against Ognutt’s ear, changing direction to shoot through Hetricia’s chest, then shifting once more to crackle toward Ugmar. The fetish-laden wizard swirled her wands like a double-fisted swordsman blocking a blow, and the lightning stroke deflected down into the ground with a puff of smoke and a clatter of soil.

“, you meddlesome in-betweenling!” Ugmar snarled, as a sizzling green blob of slime jetted from her left-hand wand. It hissed into the tree and splashed Lyridel, whose long green coat and brown trousers seemed to be a grudging compromise between fashion and camouflage. (“Looking good” had bullied “going unseen” into some unfortunate concessions.) The spell’s acid burned brocade, decorative buttons, wool, cotton, hair, and flesh as Lyridel squawked and struggled to retain her perch.

Cipher grimaced, blinked, then made two tidy movements that lassoed the halfling and pulled her, stumbling, close, where his dagger flashed across the front of her neck, so deep that he felt it scrape spine before she fell.

I think someone’s recovered.

At that moment, the cavalry arrived. Unlike Mursei, who’d gone over the edge and charged down the steep approach, the soldiers of Roundwell’s Comets coursed around the hill in a disciplined, galloping wedge, with Gruttla Hammerheart at the tip.

“THURLBEEEE!” she howled, and swung her warhammer straight into Ognutt’s side with all the force of her arms, her magic weapon, and Brute’s full gallop. With a gasp, the giantess crumpled, spilling Mursei out of the deadly compression.

Cipher stumbled back as Tark and his other colleagues, standing proud in their stirrups, peppered the enemy with arrows. Hetricia fell and was overrun. Ugmar took to her heels, charging up a steep slope while the cavalry circled below, bowstrings twanging, followed by the clatter of misses and the meat-thud of missiles on target.

The monk, however, was narrowing his eyes and looking off in the distance, where the human woman from the cave had retreated. (The archer had dropped his bow and was waving his hands in surrender.) Cipher saw a small sapling bend toward a particularly dense copse and he started sprinting toward it.

“That’s Hetricia!” he shouted. “That’s her!”

Tark had switched out his bow for a short lance, and when he stabbed the giant swordswoman on the ground through the heart, he was startled as her outline writhed and reformed. It went from a dying giantess with a wounded chest to a dying human with a wounded neck.

“!” Lyridel called from her perch, gesturing with her silver nail as she struggled to divest herself of the acid-soaked remains of her coat. But this time the glowing wad of force popped like a soap bubble when it hit the puffing, climbing Ugmar, who paused to utter a contemptuous laugh.

A few fervent soldiers were climbing the crumbly slope behind the fleeing giantess, but Cipher couldn’t pause to join in. He had his own quarry to pursue. The woman, who seemed entirely human, was now in the dense wood where horses couldn’t follow. From the depth of her footprints and the ease with which she shoved aside saplings, he could tell he’d been right. It was Hetricia in disguise.

Where she moved to the left of a long-fallen trunk, he ran up its incline and began brachiating after her. The branches were thinner up high, and by hurling his leather strap to entangle far trees, then swinging on it like a pendulum, he soon caught up with her, despite her strength. As he watched, she shed her disguise in favor of her natural form, with long limbs to cover ground and a high point of view.

“Give it up, Hetricia,” he called. “It’s over.”

She paused, panting. “Over? The only thing over is you, little man.” She squatted and started searching the ground.

“Oh? You’re going to throw a rock at me?” He casually took cover behind the tree trunk, only one eye peeking around to watch. She’d found a stone the size of a hen’s egg. In her palm, it looked like a kidney bean. “Going to chop down my tree with your sword there?” Again, the disproportion of her hand and the object in it: a sword barely worthy of the name looking like a letter opener.

“What of you, mystery man? Do you think you’re a fair fight for me, battered, storm-baked, bleeding, and cut? Why not drop down here by me, and we’ll see who winds up quick and who dead?”

He gave a low chuckle, and then he was silent.

The silence stretched. The wind picked up, with a rustle of leaves, but Hetricia heard no words, no rattling as limbs rubbed together.

“Brave man!” she called out. “Well? Do you plan to face me? Or will you hide like a coward?”

When she got no reply, she turned to leave.

The pain was next. There was no sound at all to warn her, not even the whistle of a dagger in flight, just the shock of impact — not hard, not to someone who’d suffered punches from Ognutt — but tipped with hurt, a startling sting that got brighter and deeper, from the top of her neck through to behind her ear.

She spun, raising a hand to the blood flowing from the back of her head. She saw a knife falling away, swinging, and then reeling up along a leather trail, flying back up into the trees.

Hetricia shrieked a very bad word indeed as she hurled her rock at the end point of the dagger’s tail, but it was already moving, there was the creak of wood and the clatter of branches. She couldn’t see him, but she could track him by the rustling of trees as he leaped from one to another, and she rushed toward their bases, seizing one and shaking it, hoping to dislodge him, but her only reward was another dagger strike-and-recoil, this time to the top of her shoulder, followed by more chuckles. More sounds of him jumping away, then silence.

“Coward!” she shouted. “Afraid to face me?” She had the sword out, pointing in front of her as she turned, looking for a clearing to make her stand… but of course, there was no clearing. She’d gone toward the forest’s thickest part entirely by design.

The next blow was straight into the top of her head, and the monk couldn’t get the strength and leverage to pierce that dome of bone, his weapon simply didn’t have the heft, but it hurt. It hurt a lot.

“Did you figure out my strategy yet?” he called.

“I will tell the world of your fear!” she shrieked.

“I’m sure the world will judge harshly my unwillingness to let a foe twice my size and weight shame me into a straight-faced pound-down.”

She bolted. Or she tried. The narrow spaces made her path uneven and difficult, and she heard him above her, first on one side, then the other. Blood was dripping from her wounded scalp, and flies were starting to buzz around the gore accumulating in her thick hair. Then he was in front of her, balanced on a branch ten feet above her eyes, his arms contorted as if tied together…

The blade swung sideways at her face and she raised her little sword to block it. With a crisp snap of the wrist, he corrected the knife’s course so it dropped, so that its thong impacted her forearm and sent the edge spinning sideways across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She lurched back and felt the strap on her wrist go taut, just before the dagger orbited her arm, pulling free and leaving a combined friction-burn and knife-slice spiraled between her elbow and her wrist.

“Almost disarmed you that time,” he sang out, springing once on the branch before leaping to another, higher limb. He did a somersault in midair so he could catch the returning weapon in his right hand, then rolled to a landing well out of her reach. “What was it your sister said, the first time we met? ‘I can do this all day’?”

“What do you want?” Hetricia asked, staring up into the trees, a veil of blood coursing down her face. She didn’t know it, but her expression bespoke hopelessness.

“I’d really like to kill you! You hurt me, you and your sisters both. One of them at least is captured, maybe dead. But bleeding you out with so many little cuts… it would take all day, wouldn’t it?”

“Then get on with it!” With an oath, she hurled her sword away, embedding it to the hilt in a tree fifty paces away.

He dropped to the ground in front of her. He was at a distance — outside the range of his tethered weapon. “What I want most,” he said, “is to know where my silver casket went.”

She gave a low, ragged chuckle. “If I tell you, then, will you let me go?”

“Oh, hell no. I would never believe you without proof. But if you surrender, come peacefully, and then tell me… I’ll do what I can.”

She sighed.

“Do you think Ognutt is dead?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I know you can’t be sure, but you’re a seasoned battler. You saw the hurts she took — you gave her half of them. Do you think, is it your considered opinion, from your expert’s perspective, that she lived… or died? If you were a gambling man, where would you stack your towers?”

With that, it was his turn to sigh. “Dead, I figure. That eye… but mostly it was the sound of that last stroke of the hammer. It was no glancing blow.”

“Well, I reckon she died as she lived,” Hetricia said, but her lower lip was trembling. Her shoulders slumped and she raised her wrists.

“Very well, then,” she said. “Bind me by law.”

Both of them heard horses in the distance.

# # #

When Cipher emerged from the thicket with Hetricia Thurlby on a leash, her hands bound behind her neck and a loop around her throat, Tark greeted them with an expression of astonishment so profane, he could only have learned it from Cipher.

“Well handled!” Gruttla said, coming forward with eyes and mouth equally wide. “We thought she got away clean as Ugmar!”

“What of Ognutt,” Hetricia asked. “My big sister… is she… ?”

Gruttla gave her a searching, level look, then gestured for the soldiers to step aside.

Ognutt was as graceless in death as in life. They had rolled her onto her back and draped her face with someone’s kerchief, and her hands were folded on her chest. The dent in her side from Gruttla’s deathblow was visible even through her loose garments. Beside her, similarly draped, lay the near-decapitated halfling, in a puddle of blood with the badly trampled human woman and the eye-struck half-orc. The other survivor, the archer, knelt beside them, tearstained and fearful.

“Let me see her face?” Hetricia asked. “Please?”

Gruttla nodded and Tark pulled the cloth aside. Hetricia began to sob.

In time, Tark covered Ognutt’s face again and Hetricia turned away. When she finally composed herself, she looked at Cipher with a hollow, blank expression.

“Your silver casket was taken from us,” she said. “A minion of the Crusader, Captain Grossthorn. He took it to Rivernaught.”

# # #

The watch house was redolent with the aromas of sweat, giant despair, and a hot, bitter beverage from Queen’s Wood called  in Elven, colloquially called “twitch-juice” among Imperial soldiers.

“Can I get another uchtsessro here?” Tark asked, holding up a thimble-sized cup.

“Just call it twitch-juice,” Lyridel suggested.

“I’m only trying to give it its Elven name.”

“Trying and failing,” the wizard replied.

“We got potions,” Gruttla called from a different direction, the one leading to the watch-house infirmary. “Line up in an orderly fashion and show me where it hurts. Not you,” she added to Mursei, who’d been brought back to the headquarters strapped in a travois after half the healing drinks they’d carried had gone to stabilize her. “You just lie there.”

The potion was as black as the , but not nearly as pleasingly flavored. “Ugh, this is as bad as that ale you got for the dwarven New Year,” Mursei grumbled, gritting her teeth as her leg itched and twitched and knit. “After it went skunky!”

“Still better than lying with your heel cut,” Gruttla replied, offering the next ladle of it to Cipher, who drank with a grimace, but no comment.

“Have another,” Gruttla ordered him, and he nodded, feeling the queer sensation of the wound on his side closing like a stubborn mouth, feeling the dead nerves in his chest restored to agonized life.

“Ye next taste, I claim,” Lyridel announced, moving forward with a hiss as her scalded flesh rubbed against acid-stained garments. She had used potions of her own at the site, but no one grudged her another.

“Here. Try this.” It was a peg-legged old-timer, hired to keep the watch-house kitchen after Nagatia moved on. “It’s supposed to ease those after-potion aches.”

“Does it work?” Mursei asked.

“Doesn’t make anything worse.”

She would have shrugged if such a movement wouldn’t have hurt. Instead she took a handful of brown glop and reached it up under her tunic to rub her sore ribs, then rolled up her sleeves.

“What is it?” Cipher asked, reaching for the salve as its scent cut through the air.

“Mostly pine-pitch and juice of timberwort,” he said, “plus aromatics.”

“Ugmar may be free, yet she is once more cut loose a’ her reagents,” Lyridel said, swigging her drink and waving away the odoriferous ointment. “Ye cave was a den for her spirit-wrenching, and lacking its symbols and tools, her spells shall remain weakened and stiffly cast.”

“What exactly does it mean for a spell to be ‘stiffly cast’?” Dovestrom asked, giving the elf a sidelong glance. He’d been tasked with holding down the fort and was now jumpy and tense. “Does it hurt less, or miss more or boil up slower?”

“Nay, no, and no,” Lyridel said, voice both airy and icy. “’Tis primarily an aesthetic distinction, and o’ little concern to a swordsman. But any caster would know.”

“As you say,” he said, flushing mildly and standing. “I’m going to check Hetricia.”

“I’ll come with,” Cipher said.

“So,” Dovestrom said as they neared the steps, “none of ours died, and we got Ognutt. That’s a fine job of work.”

“I’m happier that Hetricia’s in chains.”

“Mph. I always had the most distaste for Ugmar, personally. I know little about magic but know enough to prefer it on my side.”

“It’s Hetricia who worried me more,” Cipher said. “Shapeshifters? Just their existence makes it hard to trust anyone.” He frowned, then stopped in place.

“What?” Dovestrom asked.

“I had a disquieting thought.”

“Want to share it?”

“What if,” Cipher said slowly, “it really wasn’t Grossthorn who followed me to the temple?”

“Who else? Hetricia? No horse could carry her.”

“That’s true.” Cipher pulled at his lower lip, frowning. “But that wizard she had with her in the cave, she wore an enchanted disguise.”

“Those are only good for about five minutes,” Dovestrom said.

“Are you sure?”

Dovestrom shrugged. “Lyridel could never pretend to be anyone else longer than that.”

Cipher’s brow cleared and he smirked a little. “Who did you have her look like?”

Dovestrom’s answer was a punch to the shoulder. “Maintain a respectful demeanor, you ill-mannered knave.”

They reached the top of the steps to hear Berry’s clarinet voice chanting, “Teeth like a pauper?”

“He’ll fight for a copper,” came the response.

“A man with nice rings?”

“Will have other nice things.” The respondent was a drifter, caught with his hand in a cashbox. He was young, human, straw-haired, and missing one ear already.

“If she’s human and tall?”

“Then perhaps pay a call.”

“Pipe down, you two.” Homard was on guard, and quarrelsome. “This is a jail, not a school for roguery.”

“I don’t understand why tall women are targeted,” Dovestrom said, striding into the narrow hall between the cells. “It seems unwarranted.”

