The Desert Spear

CHAPTER 12 WITCHES

LEESHA’S PARENTS’ HOME CAME into sight. It was a modest house, considering her father’s means, but it served her family well enough, built against the back wall of her father’s paper shop. The path leading to the front door was warded.

Not that Rojer was paying much attention. He walked slightly behind Leesha, so he could gaze at her without her noticing. Her pale skin was a sharp contrast to her night-black hair, and her eyes were the color of sky on a clear day. His eyes drifted over her curves.

Leesha turned to him suddenly, and Rojer started, quickly raising his eyes.

“Thanks again for doing this, Rojer,” Leesha said.

As if Rojer could refuse Leesha anything. “It’s hardly a chore to sit through a meal, even if your mother’s cooking could try a coreling’s teeth,” he said.

“For you, maybe,” Leesha said. “If I show up alone, she ’ll plague me until I’m ready to spit over when I’m going to find a husband. With you there, she may at least cover her fangs. Perhaps she ’ll even take us for a pair and draw off entirely.”

Rojer looked at her, his heart stopping. He slipped into his Jongleur’s mask, face and voice betraying not a bit of what he was feeling, and asked, “You wouldn’t mind your mother thinking us a pair?”

Leesha laughed. “I’d love it. Most of the town would accept it, too. Only you and Arlen and I would know how ridiculous it is.”

Rojer felt like she had slapped him, but his heart resumed beating, and with his mask in place Leesha noticed nothing.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Rojer said, changing the subject.

“Arlen?” Leesha asked, and Rojer winced. “Arlen! Arlen! Arlen!” she said, laughing. “It’s just his name, Rojer. I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t have one, however mysterious he wants to seem.”

“I say let him seem as he likes,” Rojer said. “Arrick always said, if you rehearse an act you never mean the audience to see, sooner or later they’ll see it. All you need is one slip, and his name will be on every lip in town.”

“So what if it is?” Leesha asked. “The ‘Painted Man’ isn’t comfortable in town because folk treat him differently. Admitting he has a name might go a ways toward fixing that.”

“You don’t know what he’s left behind him,” Rojer said. “Could be some folk might get hurt if his name got out, or others might come hunting him with some account to settle. I know what it’s like to live like that, Leesha. The Painted Man saved my life, and if he doesn’t want his name out, I mean to forget I know it, even if it means giving up the song of the century.”

“You can’t just forget things you’ve learned,” Leesha said.

“Not all of us have as much space upstairs as you,” Rojer said, tapping his temple. “Some of us fill right up, and forget the old things we have no use for.”

“That’s nonsense,” Leesha said. Rojer shrugged.

“Anyway, thank you again,” Leesha said. “I’ve no end of men volunteering to stand in front of demons for me, but not one who’ll stand in front of my mother.”

“Reckon Gared Cutter would do both,” Rojer said.

Leesha snorted. “He’s as much my mother’s creature as any. Gared destroyed my life, and she wants me to forgive him and make him babies still, as if him taking so well to demon killing somehow makes him a catch worth having. She’s nothing but a manipulative witch, poisoning everyone around her.”

“Bah!” Rojer said. “She’s not so bad. Understand her, and you can play her like a fiddle.”

“You’re underestimating her,” Leesha said. “Men see her beauty and refuse to look past it. You may think it’s you doing the charming, but in truth she’ll be seducing you like she does every man, turning them against me.”

“That’s tampweed talk,” Rojer said. “Elona isn’t some corespawned genius bent on destroying your life.”

“You just don’t know her well enough,” Leesha said.

Rojer shook his head. “Arrick taught me all about women, and he said the ones like your mum, who were really beautiful once but are starting to show their age, are all the same. Elona was always the center of attention when she was young, and that’s the only way she knows how to interact with the world. You and your father have long conversations about warding that she’s no part of, and it makes her starve to be noticed, any way she can. Make her think she’s the center of attention, even if she’s not, and she’ll eat out of your hand.”

Leesha looked at him a moment, then barked a laugh. “Your master didn’t know a thing about women.”

“He sure seemed to,” Rojer replied, “considering how adept he was at bedding them.”

Leesha raised an eyebrow at him. “And how many has his apprentice bedded using these brilliant techniques?”

Rojer smiled. “Kissing tales aren’t the kind I spin, but a Milnese sun says they work on your mum.”

“Taken,” Leesha said.

“So the merchant tells Arrick, ‘I paid you to teach my wife to dance!’ ” Rojer said, “and Arrick, calm as dawn, looks at him and says, ‘I did. Ent my fault she preferred to do it lying down.’ ”

Elona burst out laughing, sloshing wine from her cup as she banged it on the table. Rojer joined her, and they clapped their cups together and drank.

Leesha scowled at them from the other end of the table where she and her father were talking. She honestly didn’t know which she dreaded more: winning the bet with Rojer, or losing it. Perhaps bringing him was a bad idea. The bawdy stories were bad enough, but worse was the way Rojer’s eyes kept flicking to her mother’s cleavage, though she could hardly blame him, the way Elona had it on display.

The plates had long since been cleared. Erny sat leafing through the book Leesha had brought him, his eyes tiny behind the thin, wire-framed glasses that never seemed to leave the edge of his nose. Finally, he grunted and set it aside for later, gesturing at the stack of bound leather books in front of Leesha.

“Only had time to make a few more,” he said. “You fill them faster than I can bind.”

“Blame my apprentices,” Leesha said, fetching the teakettle from the fire. “They make three copies for every book I fill.”

“Still,” Erny said. “I only had one grimoire of wards my entire life, and never filled it. How many is this you’ve made now? A dozen?”

“Seventeen,” Leesha said, “but it’s as much demonology as wards, and more comes from the Painted Man than me. Just copying the wards on his skin filled several books.”

“Oh?” Elona asked, looking up. “And how much of his skin have you seen?”

“Mother!” Leesha cried.

“Creator knows, I’m not judging,” Elona said. “You could do worse than bear the Deliverer’s child, even if he’s a horror to look at. But you’d best get to it, if that’s your plan. Plenty younger and more fertile than you will soon be vying for the privilege.”

“He’s not the Deliverer, Mum,” Leesha said.

“That’s not how everyone else tells,” Elona said. “Even Gared worships him.”

“Oh, and if Gared Cutter thinks something, it mustbe right,” Leesha said rolling her eyes.

Rojer whispered something in Elona’s ear, and she laughed again, turning her attention back to him. Leesha blew out a sigh of relief.

“Speaking of the Painted Man,” Erny said, “where has he got off to? Smitt tells me another Messenger’s come from the duke, summoning him to an audience, but again he’s nowhere to be found on Messenger day.”

Leesha shrugged. “I doubt he much cares about an audience with the duke. He doesn’t consider himself one of Rhinebeck’s subjects.”

“You’d best tell him to think twice,” Erny said. “The Hollow isn’t producing wood like it should, and Rhinebeck is getting angry. Ignoring Messengers may hold him off now, while the road is choked with snow and he can’t send a sizable force, but come spring melt the duke will want answers, and assurance that Deliverer’s Hollow remains loyal.”

“Does it?” Rojer asked, looking up. “If the Painted Man sets himself at odds with Rhinebeck, the Hollow would likely flock to his banner in an instant.”

“Yes,” Erny agreed. “Other hamlets, as well, and probably a great many folk in Fort Angiers itself. The Painted Man could start a civil war with a word, which is why it’s all the more important he declare his intentions before Rhinebeck does something rash.”

Leesha nodded. “I’ll talk to him. I have unfinished business in Angiers, myself.”

“The only unfinished business you have is under your skirts,” Elona muttered. Rojer choked and wine spilled from his nose. Elona smiled smugly as she sipped from her cup.

“At least I can keep mine around my ankles!” Leesha snapped.

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” Elona said. “I may not know anything about politics or demonology, but I know you’re a winter away from becoming a spinster crone, and no matter how many corelings you leave dead behind you, you’ll still go to your grave regretting not having addedlife to the world.”

“I’m the town Herb Gatherer,” Leesha said. “Saving those who would have otherwise died doesn’t count as adding life to the world?”

“Vika saves lives,” Elona said, referring to one of Leesha’s fellow Gatherers. “Din’t stop her raising a brood for Tender Jona. Midwife Darsy’d do the same in an instant, if she could find a man able to close his eyes and stiffen long enough to put a child in her homely womb.”

“Darsy’s done more for this town than you ever will, Mother,” Leesha said. She and Darsy, both former apprentices of Hag Bruna, had been at odds once, but no longer. Darsy was now Leesha’s most devoted student, if not her best.

“Nonsense,” Elona said. “I did my duty, and gave the town you. You may be ungrateful for it, but I think the Hollow benefits well enough for my troubles.”

Leesha scowled.

“Any fool watching you and the Painted Man together can tell there’s been something between you,” Elona pressed, “and that it’s not to either of your satisfaction. Did he fail abed?” she asked. “Darsy gives me herbs for your father when he—”

“That’s ridiculous!” Rojer cried as Erny flushed red. “Leesha would never—”

Elona cut him off with a snort. “Well she sure ent going with you. It’s plain as day you got the eye for her, but you ent good enough, fiddle boy, and you know it.” Rojer’s face turned beet red. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“You’ve got no right to talk to him like that, Mother,” Leesha said. “You don’t know—”

“Always what I don’t know!” Elona barked. “Like your poor mum is too dim to see the sun shining in her face!” She gulped her wine, and her face took on a cruel cast Leesha knew well, and feared.

“Like I know the boy’s song about how the Painted Man found you after you was left for dead by bandits on the road,” Elona said. “And I know how men treat women like us, when there ent no one to stop them.”

“Mother,” Leesha warned, her voice hardening.

“Not how I’d wanted you to lose your flower,” Elona said, “but it was time it was done somehow, and I expect you’re the better for it.”

Leesha slapped her hand down on the table, glaring. “Get your cloak, Rojer,” she said. “It’s getting dark, and we’re safer out among the demons.” She shoved the blank books into her satchel and set it over her shoulder as she snatched her richly embroidered cloak from the peg by the door and threw it about her shoulders, clasping it at her throat with a silver ward pin.

Erny came over, hands spread in apology. Leesha embraced him as Rojer put on his cloak. Elona stayed at the table with the wine.

“I really wish you wouldn’t walk around after dark, magic cloak or no,” Erny said. “We can’t exactly replace you.”

“Rojer has his fiddle,” Leesha said, “and I have more tricks than wards of unsight, if a coreling were to somehow find us. We ’re quite safe.”

“You can witch all the Core to your bidding, but not a simple man,” Elona sneered into her glass.

Leesha ignored her, putting up her hood and stepping out into the dusk.

“Now do you believe me?” she asked Rojer as the door closed behind them.

“Seems I owe you a sun,” Rojer admitted.

The snow crunched under Leesha’s booted feet as she and Rojer headed to the village proper. Their breath fogged in the crisp winter air, but their cloaks were lined with fur and kept them warm enough.

Rojer hadn’t said a word since Elona’s comment. His head was down, face buried under long locks of red hair. His fiddle was tucked in its case, slung beneath his motley cloak, but she could tell from the way his fingers flexed that he longed to hold it. He always played the fiddle when he was upset.

Leesha knew Rojer shined on her. Most everyone knew, really. Half the women in town thought she was mad for not snatching him up. And why not? Rojer had a boyishly pretty face and a quick wit. His music was beautiful beyond words, and he could bring a laugh from Leesha when she was at her lowest. He’d shown more than once that he was willing to die for her.

But try as she might, Leesha could not bring herself to see him as a lover. Rojer had barely seen eighteen winters, a full ten years younger than her, and he was her friend. In many ways, Rojer was her only friend. The only person she trusted. He was the little brother she’d never had. She didn’t want to hurt him.

“Your apprentice Kendall saw me the other day,” Leesha said. “Pretty girl.”

Rojer nodded. “My best student, too.”

“She asked if I knew how to brew a love potion,” Leesha said.

“Ha!” Rojer barked. Then he stopped short and looked at her. “Wait, can you?”

Leesha laughed. “Of course not. But the girl doesn’t need to know that. I gave her a tincture of sweet tea instead and told her to share it with her would-be love. Watch out if she offers you tea, or you might be in for a night of kissing.”

Rojer shook his head. “Never stick your apprentice.”

“Another of Master Arrick’s brilliant maxims?” Leesha quipped.

Rojer nodded. “And one I’m happy to report he practiced as well as preached. I knew other apprentices in the guild who weren’t so lucky.”

“This hardly compares,” Leesha said. “Kendall’s nearly as old as you are, and she’s the one buying love potions.”

Rojer shrugged and put his hood up, pulling the edges of his motley cloak together to strengthen the wardnet. The last of the light had faded, and all around them misty forms were rising from the snow, solidifying into corelings that hissed and cast about, scenting them in the air but unable to find them.

Erny had set his house away from the village so that he would not have to endure complaints about the smell of his papermaking chemicals, but that distance also put it outside the great ward of forbidding that protected the village proper.

A wood demon wandered into Rojer’s path, sniffing the air. Rojer froze, not daring to move as it searched. There was a sharp movement under the cloak, and she knew one of the warded throwing knives he kept strapped to his wrists had fallen into the palm of his good hand.

“Just walk around it, Rojer,” Leesha said, continuing down the path. “It can’t see or hear you.” Rojer tiptoed around the demon, twirling the knife nervously in his fingers. He had grown up juggling blades and could put one into a coreling’s eye at twenty paces.

“It’s just unnatural,” Rojer said, “walking plain as day through hordes of corelings.”

“How many times must we do it before you tire of saying that?” Leesha sighed. “The cloaks are safe as houses.” The Cloaks of Unsight were her own invention, based on wards of confusion the Painted Man had taught her. Leesha had modified the wards and embroidered them with gold thread into a fine cloak. Demons ignored her when she wore it, even if she walked right up to them, so long as she moved at a slow, steady pace and kept it wrapped around her.

She’d made Rojer’s cloak next, embroidering the wards in bright colors to match his Jongleur’s motley, and she was pleased to see that he seldom removed it, even in daylight. The Painted Man never seemed to wear the one she had made for him.

“Nothing against your wards, but I don’t think I ever will,” Rojer said.

“I trust your fiddle magic to keep me safe,” Leesha said. “Why don’t you trust mine?”

“I’m out here in the dark, aren’t I?” Rojer asked, fingering his cloak. “It’s just eerie. I hate to say it, but your mother wasn’t far off the mark when she called you a witch.”

Leesha glared at him.

“A Ward Witch, at least,” Rojer clarified.

“They used to call Herb Gathering witching, too,” Leesha said. “I’m just warding, same as anyone.”

“You’re not the same as anyone, Leesha,” Rojer said. “A year ago, you couldn’t ward a windowsill, and now the Painted Man himself takes lessons from you.”

Leesha snorted. “Hardly.”

“See the light,” Rojer said. “You argue his own wards with him all the time.”

“Arlen is still thrice the Warder I am,” Leesha said. “It’s just…it’s hard to explain, but after looking at enough wards, the patterns started…speaking to me. I can look at a new ward and just by studying the lines of power, guess its purpose more often than not. Sometimes I can even change the lines to alter the effects. I’ve been trying to teach the knack to others, but none seems to get past rote.”

“That’s what fiddling’s like for me,” Rojer said. “The music speaks to me. I can teach my apprentices to play songs well enough, but you don’t play ‘The Battle of Cutter’s Hollow’ for the corelings to pacify them. You have to…massage their mood.”

“I wish someone could massage my mother’s mood,” Leesha muttered.

“About time,” Rojer said.

“Ay?” Leesha asked.

“We’ll be in town soon,” Rojer said. “The sooner we talk about your mum, the sooner we’ll be done talking about it, and can get on with our business there.”

Leesha stopped short and looked at him. “What would I do without you, Rojer? You’re my best friend in the world.” She put just the right emphasis on the word friend.

Rojer shifted awkwardly, walking on. “I just know how she gets to you.”

Leesha hurried after. “I hate to think my mum could be right about anything…”

“But she often is,” Rojer said. “She sees the world with cold clarity.”

“Heartless clarity is more like it,” Leesha said.

Rojer shrugged. “Rabbit in one hat, bunny in the other.”

Leesha casually reached out to take snow from a low branch in her gloved hand, but Rojer noted the move and easily dodged the snowball she threw at him. It struck a wood demon, which looked about frantically for its assailant.

“You want children,” Rojer said bluntly.

“Of course I do,” Leesha said. “I always have. Just never seemed to find the right time.”

“The right time, or the right father?” Rojer asked.

Leesha blew out a breath. “Both. I’m only twenty-eight. With the help of herbs, I can likely carry a child to term for another two decades, but never as easily as I might have ten, or even five years ago. If I’d married Gared, our first child might be fourteen now, and there would likely have been several more after that.”

“Arrick used to say, There’s nothing gained in lamenting what never was,” Rojer said. “Of course, he was living proof of how hard those words are to live by.”

Leesha sighed, touching her belly and imagining the womb within. It wasn’t Gared she lamented, really. Her mother had been right about the bandits on the road, as Rojer well knew. But what she had never told him, or anyone, was that it had been her fertile time when it happened, and she had feared a child might come of it.

Leesha had hoped Arlen would add his seed when she seduced him a few days later. If he had, she would have raised the child, if one came, in the hope it sprang from tenderness and not violence. But the Painted Man had refused, vowing to have no children lest the demon magic that gave him his strength infect them somehow.

So Leesha had brewed the tea she had sworn never to brew, and ensured that the bandits’ seed could find no purchase. When it was done, she had wept bitterly over the empty cup.

The memory brought fresh tears, cold lines streaking her cheeks in the winter night. Rojer reached out, and she thought he meant to wipe them away, but instead he put his hand into her hood and withdrew it suddenly, producing a multicolored handkerchief as if from her ear.

Leesha laughed despite herself, and took it to dry her tears.

By the time they reached town, half a dozen corelings were trailing them, sniffing at the footprints in the snow beyond the radius of the cloaks’ magic. A woman at the edge of the forbidding raised her bow, and warded arrows struck the demons like thunderbolts, killing those that failed to flee.

All the young women in Deliverer’s Hollow studied the bow now, starting as soon as they could hold one. Many of the older women, not strong enough to pull a great bow, had begun learning to aim a loaded crank bow so they could throw in. The women worked in shifts to patrol the edge of town, killing any demons that ventured too close.

As they came into the light, Leesha saw Wonda waiting for them. Tall, strong, and homely, it was easy to forget the girl was only coming to her fifteenth summer. Her father, Flinn, had died in the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow, and Wonda was sorely wounded. She’d recovered fully, though she was badly scarred, and had become attached to Leesha during her time in the hospit. Wonda followed Leesha like a hound, ready to kill any coreling that came near. She carried the yew great bow the Painted Man had given her, and could put it to deadly use.

“I wish you’d let me escort you, Mistress Leesha,” Wonda said. “You’re too important to walk alone outside the forbidding.”

“That’s what my father says,” Leesha said.

“Your father is right, mistress,” Wonda said.

Leesha smiled. “Perhaps when your Cloak of Unsight is finished.”

“Really?” Wonda asked, her eyes widening. Each cloak took many, many hours to make, and was a royal gift.