“Just to make the rhyme,” Berry said, while the one-eared wanderer turned to face his wall.

“What if you suspect a mage?” Cipher folded his arms and looked at the gnome, who grinned.

“Avoid, and live to a ripe old age.”

“Please don’t encourage him,” Homard said.

“Aye,” Hetricia’s voice said from the cell at the end. “I too would have their banter cease.”

Berry put up his hands and sat back. “My apologies, lady Hetricia.”

Dovestrom led Cipher to her end of the corridor. The Thurlby captive had shifted into the shape of an adorable gnome, with wide, innocent eyes and hair like sunlit rain. Her giant-sized dress was wrapped around her like a cloak.

“How is Ognutt to be buried?” Hetricia asked.

“At the crossroads, as befits one who raised arms against the Empire,” the sergeant replied. Hetricia’s nostrils flared.

“It’s not enough to kill my sister, you have to set her under the heels of any rootless rube who wanders by?”

“Crossroads or buried with honors — the way so many bones she gnawed were settled — it’s all tasted by the trees and grass, while souls pass on. Where d’you think hers wound up?”

“I’m sure she’s fistfighting demons in hell right now,” Hetricia said. “As I’ll be when your wee paladin comes to pass judgment.”

“You could cooperate,” Cipher suggested. “Your sister’s mortal remains could get their proper rites, instead of simply being broken to keep her from coming back a-zombied. You might even get a taste of mercy.” He gave a wintry smile. “With the right geas, you could be on the northern border, fighting orcs beside brawny men who might find any number of uses for a woman who changes her form.”

She snorted. “You’d have me tell you where Ugmar is, then? I’m afraid I can’t help you. We all kept secrets. Well, Ugmar and I did, anyhow. She’s likely to wind up in the One-Eyed cult or running to the marshes.”

“Or Rivernaught?” Dovestrom asked.

Her eyes — so big, so blue, like a child looking at a new puppy! — turned to him. “No,” she said, in a voice that broke any illusion of innocence. “Not there.”

“And why not?”

She leaned back and smiled. “We are about to commence to haggling, aren’t we?” she said.

“If that’s all right with you.” Cipher squatted to the floor then sat, legs crossed.

“I have knowledge about your precious casket,” she said. “What can you offer in return?”

“How about I spare you a beating?” Dovestrom said, crossing his arms. Hetricia just laughed.

“I can get your sister buried, rited by a Bright God’s priest,” Cipher said.

“Hmph. So you say.”

“Yes. You may have to extend some trust to me.”

“I trust no one who bears the black dagger,” she replied.

“And see, if I knew why I had that casket, I might know why I have the knife. Round and round we go, don’t we?”

“I’m fair dizzy.”

“Stay with her,” Dovestrom said, turning abruptly.

“Would you like to hear my history with Grossthorn?” Cipher asked.

“Hm. I guess. Sitting here in jail is tedious.”

So he told her. By the time he was finished, Dovestrom had returned with a thick-piled platter of meat and bread, a slab of good cheese, and a massive flagon.

“Here’s something,” he said. “Something better than the gruel you’d get.”

“You think I can be bought for half a ham and a fresh loaf?” Hetricia smirked, but her eyes were bitter.

“Sir Fettleting comes tomorrow,” Dovestrom said. “A day and…” He glanced at the thin sliver of light showing through the cell’s window-slit. “Two hours? Three? That is the remnant of your life, most likely.”

“Unless Ugmar comes to save me.”

“Yes. Unless your sister, with your gang scattered, and with her power halved and trinkets broken, comes and saves you from a unit of Imperial cavalry at full strength, when two-thirds of it was able to send her running, catch you, and kill Ognutt.”

“If you were a gambler,” Cipher said quietly, “where would you stack your towers?”

She said nothing. Cipher reached across to pick a piece off the platter.

“Mm,” he said. “It’s hot.”

“You can have this as… mm, what, a quarter of the meals in your remaining life? Pretty good.” Dovestrom swigged from the jug, and the scent of mulled wine wafted through the cells. “You’re fond of this, aren’t you?”

She called him a name and slid farther back into her cell. It was only modestly foul, as if her hatred was not fully heartfelt.

“I know about you,” Dovestrom said. “We were after you a long time. This is your preferred vintage. Tomorrow I can get you a nice plate of braised beef with mushrooms in a white wine sauce, over Throne Point rice. Your favorite dinner. You can have that before you face the grand beyond.” He stood, leaving the dish on the floor, and raised his foot over it. “Or I can stomp this with my big, muddy boots and feed you millet porridge. For the rest of your life.”

“Don’t,” she said. She came forward, her dress trailing her like a train. Her eyes were calculating.

“Good meals,” she said, her voice bitter. “And a proper burial for my sister and myself.”

“Oh, if Sir Fettleting beheads you, he’s sure to insist on proper ceremonies.”

“I’ll not give up anything on Ugmar. If that’s what you seek, begone and be damned.”

“The casket,” Cipher said, leaning forward to grasp her bars.

“The casket,” she said, raising a corner of her lip. “We tried to open it and it resisted most doughtily.”

“What did you do to it?”

“Lock-wrenching spells did naught but shrivel up Ugmar’s third-best piney wand. We took it to our local seducer-of-doors, but his charms and tools found no opening in it. Had we not felt something sliding around in it, we’d have suspected it was solid through. Ognutt tried to smash it once, when she had drinks upon her, and Ugmar was elsewhere gathering weeds and carving stones. She couldn’t even dent it. Just as well, Ugmar didn’t want it harmed. She was sure there was something of great worth inside.”

“I think it’s me inside,” Cipher said. “My memories. My life.”

Hetricia tipped her head. “Honestly, I can’t see Ugmar trading one dried pig-ear for that. But Grossthorn was quite interested.”

“How’d he learn you had it?” Dovestrom asked.

“I wondered the same thing. I reckon it must have been that latch-tickler. Lunby, that was his name. The Crusader’s people snatched him up in one of the villages, or perhaps he was daft enough to try for the treasure of Rivernaught.”

“There’s treasure in Rivernaught?” Dovestrom crossed his arms and looked skeptical.

“There’s that wretched captain’s magic helm at the least. The troops cull tolls from those who ford the river nearby. There are a thousand tales of the wealth of the Crusader cached within. Burglars see anything as well defended as Rivernaught and believe there must be gobs of coin and stacks of jewels. Hard to persuade ’em otherwise.”

“How’d Grossthorn get it?” Cipher persisted. Hetricia pointed at the cooling ham. Dovestrom nodded to Cipher’s glance, then slipped the food through the slot.

“With your horse-happy harassment of our business, the three of us were on the move a lot,” Hetricia said, tearing a hunk off the end of the bread loaf and wrapping it around a piece of steaming meat. “I’d get supplies in disguise, Ognutt hunted and built shelters, Ugmar was always looking for strange fungi and other components. She’s a spirit-twister, you know? Binding nature energies and intelligences to her service, or something of that sort.”

“I’m a simple swordsman,” Dovestrom said, looking bored.

“Fine. I never followed it when she’d talk magery either.” Hetricia paused for a deep swallow of wine. “But some of the best spirits were down by the river, near the old, capped-over hellhole. Sounds like it was a… a thin place between here and wherever the spirits are. So she’d go there to sweep up weather sprites for her lightning and the tiny dryads of dizzy-making weeds for confuddlement charms.”

“Mm hm,” Dovestrom said, glancing down the hall.

“She wasn’t the only one. There was some elfy wretch from Rivernaught doing the same thing and, well, you know what happens when you get two bulls in one field.”

“Ugmar tried to steal magic right from under the noses of the Crusader’s people?” Cipher asked.

“No ‘try’ about it, leather-fist. She did it. When that stick-thin, kirtle-clad fool confronted her, we put paid to her, broke her little black iron wand and had Ognutt feast on her.” She punctuated this with a handful of ham-fat. “Don’t know if you’re aware, but people can’t come back a-wraithly if you eat their heart the right way. There were some words you had to say, Ugmar taught her…”

“Sure. As if you Thurlbies needed a tactical reason for cannibalism,” Dovestrom said.

Hetricia gave him a brief, piqued glare. “I’ll not deny my villainies, but hunger after things that could argue against being eaten was never one of them. Not to put a fine point on it, but I found it distasteful.”

“Very funny.”

Hetricia made a rude gesture, accompanied by the synonymous word, which was slightly obscured by half-chewed food.

“So you killed one of the Crusader’s spell-workers,” Cipher prompted.

“Killed and ate,” Dovestrom added.

“Old Grossthorn wasn’t having that.” Hetricia continued to eat with great, sloppy gluttony. It looked impossible that so much food could go so swiftly into such a small frame. “One time I came back from some discussions with certain parties who were moving certain properties through certain areas…”

“Was this Gindlek and his forbidden potions, about a month and a fortnight past?”

“It was a certain person with certain items, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

“That honor will serve you well on the stump tomorrow,” Dovestrom said.

“Let her tell the story!” Cipher said.

“I got back and Ugmar was gone and Ognutt was in hiding. They’d done something to her, she… she never would talk about what they showed her that made her run off on Ugmar. Something bad.”

“So Ugmar was imprisoned in Rivernaught?”

“Yes. They have a sort of… great open cage for the demons they’ve not yet tamed, and the mortal prisoners are stored in a big stone box on top of that. To escape, you have to climb down past the monsters. I have to say, they seem to exceed you when it comes to preventing escapes.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Dovestrom said. “Now let me guess. You traded the casket for her freedom?”

“That’s the sum of it.”

“To Grossthorn specifically?” Cipher asked. Hetricia nodded.

“Did he say anything about why he wanted it?” Cipher asked.

She shook her head, belched, and grinned.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sir Fettleting was grim, riding at the forefront of the party. Gruttla, mounted on Brute, loomed behind him, with Cipher beside her. Dovestrom insisted on riding to Rivernaught as well, and Lyridel wound up riding beside him, despite Dovestrom’s obvious unease.

“I like your new dog,” Cipher told the small knight.

“What? Oh, thank you. She’s a good-hearted creature,” Fettleting said, petting his mount’s neck. But he was clearly distracted. So were the steeds. As they neared Rivernaught, they heard a keening sound. It was intermittent on the breeze at first, but as they drew closer it got more constant, though still low. It sounded like high wind in old trees, screaming between their branches and making their trunks groan. But the day was nearly still.

“Cipher,” he asked, “have you ever been to Rivernaught?”

“Quite possibly, but I do not recall it.”

“Keep your wits about you. I don’t think Grossthorn will harm us when we’re clearly on Imperial soil. Once we cross the bridge into his fortress, however… well, there’s no dishonor I would put past a servant of the Flayer.”

“Don’t let the bridge upset you,” Gruttla said.

“What would upset…?” he began, but his words trailed off as they crested a hill and the fortress came into view.

The hellhole had emerged on a small, swampy island that peeked out of a broad, shallow part of the Silverwine river. It was not a large parcel of land, and the Crusader had built on nearly every inch of it, creating a firm and stony foundation either by enchantment or simple industry.

Seen from above, Rivernaught was shaped like a diamond, or a lozenge, with one broad face looking out over the water and another, fronted by a gate, paralleling the near shore. Its walls, the color of dried blood, sloped in from the ground and steepened to sheer at the top. At its narrow ends, facing upstream and down, were matching towers surmounted by great siege engines. Each also carried large banners bearing the Crusader’s mail-fist symbol, and three stars representing the three great hellholes conquered and bound over from the service of evil chaos to evil order. From its center, a vast and steady gout of sulfurous steam or smoke rose into the sky.

It was the bridge, however, that caught Cipher’s attention. It was built of black iron, with neither stone nor wood as a floor to it, only a metal grate through which any who crossed could see what lay below. The toil of enslaved demons had deepened the river to serve as a functional moat, but that was not what was distressing about the bridge. Its lower spars were not just support for the structure: they were also a cage.

The beast inside was large, impaled throughout its man-shaped body by barbed struts. Its wings, black and big as a giant’s bedsheet, were crimped and crumpled and chained. Flames rose from its hulking shoulders, its clawed and bound arms, its screaming needle-toothed mouth, its down-turned massive horns. Its struggles made the bridge shake, just a little, now and then.

It was almost drowning, the water drenching its flames before they blazed up again to boil the river away, giving it just enough time to pull itself up by its bleeding limbs and inhale before sinking into the water again. Its misery was palpable. The sound they’d heard was its cries of rage.

“What is that?” Cipher said, staring.

“I believe it is a Balor,” Fettleting said. “So far, none of the Crusader’s priests have been able to force it into obedience, so it is held in painful durance to weaken its resolve.”

“Should even an evil so great be treated so cruelly?” Cipher asked. The knight had no answer.

As they neared, they could see more of its features. The brokenness of one leg, deliberately set wrong. The flames that smoldered under its great talons, each the length of Cipher’s forearm, glowing even under the water, like embers at the deepest part of a dying furnace. There was no fire from its eyes, though. It had no eyes. Where eyes had been were raw, scooped-out pits.

As they approached, a pair of riders broke from a wooded space to their right. They were garbed in the Crusader’s colors and one called, “Who goes there?”

“We are agents of the Emperor and do his righteous work!” Dovestrom bawled out in reply. “Step aside for your betters while they discourse with your master!”

“Hello again, Effithaq,” Cipher said, walking his horse closer.

The elf gave him a wicked smile, then spun her steed and galloped toward the bridge. The other soldier watched her go, then turned back to the Imperial delegation.

“What’s this about?” he demanded, but his posture was uncertain.

“We have reason to believe that there is evidence pertaining to an Imperial criminal case being held within your fortress,” Fettleting said pleasantly.