“If you’re determined to shadow my steps,” Leesha said, “I don’t see there’s much alternative. I gave the pattern to my apprentices to embroider last week.”

“Oh, thank you, mistress!” Wonda said, throwing her long arms around Leesha and hugging her in a girlish fashion that seemed unfit for one taller and stronger than most men.

“Air,” Leesha gasped at last, and Wonda let go and drew back quickly, looking sheepish.

“Isn’t she a little young to be venturing outside the forbidding?” Rojer asked quietly as they headed into town. The cobbled streets of Deliverer’s Hollow looped and twisted awkwardly and often inconveniently, but in so doing they formed a huge, complex ward of protection designed by the Painted Man himself. No coreling, big or small, could rise through the soil of the town proper, nor set foot upon it, nor fly above. The streets glowed softly, warm with magic.

“She does it already,” Leesha said. “Arlen caught her out hunting demons alone twice last week. The girl’s determined to get herself cored. I want to keep her where I can see her.”

Once, the village would have been dark and silent after sunset, but now the glowing cobbles cast light for dozens of people moving to and fro. The Hollow had lost many in the battle almost a year ago, but its numbers had swelled as folk filtered in from nearby hamlets, drawn to the growing legend of the Painted Man. These newcomers stared and whispered to one another as Rojer and Leesha, the Painted Man’s only known confidants, passed.

They entered the Corelings’ Graveyard, which was once the old town square where so many demons and Hollowers had perished. Despite its name, the graveyard was still the center of activity for the town: the place where the villagers trained and where the Cutters assembled each night to receive the blessings of Tender Jona before heading out to hunt demons. They stood there now, heads and broad shoulders bowed, drawing wards in the air as Jona prayed for their safety in the naked night.

Other villagers stood by, heads bowed to join in the blessing. There was no sign of the Painted Man. He spared no time for blessings, likely already out hunting. Sometimes days passed with no sign of him other than demon bodies left freezing in the snow until the morning sun rose to burn them from the world.

“There’s your promised,” Rojer said, nodding toward Gared Cutter, who stood at the forefront of the Cutters, stooping low so that Tender Jona, whom Gared had bullied as a child, could take a charcoal stick and draw a ward on his forehead.

A giant, Leesha’s former betrothed towered over even the other Cutters, few of whom stood under six feet. His hair was long and blond, and his bronzed arms were thick with muscle. A pair of warded axe handles jutted over his shoulders, and his gauntlets, tough leather bolted to hammered steel etched with wards, hung from his belt. They would soon be black with sizzling demon ichor.

Gared was not the oldest of the Cutters, nor the wisest by any means, but he had emerged from the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow a leader whom even the eldest followed without question. It was he who shouted at the men to train harder in the day, led the charge at night, and left more dead corelings in his wake than any save the Painted Man himself.

“Whatever he’s done to you,” Rojer said, “you have to admit, he’s the sort that gets songs sung and statues made for him.”

“Oh, there’s no denying he’s beautiful,” Leesha said looking at Gared. “He always was, and drew others to worship him like iron to a magnet. I was one of them, once.”

She shook her head wistfully. “His da was the same way. My mother broke her wedding vows repeatedly with him, and on an animal level, I even understand it. Both men were perfect specimens on the outside.”

She turned to Rojer. “It’s the inside that worries me. The Cutters follow Gared without question, but does he lead them in defense of the Hollow, or out of love of carnage?”

“We thought the same about the Painted Man, once,” Rojer reminded her. “He proved us wrong. Perhaps Gared will, too.”

“I wouldn’t gamble on it,” Leesha said, turning away from the scene and continuing on.

At the far end of the graveyard stood the Holy House, and built onto the side of the stone building was the new hospit, completed before the first snows.

“Ay, Mistress Leesha! Rojer!” Benn called, spotting them. The glassblower was standing with his apprentices, who where carrying blown items and large sheets of glass. Nearby, a group of fiddlers stood, tuning their instruments in a clamor. Benn gave a few quick instructions to his apprentices and came over to meet them.

“Ready to charge when you are, Rojer,” he said.

“How were last night’s results?” Leesha asked.

Benn reached into a pocket, producing a small glass vial. Leesha took the item, running her fingers over the wards thoughtfully. It seemed like ordinary glass, but the wards were smooth, as if the bottle had been heated again after they were etched.

“Try and break it,” Benn encouraged.

Leesha cast the vial down onto the cobbles as hard as she could, but the glass only bounced, ringing a clear note. She picked it up, studying it closely; there wasn’t the slightest mark upon it.

“Impressive,” she said. “Your warding is improving.”

Benn smiled and bowed. “You can break one on an anvil, if you’re determined, but it ent easy.”

Leesha frowned and shook her head. “They should resist even that. Let me see one you haven’t charged yet.”

Benn nodded, signaling an apprentice who brought another vial, almost identical to the first. “Here’s one of those we mean to charge tonight.”

Leesha studied the vial closely, tracing her fingernail down into the grooves of the etching. “Might be that the depth of the groove affects the power of the charge,” she mused. “I’ll think on it.” She slipped the vials into a pocket in her apron for later study.

“We’ve got production running smoothly now,” Rojer said. “Benn and his apprentices blow and ward by day, and my apprentices and I lure corelings in to charge them at night. Soon every home will have windows of warded glass, and we’ll be able to store liquid demonfire in quantity without fear.”

Leesha nodded. “I’d like to observe the charging tonight.”

“Of course,” Rojer said.

Darsy and Vika were waiting by the hospit doors. “Mistress Leesha.” Vika greeted her with a curtsy as they arrived at the hospit. She was a plain woman, neither beautiful nor ugly, sturdily built with breeder’s hips and a round face.

“You don’t have to curtsy every night, Vika,” Leesha said.

“Course I do,” Vika said. “You’re town Gatherer.” Vika was a full Herb Gatherer herself, but she and Darsy, both years Leesha’s senior, accepted Leesha as their leader.

“I doubt Bruna put up with that,” Leesha said. Her mentor, the town’s last Gatherer, had been a woman of terrible temper who spat upon meaningless formality.

“The old crone was too blind to see it,” Darsy said, coming up and giving Leesha a nod of greeting. Bowing and scraping was not Darsy’s way, but there was as much deference in that nod as in all Vika’s curtsies and mistresses.

The daughter of Cutter stock, Darsy was tall and heavyset, though more with muscle than fat. She could overmatch most men at festival feats of strength, and the heavy warded blade at her waist had cut the limbs from more than one demon seeking to finish off an injured person on the battlefield.

“Hospit’s ready, if the Cutters come back with wounded,” Darsy said.

“Thank you, Darsy,” Leesha said. The hospit was always busiest at midnight, when Cutters came back from the hunt. Even against warded axes, wood demons could be a terrifying foe. Under the canopy of trees, their skin blended into the bark as if they wore Cloaks of Unsight, and while some walked the forest floor, looking much like trees themselves, others stalked the limbs like monkeys, dropping unexpectedly on their prey.

Even so, fatalities among the Cutters were few. When a warded weapon struck a demon and flared to life, there was always feedback. The magic jolted through the wielder, bringing with it a flash of ecstasy and a feeling of invincibility. Those who tasted the magic were stronger and healed faster, at least until the dawn. Only Arlen still had power in the day.

“What are the apprentices working on?” she asked Vika.

“Eldest are embroidering your cloak patterns,” Vika said. “The rest are sterilizing instruments and practicing their letters.”

“I’ve brought fresh books and a new grimoire I’ve completed,” Leesha said, handing her the satchel.

Vika nodded. “I’ll have it copied right away.”

“You have your Gatherer’s apprentices copying wards?” Rojer asked. “Isn’t that better handled by Warders’ apprentices? I could have a word…”

Leesha shook her head. “Every one of my girls gets warding lessons now. I won’t have them left helpless at sunset like we were.”

Leaving Leesha to make her rounds in the hospit, Rojer went over to the music shell at the edge of the square where his apprentices gathered. They were a mixed bunch, as motley as Rojer’s pants. Some were Hollowers, but most had come from other towns, drawn to the tales of the Painted Man. Half of them were too old to lift a tool or weapon, and so they decided to try the fiddle, only to find that their fingers lacked the necessary dexterity. Several others were children whose skill might not tell for many years.

Only a handful of the remainder showed promise, pretty Kendall most of all. She was Rizonan, and new to the Hollow. Old enough to handle complex arrangements, but young enough to still learn quickly, she had a real aptitude for music. She was slender and quick, as adept at tumbling and acrobatics as fiddling. She would make a fine Jongleur one day.

Rojer did not immediately acknowledge his apprentices, and they knew to keep back until he did. He took out his fiddle and plucked the strings, checking their tune. Satisfied, he took up the bow in his crippled hand. He was missing his index and middle fingers, bitten off by a flame demon when he was only a child, but his two remaining fingers were limber and strong, and the bow became like an extension of his arm.

All the feelings he had hidden behind his Jongleur’s mask that night found voice in his music then, as he filled the square with a haunting melody. Layer by layer, he added complexities to the music, limbering his muscles and readying himself for the night’s work.

The apprentices applauded when he was finished, and Rojer bowed before taking them through a series of simpler melodies to warm them up. He winced at all the discordant notes. Only Kendall was able to keep pace with him, her face knit tight in concentration.

“Terrible!” he snapped. “Has anyone other than Kendall even lifted their fiddle since last night? Practice! All day, every day!”

Some of the apprentices grumbled at that, but Rojer played a jarring series of notes on his fiddle, startling them. “Don’t want to hear your grumbles, either!” he barked. “We’re looking to charm demons, not spin a wedding reel. If you ent gonna take that seriously, it’s time to put your fiddle back in its case!”

Everyone looked at their feet, and Rojer knew he had been too harsh. Not half as harsh as Arrick would have been, but more than felt fair. He knew he should say something encouraging, but nothing came to mind. Arrick hadn’t set much example there.

He walked away, breathing deeply. Without even thinking about it, he put his bow back to work, turning his guilt and frustration into music. He let the emotions drift off with the sounds, and he looked back to his apprentices and made the music speak to them, giving the hope and encouragement his words lacked. As he played, folk began to straighten, their eyes growing determined once more.

“That was beautiful, Rojer,” a voice said when he finally took bow from string. Rojer saw Kendall standing beside him. He hadn’t even noticed her approach—lost in his music.

“Are you thirsty?” Kendall asked, holding up a stone jug. “I brewed sweet tea. Still hot.”

Did Leesha know all along she meant it for me? Rojer wondered.

You ent good enough, fiddle boy, Elona had said, and you know it.

Leesha knew it, too, it seemed. She might as well have tied Kendall with a bow.

“Never much cared for sweet tea,” Rojer said. “Makes my hands shake.”

“Oh,” Kendall said, deflating. “Well…that’s all right.”

“I want you to solo tonight,” Rojer said. “I think you’re ready.”

Kendall brightened. “Really?” She gave a squeal and threw her arms around him, hugging a bit longer than was precisely necessary.

Of course, that was when Leesha chose to arrive. Rojer stiffened, and Kendall pulled back in confusion until she saw Leesha. She quickly stepped away from Rojer and dipped into a curtsy. “Mistress Leesha.”

“Kendall.” Leesha greeted her with a smile. “Is that sweet tea I smell?”

Kendall blushed a deep red. “I, ah…”

Rojer scowled. “Run and fetch your fiddle, Kendall.” He turned to Leesha. “Kendall is going to try a solo tonight.”

“Is she ready for that?” Leesha asked.

Rojer shrugged. “Is Wonda ready to hunt corelings? I was younger than Kendall when I first charmed a demon.”

“Your need was more dire,” Leesha said.

“It’s safe,” Rojer said. “I’ll be ready to take over if I’m needed, and the women will be watching with arrows nocked.” He nodded to the edge of the wards, where archers, including Wonda, had gathered in force.

They began preparations by ordering the archers to keep clear a wide area of ground past the edge of the forbiddance. Rojer then led his fiddlers into a series of loud, jarring notes, filling the air with an atonal cacophony that corelings hated. The music shell focused the sound to the area just outside the forbidding, where corelings tended to gather, sometimes in force.

Thus secure, the glassblower’s apprentices rushed out from the forbidding and placed warded glass throughout the clearing. There were large sheets, blown bottles, vials, even a glass axe that must have taken weeks to make and ward.

When the glassblowers were safely returned, the fiddlers changed their tune. Rojer led the music, calling out instructions to the others as he did, using them to amplify his special magic as he coaxed demons out of the woods and into the clearing. He then walked alone outside the forbiddance, calling with his music, controlling each step forward the corelings took until they were arranged as he liked.

“Kendall!” he called, and the girl stepped forward and began to play. Rojer softened his music and backed away from the corelings as she strengthened hers and approached them, until he was able to stop playing entirely, leaving the mesmerized demons to her sole control.

Rojer went to where Leesha waited by the ward’s edge. “She really is quite good,” he said proudly. “The demons will follow her around like puppies, charging everything they touch.”

Indeed, the corelings drifted after Kendall as she stepped carefully about the field. There were flares of light as demons touched the glass in their path, the etched wards siphoning off a tiny fraction of the demons’ magic and guiding it to new purpose.

The corelings hissed, clawing at the areas where they had felt the drain. Kendall tried to change her music to calm them again, but her fear was apparent in her playing as she began to miss notes. She tried to increase her tempo to compensate, and that only made things worse. The demons started to shake the confusion from their heads.

Rojer moved toward her slowly in his warded cloak, with plenty of time to reach her before the corelings turned ugly, but then Kendall misstepped. A bottle shattered under her foot, sending glass through the soft leather of her shoe. She cried out, and her bow slipped from the strings with a jarring sound.

Immediately the corelings perked up, and her spell shattered. Their nostrils flared as they caught the scent of her blood, and they shrieked, launching themselves at her.

Rojer broke into a run, but he had drifted far away to speak to Leesha, and one of the corelings buried its talons deep in Kendall’s body, pulling her close and sinking rows of teeth into her shoulder before he could get in range. Blood soaked her dress, and other demons leapt in, prepared to fight one another for a share of the kill.

“Archers!” Rojer cried desperately.

“We’ll hit Kendall!” Wonda cried back, and Rojer saw that all the women had bows drawn, but none dared risk the shot.

He put his fiddle to work, notes meant to frighten and drive off the demons. They shrieked and broke off their attack, Kendall collapsing to the ground, but there was blood in the air now, and they were not easily driven back. They hissed and swiped, blocking Rojer’s path.

“Kendall!” Rojer screamed. “Kendall!” Weakly, she lifted her head, gasping air as she reached a bloodied hand his way.

Suddenly a huge shape swept by Rojer, nearly bowling him over. He looked up to see Gared tackle one of the wood demons into another. Both corelings were brought down under the burly Cutter’s weight, and the wards on his gauntlets flared brightly as he laid heavy blows on the one he had landed upon. By the time the other recovered, he was up again, but the coreling was quick and bit hard into his arm.

Gared screamed and grabbed the demon’s crotch with his free hand. He flexed his mighty arms, lifting the huge wood demon and using it as a ram to drive into its fellows. He and the demons all went down in a tumble just as other Cutters rushed in, hacking at the prone creatures with warded axes.

His fiddle useless amid the commotion, Rojer hurried to Kendall’s side, staining his cloak with blood as he threw it over her. Kendall croaked weakly at him as Rojer struggled to lift her. The commotion had drawn more demons from the woods, though, faster than the archers could pick them off.

Gared, an axe in each hand and blood streaming down his arm, hacked his way to them. He dropped the weapons and lifted Kendall like a feather. With the archers and Cutters providing cover, he ran her to the hospit.

“I need a blood donor!” Leesha cried as Gared kicked in the hospit door. They laid Kendall on a bed, and apprentices ran for Leesha’s instruments.

“I’ll do it,” Rojer said, rolling up his sleeve.

“Check if he’s a match,” Leesha told Vika as she moved to scrub her hands and arms. Vika quickly lanced a sample from Rojer as Darsy tried to have a look at Gared’s arm.

“Worry about those that are hurt worse,” Gared said, pulling away. He pointed to the door, where other injured Cutters were being carried in.

There was a whirlwind of bloodied activity as the Herb Gatherers worked. Leesha cut and clamped and sewed Kendall for two hours as Rojer looked on, dizzy from the blood transfusion.

At last, Leesha paused to drag the back of a bloodied hand over her sweating brow. “Will she be all right?” Rojer asked.

Leesha sighed. “She’ll live. Gared, I’ll have a look at that arm now.”

“It’s just a scratch,” Gared said.

Leesha bit back a scowl, reminding herself how brave Gared had just been, but try as she might, she could not forget how his lies had almost ruined her life, and how he had brutally beaten any man caught speaking to her after she broke off their betrothal.

“You were bit by a demon, Gar,” she said. “You let the wound fester, and I’ll be cutting that arm off before you know it. Get over here.”

Gared grunted and complied. “It’s not so bad,” Leesha said, after she had washed the wound out with hogroot tincture. Charged by the magic he had absorbed, the clean cuts from the demon’s sharp teeth were already closing. She wrapped the arm in a clean bandage, and then took Rojer aside.

“I told you Kendall wasn’t ready for a solo,” she whispered angrily.

“I thought…” Rojer began.

“You didn’t think,” Leesha said. “You were showing off, and it almost cost that girl her life! This isn’t a game, Rojer!”

“I know it isn’t a game!” Rojer snapped.

“Then act like it,” Leesha said.

Rojer scowled. “We’re not all as perfect as you, Leesha.” His eyes were seething, but Leesha saw right through to the pain they hid.

“Come to my office,” she said, taking him by the arm. Rojer yanked his arm away, but followed Leesha to her office, where she poured him a glass of hard alcohol more suited to antiseptics than consumption.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was out of the light.”

Rojer seemed to deflate, falling into a chair and downing the glass in one gulp. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “I’m a fraud.”

“Nonsense,” Leesha replied. “We all make mistakes.”

“I didn’t make a mistake,” Rojer said. “I lied. I lied and said I could teach people how to charm corelings when in truth, I don’t even understand how I do it myself. Just like I lied last year and told you I could see you safely here from Angiers. It’s how I made my way in the hamlets after Arrick died, and how I got into the Jongleurs’ Guild. Seems lying is all I ever do.”

“But why?” Leesha asked.

Rojer shrugged. “Keep telling myself pretending to be something’s the same as being it. Like if I just pretend to be great like you and the Painted Man, it will be so.”

Leesha looked at him in surprise. “There’s nothing so great about me, Rojer. You know that better than anyone.”

But Rojer laughed out loud. “You don’t even see it!” he cried. “An endless line of weapons and wards comes from your hut, the sick and injured cured with a wave of your hand. All I can do is play my fiddle, and I can’t even save a life when I do. You and the Painted Man have become giants while I spend months teaching my apprentices, and all they’re good for is getting folk to dance.”

“Don’t belittle the joy you and your apprentices have brought to a town fraught with hardship,” Leesha said.

Rojer shrugged. “I do nothing a keg of ale can’t do on its own.”

Leesha took his hands in hers. “That’s ridiculous. Your magic is as strong as Arlen’s or mine. The fact that you have such trouble teaching it is just proof of how special you are.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Besides, however big I grow, I’ll always have my mum to cut me back down.”