“Your authority ceases at the gates to Rivernaught,” the soldier said. Around his neck, the symbol of a Dark God hung on a leather thong. It was an ugly and convoluted thing, sacred to She Who Turns Beneath.

“My authority,” Fettleting said, placing a hand in the middle of his armor’s holy symbol, “holds wherever light has fallen.”

The two seemed to square off, facing one another. Dovestrom and Gruttla exchanged a glance, and the dwarf began to reconfigure the Weapon That Is All Weapons from spike-flinger into a flail, but Fettleting raised a hand to stop her.

“We will proceed,” he said, eyes still firm on the man in black armor.

“You… have no place… here,” the dark rider replied. His helmet’s mask was down, but his voice bespoke effort. “The time of your foolish god… is waning.”

“That’s not so.” Fettleting seemed to get more cold and resolute by the moment. “But even if it is, it has not passed yet.”

There was a loud, ceramic CRACK as the mark of She Who Turns Beneath broke into shards. The man emitted a little sound of loss, and swayed in his saddle.

“Come forward then.” Fettleting’s voice was back to normal and he gestured the cavalry on.

When they reached the bridge, Grossthorn was on the far side.

“Greetings!” he cried, smiling, waving them forward. “Don’t mind the bridge, it won’t let you fall!”

“Careful,” Fettleting said, voice low, but he urged his whining dog forward. Their horses snorted and shied, eyes rolling at the thrashing beast below. This close, the marks of harm on it were almost as repellent as the sulfurous steam that rose from its flanks, or the features of its face, neither human nor beast. Its size and obvious strength were appalling, and Gruttla waved back Dovestrom and her soldiers, pointing to joints and hinges spaced throughout the structure.

“This is built to collapse!” she said, voice loud over the moans of the creature below.

“Of course!” Grossthorn said, gesturing to the short watchtowers flanking its exit. “In case of siege a single guard could cut off the access and, in the process, release an angry denizen of one of the deeper pits. But surely that won’t be necessary today. We’re all allies, aren’t we?”

“Wouldn’t that thing turn against you first?”

“No way to tell!” Grossthorn looked positively jovial. “But why don’t you come into the courtyard and we can discuss matters without the distraction of its noise? We have a spell,” he said with a wink, “to keep its sounds outside.”

“No,” Fettleting said, putting up a hand to halt Gruttla and Cipher. “We can talk here.”

“If your barbarity makes it hard to conduct business, well, perhaps you should rethink it,” Gruttla said.

“This is how my ‘business’ is done, Madame Commander. I do not have the luxury of thinking that the world and our circumstances are any prettier than this,” Grossthorn replied. “But it gladdens my heart to see you this close to my domain.”

“You mean your master’s domain,” Cipher said.

Grossthorn gave him a chill smile. “While I’m sure everyone enjoys being corrected on small matters of unimportant accuracy, this domain is, in fact, mine.” He reached behind his loosely fastened breastplate and produced a scroll case. Although Lyridel tensed beside Dovestrom, Grossthorn opened it and handed it to Fettleting.

“After my last visit to your muster house,” he said, looking at Gruttla, “I started to have concerns about my… viability as a regional authority. Because of the political climate.” He had the gall to look apologetic.

“This document says that Grossthorn is the sole arbiter of law within the walls of Rivernaught,” Fettleting said. “It’s signed by a High Imperial Judiciar and Magistrate General.” He sounded disgusted. “You must have worked hard to get this,” he added to the priest.

“I had a very difficult summer and my master, while entirely without mercy, understands that sometimes you have to stay the course.”

“Regardless,” Fettleting said, “we are here for this man’s silver casket.” He folded his arms.

“I beg your pardon?” Grossthorn said.

“We know you have it!” Gruttla shouted, pointing a finger.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You people have the most… remarkable beliefs about me. You say I killed your officer Horm, with no proof that he’s not alive and well and living in Shadow Port. You said this Nagatia person was at risk from me, though nothing came of that, did it? Now the man who kicked me in the head, unprovoked, is claiming that I stole some ‘silver casket’? I have no idea what he’s talking about. Why, exactly, do you believe him?”

“We have corroboration from a captive,” Fettleting said.

“Oh, would that be Hetricia Thurlby?” The captain tipped his head to the side and brought a finger to the corner of his mustache.

“She told us she gave it to you,” Cipher said.

“Could you give me one example from her history that validates trusting her for even the span of a breath? She is a mistress of disguise, the primary coordinator of a sprawling and hidden criminal enterprise, and a well-established deceiver of men.” He stepped forward casually, leaning in toward them with a comradely air. “She had this object last? And now she’s in your prison? Can you think of any reason why she might want to get the strongest of you away from the watch house where she’s kept?” He gave Cipher a condescending pat on the shoulder, which the monk shrugged aside.

Gruttla’s eyes got marginally wider.

“Comes the dawn!” Grossthorn said. “No fool, she knew exactly who you’d readily suspect, and here we are. I do not have your property, dolt. Now, maybe you’d better rush off back to make sure she has not escaped you a second time.”

“Grossthorn,” Fettleting said, “ruling this isle as if independent of the Empire is a grievous step to take. You do not want to break the comity between the Emperor and your Crusader. It will go very badly for you, from both sides.”

“Your concern touches me deeply, but rest assured, I am not the one whose actions imperil our masters’ truce.”

With grimaces and sour expressions, Cipher and his companions turned their uneasy steeds and crossed the dreadful bridge one more time. The relief on the faces of the Comets across the way was mirrored on Gruttla’s face, and even on Lyridel’s. None of them looked sorry to put Rivernaught behind them at speed.

As Cipher was nearing the top of the hill, the one that would blot out the sight of the tortured Balor, he heard Grossthorn’s voice in his head. It wasn’t images and inexplicable knowing, like the communications from Brother Brawn and Sister Swift. It was clearly words, from Grossthorn, and they were just as clearly coming from within his mind, not from his ears.

<<I thought I’d take a moment to let you know that it really was me that ordered your friend’s death, and you were right that I went to his wake to drink your grief like wine. Also, I have your casket here in Rivernaught, and there is no one here who will not die to keep you from reclaiming it.>>

“Not one who will not die?” Cipher muttered. “I hope your god takes that as a prayer.”

Who are you talking to? Sister Swift queried, and Dovestrom asked the same thing out loud.

“No one,” Cipher said.

# # #

When they returned, Gruttla was clearly angry. As she huffed around the small fort, slamming doors and yelling, she seemed upset that there hadn’t been an attempt to break Hetricia free. When Lyridel pointed out this paradox, Gruttla rounded on him, face darkened.

“Of course I don’t want her to escape, but this means that Grossthorn tricked us. Tricked us again! He’s making fools of us, and I don’t know how you were raised in the elf courts, but dwarves don’t take that lightly!”

“He has my casket,” Cipher said, staring into the distance with a look like he was withstanding torture. “My memories.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Gruttla said. “Why would some Imperial high-and-mighty sign his document? Why is the Empire cutting us off? Do you think a Judiciar and Magistrate General could be a… a cultist of the Dark Gods?”

“If she is, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Fettleting said. He had one of Gruttla’s goblin-skull ale mugs in front of him, but he was just staring into it and not drinking. “Thanks to the ‘invaluable alliance’ with the Crusader, people are as free to worship the Dark Gods as we are to follow the Bright.”

“They even want a temple in Santa Cora,” Cipher said.

“In my city? The holy city?” Fettleting’s eyes glittered. “Not while I have breath.”

“I’m no appreciator of the Dark Gods,” Gruttla said, “but of all the favors the Crusader might request in return for striking against the Abyss…”

“You don’t understand,” Fettleting said, with quiet intensity. “His masters are now here. But if he raises their temple in Santa Cora, they will belong here.”

“I say we just gather our forces, wait until Grossthorn is away from his rotten little lair, and charge them all,” Dovestrom said. “I’d empty my purse to hire mercenaries, some of those little river halflings maybe, have them land on the upstream side, while we drop the bridge on them. Flee on horseback if that Bablor creature strikes us and not them…”

“You’re talking treason,” Fettleting said, but there was no heat in his voice, only resignation. “You have sworn an oath to the Emperor and his representatives. The Magistrate General has the right to dole out judiciary domains. Grossthorn,” he said, “is as legitimate an authority within those walls as I am without. Anyone who attacks him is guilty of insurrection.” At last he took a deep draught from the cup. “If we, who took the Emperor’s coin and duty, were to attack him, we would be guilty of more. The judgment of insurrection falls upon the rebel, but treason against duty? That falls on your whole family.” He looked steadily at Dovestrom. “Your lands would be forfeit, possibly to Grossthorn himself, or his heirs, or the Crusader.” He turned to Gruttla. “As servants of the Dwarf King, your family would likely escape any direct punishment, so long as they remained in the lands beneath. Any attempt to get legitimate papers for traveling on the surface? Unlikely. Now Lyridel,” he added, turning to the elf.

“La sir, milady ye Elf Queen accepts no guilt from ye bloody deeds of her daughters nor sons. ’Tis in our compact with thy Emperor, when elves are to hang on their own and when the Court’s at fault. I never bent knee to ye Emperor, nor kissed a signet ring. No soldier I, but merely an informal deputy.”

“If the Empire couldn’t find my family when I was lost and destitute,” Cipher said, “why would they find them if I turned rebel?”

“Because then there would be money a’ confiscate,” Lyridel said.

“Shut up!” Dovestrom bellowed at him.

“Ah, ye dulcet tones of Imperial debate.”

Dovestrom leaped to his feet and swept across the room. Before the troops could react, he’d grabbed Lyridel by the shirtfront and hauled the elf to his feet.

“I’ve taken a lot of insults from you, but I won’t hear the Empire called corrupt, you sneering, cynical…”

“Easy,” Cipher was instantly behind the officer, steely fingers closing on the secret, vulnerable points of his elbows, but not yet sinking into them.

“La, is this really about thy Empire?”

“Don’t provoke him,” Gruttla snarled, wedging herself between them as Cipher hauled back the other man.

“Dovestrom, stand down and return to quarters,” Fettleting said sharply, standing alertly at Lyridel’s side and watching the elf’s wand and silver fingertip.

“Aye, Commander.” Dovestrom was still glaring murderously at Lyridel, his face bright red, but he let Cipher lead him away.

“I’ll show myself out,” Lyridel said, pulling away from the paladin. “Lo, I now remember exactly why I severed my association with this band o’ horsy oafs and brute .” The last word was no spell, and Lyridel had claimed that High Elven had no curse words, but his pronunciation made it sound like an oath of the darkest vileness.

# # #

That night, Hetricia submitted to a geas stipulating that she would begin to inexorably perish from Guddington’s Gut-Rot within a fortnight unless she traveled directly to the town of Foothold. Once there, she would never travel more than two miles from its farthest boundary, or else fall instantly victim to the aforementioned disease. She agreed to defend said municipality against any and all violent threats as determined by the town’s legitimate authorities. Moreover, she was bound to leave Foothold if so commanded by the town’s leaders, with the full understanding that exile was a painful, disgraceful, and unhygienic death.

“So I’m to be battle-slave for yokelish town elders on the edge of the Hell Marsh?” she asked.

“Or I can cut your head off right here,” Fettleting said. “But I believe in second chances.”

She agreed.

As for Berry, his geas involved a ten-year term serving as a cargo inspector in Shadow Port, bound by oaths and enchantment not to skim, cheat, or otherwise corrupt his office, on pain of instant combustive death. He took it philosophically.

# # #

A month passed. The Crusader’s cavalry was seen in Belton’s Hill and in the forests around Tarrowhenge, but they seemed to be going out of their way to avoid Roundwell’s Comets. The weather turned cooler, and the trees began to slowly mimic the green-to-gold transition that had so rapidly passed over Nagatia in her grief. The rains came, and Lyridel did not return to the muster house. Dovestrom, however, commented upon the elf’s tendency to parade around Belton’s Hill whenever he visited town, always female and “dressed to poke a man’s eye out”. When asked if he’d spoken to her, he became agitated.

Cipher continued to work as an unofficial deputy. He solved the mystery of the missing chicken flock (by observing the uneven wear on a boot-tread); the case of the runaway dairymaid (she’d run away); and he uprooted a vampire cult that was festering in Hob’s Vale (by means of some clever sleight-of-hand with a mirror). That last one ended with frantic staking, a flurry of flaming arrows, and Gruttla wrestling the chief vampire to the ground and literally force-feeding it a holy symbol. The symbol was for a deity of mercy, ironically enough.

Another month passed after that, and autumn began in earnest.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I brought you a bottle of wine,” Cipher said.

“So I see,” Lyridel responded, folding his arms.

“May I visit?”

“Art alone?”

He rolled his eyes and entered the wizard’s house. He couldn’t help noticing that the implements of arcane exploration — the thing with the struts and metal cubes, the flickering lights caught behind a constellation of stained glass, the arrangement of rune-tablets that always seemed to be in a different order each time he looked — they were all just a bit dusty, while the dissection tools and planchette for contacting spirits were neatly packed away on their shelves instead of being untidily strewn about. The odd plants on the windowsill looked not only normally unwholesome, but unhealthy as well. Lyridel himself seemed peaky and was dressed in simple denim pants and an untucked, wrinkled white shirt. The silver nail guard still encased his finger, but his shoes were worn and stained, with bits of cotton lining hanging out a loose seam. He didn’t have any makeup on, and from the shadow on his lip, Cipher suspected he hadn’t been shaving.

“Are you well, Lyridel?”

“Am well and shalt be well when thou rot down to bones and callus in your broad human grave,” the wizard said, fetching a corkscrew and goblets by hand. This time, however, he served his guest.

“Been keeping busy?”