It was a moonless night, and where Leesha and Rojer walked, far from the glow of the greatward, the darkness was near complete. Leesha walked with a tall staff, the end of which held a flask of chemics that glowed fiercely, casting light for them to make their way by. The flask and staff were etched with wards of unsight; corelings could see the light, but they could no more find the source than they could find the two of them in their warded cloaks.

“Don’t see why he couldn’t meet us in town,” Rojer muttered. “Hemight not feel the cold, but I do.”

“Some things are best said in private,” Leesha said, “and he tends to draw a crowd.”

The Painted Man was waiting for them on the warded path leading to Leesha’s cottage. Twilight Dancer, his enormous black stallion, was in full barding and horns, nearly invisible in the darkness. The Painted Man himself wore only a loincloth, his tattooed skin bare to the cold.

“You’re late,” the Painted Man said.

“Had some problems at the hospit,” Leesha said. “An accident while we were charging glass. Why aren’t you wearing your cloak?” She tried to make the question seem casual, but it hurt her that for all the hours she spent on it, Leesha had never seen him wear the garment apart from the one time she threw it across his shoulders to check the fit.

“It’s in my saddlebag,” the Painted Man said. “Not looking to hide from corelings. They want to come at me, let them. World could do with a few less.”

They tied Twilight Dancer to a hitching post in the yard and went inside. Leesha took a match from her apron and lit the fire, filling a kettle and hanging it over the blaze.

“How are the fiddle wizards coming along?” the Painted Man asked Rojer.

“More fiddle than wizard, I’m afraid,” Rojer said. “They’re not ready.”

The Painted Man frowned. “Cutter patrols would be stronger with a fiddler who can manipulate the demons’ emotions.”

“I can patrol with them,” Rojer said. “I have my cloak to keep me safe.”

The Painted Man shook his head. “Need you teaching.”

Rojer, blew out a breath, glancing at Leesha. “I’ll do what I can.”

“And the Hollow?” the Painted Man asked when Leesha joined them at the table.

“Expanding quickly,” Leesha said. “Already we have twice as many people as we had before the flux last year, and more come in daily. We planned the new town to accommodate growth, but not at this rate.”

The Painted Man nodded. “We can have the Cutters clear more land and plot another greatward.”

“We need the lumber, anyway,” Leesha agreed. “We haven’t sent a shipment to Duke Rhinebeck in over a year.”

“Had to rebuild the entire village,” the Painted Man said.

Leesha shrugged. “Perhaps you’d like to explain that to the duke. He sent another Messenger, requesting an audience. They fear you, and your plans for the Hollow.”

The Painted Man shook his head. “Ent got any plans, beyond making the Hollow secure from corelings. When that’s done, I’ll be on my way.”

“But what about the Great War on demonkind?” Rojer asked. “You have to lead the people to it.”

“Corespawn it, boy, I’m not the ripping Deliverer!” the Painted Man growled. “This isn’t some fantasy from a Tender’s Canon, and I wasn’t sent from Heaven to unite mankind. I’m just Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook, a stupid boy with more luck than he deserved, most of it bad.”

“But there’s no one else!” Rojer said. “If you don’t lead the war, who will?”

The Painted Man shrugged. “Not my problem. I won’t force war on anyone. All I aim to do is make sure that anyone who wants to fight, can. Once that boulder shifts, I mean to get out of the way.”

“But why?” Rojer asked.

“Because he doesn’t think he’s human,” Leesha said, reproach clear in her tone. “He thinks he’s so tainted by coreling magic that he’s as much a danger to us as they are, even though there ’s not a shred of proof.”

The Painted Man glared, but Leesha glared right back. “There ’s proof,” he said finally.

“What?” Leesha asked, her voice softening but still skeptical.

The Painted Man looked at Rojer, who shrank back under the glare. “What I say stays in this cottage,” he warned. “If I hear even a hint of it in a song or tale…”

Rojer held his hands up. “Swear by the sun as it shines. Not a whisper.”

The Painted Man eyed him, finally nodding. His eyes dropped as he spoke. “It’s…uncomfortable for me, in the forbidding.”

Rojer’s eyes went wide, and Leesha inhaled a sharp breath, holding it as her mind raced. Finally, she forced herself to exhale. She had sworn to find a cure for the Painted Man, or at least the details of his condition, and she meant to keep that vow. He’d saved her life, and that of everyone in the Hollow. She owed him that much and more.

“What are the symptoms?” she asked. “What happens when you step onto the ward?”

“There’s…resistance,” the Painted Man said. “Like I’m walking against a strong gust of wind. I feel the ward warming beneath my feet, and myself getting cold. When I walk through the town, it’s like wading through hip-deep water. I pretend otherwise, and no one seems to notice, but I know.”

He turned to Leesha, his eyes sad. “The forbiddance wants to expel me, Leesha, as it would any demon. It knows I don’t belong among men any longer.”

Leesha shook her head. “Nonsense. The ward’s siphon is just drawing away some of the magic you’ve absorbed.”

“It’s not just that,” the Painted Man said. “The Cloaks of Unsight make me dizzy, and I can feel warded blades warm and sharpen at my touch. I fear I become more demon every day.”

Leesha took one of the warded glass vials from her apron pocket and handed it to him. “Crush it.”

The Painted Man shrugged, squeezing as hard as he could. Stronger than ten men, he could easily shatter glass, but the vial resisted even his grip.

“Painted glass,” the Painted Man said, examining the vial. “So what? I taught you that trick myself.”

“That wasn’t charged till you touched it,” Leesha said. The Painted Man’s eyes widened.

“Proof of what I’m saying,” he said.

“The only thing it proves is that we need more tests,” Leesha said. “I’ve finished copying your tattoos and studying them. I think the next step is to start experimenting on volunteers.”

“What?!” Rojer and the Painted Man asked in unison.

“I can make a stain from blackstem leaves that will stay in the skin no more than two weeks,” Leesha said. “I can perform controlled tests and mark the results. I’m certain we can—”

“Absolutely not,” Arlen said. “I forbid it.”

“You forbid?” Leesha asked. “Are you the Deliverer, to order folk about? You can forbid me nothing, Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook.”

He glared at her, and Leesha wondered if perhaps she had pushed him too far. His back arched like a hissing cat, and for a moment she was afraid he would leap at her, but she stood fast. Finally, he deflated.

“Please,” he said, his tone softening. “Don’t risk it.”

“People are going to imitate you,” Leesha said. “Already Jona is drawing wards on people with charcoal sticks.”

“He’ll stop if I tell him to,” the Painted Man said.

“Only because he thinks you’re the Deliverer,” Rojer noted, and flinched at the look the Painted Man gave him in return.

“It won’t make any difference,” Leesha said. “It’s only a matter of time before your legend draws a tattooist to the Hollow, and then there will be no stopping it. Better we experiment now, in control.”

“Please,” the Painted Man said again. “Don’t curse anyone else with my condition.”

Leesha looked at him wryly. “You’re not cursed.”

“Oh?” he asked. He looked at Rojer. “Do you have one of your throwing knives?”

Rojer flicked his wrist, and a knife appeared in his hand. He spun it deftly and moved to give it to the Painted Man, handle-first, but the Painted Man shook his head. He rose and took a few steps back from the table. “Throw it at me.”

“What?” Rojer asked.

“The knife,” the Painted Man said. “Throw it. Right at my heart.”

Rojer shook his head. “No.”

“You throw knives at people all the time,” the Painted Man said.

“As a trick,” Rojer said. “I’m not going to throw one at your heart, are you insane? Even if you can use your demon speed to dodge…”

The Painted Man sighed and turned to Leesha. “You, then. Throw something—”

He hadn’t even finished the sentence before Leesha snatched a frying pan off a hook by the fire and hurled it at him.

But the pan never struck home. The Painted Man turned into mist as the iron passed through, dissipating his body as if waved through smoke. It clattered against the far wall and fell to the floor. Leesha gasped, and Rojer’s mouth fell open.

It took several seconds for the mists to coalesce again, re-forming into the body of the Painted Man. He breathed deeply as he became solid.

“Been practicing,” he said. “Dissipation is easy. Like relaxing your molecules and spreading them the way boiling spreads water into steam. Can’t do it in sunlight, but at night I can do it at will. Pulling back together is harder. Sometimes I worry I’ll spread too thin, and just…drift away on the wind.”

“That sounds horrible,” Rojer said.

The Painted Man nodded. “But that’s not the worst of it. When I dissipate, I can feel the Core pulling at me. When the dawn is near, the pull can become…insistent.”

“Like that day on the road, in the predawn light,” Leesha said.

“What day?” Rojer asked, but Leesha barely heard him, reliving that terrible morning.

Three days after the attack on the road, Leesha’s body had healed, but the pain had not lessened. All she could think of was her womb and what might be growing there. There was a tea Bruna had taught her of, one that would flush a man’s seed from a woman before it could take root.

“Why would I ever want to brew such a vile thing?” Leesha had asked. “There are few enough children in the world as it is.”

Bruna had looked at her sadly. “I hope, child, that you never find out.”

But Leesha understood when the bandits had left her. If she ’d had her herb pouch, she would have brewed the tea as soon as she ’d washed her body, but the men had taken that, too. The decision was out of her hands. By the time they reached the Hollow, it would be too late.

But when the pouch was returned to her, so too was the choice. The only missing ingredient of the tea was tampweed root, and she had seen some just off the road as they ran to a cave for shelter from the rain.

Unable to sleep, Leesha had risen before full dawn while Rojer and the Painted Man were still sleeping and snuck out to cut a few stalks of the weed. Even then, she was unsure if she could bring herself to drink the tea, but she meant to brew it all the same.

The Painted Man had come upon her, startling her, but she forced herself to smile and speak with him, rambling on about plants and demons to distract from her true purpose. All the while, her thoughts roiled in chaos.

But then she unintentionally insulted him, and the hurt in his eyes brought her out of it. Suddenly she saw something of the man he had once been. A good man, who had been hurt as she was, but embraced his pain like a lover rather than give it up.

She felt that pain, so resonant with her own, and all her swirling thoughts suddenly clicked together like the gears of a clock, and she knew what she must do.

Moments later she and Arlen lay together in the mud, a frantic coupling born of mutual desperation, cut short when a wood demon attacked. The man who had been caressing her vanished, becoming the Painted Man again as he wrestled the coreling away from her. As the sun rose, both of them began to dissipate. She stared in terror as they began to sink into the ground.

But then the mist drifted back to the surface and they solidified, the demon burning away in the sun. Leesha reached for Arlen then, but the Painted Man turned away, and she cursed him for it. So caught in her own feelings, she had barely given thought to what he must have been going through.

Leesha shook her head, coming back to herself.

“I’m so sorry,” she told the Painted Man.

He waved a hand dismissively. “You didn’t make my choices for me.”

Rojer looked at her, then at him, then back to her. “Creator, your mum was right,” he realized. Leesha knew the news was a blow to him, but there was nothing to be done for it. In a way, she was glad to have the secret out.

“This can’t just be the tattoos,” she said, returning to the topic at hand. “It makes no sense.” She looked at the Painted Man. “I want your grimoires. All of them. Everything I learn from you is filtered by your understanding. I need the source material to understand what’s causing this.”

“I don’t have them here,” the Painted Man said.

“Then we’ll go to them,” Leesha said. “Where are they?”

“The nearest cache is in Angiers,” the Painted Man said, “though I have others in Lakton, and out on the Krasian Desert.”

“Angiers will do nicely,” Leesha said. “I have unfinished business with Mistress Jizell, and perhaps you can convince the duke you’re not after his crown while we ’re there.”

“I might be able to help there,” Rojer said. “I grew up in Rhinebeck’s court while Arrick was his herald. I’ll visit the Jongleurs’ Guild while we ’re there, maybe hire some proper teachers for my apprentices.”

“All right,” the Painted Man said. “we’ll go at first melt.”

The broad wings of the mimic ate the miles, but the coreling prince hated the brightness of the surface, and twice took shelter in the Core for all but the darkest hours of the night. It was now the night after new moon, and even the effects of that minute sliver were bright to the demon’s corespawned eyes. When it returned to the Core, it would not rise again until the cursed orb waxed and waned a full turn.

The greatward of Deliverer’s Hollow came into sight below, its stolen magic shining like a beacon. The mind demon hissed at the sight, and its forehead pulsed as it sent the image hundreds of miles to the south in an instant, resonating in the mind of its brother.

A reply came instantly, the demon’s cranium reverberating with its brother’s frustration.

The mimic landed silently, and the mind demon dismounted. Immediately the mimic shed its wings and became a nimble flame demon, darting ahead to ensure that the path of the coreling prince was clear as it made its way toward the village.

The greatward was too large to mar, and too powerful for even a coreling prince to overcome. The demon could see the accumulated magic shimmering around the village—a barrier more solid than stone. It reached out with its thoughts, the soft nodules on its cranium pulsing as it tried to touch the minds of those within, but the sheer concentration of magic blocked even mental intrusion.

The demon circled the town, noting the terrain around the twists and turns of the ward. A strong defense with few weaknesses, and those not easily exploited. Drones drifted out of the trees, drawn to the coreling prince’s presence, but a thought drove them off.

It found a place where two human females stood at the edge of the ward, armed with primitive weapons. The demon listened carefully to their grunts and yelps, waiting for a particular intonation that signaled address. It came soon, and the females clutched each other before dividing to walk the edge in different directions, their weapons at the ready.

The mind demon ran ahead of the elder of the two, waiting in an isolated spot until the woman reappeared. It signaled the mimic, and its servant swelled, scales melting away to be replaced by pink skin and the outer wrappings of the surface stock.

The mimic fell to the ground in the shadows just outside the forbidding as the elder female approached. It cried the elder female’s name, its voice as perfect a copy of the younger female as its form. “Mala!”

“Wonda?” its chosen victim cried. She looked about frantically, but seeing no demons, she ran to what she assumed was her friend. “I just left you! How did you get out here?”

The mind demon stepped from behind a tree, and the female gasped, raising her bow. The nodules on the coreling prince’s cranium throbbed softly, and the female stiffened, hands lowering her weapon against her will. The mind demon approached, and the female held out the projectile she had meant to launch for its inspection.

The wards on the projectile were powerfully shaped; the mind demon could feel them tugging at its own potent magic. It waved a taloned hand at them, marveling at how they began to glow even with its flesh still inches away.

The demon prince probed the mind of its victim deeply, sifting through images and memories as one might rummage in an old trunk. It learned much; too much to act upon without further consideration.

It was hours before dawn, but already the sky was brightening. Far to the south, it sensed its brother’s agreement. There was time to reflect upon the problem.

The mind demon regarded the female. It could steal the memory of this event from her—send her back into the forbidding never knowing what had happened—but the touch of the human’s mind, fat and largely unused, aroused its hunger.

Sensing its master’s desire, the mimic sent a sharp tentacle to sever the female’s head. It caught the prize and slithered over, peeling the skull open with a talon to present the meal.

The coreling prince tore at the sweet gray matter within, gorging itself. The meat was not as tender as the ignorant brains of its personal stock, but there was a satisfaction to hunting on the surface that added pleasure to the repast.

The demon looked to its mimic, standing vigilant as the coreling prince feasted. A throb of permission, and the mimic swelled, opening an enormous, many-toothed maw and slithering over to the female, swallowing the remainder of her body whole.

When master and servant alike were sated, they dissolved into mist, slipping back down to the Core as the sky continued to brighten.

CHAPTER 13 RENNA

RENNA’S STRONG ARMS BURNED, coated in a thin sheen of sweat as she worked the butter churn. It was early spring, but she was clad only in her shift. Her father would have a fit if he saw her, but he was around back cutting wardposts, and Lucik and the boys were out in the fields.

The farm had grown in the fourteen years since Lucik came to live with them, marrying Beni and putting children in her. There had been a hard season after Ilain ran off with Jeph Bales. Harl had raged and taken it out on them—mostly on Beni, since she was elder. But that had all stopped when Lucik, with his thick arms and broad shoulders, came to live with them. Harl hadn’t touched either of them since, and the fields, once little more than a large garden, had gotten bigger every year.

Thinking of that time made her think again of Arlen Bales, and what might have been. When they were promised, it was agreed that she was to be the one to go and live on Jeph’s farm, not Ilain. But Arlen had run off into the woods after his mother passed, and was never heard from again. Folk said he must be dead, especially after Jeph went to Sunny Pasture to search and hadn’t found him. The Free Cities were weeks away on foot, and no one could survive that many nights without succor.

But Renna had never given up hope. Her eyes were always searching the road east, praying that one day he would come and take her away.

She looked up just then and saw a horseman coming down the road. Her heart stopped for a moment, but the rider came from the west, and after a moment, she recognized him.

Cobie Fisher sat tall on Pinecone, one of Old Hog’s dappled mares, his patchwork armor and hammered cookpot helmet polished carefully. His spear and shield were strapped to the saddle in easy reach, though she had never heard tell of him using them.

Cobie fancied himself a Messenger, but he didn’t brave the night like real Messengers; he simply ferried goods and word from one end of the Brook to another for Rusco Hog, who ran the general store. Once or twice, Cobie had slept in their barn on his way north to Sunny Pasture.

“Ay, Renna!” Cobie called, lifting a hand in greeting. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and straightened as he approached.

Cobie’s eyes bulged suddenly, and he blushed. Renna remembered then that she was only half dressed. Her shift ended above her knees, and swooped low in front, showing a fair bit of cleavage. She smirked, amused at his embarrassment.

“Off to Sunny Pasture again?” she asked, making no effort to cover herself.

Cobie shook his head. “I’ve a message for Lucik.”

“So late in the day?” Renna asked. “What could be so…” She caught a look in Cobie’s eye, and began to worry. The last time someone had come with a message for Lucik, barely two years past, it was that his brother Kenner had gotten drunk testing ale from the vats and stumbled out beyond the wards. By the time the sun banished the demons, there was barely anything left of him to burn.

“Everyone’s alright, ent they?” she asked, dreading the answer.

Cobie shook his head. He bent in close, lowering his voice though no one was around. “Lucik’s da passed this morning,” he confided.

Renna gasped, putting her hands to her mouth. Fernan Boggin had always been kind to her when he came to see his grandchildren. She would miss him. And poor Lucik…

“Renna!” came her father’s bark. “Get inside and cover yourself, girl! This ent no Angierian house of sin!” He pointed to the door with his prized hunting knife. The blade was Milnese steel, with a bone handle, and was never far from his hands.

Renna knew that tone, and left Cobie with his mouth open as she turned and hurried inside. She stopped at the door to watch Harl stride out to meet Cobie, who was tying Pinecone to the hitching post.

Her father was wrinkled and gray, but he seemed to only toughen with age, his wiry muscles hard from working the fields and his skin leathern and rough. Harl had wanted to find Renna a husband before Ilain left, but since, he had scared off any boy who even looked her way.

Cobie was taller than Harl, though, and wider, one of the biggest men in Tibbet’s Brook. Hog had chosen him as his messenger because he had more than a little bully in him still and didn’t scare easily, especially with his armor on. Renna couldn’t hear what they said, but her father’s rumbling tone was respectful as they clasped wrists.

“What’s the commotion?” Beni asked from the fire where she was chopping vegetables into the stew.