“I’m sure my endeavors would be quite beyond thy limited comprehension,” Lyridel replied, pouring generous servings and drinking half of one before he was even fully settled in his chair.

“I choose to hear that as ‘no’,” Cipher said.

“La, thou can choose how a’ hear words now? Then perhaps I can hear Dovestrom’s ‘burn in hell, twisted temptress’ as aught more conciliatory.”

“Dovestrom said that?”

“Who is he to judge me? Let him marry some dull, barely literate, mid-noble middle daughter with a reasonable dowry, and pump her ham-fatted thighs twice as broad with a dozen squalling man-brats. La, I care not.”

“For someone who doesn’t care, you seem curiously involved,” Cipher said, pulling out a chair and sitting. He took a tiny sip.

“You misperceive, thou great-fisted lackwit.” Lyridel’s cup was nearly empty.

Cipher sat and examined his fingernails for a moment while Lyridel finished his drink.

“Heard you made a bit of a stir at the gamble-shack,” Cipher said.

“Doubtless ’twas swollen by the telling.” Lyridel gave his cup a truculent grimace. “I win, I lose, I pay my debts as any decent might. Were I hell-set on ‘making a stir’, the gamble-shack would be ashes now.”

“You’ve been paying on credit,” he observed.

“Thou prying chisel-creep!” Lyridel sprang to his feet. “How darest thou court gossip a’ my personal finances?”

“I’d like to help you out.”

“I choose to hear that as ‘I’d likest thou a’ help me out’.”

Cipher laughed. “Perhaps we can help each other,” he said.

“I bought you clothes but few months ago, dunderpate. Unless thou hast recalled that thou art actually the Prince of Shadows’ secret treasurer, I doubt thou hast the resources to address any debts I may or may not have.”

“Well, it’s not about money, for me. It’s about something else.”

The elf groaned and sank back into his chair. “Thy silver casket.”

“Indeed.”

“Let it go, man!” Lyridel tried to drink, realized his cup was empty, and instead set it aside to reach across and clutch Cipher’s hand. “What bleakness must there be in thy past, to warrant sealing it away with such great sorcery? Dost think thou wilt rejoice to regain it? Thy ignorance may be thy shield against heartbreak.”

“If that’s so, it’s still my heartbreak. Better have that than nothing at all.”

“Build better memories, then! Hast not made friends, found work, become ‘useful to ye Empire’, as thy pocket paladin would deem it?” Lyridel leaned in as Cipher looked away and took a healthier swallow. “Whoever put thy mind in durance has power, Cipher. If ’twas done as a favor, surely thou shalt regret its undoing. But if thy enchanter is an enemy, recalling it is only likely to turn a cruel eye back upon thee. Had I a foe who broke so formidable a spell, my next deed would escalate.”

“No. I don’t believe hiding from enemies makes them go away. I intend to break into Rivernaught…”

“Only death can await thee within!”

Cipher continued. “If I can enter by stealth, I can regain what is mine and, probably, no small quantity of other treasure.”

“If caught, ’tis no gambler’s guess whether Grossthorn will make a spectacle of thy lawbreaking to humiliate thy friends, or simply fat up his demons with thy flesh!”

“I know it, but I’m not in the Imperial army. My crimes are mine only, not Gruttla’s, not Fettleting’s, not the Emperor’s. I don’t want to get caught. That’s why I want your help, and I’m willing to give you every treasure we take, except my memories.”

“We cannot take Rivernaught,” Lyridel said. “Nor will the Comets aid us if we’re caught within.”

Cipher finished his drink and poured another for the enchanter. “We don’t have to seize it by force,” he said. “Think of it not as a fortress, but as a puzzle. And I can cheat it.” He smiled. “I happen to know a customs inspector who escaped from Rivernaught. He drew me a map.”

# # #

It took a fortnight before the weather was decent for Cipher’s plan — meaning, it was raining like the sky was rioting. The temperature had dropped a bit, and the Silverwine’s surface rattled with gray dimples as the monk and the mage crept to the bank opposite Rivernaught, perhaps a half mile upstream.

Rivernaught’s layout was like a rounded diamond, or like an eye narrowed and suspicious. Its narrow corners were secured with towers, one upstream to the west, the other downstream at the west. Most of the river flowed past it to the north, but a thin stream, split off by the island, rushed whitely to the south before rejoining the flow. Berry’s map gave few details of what lay within, and none at all of the looming spires at its ends. He had never been inside them. The largest building, L-shaped and closest to the upstream tower, was the barracks and training hall. Separated from it by a span of maybe fifty paces were the two-story iron cages for Abyssal monsters, with a stone prison on top for any captives who weren’t actively infernal. That was where Berry had been held.

Beside the prison was some sort of foundry or factory. Again, Berry had never entered it, but had seen men and monsters go inside clean and come out weary and begrimed, often carrying weapons or armor or girders or objects he could not identify. To one side of it was a well, which supplied water, presumably from the Silverwine. But strangely, near the well was a broad stone fountain that bubbled not with water, but with lava. At odd times, the workhouse would open a sliding stone grate and magma would flow in or out, or sometimes water that would strike the molten rock with a great stenchy hiss and send off white clouds, leaving behind skins of solidified stone. Sometimes these were fished out and taken inside, sometimes ignored, sometimes thrown aside like mine tailings.

What mattered most was that this building produced steam or smoke almost all the time, and with prevailing winds blowing to the northwest, there was a stretch where the plume blocked the view of the river. Heavy rain would only compound this circumstance.

Just to the east of the cloud-spewing workshop was the last building of Rivernaught: a temple to the Dark Gods.

Cipher figured the casket would be there, or else in the Crusader’s version of the muster house, on the west side. They’d also established that Grossthorn, and probably Effithaq, had been seen riding toward Farfield. It was no guarantee that the captain was gone, but the rain was timely, and the river would only get colder the longer they waited.

“Do you see the little beach on the northern facing?”

Lyridel squinted and nodded. “Where thy roguish associate said ye fortress empties its chamber pots? Aye, I see it.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to wash off afterward. You’re sure you can’t just… go there?”

Lyridel gave him a cool look. “I have been loath to discuss ye specifics of my kind’s secret movements with outsiders, and that has not changed. Get thyself to the beach, as shall I.”

Cipher nodded, then turned to the flying carpet. “You’re sure you can’t carry me across?” he asked it.

Nooooo… Unlike the images projected by his bracelets, the whine of the carpet was in his mind, high and unhappy. This rock is REALLY HEAVY!

“Thou needs not speak aloud a’ thy device,” Lyridel said with a little smirk.

“I don’t want it reading my mind.”

“If thou but turn thy thoughts a’ it…”

“It’s fine,” Cipher grumbled. “Right, carpet. Follow me across the water.”

Dimpling the carpet’s fabric until it almost scraped the ground was an egg-shaped stone the size of a dwarf’s head. When they’d pried it out of the turf south of Belton’s Hill, it had been a pleasant, opalescent pink. Now that had deepened to orange-red, with threatening black streaks. Lyridel assured Cipher that the Repel would not be noticeably damaged by its removal, offering mystic assurances that the monk had been entirely unable to comprehend. The same sort of magical esoterica had assured Cipher that the warding stone would work for his plan.

The pair began pulling off clothes and putting them in drawstring sacks. This was much simpler for Cipher, who had only a robe, his dagger-belt, and a loincloth. Lyridel had dressed simply by his standards, but still had to unbuckle his boots and unbutton his doublet. He doffed his shirt into the bag but left on his trousers. With some reluctance he put away his silver nail-cover as well. His bag bulged with just his clothing. Cipher’s was just as full with his robe on top of a quantity of rope and a quantity of well-padded bottles.

“What, modest?” the naked monk asked.

“Had I a body like thine, I would be modest indeed.”

“Well, I hope you left your magic belt somewhere safe. I doubt it would be of use today.”

The elf turned away and began wading into the water, wincing at its chill. Cipher piled their bags onto the rug, then plunged under the surface.

It only took a dozen strokes from his powerful arms before he realized he had made some miscalculations.

Naturally, before beginning a risky plan whose first step was “swim across the river under the cover of heavy rain”, he had made sure the elf could handle himself in the water and had checked to see if his body remembered swimming in a way that his empty memories couldn’t. He’d ducked under the water at a shallow lake, kicked around, gotten used to being buoyant, and decided the crossing would be no challenge.

Once he was in the river, he couldn’t help noticing that moving water was a harder struggle than still. Moreover, cool lake water during a hot summer day was invigorating, while cool river water in the rain-chilled autumn seemed to sap all his strength.

He blinked and looked to see if Lyridel was still with him, but couldn’t spot the elf through the foam and fog and falling droplets. “Carpet! Are you following?”

It’s cold and wet and I don’t like it…

You need to angle yourself upstream. The message in his mind from Sister Swift was no sentence, just an image of himself moving slowly south under his own power and, considerably more swiftly, moving east under the influence of the current.

Get a rhythm when you breathe!

You really don’t know how to swim at all, do you? Right, lie on your side and bring your heels up, top one out and back, like that stomp-kick you used to finish off that vampire cultist, bottom one back and then to the center, like the flutter-kick you like for groins.

Tilt your head up and breathe… now!

Cipher struggled to obey the imperatives of his jewelry, but he was getting close, too close. He needed to dive underwater for concealment, or else be sighted and lose his tiny advantage of surprise. He misjudged his timing and briefly tasted muddy water before it burned into his nose and lungs.

Breath all out, all of it, now!

“Hnnnnnnnh!”

Now in, as much as you can take!

“Awhhhhhhhhh!”

Hold it! Bend yourself under the water! Face down, good, kick back and forth, reach forward gently like you’re slowly parting curtains, then pull back with strength. Don’t push your arms forward hard, that’s the easy part.

He tried. His lungs were still burning. He thought he could feel water in them starting to sizzle and hop like fat in a skillet.

You’re halfway there. If you can’t get there from here, you can’t get back either.

Work those legs! Really kick! Fast matters more than hard!

You can breathe out a tiny bit when it hurts too much, just not in.

He let out a small burst of bubbles, felt his lungs’ agonizing pressure ease, just a little.

Reach.

Kick!

He did, and again, and again. He let out more of his held air.

Reach.

Kick!

Reach.

Kick! You’re getting close!

He tried to breathe out and realized his lungs were empty, it felt as if they’d clamped shut. Somehow, the painful bursting press of the air within had inverted, it was now like being caught in a vise, his chest felt locked and compressed, and his eyes, oh gods, his eyes felt ready to pop…

You must keep going.

He tried to drop his feet and see if he could touch, but he only sank. It just got darker, and deeper, and colder.

Kick!

Reach. Come on, reach.

Reach.

# # #

Cipher came back to consciousness when long fingers laced themselves in his hair and pulled him up. He tried to lash out or latch on, but his leaden arms couldn’t respond. He heard a splash as he was flipped over, felt rough river stones scraping his back and buttocks as he was dragged to the shallows.

“Thou daft ingrate bruise-monger!” Lyridel hissed, as Cipher discharged inhaled water into his own naked lap. The elf was on the little beach, looking anxiously up at the wall.

“Ugh,” Cipher said. “Oh. Uph. I hate water. Ogh.”

“I hope ye rest o’ thy plan goes better.” The elf leaned in, wiping rain from his eyes and unloading their packs from the rug. “Canst thou even continue?”

In reply, Cipher scrambled out of the water and got his back up against the bricks.

“One… minute. Body control. Let me…” He closed his eyes, laced his fingers in a complex pattern, breathed out hard, made a repetitive gesture, then breathed in and clenched his fists. They crackled.

“All better,” he said. The elf looked dubious, but was putting on his clothes.

“Thou hadst best be, should thee wish to scale yon wall.”

“I’m not a good swimmer, but I’m a superb climber.”

“Well, I’m not, so make sure you get yon rope secured tight a’ ye top.”

“No worries…” Cipher started dressing and finished before Lyridel had buttoned his last cuff. “You wait right… yes, here,” he said, pushing the wizard over to a spot where the wall was slightly steeper than the gradual slope around it. “Crouch like this and do not move,” he commanded. Lyridel nodded.

“Carpet, you wait here. You’re to come up the wall with the stone when Lyridel climbs.”

I don’t WAAANT to… Yet somehow, the monk sensed it would grudgingly comply.

Cipher squinted up at the puffs and trickle of steam. Not as much as he’d like, but better than nothing. He looked at the wall and wished it hadn’t been quite so tightly constructed, but at least the bricks were rough enough to have some traction. Granted, they’d have had greater traction had they been dry.

He drew his knife in his right hand and took a running start. He got three loping steps up the wall’s steep incline before he felt his soles begin to slip. He launched off his right foot and jerked his left knee high before scrabbling at the wall with his empty hand, eyes searching for a flaw in the mortar, while his feet started to pedal against the bricks…

There.

He slammed the blade into the tiny gap between two stones, felt it bend just a bit, felt it start to pull out, but it could take some weight, it gave his cold wet toes a chance to feel the wall and find a grip, it let his powerful fingers grasp a projecting ledge half the width of a fingernail.

The blade’s slippage ceased as he shifted weight from it into his fingertips, into his feet. He took a breath and made himself motionless.

He looked down. He was about ten feet up. He saw how the rain was trickling along the wall, analyzed it to see which bricks were a little bit out of true, either sticking out as a possible step or ledge, or recessed enough to offer a toehold or finger-grip. Yes. There were a few places for his feet.

He looked up, blinking into the raindrops, plotting his course. Fifty feet to go. He could make out a harrowing, difficult path upward for the next twenty. He let himself take another breath and, with the other three limbs secured, lifted his left leg up and out to its next precarious perch. The dagger was withdrawn and sheathed, its scabbard hanging high by his shoulder for the next time he needed it.

# # #

Thirty feet up, he found that a seed, probably dropped there in a bird’s leavings, had sprouted a tiny, stubborn sapling. He made sure his feet and left hand were fairly secure before he grabbed it and pulled. There was some give. He contemplated the possibilities and decided to advance his right leg with weight on the root. Sure enough, it started to give, but he got his toe-grip in time, and dropped the weedy stem and root below him. He wedged his fingers into its vacated hole, then closed them, sighing with something like delight. The rough stone bit into his hand as he put more and more weight into it, but his hands were tough, and dangling from one fist let him relax his legs and other arm proportionally, flexing them gently to return circulation to his taxed muscles.

He looked up and plotted the last twenty feet.

# # #

He got weary as he neared the summit, but perhaps the builders had been careless as they’d approached the end of their task. Certainly it seemed like the rough spots his soles could push, or the thin ledges for his fingertips, came a little more densely. He was six feet from the top when he heard voices.

At first they were just casually blaspheming about the weather, two male voices, one low and rough, the other low and oily. He heard the rattle of armor, heavy footsteps. He waited for them to move on. Instead they stopped.

“Hey, hold on. I’m rolling one up. This bloody rain has me chilled inside and out.”

“Got a match?”

“Yeah, my face and your… wait, no, that’s not how it goes…”

The two chuckled and Cipher heard the clatter of a small wooden box, then a scrape.

“C’mon, miserable thing… light. C’mon.”

“There ’tis.” There was the smell of sulfur. Cipher, looking up, saw a glowing tip arc over the bricks and barely had time to duck his head and keep it from landing in his eye.

Instead, it landed on the top of his head, and he immediately felt his hair start to singe.

“Oh, I got one,” the oily voice said. All the guards had to do was lean out over a chest-high wall, just an inch or two, and they’d see the intruder below them. “Why don’t gnomes and halflings ever marry?”

Cipher could feel his hair sullenly smoldering, despite its moisture, and he pressed it against the sodden brick to try and crush it out or drown it all the way.

“Why?”

“Because their kids’ lies would be too long and never get to the point.”

Cipher grimaced and tried to rub his head harder, despite the strain it put on his precarious grips.

“I don’t get it,” the rough voice said.

“See, gnomes are always lying, and halflings… oh, never mind. Hey, do you smell something?”

“It’s not me.”

“No, like… burning hair?”

Cipher froze against the wall.

“Probably something from the making-works. Or a breeze from the cages.”

“By the Devourer of Crowns’ inconstant wife, burning hair would be perfume for the cages.”

Cipher could feel his head cooling. He breathed out his relief, very, very slowly.

“Well, get a deep breath then, ’cause they’re the next stop on our grand tour.”

“Ugh.”

Cipher glanced up just in time to see the discarded hand-roll fly out over the beach. Looking down, he could see exactly where Lyridel was (though, to the elf’s credit, he had not moved from the position Cipher demanded). All the guards had to do was follow the falling dog-end with their eyes…

But instead they walked on.

# # #

When he got over the edge, Cipher looked around and saw nobody. He was on a walkway two paces wide, its interior edge a brick wall rib-high and hand-width thick. The wall he’d just summited was thicker and higher, with periodic crenellations, firing slips the width of a gnome’s skull. To the southeast, the foundry spouted intermittent clouds, and a steadier, thinner cascade of steam came from beyond it, where the rain struck the lava pool.

Cipher let himself do one squat and one stretch, extending and flexing his arms. Then he opened his bag and produced a rope ladder, its rungs and cables carefully rubbed with shoe-dye to match the wall. He secured it through an archery slit and let it roll down the wall, watching with his upper lip gripped between his teeth, checking the towers on either side. When he looked down again, he saw Lyridel break cover and catch the bottom of the climbing contraption before it could clatter. As they’d practiced, the elf secured its loose end to the back of his pants and started to climb. At fifteen feet up, he passed a rung with a metal shackle sunk in its right side, and he secured that to his belt. If he lost his grip, he would stop falling fifteen feet up, rather than hit the ground. A second fall-breaker was twenty feet from the top. The rug floated up beside him, supporting the stone.

The monk watched, then tore his eyes away to keep lookout. It was well that he did, for the patter of rain, the factory groan, and the squawks and snarls from the metal bestiary masked the approach of footsteps. When the man came out of the fog, he was no more than ten feet away. He stopped and blinked in visible surprise.

In an instant the black blade was in his hand and Cipher sprang at him. The monk’s hand punched up, ready to slam the point through the bottom of his jaw, then the roof of his mouth — an instant kill.

That’s a servant.

Brother Brawn’s wordless observation was without judgment or warning, just a clarification that the man was unarmored, carrying a covered tray, and wearing a food-stained apron.

The dagger tip stopped when it dimpled skin.

“One word,” Cipher said, “and you die.”

The lackey’s wide eyes locked on Cipher’s, and he pulled his lips between his teeth. “Umm mmm!” he said, trying to put a negative tone into his wordless vocalization.

“We’re going to squat and have you put that tray down,” he said, and he was right. They did.

“Grossthorn,” he said. “Where is he? Whisper it.”

“… training hall…” the server murmured, pointing behind him. Cipher cursed.

“What about Effithaq? She here?”

“… don’t know?”

“Dost intend a’ kill that child?”

Cipher twisted his head to see Lyridel standing behind him. He hadn’t heard the sound of scraping or clatter as the elf crested the wall, but somehow Lyridel was now on the path and disconnected from the ladder, fitting his silver fingertip back on. The carpet sagged sullenly beside him, its stone now an angry, black-crackled crimson.

“I guess not,” Cipher said. “As long as he makes no trouble.”

“Who’s the food for?” Lyridel asked, starting to reel in their climbing gear.

“… east tower…”

“They get it at a regular time?”

“Yes,” their captive whispered. “Noon.”

“Do you know,” Cipher said, leaning forward with eyes intent, “where they keep the silver casket?”

“He’ll nae know that.” Lyridel said irritably, as the man shook his head.

“Fine. I’m going to tie you up. Do not scream when I take away the knife, or it will come back very, very fast. It would be a lot more convenient for us to kill you and hide your body, so don’t give us a reason, all right?”

Judging from his pallor, dilated eyes, and trembling, he was convinced. Cipher tied their captive’s wrists together, then his thumbs, then his ankles. He finished with a gag and a blindfold.

“Thou are frightfully good a’ that,” Lyridel observed.

“Also at this.” Cipher’s hands darted out with ruthless precision. The boy’s eyes widened, and then rolled back into his head as he slumped against the wall.

“How long will he sleep?” the wizard asked.

“It’s not sleep, but he’ll be… limp… for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Let’s move.” Cipher was peering over the interior wall. “Yes, here,” he said, checking a red rung and rolling the cables down.

“I just climbed up,” the elf grumbled, but went over the edge and started descending.

“Go, carpet. You’ll be closer to the ground, as you prefer.”

It’s wet and cold and I don’t like it here and the guard stone doesn’t like it here either.

Cipher waited, trying to remain relaxed, until he saw the wizard touch down. Then he unhooked the ropes, dropped them over the edge, and jumped.

He pushed out hard, aiming for a heavy iron vent in the back of the forge. He hit below it, grabbed it, realized it was painfully hot, but didn’t actually get injured before kicking off again, across to the first wall, hitting it and sliding down, arresting his speed with a four-limbed scramble as it curved out. He came to a stop and dusted off his hands as Lyridel finished putting away the ladder.

“To the temple?” Cipher asked, just as tones of shock and surprise sounded from above them.

“At speed,” Lyridel said, and a horn rang from the wall’s top.

“What did thy informant name the watch-hounds here?” the elf panted, running along the barren ground between the factory and fortification wall.

“Charity, Hope, and Patience,” Cipher said, and then an arrow struck the ground in front of him and another hit behind.

“I think I hear them.”

“Have no fear, they can’t get past the Repel-stone!”

Cipher hoped very hard that he was correct about that, since deep, growling howls and barks were coming from the distance behind them. It distracted him from a vague scent of sulfur that thickened as they moved east. But since they were behind the making-works, its odors of rust and sweat and fuel were thick in the air as well. So they had no warning when they turned the corner and saw the hellhound, silent, waiting.

It looked something like a dog, but not really. It looked like it had been built by something that had heard dogs described, something that had never seen one and knew only lizards, and flame, and unjust persecution. Its head was the height of Cipher’s shoulder, even drooping, for it wasn’t crouched and eager and wagging its tail in anticipation of a bite. It looked unhappy. It turned its head to the side and its shoulders hung and its tail was limp. Its posture was entirely that of a sad animal, confused and trying to avoid punishment. It whined, several octaves lower than a mortal canine. Flames dripped like drool from its mouth as it shuffled forward.

“Carpet… come here.”

As the reluctant rug drifted closer, the hound whimpered and shied away. Cipher stepped back closer to it and its protective stone, and dared a glance over his shoulder. Lyridel was facing backward, wand and silver fingertip aimed. For every foot forward the mystic obelisk moved, the two hellhounds stalking Lyridel came twelve inches closer.

“Fire!”

Several of the archers on the wall had let fly even before the order was issued. Crossbow bolts slammed the dirt around the intruders’ feet, and Cipher had to catch one to keep it from striking his shoulder.

“Carpet! Take the stone to the doors of the temple!” One of the hellhounds — Charity? Patience? — was on the steps before the doors, but it started to growl, a horrible sound like grinding metal, as the stone got closer.

He felt the carpet’s grudging compliance, until an arrow slammed through its fabric and pinned it to the ground. He wondered, very briefly, if it had been mischance or deliberate. But he didn’t think about it long, because the carpet was screaming in his mind.

Cipher echoed its scream in a single, very vulgar syllable, and then leaped at the hound blocking his way, limbs gyrating and dagger drawn. When he slammed into the middle of its back, the creature burst into flame.

“Owww!”

Lyridel looked at Cipher, then yelped and spun as an arrow struck him in the calf.

“ !” he cried, seeing that the archers on the wall had reinforcements on the way. The next arrow, which was on target to hit between his eyes, instead shuddered in midair and burst apart. The elf lurched toward the wall to make their shot harder, while still attempting to stay within the stone’s protective perimeter. The two trailing beasts were circling, as if probing the repulsion. They left steaming footprints in the mud as the Repel-stone started to vibrate.

The beast’s mouth was a froth of burning slobber as it worried at Cipher’s arm, but though the monk’s robe was alight, somehow his skin resisted ignition. He had his legs wrapped around the animal’s neck as they rolled on the ground, and the black knife slashed and stabbed, releasing fiery gore with each blow.

With a final, mournful howl, the monster fell back and expired, its bright fires dimming into a cloud of smoke. Cipher staggered to his feet, and more than the blood on his clothes, it was his lack of grace that told the wizard the monk was badly hurt.

“!” The wizard waved his wand, and as he shouted the spell he aligned it beside his nail guard. Even through the word’s eerie echo, it was possible to hear a note of desperation.

One dog tilted its head and made a quizzical noise, then turned and darted forward to bite the other hellhound right on the haunch.

“Get the archers!” Cipher cried, pulling a potion from his bag. As an arrow zipped at him, he dodged and raised the bottle so that the missile neatly nipped off its cork.

“Quit showing off!” Lyridel retorted, aiming at the wall and seeing the attackers there duck back. “Get a’ ye temple!!”

Dropping his empty potion bottle, Cipher squatted to encircle the stone, which was steaming in the rain. With a grunt, he lifted it, hissing as its hot and trembling surface pressed against his soaked robe.

The temple was an ornate pile, symmetrical around great porticoed black doors, mostly constructed of the same red brick as the wall, but with accents and pillars of matte black basalt. Gargoyles and howling faces leered down at them, interspersed with windows of crimson glass, and all of it surmounted by a statue so vile and repugnant in what it depicted that merely describing its subject matter would get one ejected from any reputable tavern in the Empire. As the monk waddled toward it with his arcane burden, he abruptly felt the stone stop, as if it had struck a wall. Apparently, just as it kept lesser evils at bay, it was in turn repelled by the forces inside the fane. He dropped it to the ground and turned to the temple’s huge doors.

Lyridel dodged another volley of arrows (successfully, except for one that caught him laterally across the shoulder blades), then threw his meager efforts into pulling at one of the doors. The hellhounds were still battling each other, but a shadow from the steamworks, accompanied by thundering footsteps, indicated that something even worse was on its way.

With a groan, the door finally shifted open.

Cipher slipped through the slender aperture and got aside so the thinner elf could rush through behind him.

“So, whatever’s coming, it can’t bypass the Repel-stone, right?”

“That is ye theory, but I bid thee find thy treasure quickly,” the elf panted, then added “”, while scratching a glyph on the door with his silver nail.

“That a mage-lock?” Cipher panted. “That’s good, but I want more.” He’d found a thick oaken beam and, with slight aid from the elf, barred the door with it.

From without there was a ghastly roar, followed by a thunderous crack that shook the doors and splintered their thick beams in three places. Cipher squinted at a red-hot stone fragment lodged in the shattered wood. It paled, swirling briefly yellow-green as if trying to regain its normal hue, before fading into a dull, mundane gray. “I think the Repel-stone met its match,” he said.

Lyridel gingerly poked the shard away and peered out the hole. “Aye, but much of it went in and through a demon o’ the skunky depths. ’Twas a if I guess aright, but there’s little save chunks and hairs of it left.”

“That’s good, then.”

For a moment, they just stood there, hunched over, catching their breath.

“Hold still,” Cipher said, kneeling by Lyridel’s wounded calf. The projectile was still through the limb, and he cut off the head before pulling the shaft out backward.

“I do not care for this.” Lyridel winced as Cipher knotted a bandage around his leg.