“Cobie Fisher’s come in from Town Square,” Renna said.

“Did he say why?” Beni asked, her face clouding with worry. “Messengers don’t just come to say hello.”

Renna swallowed hard. “Da called me in before he could say,” she lied, and hurried to the curtain in her corner of the common room, pulling off her dirty shift and putting on a dress. She was still lacing the stays when she exited the curtain and caught Cobie looking at her again.

“Corespawn it, Renna!” Harl roared, and she vanished behind the curtain until she was properly done up.

Harl scowled when she reemerged. “Run and fetch Lucik from the fields, girl, and keep the boys out in the barn. Messenger’s come with dark news.”

Renna nodded, darting out the door. She found Lucik tending the wardposts at the far end of the fields, just before the ground turned black, scorched clean by flame demons.

Cal and Jace were with him, digging weeds while their father worked. They were seven and ten.

“Suppertime?” Cal asked hopefully.

“No, poppet,” Renna said, tousling his dirty blond hair. “But we’re going to put the animals back in the barn. Your da has a visitor.”

“Eh?” Lucik said.

“Cobie Fisher,” Renna said, “with news from your mam.”

Fear flashed on Lucik’s face, and he set off at once. Renna led the boys back and set them to work leading the hogs and cows from the day pens into the big barn. Renna untethered Pinecone herself, leading the mare into the small barn off the back of the house where they kept their mollies and the chickens. Their last horse had given out two summers past, so there was an empty stall. Renna undid the girth, slipping off the saddle and bridle. She turned to get the brushes and caught Jace reaching for Cobie’s spear.

“Hands off, ’less you want a whipping,” she said, slapping his hand away. “Get the brushes and rub the horse down, then go slop the pigs.”

She fed the chickens while the boys went about their chores, but her eyes kept glancing to the door to the house. She had seen twenty-four summers, but Harl still treated her like a child, sheltering her as much as he did the boys.

After a time, the door opened and Beni stuck her head in. “Supper’s ready. Everyone wash up.”

The boys whooped and ran inside, but Renna lingered, meeting her sister’s eyes. Since they were children, the two had been able to speak volumes to each other with but a look, and this time was no different. Renna put her arms around Beni and hugged her as she cried.

After a brief bout of sobbing, Beni straightened and wiped her eyes with her apron before going back inside. Renna drew a deep breath and followed.

The dinner table only sat six, so the boys were sent to eat by the fire in the common room. Having no idea anything was amiss, they scampered off happily, and the elders could hear them laughing and wrestling the dogs through the thin curtain that served as a divider between the dining area and the common.

“we’ll head out first thing in the morning,” Lucik said when Renna had cleared the bowls. “With Da and Kenner gone, Mam is going to need a man around afore Hog starts buying Marsh Ale again.”

“Can’t someone else take it on?” Harl said, his face sour as he whittled the end of a wardpost. “Fernan young’s near a man.” Fernan young was Kenner’s son, named after his grandfather.

“Fernie’s only twelve, Harl,” Lucik said. “He can’t be trusted to run the brewery.”

“Then what about yer sister?” Harl pressed. “She married that Fisher boy couple summers ago.”

“Jash,” Cobie supplied.

“He’s a Fisher,” Lucik said. “He might be able to scale and gut, but he won’t know night about brewing.” He glanced at Cobie. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Cobie said. “Jash is apt to drink more than he brews, anyway.”

“You’re one to talk,” Harl snapped. “Way’s I hear, Hog made you his message boy when you couldn’t pay all the ale credits you owed. Maybe it’s you, ort be up at the brewery, working off your drink.”

“You got some stones, old man,” Cobie said, scowling and half rising from his seat. Harl rose with him, pointing at him with his long hunting knife.

“Know what’s good for you, boy, you’ll sit’cher ass back down,” he growled.

“Corespawn it!” Lucik barked, slamming his hands down on the table. Both men looked at him in shock, and Lucik glared in return. He was of a size with Cobie, and flushed red with anger. They returned to their seats, and Harl picked up his post end, whittling furiously.

“So just like that, you up and desert us,” he said. “What about the farm?”

“Spring planting’s done,” Lucik said. “You and Renna should be able to weed and keep the wardposts till harvest time, and me and the boys’ll come back for that. Fernie, too.”

“And next year?” Harl asked.

Lucik shrugged. “I don’t know. We can all come to plant, and might be I can spare one of the boys for the summer.”

“Thought we was family, boy,” Harl said, spitting on the floor, “but it looks like you’ve always been a Boggin at heart.” He pushed back from the table. “Do as you want. Take my daughter and grandsons away from me. But don’t expect a slap on the back for it.”

“Harl,” Lucik began, but the old man waved him off, stomping over to his room and slamming the door.

Beni laid a hand over Lucik’s clenched fist. “He din’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, Ben,” he said sadly, laying his free hand over hers, “course he did.”

“Come on,” Renna said, grabbing Cobie’s arm and pulling him from his seat. “Let’s leave them in peace and find you some blankets and a clean spot in the barn.” Cobie nodded, following her out of the curtain.

“Your da always like this?” he asked as they left the house proper.

“He took it better than I expected,” Renna said, taking a broom and sweeping out one of the empty stalls. Outside, the sun had set, and there were shrieks and flashes of light as the corelings tested the wards. The animals were used to the sound, but still they shifted nervously, knowing instinctively what would happen if the wards failed.

“Lucik just lost his da,” Cobie said. “You’d think Harl would show a little heart.”

Renna shook her head. “Not my da. He don’t care about any needs but his own.” She bit her lip, remembering what things were like before Lucik came.

After Cobie was safely settled in the barn, Renna came back in to the house to find Lucik in the common room, explaining things to the boys. She slipped quietly by and went into Beni’s room, finding her sister folding clothes and packing her few belongings.

“Take me with you,” Renna said bluntly.

“What?” Beni asked, surprised.

“I don’t want to be alone with him,” Renna said. “I can’t.”

“Renna, what are you…” Beni began, but Renna grabbed her shoulders.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!” she snapped. “You know what he was like before Lucik came.”

Beni hissed and pulled away, going to the door and pushing it shut. “What do you know of it?” she asked, her voice a harsh whisper. “You were always the baby. You never had to endure—” She broke off, her face twisting with anger and shame.

Renna glanced pointedly at her bosom. “I’m not a baby anymore, Beni.”

“Then bind your breasts,” Beni said. “Stop running about in just your shift. Don’t give him a reason to notice you.”

“That won’t stop him, and you know it,” Renna said.

“Been almost fifteen years, Ren,” Beni said. “You don’t know what he ’ll do.”

But Renna did know. In her heart, she had no doubt. She had seen her father looking at her, his eyes running over her like greedy hands. Why else did he react so jealously whenever a man glanced her way? More than one had come courting when she was younger. They knew better now.

“Please,” she begged, gripping Beni’s hands as tears filled her eyes. “Take me with you.”

“And what will I tell Lucik?” Beni snapped. “He feels bad enough, leaving the farm untended. Without you, Da ent never gonna be able to handle the load.”

“You could tell him the truth,” Renna said.

Beni slapped her. Renna fell back, clutching her cheek in shock. Her sister had never struck her in her life.

But Beni showed no sign of remorse. “You get that out of your head,” she growled. “I ent gonna make my family bear that shame. Lucik would turn me out if he knew, and before long the whole town would hear tell. And what of Ilain? Should Jeph and her children have to carry that stain, too, all ’cause of you being a baby?”

“I’m not being a baby!” Renna shouted.

“Keep your voice down!” Beni hissed.

Renna took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “I’m not being a baby,” she said again, “just because I don’t want to be left alone with that monster.”

“He ent a demon, Renna, he’s our da,” Beni said. “He’s given us succor and put food on the table all our lives, even though his heart broke when Mam died. Ilain and I took it, and if it comes to that, you can, too.”

“Ilain took it by running to hide behind Jeph,” Renna said, “just like you hide behind Lucik. But who do I have to hide behind, Ben?”

“You can’t come with us, Renna,” Beni said again.

Just then, Lucik walked into the room. “Everything all right? I heard raised voices.”

“Everything’s fine,” Beni said, glaring at Renna, who sobbed and pushed past Lucik, running to her little curtained corner of the common.

Renna lay awake that night, listening to the shrieks of the corelings in the yard and the grunting from Beni’s room, her and Lucik at it like most every night. The same sound used to come from Harl’s room when her mother was alive. And after that, when Harl had made their eldest sister Ilain take her place. And when Ilain left, those sounds had come again on the nights when Harl pulled Beni in there. She hadn’t been so accepting of it then.

Renna sat up, bathed in sweat, her heart pounding. She peeked around the curtain and saw the boys fast asleep on their blankets. Clad only in her shift, she crept through the common and eased open the barn door, slipping quietly within.

Inside, she took the striker and lit a lantern, casting the barn in a flickering light.

“Eh?” Cobie asked, squinting and raising a hand over his eyes. “Whozzat?”

“It’s Renna,” she said, coming over and sitting beside him in the hay. The lantern light danced around the stall, flickering over Cobie’s broad chest as his blanket slipped down.

“Don’t get visitors often,” she said. “Thought we could sit and talk a spell.”

“Sounds nice,” Cobie said, rubbing the sleep from his face.

“Have to be quiet, though,” Renna said. “If Da catches us, there ’ll be the Core to pay.”

Cobie nodded, flicking a nervous eye in the direction of the house door.

“What’s it like, being a Messenger?” Renna asked.

“Well, I ent a real Messenger,” Cobie admitted. “Ent licensed by the guild in the Free Cities, and don’t think I’d be fool enough to sleep outside with the demons even if I were. But workin’ for Mr. Hog beats fishin’. Always hated that.”

“Way I hear tell, you never did much of it,” Renna said.

Cobie laughed. “True enough. Used to just run and fool about with Gart and Willum, but they got promised and stopped having time for it. Can’t laugh out on the boats. Scares the fish.”

“How come you never got promised yourself?” Renna asked.

Cobie shrugged. “Da said it’s because girls’ fathers didn’t think I could settle and provide for a wife and young’uns. He was right, I guess. I was always more interested in hanging around the general store than working. Fished when I had to, but never had enough credits to pay for all the ale I drank. Your da was right that Mr. Hog started sending me to fetch this or deliver that just to balance the log. But when the Speaker started asking Mr. Hog to have me ferry messages around, too, he said I could stay in the little room behind the store to be on hand.

“People treat me with respect now,” Cobie said, “because I’m on town business. They give me meals, and succor when it’s too far to go back to Town Square before dark.”

“Bet it’s nice,” Renna said, “traveling all over the Brook and seeing everyone all the time. I never see anyone.”

Cobie nodded. “I earn more than I drink, now, and when I have enough credits, I’m going to buy a horse of my own, and change my name to Cobie Messenger. Maybe build a house in Town Square, and have sons to take on the job when I’m old.”

“So you think you could settle and provide now?” Renna asked. Cobie wasn’t handsome, but he was a good strong man with prospects. She was coming to realize Arlen might never come back for her, and life had to go on.

Cobie nodded, looking in her eyes. “I might,” he said, “if a girl took her chances on me.”

Renna leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. Cobie’s eyes widened a moment, but then he kissed her back, enveloping her in his strong arms.

“I know a wife’s tricks,” Renna whispered, pulling down her shift to expose her breasts. “I seen Beni and Lucik at it plenty of times. I could be a good wife.” Cobie groaned, nuzzling her bosom as his hands ran up her legs.

There was a crash from behind, startling them both.

“What in the Core is going on here?!” Harl demanded, grabbing Renna by the hair and pulling her off Cobie. In his free hand, he held his long hunting knife, sharp as a razor. He threw Renna aside and put the point up to Cobie’s throat.

“We…we were just…” Cobie stuttered, drawing back as far as he could, but his back was against the wall of the stall, and there was nowhere to go.

“I ent no fool, boy,” Harl said. “I know what you were ‘just’! You think because I give you succor behind my wards, you can go and treat my daughter like some Angierian whore? I orta gut you right here.”

“Please!” Cobie begged. “It ent like that! I really like Renna! I want her hand!”

“’Spect you wanted more than that,” Harl growled, pressing the point in and drawing a drop of blood from Cobie’s throat. “You think that’s how it works? Come stick a girl, then ask for her hand?”

Cobie pulled his head back as far as he could, tears and sweat mixing on his face.

“That’s enough!” Lucik cried, grabbing Harl’s arm and pulling the knife away. Harl whirled to his feet, and the two men stood glaring at each other.

“You wouldn’t say that if it were your daughter,” Harl said.

“That may be,” Lucik said, “but I ent gonna let you kill a man in fronta my boys, either!”

Harl glanced back, seeing Cal and Jace watching wide-eyed from the house door while Renna cried in Beni’s arms. Some of the anger went out of him, and his shoulders slumped.

“Fine,” he said. “Renna, you’re sleeping in my room tonight, so’s I can keep an eye on you. And you,” he pointed his knife at Cobie again, who went rigid with fright, “you so much as look at my girl again, and I’ll cut yer stones off and feed ’em to the corelings.”

He grabbed Renna by the arm and dragged her along as he stormed into the house.

Renna was still shaking when Harl threw her down on the bed. She had pulled her shift back in place, but it seemed woefully inadequate, and she could feel her father’s eyes on her.

“This is what you do when we have a visitor in the barn?” Harl snapped at her. “I bet half the town is laughing behind my back!”

“I never!” Renna said.

“Oh, I’m supposed to believe that, now?” Harl sneered. “I saw the way you paraded around half dressed for him today. Reckon the hogs aren’t all that’s grunting in the barn when the messenger boy’s about.”

Renna had no reply, sniffling as she pulled the blanket around her bare shoulders.

“Now yer shy and trying to cover?” Harl asked. “Mite late, you ask me.” He undid his overalls and slung them over the bedpost, snatching the edge of the blanket and sliding in beside her. Renna shuddered.

“Quit yer whining and get some sleep, girl,” Harl said. “Another of yer sisters up and deserted us, and there ’ll be extra chores for both of us from now on.”

Renna woke early, finding her father snuggled close with an arm over her. She shivered with revulsion, easing out of his grasp and leaving him snoring as she fled the room.

Remembering Beni’s advice, she tore a long strip from the sheet on her pallet, wrapping the cloth around her chest several times, binding her breasts tight. When she was done, she looked down and sighed. Even flattened, no one would ever mistake her for a boy.

She dressed quickly, lacing her dress loosely to hide her curves and tying her long brown hair in an unkempt knot.

The boys stirred as she put the porridge on and laid bowls on the table. By the time the sun rose, the whole house was bustling, and Lucik sent the boys out to their morning chores one last time.

Cobie was gone before breakfast was ready, but Renna supposed it was just as well. Harl might not deny a man succor, but that didn’t mean he would share his table. She wished she ’d had a chance to apologize for his actions, and for hers. She ’d ruined things for both of them.

After morning chores, Harl hitched the cart and drove them all up through Town Square to Boggin’s Hill for the cremation. It was afternoon by the time they arrived, and by then there was a big gathering on the hill. Most everyone in Tibbet’s Brook drank Boggin’s Ale, and many came to pay their respects as Fernan Boggin was burned.

The Holy House crowned the hill, and Tender Harral welcomed everyone warmly. He was a big man, not yet fifty, with powerful arms reaching out from the rolled sleeves of his brown robe. “Your da was a good friend, and a good man,” he told Lucik, wrapping him in a tight hug. “we’ll all miss him.”

Harral gestured to the great doors. “Go on inside and sit in the front pew with your mam.” The Tender smiled at Renna, winking at her for some reason as she passed.

“Looks like the ingrate’s come down from hiding,” Harl muttered as they slid into the pew behind Lucik, Beni, and the boys. Renna followed his gaze to see her eldest sister Ilain a few rows back. She stood with Jeph, Norine Cutter, and her children. They had all gotten so big!

“Don’t even think about it,” Harl muttered, grabbing her arm and squeezing hard as she moved to go and greet them. Harl had never forgiven Ilain for running off, though it was near fifteen years gone, and meant that he never knew his grandchildren by her.

“That sumbitch got a lot of nerve, coming here,” Harl muttered, glaring at Jeph. “Another corespawned thief, thinking just because I give them succor, they can run off with one of my girls. Just as well you didn’t end up married to that good-for-nothing son of his.”

“Arlen wasn’t good for nothing,” Renna said sadly, remembering how he had kissed her when they were children. She ’d admired him from afar for years, and being promised to him had seemed a dream come true. She had always refused to believe he ’d been cored, but if he hadn’t, why didn’t he come back for her?

“What’s that, girl?” Harl asked, distracted.

“Nothing,” Renna said.

The ceremony went on, with Harral singing the praises of Fernan Boggin as he painted wards on the tarp wrapping the body to protect Fernan’s spirit as it made its way to the Creator.

When it was done, they carried the body out to the pyre Harral had built, and laid him to rest as the fire burned. Renna drew wards in the air along with everyone else, praying that Fernan’s soul would escape this demon-infested world as the flames consumed his body.

On the other side of the fire, Ilain stared sadly at her. She raised a hand to wave, and Renna started to cry.

People began to drift off as the fire burned down, some to Meada Boggin’s house, where she had refreshments ready for her husband’s mourners, and others beginning the trek back to their homes. Some had come from a ways off, and the corelings rose no later on funeral days.

“C’mon, girl, we’d best be getting back,” Harl said, taking her arm.

“Harl Tanner!” Tender Harral called. “A moment of your time!”

Harl and Renna turned to see the Tender approaching with Cobie Fisher in tow. Cobie’s eyes were firmly on his feet.

“Oh, what now?” Harl muttered.

“Cobie told me what happened last night,” Tender Harral said.

“Oh, did he?” Harl said. “Did he tell you I caught him and my daughter in sinful embrace under my own wards?”

Harral nodded. “He did, and he has something to say now. Don’t you, Cobie?”

Cobie nodded, coming forward while still studying his boots. “I’m sorry for what I done. Din’t mean to shame no one, and I intend to make an honest woman of Renna, if you’ll allow it.”

“The Core I will!” Harl barked, and Cobie paled and took a step back.

“Now, Harl, wait just a minute,” Tender Harral said.

“No, you wait, Tender!” Harl said. “This boy disrespected me, my daughter, and the sanctity of my wards, and you want me to take him as a son, just like that? I’d sooner let Renna marry a wood demon.”

“Renna’s past the age where she ought to be married and raising young’uns of her own,” Harral said.

“That don’t mean I got to hand her to some drunken wastrel just cuz he bent her over a hay bale,” Harl said. He grabbed Renna and dragged her toward the cart. Renna looked longingly at Cobie as they rode off.

CHAPTER 14 A TRIP TO THE OUTHOUSE

RENNA CAST A WISTFUL eye back up the road as the farm came into sight. “I know what yer thinkin’, girl,” Harl said. “Yer thinkin’ of bein’ like yer ingrate sister and runnin’ off t’be with that boy.”

Renna said nothing, but she felt her cheeks burn, and that was damning enough.

“Well, you think twice about it,” Harl said. “I won’t let you shame our family like Lainie did, runnin’ off with a man whose wife just died the night before. Whole town still talks of it, and they all cast a dark eye on old Harl for raising such a corespawned whore.