“How’s your back?”

“’Tis only a scratch. Thy arm?”

“The potion took care of it,” he said, showing the filled-in flesh where the beast’s teeth had pierced and torn. All his arm hair was burned off, but the new skin looked healthy, albeit pale next to his normal tan.

“Let us find thy casket,” the wizard said, striding forward. Another pair of doors lay before them, not stout and plain like the exterior, but richly carved and inlaid with silver. Each panel depicted the triumph of the Dark Gods, specifically the enslavement or execution of each of the Empire’s major races. The half-orcs were shown at toil in mills and raising obscene statues, wood elves were shackled in galleys and at strange machines, dwarves were made to pull plows like oxen, while gnomes were served at feasts with apples in their mouths and sprigs of parsley behind their pointy ears. (The Drow elves were notably absent from this display of servitude.)

“Careful,” Cipher said, but it came a half breath too late. As Lyridel touched the doors, the panels next to its knobs sprang open and two thin crescents slashed out, slicing at his wrists so quickly that at first he didn’t even cry out. But he quickly remembered to do so.

“Aiiigh!”

“Get back!” Cipher lunged forward and pulled his companion away as another panel folded out and discharged noxious black sludge. Had the monk not acted, it would have gone straight into the wizard’s fresh new wounds.

“Thou brought another healing draught?” Lyridel asked, wincing.

“Two. Consider this one payback for what you gave me the first time we met.”

As the wizard treated his wounds, Cipher carefully tested the doors again. Sister Swift advised him on how to avoid a rain of poison needles, while he successfully held his breath until a cloud of toxic gas dissipated. Lyridel tried an opening charm, only to hiss and suck his fingers when his wand vibrated sharply out of his grip.

“We need ye key,” the elf said, pointing at a diamond-shaped keyhole.

Cipher frowned. “Of course,” he said.

He drew his black dagger and inserted it like a key. It turned with perfect smoothness.

Inside was a large round chamber. Ranks of seats curved around and down, like an amphitheater, while pillars around its perimeter supported a great dome with a black iron chandelier hanging above, bedecked with at least a hundred sputtering red candles. On a sunny day, they might not be needed, given the red crystal window at the front, but today that looked as dull as stone.

The squat altar at the front was richly decorated with Abyssal runes, but the leather restraints at its corners were entirely practical, and the gutters cut into it had been made to catch and optimally distribute sacrificial gore. Every rune, whether incised or in relief or a combination, had layers and layers of dried blood upon it. It seemed to make the stone less inert, while in no way suggesting it was alive. It looked like something that had risen up from the depths of the underworld fully formed, something that might change shape and rampage at any moment. As far as either intruder knew, what it looked like was exactly what it was.

“Right,” Cipher said, stepping inside and circling toward the altar. “If I was going to hide a treasure…”

He was interrupted by a yelp, and the sound of a body being cut. He turned to see Lyridel, arms raised in surprised defense, beset by a blond elf in a black cloak swinging two curved black blades.

“Effithaq!” Cipher snarled.

“’Tis ’s one!” The elf’s teeth were an ivory flash as she turned, casual but brief, to smile at him, before returning to Lyridel. “Ha’ patience an’ attend, ’tis ney a moment a’ fee-lay ’s crowny  …”

“!” Lyridel croaked, and a peal of thunder cracked pews and shook dust from the walls. “And learn a’ speak properly, thou wretched dirt-lark!”

Cipher stepped on the seat of a pew, then the back, and leaped into the elves’ battle, his dagger swinging on its cord, but Effithaq ducked and fenced and forced him to dodge back as she said, “’S one say mos’ eloquent wi’ tongues a’ steel, ney me mouthly flesh-worm.” Then she stabbed Lyridel, easily, in the stomach.

As the wizard sank down, Cipher took a firm stance and clenched his fists. Effithaq withdrew her blade and licked it.

Her grin dimmed as light began to leak from between Cipher’s fingers.

“Whay trick a’ ye…?” she began, before the monk’s hands snapped open and white, pure radiance shone forth. Effithaq flinched back and he leaped above her, clean over her head, bare heel stomping on her curly hair before she could raise her blades to block or counter-cut. She staggered, turning, but he was behind her, hands moving in dazzling arcs and circles. She made a conservative cut and thrust, but then he was somehow beside her, pulling her off balance by her sword hand, turning her elbow and slamming his illuminated palm against it with a crack.

She was tough. Even as one hand spasmed, sword falling to the floor, the other made a strong cross-strike, the blade tearing through Cipher’s shirt, the right side of his chest, scraping over ribs, and slicing the inside of his upper arm. The light of his right hand flickered and died.

But his left still looked like it was holding stars as it swept up under Effithaq’s jaw. He pivoted, pushed with his hips, with his legs, unfolded his arm…

… and his opponent flew back over two rows of pews, landing athwart the third with a howl and a crash.

Cipher looked at his heavily bleeding arm. He looked at the pool surrounding Lyridel. He looked at Effithaq, struggling to move. He pulled out his final healing draught.

As he gave the drink to the semiconscious Lyridel, he heard Effithaq’s groan and a bony snap. It was much like the sound her elbow had made being reversed, and he suspected she’d just jerked it back into place.

Lyridel’s eyes fluttered open. “Wha…?”

“DIE!” Effithaq leaped up, sword held in both hands, charging up the aisle toward them…

“No, you,” Cipher replied, and with an underhand snap sank the tethered black dagger into her throat. She tried to keep running, but he easily stepped aside, tugging the leather strap to pull her around like a terrier on a leash. Lyridel scrambled back, trying to get to his feet but unable. Effithaq’s eyes were quite mad as she tried to kill someone before dying, but with his next yank the knife came free in a gout of crimson and she collapsed, hacking and gasping.

“Let’s make this quick.” Lyridel picked up the other elf’s dropped weapon, raised it high, and delivered a decapitating stroke to the prone, defenseless foe.

Past the entryway, they heard the outside doors starting to give way. Cipher cast about for some way to seal them in the chapel when he heard a voice.

“Don’t worry about them. Their time is past.”

The words had come from the altar. At first he thought it was Grossthorn, and indeed, he recognized the captain walking respectfully behind a man in similar armor. The first man was taller, and his armor more obscenely glorious, and as he stepped into the light his face was unbearably stern, and handsome, and collected. He had the self-possession of perfect despair.

“It’s good to see you again, though I’m sure you don’t remember me. You may call me ‘Lord Crusader’.”

Cipher muttered something defiant and coarse, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it.

“I believe this belongs to you.” Tucked under one gauntleted arm, the Crusader held the silver casket.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cipher continued to glare, moving slowly at an angle to the two dark clerics. With the hand hidden by the sweep of his robe, he gestured urgently at Lyridel.

# # #

One week previous, when they were merely casting weather fortunes and poring over Berry’s map, Cipher had laid out his exit strategy.

“Wherever didst thou find such arcane reagents?” Lyridel had asked, leaning back and quirking a thin eyebrow at the bottles Cipher had set on her table. One was sweating, clearly much colder than the ambient temperature. As for the other, one needed only get with easy reach to feel heat coming off it like a bright torch. “Thou art no dragon slayer, surely?”

“They belonged to Amblard, the alchemist. Gruttla confiscated them the very first day we met. She’s kept them in her lockbox ever since.”

“Ye commander shall be sorely wroth with thee, should she learn thou hast ta’en so dangerous a device. Particularly if ’tis raised in ire ’gainst Rivernaught.”

“I won’t use it against Rivernaught and neither will you. Remember that man-raised elf? Clay, the hunter?”

“Aye…”

“After a bit more searching, I found him again. Because you spoke up for him, and I let him go, he’s willing to do us this task. We agree on a sign — you have some spell that can go up in the air like fireworks, right?”

“I know several a’ could serve such purpose, but e’en if Clay could land it upon the gate or wall unseen… are you sure it would make a hole sufficient a’ our escape?”

“He’s not going to throw it against the wall,” Cipher said, eyes bright. “He’s going to hit the bridge. He’s going to loose the Balor, and we’re going to get over the wall and down the other side into the river. Whether that thing fights them or goes overland rampaging, I reckon it won’t want to get back in the water.”

“How dost thou purpose to surmount the wall?”

“You have a spell to levitate, right?”

“Dovestrom mentioned?” Lyridel said, voice flat.

“Never mind where I heard it. You cast that and lift us out…”

“I lift myself alone.”

“Fine! You go up the wall with a rope ladder. I climb up that and down the other side while you levitate down, and we’re set.”

“Thou would trifle wi’ a beast o’ such great dire aspect?” Lyridel asked.

“Come on, Lyridel. You like to gamble, don’t you?”

# # #

As he held the Crusader’s gaze, his hand movements grew more insistent, until Grossthorn burst out laughing.

“What do you expect, forgotten monk? That your wizard will fling lightning through our window and alert your petty confederate?”

Cipher got very still.

“You probably think,” the Crusader said quietly, “that we have captured the hunter, the elf… what was his name?”

No one answered.

“Wizard,” the Crusader said, voice rising only to the level of calm conversation. “Tell me the name of the hunter who was supposed to free the Balor.”

“Clay,” Lyridel said, looking down at his feet.

Cipher turned to look at the wizard, confused.

“They… they’ve taken my enchanted belt,” Lyridel said, and Grossthorn cackled.

“You wretched thief,” Cipher snarled.

“Oh no, I won it fairly. The only fool greater than the man who games with a wizard, is the wizard who keeps at the cards once he realizes his secret marks have become useless.”

“He was disguised, Cipher, I knew naught, ’twas… they promised thou wouldn’t be hurt…”

“Really? Effithaq was hardly pulling her blows!”

“His purpose was to lead you here,” Grossthorn said, striding forward and grinning broadly. “To give you hope, that drug which leads so many good people into ruin. To deliver you into my power.”

“Would you like me to kill the elf?” The Crusader made a gesture with his gauntlet and Lyridel was swept up off the ground, gripped by a giant hand composed of shadow and flame. He had time for one brief squawk before the massive thumb pressed under his jaw, shutting his mouth and forcing his head back.

“Speak the word and your betrayer can be crushed, burned, and rightly slain for his treachery.” The Crusader’s voice stayed level. “Or I could do this one.”

He set down the casket on the altar (and how that dark and bloody stone seemed to make its silver shine braver!) to gesture with his left hand. With a yelp, Grossthorn was caught up in another hand.

“Master, why? I have only served…”

“Silence. You have only served poorly, failing to take the Temple of Ice and Crystal. Now you are fit only as a pawn in this deeper game.” He returned his attention to the monk. “I could bang their heads together, killing both in an instant. Or I could burn them slowly, weeping and crying for your delight. Do not try to tell me there is nothing in you that does not wish them punished. I could kill both, or whichever one you pick.”

“All I want,” Cipher said, shaking, “is my memories.”

The Crusader’s face was impassive. “Very well. Come then.”

As quickly as he could make himself (which was a slow, cautious pace), Cipher walked to the altar and reached for his treasure.

“Perhaps,” the Crusader said, “they will help you make a wise decision.”

Cipher picked up the casket. As soon as he touched its silver surface, it opened, and out came his past.

# # #

There was a lot of trash in the alleyway. Clearly people used it as an unofficial neighborhood dump. No sewage — that went in the stream nearby — but broken furniture and crumpled paper, warped tools and piles of filthy cloth. It was a dark place, even in the day, with tall, close buildings shading it all day long.

Something moved by the heap of rags. There was a raw, high, human sound. It was a child, thin, with a distended belly, naked. It stumbled around a low mound of dirty fabric, pawing at it. A fold fell aside to reveal dirty hair, dirty skin, a hand.

The child sat and began to wail in earnest.

# # #

There was a lot of food in the marketplace, and the booths seemed tall as trees to one whose eyes were barely level with their counters. A thin, short lad, barefoot and rag-wrapped, moved through the crowd behind the prosperous, the dwarves with shoes and the tall humans whose clothes sometimes had no patches at all.

The plantains on the table’s corner were brown and spotted, set aside where they wouldn’t catch attention. The boy hoped the fruit vendors weren’t watching them. There were two, a brawny halfling and his sharp-eyed, sharp-faced daughter. The boy skulked, loitered, snuck glances to see when they were talking, and when the father was haggling and the girl was lifting strawberries from basket to bowl, he grabbed the bananas and turned to run.

“THIEEEEF!” The cry was immediate, and his feet slapped fast on the cold street cobbles. He looked over his shoulder and the girl seemed to fly at him, face red with righteous anger, how could a halfling look so large and fierce?

He dodged through the crowd until a woman’s wide hip swung into his path. He rebounded off it, stumbled on a curb, and then the girl’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Filthy street rat!”

He tried to turn and throw the fruit back at her, but she didn’t care about the produce, she slapped it away and then slapped him, standing over him and striking in a flurry, forehand and back. He put his hands up and tried to escape, but she had her grip all the way around his skinny arm, fingernails digging flesh. They staggered, they trampled the food he’d tried to steal, and then he just curled up in a ball, trying to protect his head.

That was how she dragged him back to her father, a man who gave beatings with closed fists.

The boy learned a valuable lesson: do not get caught.

# # #

The boy came up to the stranger’s sternum. The stranger was an elf with a cane. Her forearms were covered in scars. The boy had never seen an elf up close before.

“Oh dis one’s a climber like yuh want, goes up walls like a lemur!” Hatchet said.

“He’s thin.” The boy couldn’t tell if the elf was a woman or a man.

“O’course he’s fin,” Hatchet said. “Dem pipes an’ rain-ridges won’t hold a husky one. But strong for ’is size, all fings taken inter account.”

“Is he stupid?”