“Yer on your way to getting the same reputation,” Harl said. “Not this time, girlie. I’d rather scar the wards than go through that again. You even think about runnin’, and you’ll have yerself a trip to the outhouse, even if I have to go all the way to Southwatch to collect you.”

Renna glanced at the tiny, ramshackle structure in the yard, and her blood went cold. Her father had never put her in there, but he had done it to Ilain a few times, and to Beni once. She remembered their screams vividly.

Renna reclaimed Beni and Lucik’s small room, which she had once shared with her sister, moving in her few possessions and barring the door with a trembling hand.

As she lay back in the bed, she stroked Miss Scratch, her favorite cat, who was pregnant and soon to litter. As she did she thought of Cobie, of a house in Town Square and children of her own. The images warmed and comforted her, but she kept one eye on the door for a long time before drifting off to sleep.

For the next few days, Renna avoided her father whenever she could. It wasn’t difficult. Spring planting might have been done, but even so, they were two splitting chores once shared by six. Just feeding the animals and cleaning their stalls was half a morning’s work for Renna, and she still had to milk and shear and slaughter, ready meals thrice a day, mend clothing, make butter and cheese, tan skins, and an endless array of other tasks. She fell into the work almost gratefully for the protection it offered.

Each morning she bound her breasts, leaving her hair a tangle and her face smudged, and there was enough work to keep lewd thoughts from Harl’s mind. Just checking the wardposts around the fields took hours. Each had to be examined carefully to make sure the wards were clear and sharp and aligned properly to overlap their neighbors without gap. A simple bird dropping or a warp in the wood could weaken a ward sufficiently for a demon to pass through if it found the gap.

After that, the fields still needed weeding, and the ripest produce had to be harvested for the day’s meals, or for pickling and preserves. After all that, there was still always something around the farm that needed fixing, or sharpening.

The only time they really spent together was at meals, and they said little. Renna was careful not to bend close as she served and cleared. Harl never gave any sign he was looking at her differently, but he grew increasingly irritable as the days wore on.

“Creator, my back hurts,” he said one night at supper as he bent to fill another mug from the keg of Boggin’s Ale that Meada had sent back with them after the burning. Renna had lost count of how many he had filled that night.

Harl gasped in pain as he tried to straighten, and stumbled, sloshing his ale. Renna was there in an instant, steadying him and catching the mug before it spilled. Harl leaned heavily on her as she dragged him back to his chair.

Renna and Beni had often been called upon to knead the pain from Harl’s bad back, and she did it now without thinking, working her father’s tensed muscles with strong, skilled fingers.

“Atta girl,” her father groaned, closing his eyes and pressing against her hands. “You were always the good one, Ren. Not like yer sisters, with no loyalty to kith and kin. Dunno how you turned out all right, with those two deserters as an example.”

Renna finished her ministrations, but Harl grabbed her about the waist and pulled her close before she could pull out of reach. He looked up at her with tears in his eyes.

“You’ll never leave me, girl, will you?” he asked.

“No, Da,” Renna said. “Course not.” She squeezed him briefly, and then pulled quickly back, taking his mug to the keg and refilling it.

Renna awoke that night to a crash as something struck her door. She leapt from bed, pulling on her dress, but there was no other sound. She crept to the door and pressed her ear to the wood, hearing a low wheeze.

Carefully, she lifted the bar and opened the door a crack, seeing her father passed out on the floor, regurgitated ale staining the front of his nightshirt.

“Creator make me strong,” Renna begged as she soaked a rag to clean the vomit from him and the floor, then half carried, half dragged her father back to his room.

Harl wept as she heaved him into his bed, clinging to her desperately. “Can’t lose you, too,” he sobbed over and over. Renna sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, holding him as he cried, and then disengaged as he drifted off to sleep. She went quickly back to her room and barred the door again.

The next morning, Renna came back into the house after collecting eggs in the barn and found Harl popping the pins out of the hinges of her door.

“The door broke?” she asked, her heart clutching.

“Nope,” Harl grunted. “Need the wood to patch a hole in the barn wall. Don’t matter none, you don’t need it. Ent no marital relations going on in this room no more.” He hefted the door and carried it off to the barn, leaving Renna stunned.

She felt like a frightened animal for the rest of the day, and didn’t sleep at all that night, all her senses attuned toward the thick curtain hung over the doorway.

But nothing stirred the curtain that night, or the night that followed, or for a week after.

Renna wasn’t sure what woke her. Corelings had tested the wards earlier in the night, but the sounds had faded to silence as they gave over to search out easier prey.

The only light was a soft glow around the edges of the curtain in the doorway from the fire in the common room, burned low in the night. It threw a dim light over her bed, though the rest of the tiny room was bathed in darkness.

But Renna knew immediately that she wasn’t alone. Her father was in the room.

Careful to keep still, she reached out into the darkness with her senses, trying to convince herself it was only a dream, but she could smell the stink of ale and sweat, and hear his tense breathing. Floorboards creaked as he shifted from foot to foot. She kept waiting for him to do something, but he just stood there, watching her.

Had he done this before? Snuck into her room and watched her sleep? The thought sickened her. Afraid to stir, her eyes flicked to the curtain, but escape that way seemed unlikely. It would take her four steps to reach the doorway. Harl could intercept her in one.

The window was closer, but even if she could unlatch the shutters and throw them open before he got to her, it was deep in the night, and demons prowled the darkness outside.

Time seemed to slow as Renna desperately tried to think of a way to escape. If she ran through the yard, she might make it to the barn before a coreling caught her. The big barn was warded, and not connected to the house. If she made it there, Harl couldn’t follow till morning, and perhaps by then he would have slept off his drink.

Running into the night went against her every instinct. It was suicide. But where else was there to go? She was trapped in the house with him until sunrise.

Just then Harl shifted, and she caught her breath. He came slowly over to the bed, and Renna froze, like a rabbit paralyzed with fear. As he came into the light, she saw he was clad only in his nightshirt, his arousal jutting through the cloth. He came close to her, reaching out to touch her hair. He ran his fingers through it, and then sniffed at them, his hand dropping again to gently caress her face.

“Jus’ like yer mam,” he mumbled, and ran his hand lower, past her throat and collar, tracing the smooth skin to her breast.

He squeezed, and Renna shrieked. Miss Scratch woke with a start and hissed, sinking claws deep into Harl’s arm. He cried out, and terror gave Renna strength. She shoved at him, throwing him backward. Drunk, Harl stumbled and fell to the floor. Renna was through the curtain in an instant.

“Girl, you get back here!” Harl cried, but she ignored him, running hard for the back door to the small barn. He stumbled after her, tangling in the curtain and ripping it from the rod.

She was through the barn door before he freed himself, but there was no lock from the inside. She grabbed a heavy old saddle, throwing it against the door, and ran through the stalls.

“Corespawn it, Renna! What’s gotten into you?” Harl cried as he burst through the door. There was a cry as he fell over the saddle, cursing loudly.

“Girl, I will tan the skin off your arse, you don’t come out of hiding!” he called, and there was a crack like a whip. He had pulled a set of leather reins off the barn wall.

Renna made no reply, crouching in the darkness of an empty stall behind an old rain barrel as Harl fumbled with the striker to light a lantern. He finally managed to catch the wick, and a flickering light sprang to life, sending shadows dancing around the barn.

“Where you gone to, girl?” Harl called, as he began to search the stalls. “Gonna be worse, I have to drag you out.” He cracked the reins again to accentuate his point, and Renna’s heart jumped. Outside, the demons, drawn to the commotion, flung themselves against the wards with renewed fervor. Wardlight flashed through cracks in the wood, accompanied by coreling shrieks and the crackle of magic.

She wound like a spring as he drew closer, every muscle coiling tighter and tighter until she was certain she would burst. His muttered curses grew fouler and fouler as he went, and he began flailing around with the reins in frustration.

He was only inches from her hiding place when Renna burst free, running deeper into the barn. She came to the back wall, cornered, and turned to face him.

“Dunno what’s taken you, girl,” Harl said. “’Spect I need to beat some sense into you.”

There was no way to get past this time, so Renna turned and scampered up the ladder to the hayloft. She tried to pull it up after her, but Harl gave a shout and caught the bottom rung, yanking it back down and almost pulling Renna down with it. She only barely managed to catch herself on the trap, and lost her grip on the ladder completely. Harl hooked the lantern and began to climb up after her, the reins in his teeth.

Renna kicked out in desperation, catching her father full in the face. He was knocked back off the ladder, but the floor was covered with hay and broke the worst of his fall. He grabbed the ladder again before she could pull it away, and came up fast. She kicked again, but he caught her foot and shoved hard, sending her sprawling.

And then he was up in the loft with her, and there was nowhere to run. She was only half on her feet when his fist connected with her face, and light exploded behind her eyes.

“You brung this on yourself, girl,” Harl said, punching her again in the stomach. The air exploded from her lungs, and she gasped in pain. He gripped her nightshirt in one sinewy fist and yanked, tearing half of it away.

“Please, Da!” she cried. “Don’t!”

“Don’t?” he echoed with a harsh laugh. “Since when do you say don’t to boys in the hayloft, girl? Ent this where you do your sinning? Ent this where you bring shame to our family? You’ll stick any drunk that falls asleep in a stall, but yer too good for your own da?”

“No!” Renna cried.

“Corespawned right, yer not,” Harl said, grabbing the back of her neck and pushing her face down into the hay as he lifted his nightshirt with his free hand.

When it was over, Renna lay crying in the hay. Harl’s weight was still on her, but the strength seemed to have gone out of him. She shoved hard, and he rolled off her without resistance.

She wanted to shove him right off the side of the loft and break his neck, but she couldn’t stop sobbing enough to rise. Her cheek and lip throbbed where he had struck her, and her stomach was on fire, but it was nothing compared with the burning between her legs. If Harl had even noticed the evidence that she had never been with a man before, he gave no sign.

“That’s it, girl,” Harl said, patting her shoulder weakly. “You go ahead and have yerself a good cry. It used to help Ilain, before she got to liking it.”

Renna scowled. Ilain had never liked it, no matter what he said.

“You ever do that again,” she said, “I’ll tell everyone in Town Square what you done.”

Harl barked a laugh. “No one will believe you. The goodwives’ll just think the town tramp is looking for an excuse to move close enough to get her claws into their husbands, and none of them will care for that.

“And besides,” he added, wrapping a gnarled hand around her throat, “you tell anyone, girl, and I’ll kill you.”

Renna watched the sun set from the warded porch, hugging herself as the sky washed with color. Not long ago, she had stood every night looking to the east, dreaming of the day Arlen Bales would return from the Free Cities to fulfill his promise and take her away.

She still watched the road each evening, but now she looked to the west, praying to see Cobie Fisher come for her. Did he still think of her? Had he meant what he said? Wouldn’t he have come by now if he had?

Her hope faded further each night, till it was little more than a flicker, and then nothing but a coal buried in sand, a warmth buried away for a use that might never come.

But anything that kept her outside a moment longer was worth it, even a dream that cut as much as it soothed. Soon she would have to go inside and serve her father dinner, and work her evening chores with his eyes on her until he said it was time for bed.

And then she would go obediently to his bed, and lie still as he had his way. She thought of Ilain, and all the years she had undergone this torment, back when Renna was too young to understand. How she had survived with her mind intact was beyond Renna, but Ilain and Beni had always been stronger than her.

“Gettin’ dark, girl,” Harl called. “Come and shut the door ’fore the corelings get you.”

For a moment, the image danced across her mind. The corelings would rise in a moment. It would be a simple matter to step across the wards and end her torment.

But Renna found she didn’t have the strength for that, either. She turned and went inside.

“Oh, don’t you grumble at me, Wooly,” Renna told the sheep as she sheared. “You’ll thank me to be rid of your coat in this heat.”

Beni and the boys used to make mock of her when she spoke to the animals like people, but with them gone, Renna found herself doing it more and more. The cats and dogs and the animals in the stalls were the only friends she had in the world, and when Harl was in the fields, they lent sympathetic ears as Renna poured her heart out to them.

“Renna,” came a whisper behind her. She jumped and Wooly bleated as she accidentally cut him, but Renna barely noticed, spinning to find Cobie Fisher just a few feet away.

She dropped the shears, looking around frantically, but Harl was nowhere to be seen. Out weeding the fields, he would likely be gone hours more, but she took no chances, grabbing Cobie’s arm and pulling him behind the big barn.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“Bringing a few casks of rice out to Mack Pasture’s farm up the road,” Cobie said. “I’ll succor there, and head back to the Square in the morning.”

“My father will kill you if he sees you,” Renna said.

Cobie nodded. “I know. I don’t care.” He fumbled with his message pouch, pulling out a long necklace of smooth brook stones threaded on a stout leather cord with a fishbone clasp.

“It ent much, but it’s what I could afford,” he said, handing the necklace to Renna.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, taking the gift. It wrapped around her neck twice and still hung past her breasts.

“Keep thinking about you, Renna,” Cobie said. “Tender Harral and my da told me to forget you, but I can’t do it. I see you every time I close my eyes. I want you to come back with me tomorrow. The Tender will marry us if we go to him and beg; I know he will. He did it for your sister, when she ran off with Jeph Bales, and once we ’re joined before the Creator, nothing your da says can pull us apart.”

“Honest word?” Renna asked, her eyes brimming with tears.

Cobie nodded and pulled her to him, kissing her deeply.

But Cobie only kept control for a moment, as Renna pushed him back against the barn wall and sank to her knees. He gasped and his nails dug grooves in the wood of the barn wall while she worked. His knees bucked, and as he slipped down to the ground, Renna straddled him and lifted her skirts.

“I…I’ve never…” Cobie stuttered, but she put a finger to his lips to silence him and sank herself onto him.

Cobie threw his head back in pleasure, and Renna smiled. This wasn’t like it was with Harl, rough and unfeeling. This was how it should be. She covered Cobie’s face in kisses as she rose and fell, finding her own pleasure as his hands roamed her body.

“I love you,” he whispered, and spent himself inside her. She cried and kissed him. They held each other in that warm glowing embrace for a time, and then stood, readjusting their clothes. Renna cast a wary eye around the corner of the barn, but there was no sign of her father.

“My father goes out into the fields early,” Renna said. “Right after breakfast. If you come then, he’ll be gone till lunchtime.”

“we’ll be at the Holy House before he even realizes you’re gone,” Cobie said, squeezing her tightly. “Pack your things tonight and have them ready. I’ll come as early as I can.”

“There’s nothing to pack,” Renna said. “I’ve no dowry but myself, but I promise I can be a good wife. I can cook and ward and keep your home…”

Cobie laughed, kissing her. “I want no dowry. Only you.”

Renna hid the necklace in her apron pocket, and was obedient the rest of the day and night, giving her father no reason to doubt her. It was true that she had nothing to pack, but she went to each of her friends, the animals, to whisper her goodbyes. She cried over Miss Scratch, lamenting the kittens she would never see.

“You’ll be Mrs. Scratch when the kits come,” Renna said, “even if that good-for-nothing tabby don’t help you care for ’em.”

She scanned the animals in the room, spotting the likely sire. “You take care of your kits,” she admonished, keeping her voice low so her father wouldn’t hear, “or I’ll come back and throw you in the water trough.”

She lay awake all night as Harl snored beside her, and before the first crack of light came through the shutters, she had porridge on the fire and was out collecting eggs from the coop in the barn. She went about the rest of her chores that morning aware that she was performing each for the last time, and as she worked, she kept casting eyes up the road.

She didn’t have to wait long. There was a galloping in the distance, but it faded before it came too close. Soon after, Cobie came around the bend in the road, sweaty and breathless.

“Galloped all the way,” he said, kissing her. “Couldn’t wait to see you.”

Pinecone needed a rest, so Cobie tethered her behind the barn while Renna drew water from the well. The mare drank greedily and began grazing while they fell into each other’s arms. Before long, she was bent over against the barn with her skirts around her waist.

And it was there Harl found them.

“I knew it!” he cried, swinging his pitchfork hard at Cobie ’s head. The shaft caught him on the temple and sent him reeling.

“Cobie!” Renna shouted, running to him and cradling him in her arms as he tried to rise.

“I knew sumpthin’ was up when I saw you weepin’ over them cats, girl,” Harl said. “You think yer da’s an idiot?”

“I don’t care!” Renna shouted. “Cobie and I are in love, and I’m leaving with him!”

“The Core you are,” Harl said, grabbing her arm. “You’ll get your ass in the house this instant, you want to keep the skin on it.”

But Cobie’s meaty hand locked over Harl’s wrist, twisting and pulling it off Renna.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but I ent gonna let you do that.”

Harl turned to face him and snorted. “Well, boy, don’t say you didn’t ask for this,” he said, and kicked Cobie hard in the crotch.

His pants still around his ankles, Cobie had no protection whatsoever from Harl’s heavy boot, and he crumpled in a heap, clutching between his legs. Harl shoved Renna to the ground and raised his pitchfork, striking merciless blows as Cobie lay helpless.

“Typical bully boy,” Harl spat. “Bet you never been in a real fight in your life.” Cobie let go his crotch and tried to get out of the way, but his pants were still a tangle, tripping him up, and he screamed as each blow struck home.

Finally, as he lay gasping and bloody on the ground, Harl stuck the fork in the dirt and pulled his long knife from the sheath on his belt.

“Told you what I’d do if I caught you with my daughter again,” he said, advancing. “Say goodbye to yer stones, boy.” Cobie’s eyes widened in terror.

“No!” Renna screamed, leaping on Harl’s back and tangling him with her arms and legs. “Run, Cobie! Run!”

Harl shouted, and the two of them struggled. A lifetime of hard work had made Renna strong, but Harl turned and kicked back, slamming her into the wall of the barn. The wind was knocked from her, and before she could take another breath Harl slammed her again. And again. Her grip loosened, and he caught her arm, flipping her over onto the ground.

Pain flared through Renna on impact, but even through the haze she saw Cobie pulling up his pants and leaping onto his horse. Before Harl could snatch up his pitchfork, he had kicked Pinecone’s flanks and was galloping down the road.

“This is yer last warning, boy! Stay away from my daughter or I ent gonna leave you an inch to piss with!

“As for you, girlie,” Harl said, “I told you what we do to tramps around here!” He grabbed Renna’s hair in a fist and dragged her toward the house. She cried out in pain but, still dazed, she could do little more than stumble along.

Halfway across the yard, she realized they weren’t going to the house at all. Harl was taking her to the outhouse.

“No!” she screamed, accepting the pain from her pulled hair as she planted her feet and began to pull away. “Creator, please! No!”

“Think the Creator’s gonna help you with you out sinnin’ in broad daylight, girl?” Harl asked. “I’m doing His corespawned work!” He yanked hard, keeping her moving.

“Da! Please!” she cried. “I promise I’ll be good!”

“You made that promise before, girl, and see where it’s got us,” Harl replied. “Shoulda done this right away; made sure you took me serious.”

He shoved hard, and Renna fell into the outhouse, landing hard against the bench and wrenching her back. She ignored the pain and surged forward to escape, but Harl punched her right in the face as she charged, and everything went black.

Renna came to a few hours later. At first, she forgot where she was, but the fire in her back where she had struck the bench, and the blinding pain in her cheek when she flexed her face, brought it all back. She opened her eyes in terror.