“Not stewpid, no, not noticeably stewpid,” Hatchet said, scratching the back of his neck the way he did when he was trying to figure out what someone wanted to hear. “Not going to get any bright idears and go off task, mind ye, but not one of nature’s bone-head mistakes.”

The elf squatted, stiffly, and looked the boy in the eye. He was suddenly sure she was a woman.

“Do you think you could kill someone, man-child?”

The boy nodded. He’d heard about killers for hire, even seen some people who were rumored to be assassins. They paid for their own meals.

“What do they call you?” she asked. He answered.

Her lip curled and she shook her head. “Disgusting,” she said, glancing at Hatchet, who shrugged.

“Yuh want ’im or not?”

Coins changed hands. “Come,” the woman said, turning to leave without looking back. “Call me Arquith.”

The child followed.

# # #

He was probably fourteen years old when she gave him his first mission. Perhaps just a tall twelve.

The bricks of the wayhouse were well tended on the first story, but Arquith’s training had not stopped with knifeplay, or the tricks of avoidance, or with endless physical exercises. It had barely ended when he slept, and so climbing was as natural to him as walking, and hiding was instinctive, like breathing. He climbed unseen to the third floor, and slipped his stiletto, smoke-darkened so it would not glitter, inside the window to flip up the catch.

He moved slowly, but with such economy that it was like quickness. He came in quiet, settled, and observed. The room was still, with a metal screen in front of the fireplace to keep its orange dimness deflected to the sides and top and along the floor. The bed remained in darkness.

He found an anchor point for his rope and secured it. He lowered the rest out of the window. It was a fifty-foot rope and Arquith had made him rub shoe-black into every inch of it, bare-handed, building up callus so that he would never get abrasion burns on his palms.

With escape seen to, he drew his weapon again and soft-stepped toward the bed. He was barefoot and every step was placed gently, the outside edge of his foot making contact first, gradually shifting his weight forward and in. If he stepped on anything pointy, he’d feel it before it went too deep, and his footfalls were nearly silent.

He checked the face of the sleeping man. He squinted. Yes, he was pretty sure this was the one, though lying on his side, eyes closed, mouth open, and high powdered wig on a stand beside the bed, he looked very different than he had awake. Here, supine, his jowls draped sideways instead of rolling up in rows atop his lacy neck-ruff. But it was the same man.

The sleeping merchant was immense. Would a path to the heart even work on someone so prodigiously obese? The head was better.

The man’s chin was tucked slightly, so going up through the roof of the mouth wouldn’t work. Straight through the eye would be easiest, but also messy, in all likelihood. The ear or the temple were facing upward, so he could drive down with his weight. He picked temple. His knife, though thin, was still at risk of hanging on the bone ring of the ear’s aperture.

He took a deep, smooth breath, raised the blade in his right fist, thumb over the pommel. He plunged it down, breathing out, putting his left hand on the top of the head an instant before the point made contact, to keep the head steady and aligned.

The merchant didn’t even have a chance to open his eyes.

The young assassin felt nothing. He waited, finger on the fat man’s neck, until the heart stopped. It didn’t take long. Then he wrapped a bit of warm wool blanket around the blade and pulled it out, cleaning it as it emerged.

Arquith gave him his first taste of brandy that night, and though he didn’t like it, he drank it all. After that, she called him , saying it was the Elven word for “weapon”.

# # #

By the time his beard came in patchy and thin,  had killed three people, or possibly four. (One more man, one woman, and one entity that had a man’s face on the front of its head and a woman’s on the back, along with four arms and four legs. That one had been strange. The woman-face had said, “I love you” as it died, and he was pretty sure she’d been talking to the man-face.) He dressed in black and bought drinks with gold coins and had at least seven knives on his person at all times. He’d kept that first stiletto, and added a dwarf butcher’s gut-cutter, a no-nonsense fighting dirk, a small skinning blade that fit nicely up a sleeve, a boot-knife, a wavy-bladed southern dagger with a curved handle and strange mottling on the metal, and a leaf-shaped throwing knife for the small of his back.

Arquith had a small but well-appointed apartment on the inside of a big building. It had no exterior windows whatsoever, and  slept in the entryway, curled like a dog on a mat by the only door. His instructor still gave him his missions and still bought him his meals, even though he had long since started earning gold as part of their arrangement.

“This one might be tricky,” she said. “He’s old, but he’s an abbot.”

“A what?”

“A monk. Like a king monk.”

 grunted.

# # #

He moved like a ghost through the temple halls. The guest room wasn’t even locked, didn’t have a trap, nor even a bell. The beams of the floor were built to creak — an old monastic trick. kept to the edges of the room, stepping where the wood had to be secured.

The old man in the bed looked frail as a cricket. When they’d stalked him on his procession into the city, the abbot leaned on a walking stick, thinner than Arquith’s cane, made of pale wood, with a handle carved like a songbird. It was propped in the corner, within easy reach of the sleeping man.

 moved steadily closer, deciding that this was another stab job. The old man was lying on his back, left arm flung over a third of his face, his head close to a small table with a glass of water and an unlit candle on it.

He raised the knife, aimed for an upward stroke into the right eye socket, and lunged.

The monk opened his eyes and moved very little. His head moved only inches to the left, but it was enough that the stroke missed. Especially since his left arm moved too. Only a little, but it brushed the knife aside and sent the tip into the frame of the bed… and it seemed to get weirdly heavy at the last moment, just an instant of weight, but enough to sink the blade so deep into the wood that the assassin couldn’t easily pull it free.

“That was very good!” the old man said, sliding sideways and away. With an oath, the young man pulled out his dirk and lunged.

“Oh no, no.” The man gently laid his fingers on’s arm, like a remonstration, again pushing and turning just enough that the dirk missed by an inch at most. “You’re losing focus.”

 pulled back, preparing another piston thrust, and the abbot didn’t resist it, even though his frail fingers stayed connected like sticky cobwebs. Yet when the killer made that second stab, that skinny and liver-spotted hand somehow folded his wrist down into a knot of terrible, terrible pain. The dirk clattered to the floor, and his arm felt like it was being wound around a giant gear, like a millwheel or the workings of a great clock, irresistibly drawing him forward until he was belly-down on the bed.

“All this struggle can only bring you pain.”

There was something very strange about the monk’s words, and the look on his face.  had seen something like it, or like its shadow, on the faces of people who had given him coins as a child. It was like sorrow, sorrow turned outward.

( did not, at that time, understand the idea of ‘compassion’. Even if he’d known the word, he would have had few occasions to use it.)

The murderer thrashed, biting back the sound of pain in his mouth, drawing another blade, but his own body was blocking any access to the old man.

“You have discipline and determination,” his intended victim said, kneeling on his back and effortlessly twisting ’s strong young arms into positions where their strength was all denied. “That’s laudable.”

The door slammed open and a burly man with a pole as tall as himself darted in. “Master!” he cried. “I heard struggle…!”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Just some ragamuffin killer,” the abbot said sadly. “It seems my foes have fallen on hard times. What is your name?” he asked his captive.

The answer he got was a brief selection of the choicest blasphemies Shadow Port streets had to offer.

The monk shook his head, eyes slightly widened. “That sounds about right. I’m going to call you ‘My Project’. Secure his limbs comfortably,” the old man told the man with the pole. “We’re taking him back to the monastery.”

“Master… is that wise?”

“I think I can turn this into a human being!”

# # #

From that point, the boy who had been Arquith’s  was referred to as “My Project”, or occasionally “The Master’s Project”, soon shortened to just “Project”. On the sea voyage to Glitterhaegen, this was often in the form of “The Master’s Project is vomiting again”, or “Take cheer, Project, we’re but one more day a’sea if the weather doesn’t turn.”

Being easily overpowered by a wilted man four times his age would have been humiliating enough, even if the victor hadn’t treated the whole murderous assault like a fascinating experiment. Finding out that the old man was named “Turnipseed” somehow made it worse. Project referred to him only as “Abbot”, which seemed less groveling than “Master”.

Project tried to escape in Glitterhaegen, and was easily recaptured by the man with the pole, whose name was “Stonebelly”.

“What did you do with my weapons?” Project demanded. Stonebelly had managed to lace the youth’s limbs around his staff in one of those contorted positions that blocked half his strength with the other half, while the monk could send him hopping this way or that with a finger’s push. They were heading back to the temple where they were staying as guests.

“Master threw them over the side of the boat,” Stonebelly replied.

“What? Those were mine! I paid for half those with my own money!”

“You won’t need them any more.”

“I’ll need them to skin your wretched soul out of your body,” Project began, and proceeded along those lines in the unique rhythms of Shadow Port gutter argot.

“With the right training, you won’t need those weapons because anything will be a weapon. With the right insight, you won’t need those weapons because nothing will be a weapon.”

“Oh, stick it in your… ow, OW! All right, I’m moving!”

# # #

When he tried to escape halfway to their destination, the Temple of the Oblique Path in the Giantwalk mountains, it was a hired outrider, a one-eared half-elf, who tracked him down and killed three of the seven great wolves that had been surrounding him while he tried to wrestle one unarmed. As the remainder of the pack fled and the half-elf bandaged him, she said, “You’re lucky ’twas just wolves. There’s owlbears out here too. Owlbears and worse.”

# # #

His next flight from the monastery was better planned. He managed to filch a knife from the kitchen, along with a store of food and rope and a heavy cloak. He wandered through the hills, badly lost, for two days before stumbling out of a canyon to find the abbot waiting for him, roasting a rabbit over a fire.

“Project, this is going to be very tiresome if you keep running off. We have given you food and a warm bed. Why flee? You lack the skills to survive even half the journey to the nearest town. And what awaits you there?”

“Arquith,” the boy said, stubbornly.

“No,” the abbot said. “She’s probably dead by now.”

“What?!?”

“I believe in compassion, but I have friends who are less dedicated to the principle.” He picked off a piece of meat and blew on it, holding it out to the boy, who slapped it aside. It was the first time in his life he’d rejected an offer of food.

“You’re just a double-faced liar! You talk about mercy and sure, you won’t dirty your own hands killing her, but you don’t stop anyone else willing!”

“You defend her because she is all you have known,” the old man said. “But she was much older… much farther down the path. And I rather suspect she chose her route, while you never knew anything different, now did you? I’m old, my Project. Taking you away from evil and selfishness may be the work of my last years. Trying it with her would have been harder, and longer, and she might never have changed.” He sighed. “I had to pick between her and you and I picked you.”

“You were a fool, then.”

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” He held out a skin of water, and Project stared at it. He was very thirsty.

“Someday I will kill you, old man.”

“Not today, I hope.” He frowned. “What did you have in Shadow Port that was so desirable, so much better than what we offer here?”

“I was free!”

“Were you? If you’d walked off a job or chosen not to kill this person or that… how would your Arquith have taken that?”

Project said nothing to that.

“At least I had… I… I knew what I was supposed to do,” the boy mumbled.

“Ah! Purpose! That’s an answer I like!” The abbot smiled that hard-to-not-smile-at smile and shook the water skin. “Please let me try to help you with that.”

Project narrowed his eyes, but he accepted the water.

# # #

Project found the studies of the Deadly Arts very simple. Slamming his hands into bowls of hot sand to harden them, or shin-kicking sisal-covered poles — these exercises hurt less than Arquith’s lessons. Brother Escape had much greater difficulty and was made to stay back in a beginner class with younger monks, while Project was pushed ahead to learn forms and grips and nerve-strikes with his elders.

He was also able at the farming and baking and cleaning and construction that the Temple of the Oblique Path demanded. He was strong and had clever hands. But the last, and most important aspect of monastic life was hard indeed. Brother Project was no scholar.

It was in this, of course, that Brother Escape excelled. Just as everyone soon learned that Project had been a ghetto assassin, they also learned that Escape (or Rindiridell, as he still liked to be called sometimes) was the useless stepson of a Glitterhaegen noble, who had come under threat from his mother’s family’s mercantile rivals. He had never washed his own clothes or cooked his own food, but he was fluent in three languages and could speak four others passably out loud, he could quote from “Fundamentals of Civil Governance Policy” by Rawtark the Blood-Spreader and discourse on the differences between its translations, his Elven writing was exquisite and his Dwarven runes were always tidy. He only had to read a prayer once to memorize it, and he played the Dwarven chaorchestra with exceptional skill.

Given the gulf between their abilities and experiences, it was inevitable that Escape and Project would either become dear friends or bitter rivals. It was a near thing, but they wound up friends.

# # #

Sister Harrow had gray hair, stringy muscles, and a gaze that was hard to meet without a flinch. The fighting monks of the Oblique Path had a profusion of different martial specialties: Harrow was the hard-punch expert. Her kicks were blisteringly fast and she grappled well, but her full-bore punch could shatter stone, and when she blocked a blow she left bruises.

Of all the training partners he learned beside and fought against, Sister Harrow frightened Project the most. But the first time he overcame her in free fighting practice (after three other fights, two ending with him knocked out, and the third shut down after she popped a rib loose from his sternum), he found it strangely unsatisfying. He told no one about that, however, not even Escape. Perhaps because the less martial monk was so proud of him, so impressed with his achievement.

# # #

“Adapt yourself to events!” Sister Harrow barked, teaching the intermediate class in the Deadly Arts. “Adapt events to the world!” Project was helping her, and Escape was, once more, struggling. “Adapt the world to yourself!”

“Just relax into the fall,” Project whispered, helping Escape leap over a waist-high barrier. He winced when he hit the woven mat below. “You have to be limp, let the impact pass through you.”

“You sound like the abbot when he talks about meditation,” Escape said, struggling to his feet. The chubbiness of his early tenure had gradually melted into round muscle, but he was still broad and awkward and still had beautiful teeth.

“This is completely different!”

“How do you know?”