Harl heard her screaming and pounding on the door, and came over, rapping sharply on the wall with the bone handle of his knife. “You quiet down in there! This is for your own good.”

Renna ignored him, continuing to scream and kick at the door.

“Wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Harl said, loudly enough to be heard over her tantrum. “Them boards’re old enough as is, and you’ll want ’em good and strong for when the sun sets. Keep kicking and you’ll knock the wards out of place.”

Renna quieted immediately.

“Please,” she sobbed through the door. “Don’t leave me out at night! I’ll be good!”

“Corespawned right you will,” Harl said. “After tonight, you’ll chase that boy off yourself, he comes callin’!”

It was hot in the tiny outhouse, and the air was thick with the stench of excrement. There was a vent, but Renna didn’t dare open it for fear of creating a hole in the wardnet. Flies buzzed noisily in the midden barrel in the pit below the crude waste bench.

Through the cracks in the wood, Renna watched the light dim as the sun began to set. She kept hoping, praying, that Harl would come back, that it was just a scare, but as the last glimmer of light died, so too did her hopes. Outside, the corelings were rising. She felt in her apron pocket, clutching the polished stones of Cobie’s necklace tightly for strength.

The demons came silently; the day’s heat drifting up from the ground gave them a path from the Core, it was said, and their misty forms even now would be coalescing into claws and scales and razor teeth. Renna could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

There was a snuffling at the outhouse door. Renna stiffened, biting her lip in fear, and in the silence of her stillness she could hear claws digging at the dirt of the yard, quick sniffs as the coreling inhaled the sharp tang of her fear.

Suddenly the demon shrieked and struck hard at the wards. There was a flare of magic, so bright it came through the cracks in the wood and illuminated the interior of the outhouse, and Renna screamed so hard it felt as if her throat would tear.

The wards held, but the demon was undeterred. There was a flap of leathery wings, and another flare of magic from the roof. The entire outhouse shook with the impact, and Renna screamed again as dust and dirt clattered down on her, shaken loose by the blow.

The wind demon tried again and again, shrieking its rage at the prey so near and yet so far. The wards threw the coreling back each time, but the rebounds shook the outhouse, and the old wood groaned in protest. How many blows could it withstand?

At last, the coreling gave up. Renna heard the flap of wings and its receding cries as it soared off in search of easier prey.

But the ordeal did not end there. Every coreling in the yard caught her scent before long. She endured the sparks of magic as flame demons raked at the wood with their tiny claws, shivering at the blasts of cold air as the wards converted their firespit. Worse were the wood demons, which drove off the others before long and pounded the wards so hard that the entire structure rocked with the force of each rebound. Renna felt every flare of the wards like a physical blow, and sank down to the floor, curling into a ball and sobbing uncontrollably.

It seemed to go on for an eternity. After Creator only knew how many hours, Renna found herself praying for the wards to fail—as they surely must before the night was through—just to put an end to it. If she ’d been able to muster the strength to stand, she would have opened the door herself to let them in.

More interminable time passed, and she found she lacked even the strength to cry. The flare of magic, the shrieks in the night, the stench of the midden pit, all faded as she sank deeper and deeper into a primal fear so powerful that the details ceased to exist.

She lay curled tight, every muscle tensed at once, and tears flowed silently from her wide eyes as they stared into the darkness. Her breath came in short, sharp intakes, and her heart was a hummingbird’s wing. Her nails dug grooves into the wood of the floor, oblivious to the resulting blood and splinters.

She didn’t even notice when the sounds and flashes ceased, and the demons returned to the Core.

There was a thump as the outside bar was lifted, but Renna didn’t react until the door opened wide to the blinding light of the rising sun. After hours of staring into darkness, the light seared her eyes, snapping her mind from its retreat. She gasped deeply and bolted upright, throwing an arm up against the light, screaming as she kicked back until she was scrunched against the rear wall of the outhouse.

Harl put his arms around her, soothing her hair. “There, there, girl,” he whispered, gentling her hair. “That hurt me as much as it did you.” He hugged her, firmly but gently, and rocked her from side to side as she sobbed.

“That’s it, girl,” he said. “You have yerself a good cry. Get it all out.”

And she did, clutching at him as she convulsed in sorrow, before she finally calmed.

“Think you can mind me now?” Harl asked when her composure began to return. “Don’t want to have to do this again.”

Renna nodded eagerly. “I promise, Da.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming.

“That a girl,” Harl said, and lifted her in his arms, carrying her into the house. He put her in her own bed, and made her a hot broth, bringing lunch and dinner to her on a board she could lay across her lap. It was the first time Renna had ever seen him prepare food, but it was warm and good and filling.

“You sleep in tomorrow,” he said that night. “Rest up, and you’ll be right as rain by afternoon.”

Indeed, Renna did feel better the next day, and better still the day after that. Harl did not come to her at night, and he let her work at her own pace by day. Time passed, and it became clear that Cobie wasn’t coming back. It was just as well, Renna thought.

Sometimes, between chores, she remembered flashes of the night in the outhouse, but she blocked them quickly from her mind. It was over, and she would be a good daughter from now on, so she need not fear going back there again.

CHAPTER 15 MARICK’S TALE

THE CROWD HAD GATHERED at Leesha’s hut early in the evening, while the sky was still awash in lavender and orange. At first it was just Darsy, Vika, and their apprentices, but then Gared and the other Cutters began to filter in, carrying their warded axes on their shoulders, and Erny and the rest of the Warders in the Hollow, along with their apprentices. Rojer arrived soon after, and Benn the glassblower. More and more came, until the yard was filled with onlookers, more than she could hope to house for the night. Some had brought tents to sleep in after the lesson.

Many of the visitors shifted nervously as the sun set, but they trusted in Leesha and the strength of her wards. Lanterns were lit to illuminate the stone table at the center of the gathering.

A few misty forms seeped from the ground as full dark came, but the corelings fled as soon as they solidified. They had learned that attempting to breach Leesha’s wards could bring more than simple forbiddance.

Soon after, the Painted Man arrived, walking beside his giant stallion. Slung over the horse’s back were the carcasses of several demons.

The Warders moved quickly, deactivating a portion of the wardnet long enough for the Painted Man to bring the coreling bodies through. The Cutters took over then, hauling the carcasses over to the stone table as the Warders reestablished the net.

“That didn’t take you very long,” Leesha told the Painted Man as he drew close.

The man shrugged. “You wanted one of each breed. It wasn’t exactly a challenge.”

Leesha grinned and took up her warded scalpels. “Rapt attention, all,” she called loudly as she went to the wood demon and prepared to make the first incision. “Class is in session.”

There was a communal breakfast in the morning for those who had remained at the hut. The Cutters had left soon after Leesha’s lesson with the Painted Man at their lead, looking to reinforce their learning with practical application, but most others had stayed safe behind her wards until dawn.

Leesha had her apprentices cook a great vat of porridge, and brewed tea by the cauldron. They passed out the bowls and mugs as guests emerged from their tents, rubbing sleep from their eyes after the late night.

Rojer sat away from the others, tuning his fiddle on the porch of Leesha’s hut.

“It’s not like you to sit off by yourself,” Leesha said, handing him a bowl and sitting beside him.

“Not really hungry,” Rojer said, swirling his spoon in the porridge halfheartedly.

“Kendall is going to be all right,” Leesha said. “She’s recovering quickly, and she doesn’t blame anyone for what happened.”

“Maybe she should,” Rojer said.

“You have a unique gift,” Leesha said. “It’s not your fault it’s hard to teach.”

“Is it?” Rojer asked. Leesha looked at him curiously, but he did not elucidate, instead turning away from her and looking out into the yard. “You could have told me.”

“Told you what?” Leesha asked, knowing full well.

“About you and ‘Arlen,’ ” Rojer said.

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” Leesha said.

“But Kendall’s love potions are yours?” Rojer snapped. “Maybe my teaching’s not so bad after all. Maybe the girl just had her mind on sweet tea when it should have been on the demons.”

“That’s not fair,” Leesha said. “I thought I was doing you a favor.”

Rojer snarled at her, a look she ’d never seen on his face outside of mummery. “No, you thought you were shoving me off on some other girl to make yourself feel better about not being interested yourself. You’re more like your mother than you know.”

Leesha opened her mouth to respond, but no words came to her. Rojer set down his bowl and walked off, putting his fiddle under his chin and playing an angry melody that drowned out anything Leesha might have said to call him back.

The Corelings’ Graveyard was in chaos when Leesha and the others returned to town. Hundreds of folk, many of them injured and none of them familiar, filled the square. All were filthy, ragged, and half starved. Exhausted, they rested in grim misery on the frozen cobbles.

Tender Jona was running to and fro, shouting orders to his acolytes as they tried to give comfort to those in need. The Cutters were dragging logs out to the square so people would at least have a place to sit, but it seemed an impossible task.

“Thank the Creator!” the Tender called when he caught sight of them. Vika, his wife, ran to embrace him as he hurried over.

“What happened?” Leesha asked.

“Refugees from Fort Rizon,” Jona said. “They just started pouring in this morning, a couple hours past dawn. More arrive at every moment.”

“Where is the Deliverer?” a woman in the crowd cried. “They said he was here!”

“The wards in the entire city failed?” Leesha asked.

“Impossible,” Erny said. “Rizon has over a hundred hamlets, all individually warded. Why flee all this way?”

“Wasn’t the corelings we fled,” a familiar voice said. Leesha turned, her eyes widening.

“Marick!” she cried. “What are you doing here?” The Messenger was as handsome as ever, but there were yellowed bruises on his face only partially obscured by his long hair and beard, and he favored one leg slightly as he approached.

“Made the mistake of wintering in Rizon,” Marick said. “Usually a good idea; the cold doesn’t bite so hard in the South.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Not this year.”

“If it wasn’t demons, what happened?” Leesha asked.

“Krasians,” Marick said, spitting in the snow. “Seems the desert rats got sick of eating sand and decided to start preying on civilized folk.”

Leesha turned to Rojer. “Find Arlen,” she murmured. “Have him come in secret and meet us in the back room of Smitt’s Tavern. Go now.” Rojer nodded and vanished.

“Darsy. Vika,” Leesha said. “Have the apprentices triage the wounded and bring them to the hospit in order of severity.”

The two Herb Gatherers nodded and hurried off.

“Jona,” Leesha said. “Have your acolytes fetch stretchers from the hospit and help the apprentices.” Jona bowed and left.

Seeing Leesha giving direction, others drifted over. Even Smitt, the Town Speaker and innkeep, waited on her word.

“We can hold on food a moment,” Leesha told him, “but these people need water and warm shelter immediately. Put up the wedding pavilions and any tents you can find, and have every spare hand you can find hauling water. If the wells and stream don’t provide fast enough, put cauldrons on a fire and fill them with snow.”

“I’ll see to it,” Smitt said.

“Since when does the whole Hollow hop to your commands?” Marick asked with a grin.

Leesha looked at him. “I need to see to the wounded now, Master Marick, but I’ll have many questions for you when I’m through.”

“I’ll be at your disposal,” Marick said, bowing.

“Thank you,” Leesha said. “It would help if you could gather the other leaders of your group who might have something to add to your story.”

“Of course,” Marick said.

“I’ll settle them in the inn,” Stefny, Smitt’s wife, said. “Surely you could use a cold ale and a bite,” she told the Messenger.

“More than you could imagine,” Marick said.

There were broken bones to set and infections to treat, many from blistered feet that had burst and been left untreated as folk spent more than a week on the road, knowing that to fall behind the main group meant almost certain death. More than a few of the travelers had coreling wounds, as well, from crowding into hastily put-together circles. It was a wonder any had made it to Deliverer’s Hollow at all. She knew from their tales that many had not.

There were several Herb Gatherers of varying skill among the refugees, and after a quick check of their own state, Leesha put them to work. None of the women complained; it was ever the lot of the Herb Gatherer to put aside her own needs for those of her charges.

“We would never have made it without Messenger Marick,” one woman said as Leesha treated her frostbitten toes. “He rode ahead each day and warded campsites for our group to succor when the corelings came. Wouldn’t have lasted a night without him. He even felled deer with his bow and left them on the road for us to find.”

By the time Rojer reappeared, the worst of the wounds had been treated. She left control of the hospit to Darsy and Vika and went with him to her office.

When the door closed behind them, Leesha slumped against Rojer, finally allowing her exhaustion to show. It was late in the afternoon, and she had been working for hours without a break, treating patients and fielding questions from apprentices and town elders alike. It would be dark in a few short hours.

“You need to rest,” Rojer said, but Leesha shook her head, filling a basin with water and splashing it on her face.

“No time for it now,” she said. “Have we found shelter for everyone?”

“Barely,” Rojer said. “All told, there’s more refugees than the entire population of Deliverer’s Hollow twice over, and I’ve no doubt there will be more tomorrow. Folk have opened their homes, but Tender Jona still has people sleeping sitting up in his pews, just to keep a roof over them. If this keeps up, every inch of the greatward will be covered in makeshift tents by week’s end.”

Leesha nodded. “We’ll worry over that come morning. Arlen is waiting at Smitt’s?”

“The Painted Man is there,” Rojer said. “Don’t call him Arlen in front of those people.”

“It’s his name, Rojer,” Leesha said.

“I don’t care,” Rojer snapped, surprising her with his vehemence. “These people need something bigger than themselves to believe in, and right now it’s him. No one is asking you to call him Deliverer.”

Leesha blinked, taken aback. “I’ve gotten used to everyone leaping when I say hop.”

“Well you can trust me never to do that,” Rojer said.

Leesha smiled. “I want it no other way. Come. Let’s go see the Painted Man.”

The taproom of Smitt’s Tavern was filled to capacity when Rojer and Leesha arrived, even though the new inn was twice the size it had been when it burned down the year previous.

Smitt nodded to them as they entered, and jerked his head toward the back room. They hurried through the crowd and ducked through the heavy door.

The Painted Man was in the room, pacing like an animal.

“I should be out hunting for more survivors before nightfall, not waiting on council meetings,” he said.

“we’ll be as swift as we can,” Leesha said, “but it’s best we do this together.”

The Painted Man nodded, though she could see his impatience in his clenching hands. Smitt entered a moment later, ushering in Marick, along with Stefny, Tender Jona, Erny, and Elona.

Marick stared at the Painted Man, though his hood was drawn and his tattooed hands were hidden in the voluminous sleeves of his robe.

“Are you…him?” Marick asked.

The Painted Man pulled back his hood, revealing his painted flesh, and Marick gasped.

“You the Deliverer, as they say?” Marick asked.

The Painted Man shook his head. “Just a man who learned to kill demons.”

Jona snorted.

“Something caught in your throat, Tender?” the Painted Man asked.

“The other Deliverers never named themselves as such,” Jona said. “They were all given the title by others.” The Painted Man scowled at him, but Jona only bowed his head.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” Marick said, though he sounded a little disappointed. “I didn’t really expect you to have a halo.”

“What happened?” the Painted Man asked.

“Twelve days ago, the Krasians sacked Fort Rizon,” Marick said. “They came in the night, bypassed the hamlets, and took out the wall guards, opening the gates of the central city wide at the crack of dawn. We were all still in our beds when the killing started.”

“They came in the night?” Leesha asked. “How is that possible?”

“They’ve got warded weapons that kill demons,” Marick said, “same as you Hollow folk. They talk like there ent nothing in the world more important than demon killing, and taking Rizon was just something to keep them busy till the sun set.”

“Go on,” the Painted Man pressed.

“Well,” Marick said, “it’s clear their eyes were on the central grain silos, because they took those first. Their warriors killed any man that resisted, and bent any woman that looked old enough to bleed.” He glanced at the women present, and his face flushed.

“It’s no shock what men will do when they think they can get away with it,” Elona said bitterly. “Get on with your tale, Messenger.”

Marick nodded. “They must have killed thousands, that first morning, and took the city walls to keep the rest of us in. We were beaten, tied together, and dragged into warehouses like cattle.”

“How did you escape?” the Painted Man asked.

“At first I didn’t think any of the desert rats spoke a civilized tongue,” Marick said. “I know a couple of sand words I picked up from other Messengers, but it’s mostly curses, not much to start a conversation with. I figured I was done for, but after a day, a fat one came who spoke Thesan like a native. He started rounding up the royals, landowners, and skilled laborers, bringing them to the Krasian duke. I was among those.”

“You saw their leader?” the Painted Man asked.

“Oh, I saw that big bastard all right,” Marick said. “They brought me before him, bound and battered, and when he heard I was a Warder, he set me free like nothing had happened. Even gave me a purse of gold for my troubles! I think he meant for me to teach them our wards, but I was over the wall and out of the city at dawn the next morning.”

“Their leader,” the Painted Man pressed. “What was he wearing?”

Marick blinked. “Open white robe and head rag,” he said, “with black underneath, like their warriors wear. And he wore a crown; that’s how I knew he was their duke.”

“A crown?” the Painted Man asked. “Are you sure? He didn’t just have a jewel set in his turban?”

Marick nodded. “I’m sure. It was gold, and covered in jewels and wards. Ripping thing must have been worth more than every other duke ’s crown combined.”

“And this duke, did he speak our tongue?” the Painted Man asked.

“Better than some Angierians I know,” Marick said.

“What was his name?” the Painted Man asked.

Marick shrugged. “Don’t think anyone said it. They all called him some sand word. Shamaka, or somesuch. I figured it meant ‘duke.’ ”

“Shar’Dama Ka?” the Painted Man asked.

“Ay.” Marick nodded. “That was it.”

The Painted Man swore under his breath.

“What is it?” Leesha asked, but he ignored her, leaning in to the Messenger.

“Was he about this tall?” he asked, holding up a hand above his own head. “With a forked, oiled beard and a sharp, hooked nose?”

Marick nodded.

“Did he carry a warded spear?” the Painted Man asked.

“They all carried warded spears,” Marick said.

“You would remember this one,” the Painted Man said.

Marick nodded again. “Metal, it was, point-to-butt. And covered in etched wards.”

The growl that issued from the Painted Man’s throat was so feral that even Marick, usually fearless, took a step back.

“What is it?” Leesha asked again.

“Ahmann Jardir,” the Painted Man said. “I know him.”

“What does this mean?” she asked, but the Painted Man waved the question away.

“It makes no difference now,” he said. “Go on,” he told Marick. “What happened next?”

“As I said, I scaled the wall and fled the city the moment they set me free,” Marick said. “The hamlets I passed through were half deserted by the time I arrived. When word of the attack reached them, the smart folk grabbed what they could and were on the road before the blood on the cobbles of the central city was dry. Those too weak to travel or too scared of the night stayed behind. I think more stayed than left, but there were still tens of thousands on the road.

“I bought a horse from an old fellow got left behind, and galloped off. I caught up to the folk on the road soon after. The groups were too large to stick together; no city could absorb so many. Most went to Lakton and its hamlets, where any with a hook and line can fill their belly, but the Jongleurs have had a lot to say about you,” he pointed to the Painted Man, “and them that believed you were really the Deliverer come again flocked here. I needed to get back to Angiers and report to the duke, but I couldn’t just leave folk on the road with so few to ward for them, so I offered up my services.”