“Escape!” Harrow shouted. “Project! In the ring for free fighting!”

“Light strikes?” Project asked, assuming that was her plan, reaching for padded body armor.

“No, full force! No pads!” Harrow was staring at Escape as if she wanted to burn a hole in his body.

“Instructor…?” Escape said, glancing from the sister to Project.

“Go!”

Escape shuffled forward and launched a few tentative low kicks. Project blocked and half-heartedly tried to sweep the retreating foot. It didn’t work. Despite his many martial flaws, Brother Escape was, at least, firm on his feet.

“Harder!” Harrow cried. “Escape, if you aren’t fierce he’ll tear you to pieces!”

Escape pressed inward, pivoting, landing blows on Project’s ribs as one swung and the other ducked.

“Project! Are you going to let him do that?”

He kicked Escape in the stomach, hard enough to propel his friend back but too slow to do any real damage.

“Halt!”

Harrow darted between them, a sheathed saber clutched in her hands. Before either was quite sure what was happening, she’d delivered a stinging series of slaps with it to their faces, their backs, their legs, and shoulders, flitting from one to the other, swift as a guttering candle flame.

“Neither one of you is fighting,” she spat, disgusted. “Project, do you think you’re doing him a favor with lethargic strikes? You are teaching him only how to be soft, weak, and useless! And you, Escape, do you think you need to hold back against him? Your only chance is to leave nothing in reserve! There is more in you than you believe, and the only way to find it is to let yourself truly fight, for the first time in your life!” She stepped back, holding up the sword. “When I drop this, I want to see you fight as if all lives you love depend on it, and if I do not, I will discipline you again with the naked blade. Am I clear?”

The two combatants exchanged a confused glance, then looked at their instructor. She looked like death itself.

The blade descended and Project lunged. He’d decided to end this as quickly as he could, and Escape looked shocked, giving way before a flurry of punches and kicks, but then… he stopped. He turned against a thrust kick and hooked Project’s head in the angle of two clenched hands. Project could see his friend's look of distraught astonishment, but he could also see the knee rising into his face. He turned his head, taking it on the cheek instead of the eye, and feeling his neck bones shift in place. Escape got the knee up and down once fast, but the second time Project looped his arm behind the knee and clutched it. Then he dropped back, sprawling on his back to send the larger boy flopping forward on his face. But it didn’t work. Project went down face-up, but Escape adjusted his weight, hopped forward, and landed on Project’s chest, knee-first.

There was a moment where they exchanged expressions — one face showing pain and shock, the other astonishment and regret — and then Project got the other trainee by the shoulder, rolled him over and immobilized him from the top. He hit Escape in the face. Escape raised a hand to block and Project caught it, bent it, rendered it useless, and struck again. Escape twisted, he waved his free arm, and Project captured that as well, hit him again, adjusted his position to keep him fully stuck, hit him, adapted to his weakening attempts to get free, hit him, hit him…

“That’s enough.”

He continued to strike. Words didn’t make sense to him.

Harrow didn’t tell him to stop again, she just tackled him off the larger monk and rolled him into a painfully restrained spinal stretch. (Its official name was “constriction of the peeled crawdad”.)

“Project! Come out of it! Yield!” Harrow barked.

“I’m… I’m… yes. I yield.”

She let him go and he could see Brother Escape sitting up, supported by two younger students, while a third rinsed blood from his shattered nose and sundered lip.

Project stared. Then he burst into tears, sprang to his feet, and ran.

# # #

He found the abbot in the kitchen, eating sandy brown paste out of a small bowl.

“My Project! What is it?”

“I hit Rindiridell! Harrow made me do it! I hit him so hard, his face… oh, Master, his face!”

“All right, take this stool, compose yourself.”

“Harrow made us fight! No pads, full force! She made us!”

“I know. She consulted with me about it.”

Project tilted his head, uncomprehending. “You… let her? Why? Why would you do that?”

The old man took a clean dishrag and soaked it in water brought in from the rain barrel. “Put this on your face,” he said. Project did.

“You have learned compassion,” he told the younger man.

“I… what?”

“You should try meditating now. I bet it works really well for you!”

“You’re changing the subject!”

“Not really.” The abbot sat next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “This is the first time I’ve seen you cry,” he said.

“It’s the first time I’ve cried since…” Project trailed off. The last time, Arquith had hurt him. He didn’t want to bring that up.

“And yet, you’re not hurt. Not as badly as Harrow has wounded you.”

“Well, no, though Escape did deliver one hell of a knee-spear. I’ve never seen him…” He frowned.

“What you just experienced,” the abbot said, “was a re-balancing. A sort of transfer. Rindiridell has learned fierceness. Some day he will have need of strength, and when that time comes, he will draw on what you gave him here today. He had to suffer for that, but his wounds will heal quickly and the strength will remain.

“You, I think, have suffered more, because your imbalance was more grievous. Some day you will have need of your friend’s mercy.”

“I don’t ever want to be this sad again,” the Master’s Project said, and his voice was like that of a little boy.

“Compassion is no easy mistress,” the abbot sighed.

“It hurts too much, I can’t… how can anyone live like this?”

“People surprise you. People can get used to anything.”

# # #

Project cried intermittently for the next day and a half, and never more than when Escape came to tell him it was all right, he didn’t blame him.

“Next time she does that, we should double-team her,” Rindiridell said.

“It won’t happen again,” Project said, staring at his friend. He recognized the anger showing on Escape’s face. It was new to the other boy, but he’d seen it in mirrors.

# # #

The next time he meditated, he sat immobile for twelve hours and only stopped when the abbot stuck a moistened finger in his ear.

“Ugh!”

“See! I told you it would work better.”

“Why did you do that to my ear? That’s disgusting!”

“Nothing works better to snap someone out of a trance. You’ve been there all day.”

“What? No, it’s just been…” Project looked around at the shadows and realized how far they’d moved. He started to stand, then staggered.

“Stand up slowly,” Turnipseed said, chuckling. “Was it beautiful and miserable and beyond all words?”

“Yes…”

“Mm hm. And everyone always feels like they’re the first one to get there.”

# # #

When the Priestess came to the Monastery of the Oblique Path, everyone bowed, and everyone knew the abbot was dying.

She arrived in a flying chariot pulled by seven birds, each a different hue of the rainbow, and her loveliness was remarkable but, at the same time, neither off-putting nor lust-provoking. It was not a superior beauty: rather, looking at her, you felt that you yourself were having an exceptionally presentable day and were looking exactly as good as she did.

There was a feast to welcome her, though the old master had very little. For the last few months, he’d been eating less and less, deflecting concerned questions with the same gentleness that he’d previously used on punches and spear-thrusts. “I’m just practicing my inedia,” he’d say when tempted with one delicacy or another. “Subsisting on sunlight and breath is kinder to my digestion.”

After the brief uproar of her arrival, the temple returned to its usual rhythms. For Project, this meant teaching advanced combat and basic philosophy. He was in the midst of the latter when Stonebelly came to get him.

“There are people who pray in the morning,” Project told the acolytes, “‘Oh my God, let me have this, and that, and the other thing,’ and then in the evening they pray ‘Oh my God, thank you that I received this particular thing I desired.’ But others pray in the evening ‘Oh God, let me live to wake up!’ and, when they do, greet the day with ‘Oh God, thank you that I lived to awaken!’ Which people do you think are more anxious? Meditate on it for one hour, then compose an essay in response, explaining your insights. Calligraphy counts!”

The youngsters groaned, and Project saw the older monk’s beckoning gesture.

“The Master wants to see you,” he whispered. “The Priestess is with him. I… do not think he will be thanking the gods tomorrow morning.”

Project gripped the other monk’s shoulder for a consoling moment.

“Ho, My Project!” Turnipseed’s skin was pale and drawn, but his eyes still twinkled, and Project no longer tried to resist his grin. “You once swore you would kill me.”

“More than once, I suspect.”

“You’re going to lose your chance if you don’t act soon,” the old man said.

“It’s an oath I’m happy to break.” He seated himself by his master’s bed. The Priestess was sitting on the other side.

“Your abbot is very proud of you,” she said. Her voice sounded the way spring sunlight feels on bare skin. “He says you are fully and completely a human being.”

“I hope he’s right.”

She looked at him with compassion, profound compassion.

“Do you know the Crusader?” she asked.

“I know of him,” Project said. “I have not looked upon him and do not wish to.”

“He and I are in conflict, of course. Yet at the same time, we stand side by side against the Abyss.”

“Only because you wish the world to be free and he wishes it in chains, and neither of you wishes it ruined like a dropped plate.”

She shrugged. “One cannot be picky about who catches one’s plate. The Crusader knows about you.”

“How?”

“He has ways. He says that the monks here have enslaved your mind, and that your true nature is violent, selfish, and indifferent to suffering.”

Project sat back. “I see,” he said.

“I have told him that I think these monks have freed your spirit, and that your nature has changed, becoming compassionate, just, and peaceful.”

“I hope that’s true.”

“There is one way to find out.”

Project tilted his head as she brought forth a beautiful silver casket.

“He and I could settle our differences in any number of ways,” she said, “but most would involve the clash of our agents, and those agents are needed to resist the Abyss. So if you agree, we are going to set a wager upon you.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Let us lock away your memories in here. We then set you upon the world, blank and unspoiled, until such time as your soul settles into either evil or good. However the bet falls, neither of us will harm you afterward, nor direct our people to harm you, and your full recollections will be restored.”

“If I say no?”

“That is entirely your right,” she said, but all three of them knew, as he looked upon the abbot, what he would say.

“You are a fine monk,” Turnipseed said, “but not really fit for the monastery. You are competent in our arts and have studied our beliefs with great thoroughness, but your place is out there. You belong to the world.”

# # #

There was much more besides — his first kiss, his deepest embarrassments, private and personal milestones that meant everything to him but would puzzle an outsider. Contained inside was his life, good and bad, and when he opened it, he knew it fully.

So did the Crusader, and Grossthorn, and Lyridel.

# # #

Cipher looked up from the small silver chest, and gently closed it. “So,” he asked the Crusader. “Has my soul settled, then?”

“Not just yet. You have not yet answered my initial question. Whom,” he said, gesturing with his gauntlets, “shall I kill?” As he raised his hands, both Lyridel and Grossthorn squirmed.

“Did you know the Thurlbies would steal the casket, all those months ago?”

“That was just an event that happened, and I had no hand in it. Come now. Make your choice. I know your anger,. If you do not destroy this sorry pair, you will regret it in days to come, and more than once.”

“No.”

“Keep in mind that they have seen everything that came out of that little box. I cannot order Grossthorn to harm you, but you and I both know he needs no encouragement.”

“Do not kill them.”

“You mouth the words the monks put in you, but your heart is not behind them. Surely Horm’s fate, and the mercy shown to Amblard, and the treachery of this sad elf show you how hollow it all is, this compassion old Turnipseed taught you.”

“If compassion is hollow, it’s because we have not filled it enough.”

“Consider the world, then! All the beauty of this Age can be preserved, and the Abyss flung back and sealed by the joint power of Gods Dark and Bright! It only requires the strength of a realist, one who knows he does not need the poison of others’ pity.”

“A world without pity is not worth saving. Let them go.”

With that request, the crushing fists dissolved, leaving both Grossthorn and Lyridel to sprawl on the floor.

Then, light.

At first, Cipher thought the roof had come off, but this was nothing like the grim, brooding gray of the outside sky. It was warm, and joyful, and indifferent to guilt and deserving. The Crusader looked truly sad, and truly resigned, as he looked up at its source.

The Priestess descended on a shaft of radiance, coming past the chandelier and outshining it as the sun would, without bringing blindness. She said nothing and took no specific action, but suddenly the dark and forbidding hall seemed shabby and ridiculous. With its dusty corners illuminated in full, with the cracked and flawed varnish on the pews revealed, with the carvings looking gaudy and crude, the fortress of ominous evil was transformed into an unfortunate embarrassment.

“Oh, Project,” she said, “you have repaid your master’s faith in you.”

“They call me Cipher now,” he said. “Can you please escort me and my…” he glanced at Lyridel, who wasn’t meeting anyone’s eye, “my colleague out of here?”

“Of course,” she said. “There’s just one thing I have to do first.”

She crossed the room, each step simpler than a child’s gesture, more graceful than a dancer’s leap. When she reached the altar, she frowned, and it crumbled away into gravel.

The Crusader sighed.

“It could not abide,” she said, in a tone that was not sorry, but not proud either.

She leaned in and kissed the Crusader on the cheek, then turned to take Lyridel and Cipher by the hand.

“This isn’t over!” Grossthorn shouted after them. “Don’t think I’m grateful you spared me, it was foolish of you! You’ve made me your doom, , Project, Cipher… any name you take I will curse.”

“Be quiet, Grossthorn,” the Crusader said, and hearing his tone, Cipher twisted his head to look back. Just before the Priestess gestured in light and took them away from that sad house of evil, he saw, briefly, a tear track on the warlord’s cheek.

# # #

Then they were in the meadow before the muster house, and the rain had passed, its drops glittering on each bent grass-blade.

“If he had won,” Cipher asked, “would you have let him put a temple like that in your holy city?”

“Yes.”

Lyridel sucked in his breath, looking from Cipher to the Priestess. “That’s a fearsome wager indeed! What did he have to give you?”

“He gave me nothing,” she replied. “For my victory, he had to accept a gift.”

“What gift?” the monk said.

“The hardest burden for a man in his position. He now knows that things can be better — that there is more to the world than expedience, that mercy and kindness are not mere illusions. It will be harder for him to serve as High Priest to the darkness now, though I’ve no doubt he’ll continue.”

Her smile was a little bit sad, but only a little.

“I have given him hope.”

THE END