“It was a good thing you did, Marick,” Leesha said, laying a hand on his arm. “These people never would have made it without you. Go and take your ease out into the taproom while we discuss your news.”

“I have a room reserved for you upstairs,” Smitt added. “Stefny will see you there.”

The Painted Man put his hood up as soon as the Messenger left. “Daylight is fading. If there are more on the road, I need to make sure they see the dawn.”

Leesha nodded. “Take Gared and as many Cutters as can sit a horse.”

“Get your cloak,” the Painted Man told Rojer. “You’re coming with us.” Rojer nodded, and they headed for the rear exit.

“You’ll need Warders,” Erny said, pushing back his wire-framed glasses and rising from his seat. “I’ll go.”

Elona was on her feet instantly grabbing his arm. “You’ll do no such thing, Ernal.”

Erny blinked. “You’re always complaining I’m not brave enough. Now you want me to hide when people need my help?”

“You’ll prove nothing to me by getting yourself killed,” Elona said. “You haven’t sat a horse in years.”

“She has a point, Da,” Leesha said.

“Stay out of this,” Erny said. “The town may hop at your word, but I’m still your father.”

“There’s no time for this,” the Painted Man said. “Are you coming or not?”

“Not,” Elona said firmly.

“Coming,” Erny said, pulling his arm from her grasp and following the other men out.

“That idiot!” Elona shrieked as the door slammed shut. Everyone else glanced at one another.

“Take as long back here as you like,” Smitt said, “I need to get out front.” He, Stefny, and Jona quickly filed out of the room, leaving Leesha alone with her fuming mother.

“He’ll be all right, Mum,” Leesha said. “There’s nowhere in all the world safer than traveling with Rojer and the Painted Man.”

“He’s a frail man!” Elona said. “He can’t ride with young men, and he ’ll catch his death of cold! He’s never been the same after the flux took him last year.”

“Why, Mother,” Leesha said, surprised, “it sounds like you truly care.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Elona snapped. “Of course I care. He’s my husband. If you knew what it was like to be married almost thirty years, you wouldn’t say such things.”

Leesha wanted to snap back, to shout out all the horrible things her mother had done to her father over the years, not the least of which being her repeated infidelity with Gared’s father, Steave, but the sincerity in her mother’s voice checked her.

“You’re right, Mum, I’m sorry,” she said.

Elona blinked. “I’m right? Did you just say I was right?”

“I did.” Leesha smiled.

Elona opened her arms. “Hug me now, child, while it lasts.” Leesha laughed and embraced her tightly.

“He’ll be fine,” Leesha said, as much for herself as her mother.

Elona nodded. “You’re right, of course. He may look a terror, but no demon can stand up to your tattooed friend.”

“Both of us right in one night, and Da not here to witness,” Leesha said.

“He’ll never believe it,” Elona agreed. She dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief, and Leesha pretended not to notice.

“So was that the same Marick you used to shine on?” Elona asked. “The one you ran off to Angiers with?”

“I never shined on him, Mother,” Leesha said.

Elona scoffed. “Sell that tampweed tale to someone who doesn’t know you. The whole town knew you wanted him, even if you were too prudish to act on it. And why not? He’s handsome as a wolf, and a Messenger on top. That’s man enough for any woman. Why do you think he used to make Gared so jealous?”

“Everything made Gared jealous, Mum,” Leesha said.

Elona nodded. “He’s just like his father: simple men, ruled by their passions.” She smiled wistfully, and Leesha knew she was thinking of Steave, her first love, who had died the year previous when flux took Cutter’s Hollow and the wards failed.

“The Marick I saw when we were alone on the road wasn’t much different,” Leesha said.

“And you used Gatherer’s tricks to keep him off you,” Elona guessed, “instead of taking it as the perfect opportunity to have a romp with no one the wiser.” It was true enough; Leesha had secretly drugged Marick into impotence to prevent his taking advantage of her on the road.

“Like you would have?” Leesha asked, unable to keep the bite from her tone.

“Yes,” Elona said, “and why not? Skirts lift up for a reason. Women have needs down below, just as men. Don’t lie to yourself and pretend otherwise.”

“I know that, Mum,” Leesha said.

“You know it,” Elona agreed, “and yet still you sew your petticoats shut, and think denying yourself somehow makes you heroic. How can you treat every body in the Hollow when you don’t understand the needs of your own?”

Leesha said nothing. Her mother had a most unsettling way of reading her thoughts.

“You should go up and talk to Marick while your other suitors are out of town,” Elona said. “He’s had years and tragedy to season him, and come out a hero. The folk outside can’t stop singing his praises. Perhaps he ’ll be more to your liking now.”

“I don’t know…” Leesha said.

“Oh, go on!” Elona said. “Take a plate of food up to his room and talk to him. It’s not like you have to let him stick you this very night.” She smiled and winked. “Though if you did, it’d be a better use of your night than fretting over problems that will remain come morning.”

Leesha laughed despite herself, and hugged her mother again.

Several times they passed scenes of slaughter; bodies, alone and in groups, torn apart by corelings when night fell upon them without succor.

The Painted Man cursed the sights, spurring Twilight Dancer on harder, not bothering to stop after the first. The others who followed him, even Gared and the Cutters, were inexperienced riders falling well behind his powerful stallion, but he didn’t care. There were refugees on the road, driven out of their homes by Ahmann Jardir, the man he had been fool enough to call friend, and he needed to find and protect as many of them as he could before night fell.

But he would hold Jardir to account for every life lost. Corespawn him if he did not.

More than an hour of hard riding brought him to a large group of refugees. The sky was awash with color as the sun set, but the folk were still working on their wards. They had painted the magical symbols on wooden boards, but the area they needed to secure was irregularly shaped, and the net was out of alignment.

He galloped right to the edge of the wardnet, pulling Twilight Dancer up short and leaping down with his warding kit. People cried out at the sight of him, but he ignored them, inspecting their wards.

“It’s him,” one Warder whispered to another. “The Deliverer.” The Painted Man paid him no mind, focusing on the task at hand. Some of their wards he turned or twisted to align properly with others, but many he altered with charcoal, or turned the boards over and replaced entirely.

A crowd began to gather around him, folk clutching one another and whispering as they stared at his tattooed hands and tried to get a peek under his hood. None dared approach him, though, and his work went uninterrupted. When his companions finally caught up, Erny fumbled his way down off his horse to assist. Rojer and the others placed themselves protectively between him and the crowd.

“Deliverer!” a woman screamed at him. He glanced over to see her struggling vainly toward him against the pull of Gared’s trunklike arms, her eyes alight with fanatical fire. He turned back to his work.

“Please!” the woman cried. “My sister is still on the road!”

The Painted Man looked up sharply at that. “Take over the warding,” he told Erny. “Draft as many of their Warders as you need. I’ll leave a couple of archers to buy you time to finish.” Erny gulped, but he nodded and called to the Rizonan Warders, who had been standing back with the rest of the refugees.

“Let her go,” the Painted Man told Gared when he reached the pair. Gared complied immediately, and the woman fell to her knees before him, clutching at his feet.

“Please, Deliverer,” she said. “My sister is with child; too far along to sit a horse. She and our gray parents couldn’t keep up with the group, so our husbands bade me take the children on ahead while they set a slower pace.”

“And they haven’t caught up,” the Painted Man finished for her.

“It is nearly dark,” the woman said, weeping upon his feet and clutching at the hem of his robes. “Please, Deliverer, save them.”

The Painted Man reached down to her, placing a hand on her chin and gently pulling her to her feet. “I’m not the Deliverer,” he said. “But I swear I’ll save your family if I can.”

He turned to Gared. “Pick two archers to stay with Erny while the wards here are completed,” he said. “The rest of you are with me.” Gared nodded, and moments later they thundered out of the camp, riding even more frantically than before.

It was dark when they found them: five people, as the desperate woman had said. They stood in a tiny makeshift ward circle, surrounded by dozens of corelings. Flame demons spat fire and wind demons swooped down from the sky. There was even a rock demon, towering over the rest.

Each time the demons struck and the wardnet flared to life, Rojer could see the holes in the web; holes more than large enough for a demon to squeeze through.

The two young men stood by those holes, stabbing out with pitchforks to drive the demons back as an elderly couple tended to the obvious reason why they had fallen behind.

The young woman at the circle’s center was giving birth.

The Painted Man growled and kicked his stallion forward, leaping ahead of the others. He cast his robe aside, and it floated to the ground in his wake. Gared and the Cutters gave a cry and followed suit, freeing their warded axes as they galloped toward the fray.

The Painted Man rode Twilight Dancer right into the rock demon, the warded metal horns welded to the horse’s barding crackling with power as they punched through the black carapace of the demon’s abdomen. The Painted Man leapt from his horse as the demon was driven back, grabbing one of its horns to hold on to as he rode the coreling to the ground, punching it repeatedly in the throat with warded fists as it went down.

He was up in an instant, tackling a flame demon and tearing its lower jaw clean off. The Cutters caught up to him then, catching flame bursts on their warded shields and hacking at the demons as if they were sectioning lumber.

Wonda and the archers took a different tack, halting their horses several dozen yards back and sighting the wind demons that filled the sky. They came crashing down one after another, feathered shafts jutting from their leathery bodies.

Rojer slipped from his horse, leaving it with the archers, and took up his fiddle, playing even as he ran for the small circle. Much like Leesha’s Cloaks of Unsight, his music made him effectively invisible to the corelings as he waded through their lines, but without the need for a slow pace. In moments he was inside the circle, and changed his tune to the jarring notes that would drive the demons away from the small family.

The young woman screamed as battle raged about them, black demon ichor flying free in the night air. Her parents were doing what they could to make her comfortable, but it was clear from their fumbling that they had no idea how to assist in the delivery.

“She needs help!” Rojer cried. “We need to get her to an Herb Gatherer!”

The Painted Man broke away from the demons he was engaging and was at Rojer’s side in an instant. He was clad only in a loincloth, covered in tattoos and demon ichor. The Rizonans backed away from him in fear, but the girl was too far gone to even notice.

“Get my herb pouch,” the Painted Man said, kneeling by the girl and examining her with a surprisingly gentle touch. “Her water’s broken and her contractions are close. There’s no time to get her to a Gatherer.”

Rojer ran out to Twilight Dancer, but the stallion was in a wild rage, trampling a pair of flame demons into the snow and mud. Drawing his warded cloak about him, Rojer took up his fiddle again. As with the corelings, Rojer’s special magic found resonance with the beast, and in short order the horse stood calmly while Rojer retrieved the precious herb pouch.

He brought the pouch to the Painted Man, who quickly began grinding herbs into powder and mixing them with water. The girl’s family kept back, watching the scene in horror as the Cutters laid waste to demons all around them.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Rojer asked nervously, as the Painted Man brought his potion to the moaning woman’s lips.

“I was apprenticed to an Herb Gatherer for six months as part of my Messenger training,” the Painted Man said. “I’ve seen it done.”

“Seen?!” Rojer asked.

“Do you want to do it?” the Painted Man asked, looking at him. Rojer blanched and shook his head. “Then just play your ripping fiddle and keep the demons back while I work.” Rojer nodded and put bow back to string.

Hours later, with the sounds of battle long faded, a shrill cry broke the night. Rojer looked at the screaming babe and smiled.

“There will be no denying it when people call you Deliverer now,” he said.

The Painted Man scowled at him, and Rojer laughed.

Leesha carried the steaming tray up the steps of Smitt’s inn, her heart beating nervously. Twice before, she had considered giving herself to Marick, whom she could not deny was handsome and quick-witted. Both times, Marick’s character had failed at the key moment, making Leesha feel that in his mind, her needs were second to his own, if he was considering them at all.

But her mother was right again. She often was, even as she used the insight to cut at people. Leesha was tired of being alone, and she knew in her heart that Arlen would never fill that place for her. Not for the first time, she wished she could see Rojer in that light, but it was impossible. She loved Rojer, but had no desire for him to share her bed. Marick had shown the people of Fort Rizon that he was a man who could be counted upon in times of need. Perhaps it was time to look beyond his past failings.

She tugged the wrinkles from her dress, then felt foolish for it, and knocked on his door.

“Ay?” Marick asked as he opened the door. He was shirtless and damp, having just come from the warm basin of water in his room. His eyes widened as he caught sight of Leesha.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Leesha said. “Just thought you might do with a hot meal before you sleep.”

“I…yes, thank you,” Marick said, grabbing his tunic and pulling it on. Leesha looked away as he did so, though the image of his muscled body lingered in her mind.

Marick took the tray, inhaling its aroma deeply as he brought it over to the small table and chair by the bed. He lifted the lid to reveal a hot joint of meat, moist with its own juices, nestled amid spiced potatoes and fresh steamed greens.

“Food in Deliverer’s Hollow is soon to grow short,” Leesha said, “but Smitt’s stores have held out for a night, at least.”

“A bed is glorious enough, after lying down in snow for near two weeks,” Marick said. “This is a gift from the Creator Himself.” He tore into the meat, and Leesha took a strange satisfaction in watching him eat the food she had prepared. She remembered the feeling, distantly, from the time she and Gared had been promised, and she first cooked for him. It seemed a century ago, in another life.

“That was delicious,” Marick said when he was done, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“It’s small thanks for what you did,” Leesha said, “bringing those people to safety in their time of need.”

“Even after I failed you in yours?” Marick asked. Leesha looked at him in surprise.

“Last year,” Marick said, “when flux caught the Hollow and you needed to get home. I made…unfair demands for my assistance.”

“Marick…” Leesha began softly.

“No, let me speak,” Marick said. “When we were on the road to Angiers that first time, I was so taken with you, I thought we would be raising children together within a year. But then, in the tent, when I couldn’t…be a man with you, I…”

“Marick…” Leesha said again.

“It made me crazy,” Marick said. “I felt like I needed to get far away from you, but when I did, I couldn’t stop thinking of you, even when I…lay with other women.” He looked away.

“But when I saw you again,” he went on, “I felt so…hard, and I wanted to make up for my past failing quickly, before something else prevented it. It was unfair to you, and I’m sorry.”

Leesha laid a hand on his arm. “I’m not a child,” she said. “I was as responsible for what happened as you.” It was more true than he would ever know, and at that moment she felt horrified at her own actions. It felt so righteous at the time, but the truth was she had drugged and used him for her own convenience, leaving him scarred for years over the ordeal. Perhaps Rojer was right, and she was more like her mother than she knew.

“That’s kind of you to say,” Marick said, squeezing her arm, “but you and I both know it isn’t so. I’m glad you managed to make it home,” he added, “and without having to surrender your virtue.”

Leesha had been leaning in toward him, but she flinched back from him at the words, for indeed, her virtue had been torn from her on the trip, taken by bandits on the road because she went without proper escort. All because of Marick’s impatience and inability to think of others before himself.

Marick seemed not to notice her change in demeanor. He chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t get over how you run the Hollow now. What happened to the soft girl who turned the head of every man that saw her? Overnight you’ve become Hag Bruna. I’ll wager even the corelings are scared of you now.”

Hag Bruna? Was that how folk saw her? The lonesome crone who bullied and intimidated everyone in town? Was that what she ’d become when her virtue was stripped from her?

Her mother sensed the change, too. Time it was done somehow, Elona had said, and I expect you’re the better for it.

Leesha shook her head to clear it, sensing the moment they had been about to share slipping away. “What are your plans now?” she asked. “Will you help us hunt for more survivors on the road, or do you mean to take your group of refugees directly on to Angiers?”

Marick looked at her in surprise. “Neither.”

“What do you mean?” Leesha asked.

“Now that the Rizonans are safe, it’s time I moved on,” Marick said. “The duke needs word of the Krasian attack, and I’ve let them slow me long enough.”

“Slow you?” Leesha asked. “Their lives depended on you!”

Marick nodded. “I couldn’t leave people out on the road without succor, but they have succor now. I’m not Rizonan. I have no further responsibility to them.”

“But Deliverer’s Hollow can’t possibly absorb so many!” Leesha cried.

Marick shrugged. “I’ll tell the duke. Let it be his problem.”

“They’re not a problem, Marick, they’re people!” Leesha said.

“What do you expect me to do?” Marick asked. “Devote the rest of my life to looking out for them? That’s not a Messenger’s way.”

“Well, I’m glad we never ended up raising children together, then,” Leesha snapped. “Enjoy your bed, Messenger.” She took the tray and left, slamming the door behind her.

“What are we going to do?” Smitt asked. Leesha had called a late meeting of the town council to discuss Marick’s revelation that he was leaving the refugees in Deliverer’s Hollow and pressing on alone in the morning.

“Take them in, of course,” Leesha said. “Open our homes while helping them build their own. We can’t just leave these folk without food or shelter.”

“The greatward can’t accommodate so many new houses,” Smitt said.

“So we’ll build another,” Leesha said. “We have near two thousand hands to do the work, and miles of forest for material.”

“Not to scuff the wards,” Darsy said, “but just how’re we supposed to feed so many in the dead of winter? If more keep coming, we’ll all be eating snow before long.”

Leesha had been considering the same problem. “Every young woman in the Hollow can shoot a bow now. We’ll put them to hunting, and the boys to trapping.”

“That will only go so far,” Vika said.

Leesha nodded. “Corkweed may be tough and bitter, but it’s nutritious enough, grows on just about everything, and survives year-round. Put the younger children to work gathering it, and I’ll think of a way to cook and season it in bulk. If that’s not enough, there are edible barks and even insects that can fill a starving belly.”

“Weeds and insects?” Elona asked. “You’re going to ask folk to eat bugs?”

“I’m seeing to it they don’t starve, Mother,” Leesha said. “If I have to sit and eat bugs in front of them to set an example, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Well enough for you,” Elona said, “but don’t expect me to do the same.”

“You’ll have your own part to play,” Leesha said.

Elona looked at her. “I’m not making my house into an inn for every vagabond that comes down the road.”

Leesha sighed. “It’s getting dark, Mother. You’d best head home. we’ll talk in the morning.”

The others took this as the meeting’s end and filed out of the room after Elona, leaving Leesha alone with Stefny.

“Don’t fret,” Stefny said. “I’m sure your mother will be more than willing to do her part, opening her home to the Rizonan men with the biggest dangles.”

Leesha glared at her. “My mum isn’t the only woman in this village who broke her wedding vows,” she reminded her. Stefny’s youngest son Keet, now nearly twenty, was fathered not by Smitt but by the village’s previous Tender, Michel. It was still unknown to Smitt and the rest of town, but Bruna, who had midwifed the child, knew from the outset.

“Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking Bruna’s secrets died with her,” Leesha warned. “Keep your hypocrisy to yourself.”

Stefny blanched white and nodded meekly. Leesha gave an amused snort at how she scurried out of the room, and then started suddenly, realizing she sounded just like Bruna.

It was well over a week after Marick rode off—to the cheers and adulation of those he was deserting—before the Painted Man and Rojer returned. Erny and the Cutters had drifted back into the city over the first few days, each bringing groups of refugees with them, but the Painted Man and Rojer kept ranging ever farther, and all who came to the Hollow told stories of encountering them.

Leesha was proud of Arlen and Rojer for the lives they were saving, but by the time they returned, so many folk had come that she despaired of feeding them all, weeds and bugs or no.

“We went as close to Rizon as we dared,” Rojer said over hot tea at her cottage the day they returned. “I think we found everyone who took the road, though there are likely some who tried to cut overland. The Krasians have dug in firmly, and send out regular patrols on the road.”

“They’ve only dug in temporarily,” the Painted Man said. “It won’t be long before they’re on the move again.”

“Back to the ripping desert, I hope,” Rojer said.

The Painted Man shook his head. “No. They’ll conquer Lakton, and then they’ll turn north and head right for the Hollow.”

Leesha felt her face grow cold, and Rojer looked like he might be sick.

“How can you know that?” she asked.

“The Krasians believe that Kaji, the first Deliverer, unified the tribes of Krasia and then rode out of the desert, spending two decades conquering the lands to the north,” the Painted Man said. “He called it Sharak Sun, the Daylight War, and levied the men into Sharak Ka, the great holy war against demonkind. If Ahmann Jardir thinks he is the Deliverer come again, he will attempt to follow the same path.”

“What are we to do?” Leesha asked.

“Build defenses,” the Painted Man said. “Fight them, every inch of the way.”

Leesha shook her head. “No. I won’t support that. These aren’t demons you’re talking about killing, Arlen. They’re human beings.”

“You think I don’t know that?” the Painted Man said. “I have Krasian friends, Leesha! Can you say the same?” Leesha looked at him in shock, but she recovered and shook her head.

“Make no mistake,” the Painted Man said, his voice quieter, but no less vehement, “the Krasians believe every single person in the North is inferior to the least of them. They may make a show of being merciful to leaders they can use to further their goals, but there will be no such concessions to regular folk. They will kill or enslave everyone who does not swear utter submission to Jardir and the Evejah. We have to fight.”

“We could retreat to Angiers,” Leesha said. “Hide within the city walls.”

The Painted Man shook his head. “We can’t give them any ground. I know these people. If we show fear and retreat, they will think us weak, and only press the attack harder.”

“I still don’t like it,” Leesha said.

The Painted Man shrugged. “Your liking it is irrelevant. The good news is that I doubt they have more than six thousand warriors of fighting age. The bad news is that the least of those can outfight any three Cutters, and when they’re ready to move, they’ll have levied thousands of slave troops from Rizon.”

“How are we supposed to fight against that?” Rojer said.

“Unity,” the Painted Man said. “We need to open dialogue with Lakton now, while the lines of communication are still clear, and petition the dukes of Angiers and Miln to put aside their differences and commit to a common defense.”

“I don’t know the duke of Miln,” Rojer said, “but I grew up in Rhinebeck’s court when my master Arrick was his herald. Rhinebeck is more likely to put aside his differences with the corelings than with Duke Euchor.”

“Then we’ll have to convince him personally,” Leesha said. She looked at the Painted Man. “All of us.”

The Painted Man sighed. “Just as well I not go to Lakton. I’m…not very welcome there.”

“So the tale’s true then?” Rojer asked. “The dockmasters tried to kill you?”

“After a fashion,” the Painted Man said.

Rojer sat in the music shell that night, playing to soothe the hundreds of refugees still living in tents in the Corelings’ Graveyard. Many of them drifted over to sit by the shell, basking in the warm glow of the greatward as they fell under Rojer’s spell. His music swept them up and carried them far away to forget, at least for a short time, that their lives had been shattered.

It seemed a terribly inadequate gift, but it was all he had to give. He kept his Jongleur’s mask in place, letting them see nothing of the bleakness he felt inside.

Tender Jona was waiting for him when he finished playing. The Holy Man was young, not yet thirty, but he was well loved by the Hollowers, and no one had worked harder to bring comfort and necessities to the refugees. In addition to organizing most of the food and shelter rationing, the Tender walked among the refugees, learning their names and letting them know they were not alone. He led prayers for the dead, found caregivers for orphans, and married lovers brought together by tragedy.

“Thank you for doing this,” Jona said. “I could feel their spirits lifting as they watched you play. My own, as well.”

“I’ll perform every evening I’m not needed elsewhere,” Rojer said.

“Bless you,” Jona said. “Your music gives such strength to them.”

“I wish it could give some to me,” Rojer said. “Sometimes I think in my case the opposite is true.”

“Nonsense,” Jona said. “Strength of spirit is not some finite thing, where one man must lose for another to gain. The Creator grants strength and weakness to us all. What has you feeling weak, child?”

“Child?” Rojer laughed. “I’m not part of your audience, Tender. I have my fiddle,” he held up the instrument, “and you have yours.” He pointed with his bow at the heavy leather-bound Canon that Jona held in his hands.

Rojer knew his words hurt the Tender, and that the man deserved better, but his mood was black and Jona had picked the wrong time to condescend. He waited for the Holy Man to shout at him, ready and willing to shout right back.

But Jona never grew vexed. He slipped the book into a satchel he wore for just that purpose, and spread his hands to show they were empty. “As your friend, then. And someone who understands your pain.”

“How could you possibly understand my pain?” Rojer snapped.

Jona smiled. “I love her, too, Rojer. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who didn’t. She used to come almost every day to read at the Holy House, and we would talk for hours. I’ve seen her shine on men who didn’t deserve her, never even noticing that I was a man as well.”

Rojer tried to keep his Jongleur’s mask in place, but there was an honesty in Jona’s tone that cut through his defenses. “How did you deal with it? How do you stop loving someone?”

“The Creator didn’t make love conditional,” Jona said. “Love is what makes us human. What separates us from the corelings. There is value in it, even when it is not requited.”

“You love her still?” Rojer asked.

Jona nodded. “But I love my Vika and our children even more. Love is as infinite as spirit.” He put his hand on Rojer’s shoulder. “Do not waste years lamenting what you do not have with her. Instead, cherish what you do. And if ever you need to speak with someone who understands your trial, come to me. I promise to leave the Canon in its satchel.”

He slapped Rojer on the shoulder and walked off, leaving Rojer feeling as if a weight had been lifted from him.

The lamps were lit in Leesha’s cottage when Rojer arrived, and the front door was open. Neglecting his warded cloak, Rojer had held the corelings off with his fiddle, which meant Leesha had heard him coming long before he arrived.

It was a ritual they shared. Leesha was always awake and working, but she would leave the door open when she heard his fiddle in the distance. Rojer would find her with her nose in a book or embroidering, grinding herbs or tending her gardens.

Rojer stopped playing when he reached Leesha’s warded path, and the cold night grew quiet save for the distant shrieks of demons. But in the silence between the sounds of corelings, Rojer heard weeping.

He found Leesha curled in an ancient rocking chair, wrapped in a tattered old shawl. They had belonged to her teacher, Bruna, and Leesha always went to them when she had doubt.

Her eyes were red and puffy, the crumpled kerchief in her hand soaked through. He looked at her and understood what Jona meant about cherishing what they had. Even when she was at her lowest, she left her door open for him. Could the other men in her life say the same?

“You’re not still mad at me?” Leesha asked.

“Course not,” Rojer said. “We both did a little spitting, is all.”

Leesha gave a strained smile. “I’m glad.”

“Your kerchief is soaked,” Rojer said. He flicked his wrist, pulling out one of the many colored kerchiefs in his sleeve. He held it out to her, but when she reached for it, he tossed it into the air, quickly adding several more as if from empty air. Rojer began to juggle them, creating a circle of colored cloth floating in the air. Leesha laughed and clapped.

Arrick, Rojer’s master, could have juggled anything in the room, but with Rojer’s crippled hand, kerchiefs were the only thing he could keep going indefinitely. “Pick a color.”

“Green,” Leesha said, and faster than her eye could see his hand snatched that cloth and tossed it her way, making it seem to have leapt from the circle of its own accord. Rojer caught the rest and tucked them back away as Leesha dried her face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Bad enough that demons hunt us at night,” Leesha said, “but now men are killing one another in the daylight. Arlen wants us to make war with both, but how can I support that?”

“I don’t know that you have much choice,” Rojer said. “If he’s right, the Daylight War will find us whether we support it or not.”

Leesha sighed, hugging the shawl tightly even though the heat wards around her yard kept things comfortably warm. “Do you remember the night in the cave?”

Rojer nodded. It had been the previous summer, a few days after the Painted Man had rescued them on the road. The three of them had taken shelter from the rain, and while there, Leesha had learned that Rojer and the Painted Man had killed the bandits who had robbed them and ravished Leesha. She had been furious with them, and called them murderers.

“Do you know why I was so angry with you and Arlen?” Leesha asked. Rojer shook his head. “Because I could have killed those men if I’d wanted.” She reached into her dress pocket, producing a slim needle coated in some greenish mixture.

“I carry these needles for putting down mad animals,” Leesha said. “I keep them in my dress pocket because they are too dangerous to leave lying in the herb cloth, or even my apron, which I take off sometimes. No man would long survive a puncture from one of these, and even a scratch might kill him in time.”

“I’ll ware my tongue around you in the future,” Rojer said, but Leesha didn’t laugh.

“I had one in my free hand when I threw the blinding powder at the bandit leader,” Leesha said. “If I had struck the mute with it when he grabbed me, he would have been dead before the leader recovered, and I could have struck him, too.”

“And I could have handled the third,” Rojer said. He lifted an empty hand, and suddenly a knife appeared in it. He thrust quick and twisted the knife in the air. “So why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s one thing to kill a coreling,” Leesha said, “and another to kill a person. Even a bad person. I wanted to. Sometimes I even look back and wish I had. But when the time to do it came, I couldn’t.”

Rojer looked at the knife in his hand a moment, then sighed and slipped it back into the special harness on his forearm, rebuttoning his cuff.

“Don’t think I could, either,” he admitted sadly. “I started learning knife tricks when I was five, but it’s all mummery. I’ve never so much as cut someone.”

“Once I knew I couldn’t do it, I just stopped fighting when they pushed me down,” Leesha said. “Night, I even spit on my hand to wet myself when the first one fumbled with his breeches. But even when they left me sobbing in the dirt, I didn’t wish I’d killed them.”

“You wished they’d killed you, instead,” Rojer said.

Leesha nodded.

“I felt the same way, after Master Jaycob was killed,” Rojer said. “I didn’t want revenge, I just wanted the pain to end.”

“I remember,” Leesha said. “You begged me to let you die.”

Rojer nodded. “That’s why I went with the Painted Man to the bandit camp.”

“For me?” Leesha asked.

Rojer shook his head. “Those men needed to be put down like any mad horse, Leesha. We weren’t the first folk they robbed, and we wouldn’t have been the last, especially once they had my portable circle. But we didn’t kill them. The Painted Man walked in and stole your horse, I grabbed the circle, and we ran. They were all breathing and relatively unbroken when we left.”

“Food for the demons,” Leesha said.

Rojer shrugged. “The Painted Man had killed most of the demons in the area. We didn’t see a one when we walked to their camp, and dawn was only a few hours away. It was a better chance than they gave us by far.”

Leesha sighed, but she said nothing. He looked at her. “Why do folk call an Herb Gatherer to put down an animal? Any axe or mallet will do the job.”

Leesha shrugged. “Can’t bring themselves to kill a loyal animal, or they hold out hope I can heal it. But sometimes I can’t and the animal is suffering. The needles are quick and kind.”

“Maybe the Painted Man is, too,” Rojer said.

“Are you saying you think we should fight the Krasians?” Leesha asked.

Rojer shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think we need to keep a needle in our hand, even if we don’t use it.”

CHAPTER 16 ONE CUP AND ONE PLATE

LEESHA WATCHED AS WONDA and Gared faced off in the Corelings’ Graveyard, circling slowly. Wonda was taller than any other woman in the Hollow, including the refugees, but giant Gared dwarfed her regardless. She was fifteen, and Gared near to thirty. Still, Gared wore a look of intense concentration, while Wonda’s face was calm.

Suddenly he lunged, grabbing for her, but Wonda caught his wrist in one hand and pivoted, pressing his elbow hard with her other hand as she sidestepped and used the force of his own attack to throw him onto his back on the cobbles.

“Corespawn it!” Gared roared.

“Well done,” the Painted Man congratulated Wonda as she gave Gared a hand to help him up. Since he had begun giving sharusahk lessons to the Hollowers, she had shown herself to be his best student by far.

“Sharusahk teaches diverting force,” the Painted Man reminded Gared. “You can’t keep using the wild swings you would against a coreling.”

“Or a tree,” Wonda added, bringing titters from many of the female students. The Cutters glared. More than a few of them had found themselves defeated by female students, something no man was used to.

“Try again,” the Painted Man said. “Keep your limbs in close and your balance centered. Don’t give her an opening.

“And you,” he added, turning to Wonda, “don’t grow overconfident. The weakest dal’Sharum still has a lifetime of training against your few months. They’ll be your true test.” Wonda nodded, her smile disappearing, and she and Gared bowed and began to circle again.

“They’re learning quickly,” Leesha said as the Painted Man came to join her and Rojer. She never trained with the other Hollowers, but she watched carefully each day as they practiced the sharukin, her quick mind cataloguing every move.

Again, Wonda threw Gared onto his back. Leesha shook her head wistfully. “It really is a beautiful art. It’s a shame its only purpose is to maim and kill.”

“The people that invented it are no different,” the Painted Man said. “Brilliant, beautiful, and deadly beyond reckoning.”

“And you’re sure they’re coming?” Leesha asked.

“There isn’t a doubt in my mind,” the Painted Man said, “much as I wish otherwise.”

“What do you think Duke Rhinebeck will do?” she asked.

The Painted Man shrugged. “I met him a handful of times in my Messenger days, but I know little of his heart.”

“There’s not much to know,” Rojer said. “Rhinebeck spends his hours doing three things: counting money, drinking wine, and bedding younger and younger brides, hoping one of them will bear him an heir.”

“He’s seedless?” Leesha asked in surprise.

“I wouldn’t call him that anyplace where it might be overheard,” Rojer warned. “He’s hung Herb Gatherers for less insult. He blames his wives.”

“They always do,” Leesha said. “As if being seedless somehow makes them less a man.”

“Doesn’t it?” Rojer asked.

“Don’t be absurd,” Leesha said, but even the Painted Man looked at her doubtfully.

“Regardless,” Leesha said, “fertility was one of Bruna’s specialties, and she taught me well. Perhaps I can win favor by curing him.”

“Favor?” Rojer asked. “He ’d make you his duchess for it, and get the child on you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Painted Man said. “Even if your herbs can awaken his seed, it could be months before there was any proof of it. we’ll need more leverage than that.”

“More leverage than an army of desert warriors on his doorstep?” Rojer asked.

“Rhinebeck will need to mobilize well before it comes to that, if he’s to have any hope of stopping Jardir,” the Painted Man said, “and dukes are not men apt to take such risks without great convincing.”

“You’ll have Rhinebeck’s brothers to contend with, as well,” Rojer said. “Prince Mickael will take the throne if Rhinebeck dies without an heir, and Prince Pether is Shepherd of the Tenders of the Creator. Thamos, the youngest, leads Rhinebeck’s guards, the Wooden Soldiers.”

“Are any of them likely to see reason?” Leesha asked.

“Not likely,” Rojer said. “The one to convince is Lord Janson, the first minister. None of the princes could find their boots without Janson. Not a thing goes on in Angiers that Janson doesn’t track in his neat ledgers, and the royal family delegates almost everything to him.”

“So if Janson doesn’t support us, it’s unlikely the duke will, either,” the Painted Man said.

Rojer nodded. “Janson is a coward,” he warned. “Getting him to agree to war…” He shrugged. “It won’t be easy. You may have to resort to other methods.” The Painted Man and Leesha looked at him curiously.

“You’re the ripping Painted Man,” Rojer said. “Half the people south of Miln think you’re the Deliverer already. A few meetings with the Tenders and the right tales spun at the Jongleurs’ Guildhouse, and the other half will believe it, too.”

“No,” the Painted Man said. “I won’t pretend to be something I’m not, even for this.”

“Who is to say you’re not?” Leesha asked.

The Painted Man turned to her in surprise. “Not you, too. It’s bad enough from the Jongleur eager for tales and the Tender blind with faith, but you’re an Herb Gatherer. Knowledge cures your patients, not prayer.”

“I’m also a ward witch,” Leesha said, “and you made me so. It’s honest word I put more store in books of science than the Tenders’ Canon, but science falls short of explaining why a few squiggles in the dirt can bar a coreling or do it harm. There’s more to the universe than science. Perhaps there’s room for a Deliverer, too.”

“I’m not Heaven-sent,” the Painted Man said. “The things I’ve done…no Heaven would have me.”

“Many believe the Deliverers of old were just men, like you,” Leesha said. “Generals who arose when the time was right and the people needed them. Will you turn your back on humanity over semantics?”

“It ent semantics,” the Painted Man said. “Folk start looking to me to solve all their problems, they’ll never learn to solve their own.”

He turned to Rojer. “Everything set?”

Rojer nodded. “Horses laden and saddled. We can leave when you’re ready.”

It had been over a month since spring melt, and the trees lining the Messenger road to Angiers were green with fresh leaves. Rojer held tightly to Leesha as they rode. He had never been much of a rider and generally mistrusted horses, especially those not hitched to a cart. Fortunately, he was small enough to ride behind Leesha without straining a beast too far. As with everything she turned her mind to, Leesha had mastered riding in short order, and commanded the horse with confidence.

It didn’t help his churning stomach that they were returning to Angiers. When he had left the city with Leesha a year ago, it had been as much to save his own life as to help her get home. He wasn’t eager to return, even alongside his powerful friends, especially when it meant letting the Jongleurs’ Guild know he was still alive.

“Is he overweight?” Leesha asked.

“Hm?” Rojer said.

“Duke Rhinebeck,” Leesha said. “Is he overweight? Does he drink?”

“Yes and yes,” Rojer said. “He looks like he swallowed the whole beer barrel, and it’s not far from the truth.”

Leesha had been asking him questions about the duke all morning, her ever-active mind already working on a diagnosis and potential cure, though she had yet to meet the man. Rojer knew her work was important, but it had been close to ten years since he had lived in the palace. Many of her questions taxed his memory, and he had no idea if his answers were still accurate.

“Does he sometimes have trouble performing abed?” Leesha asked.

“How in the Core would I know?” Rojer snapped. “He wasn’t the boy-buggering type.”

Leesha frowned at him, and Rojer immediately felt ashamed.

“What’s bothering you, Rojer?” she asked. “You’ve been distracted all morning.”

“Nothing,” Rojer said.

“Don’t lie to me,” Leesha said. “You’ve never been good at it.”

“Being on this road again has me thinking about last year, I guess,” Rojer said.

“Bad memories all around,” Leesha agreed, casting her gaze off to the sides of the road. “I keep expecting bandits to leap from the trees.”

“Not with this lot around,” Rojer said, nodding ahead of them to Wonda, who rode a light courser and had her great bow strung and ready in a sheath by her saddle. She sat up straight and alert, eyes sharp within her scarred face.

Behind them, Gared rode a heavy garron, though the giant man made the huge beast look a more normal size by comparison. His huge axe handles jutted up from either shoulder, ready at a moment’s notice. Trained demon hunters both, there was little to fear from mortal foes with them on guard.

But most comforting of all, even in daylight, was the Painted Man. He rode his giant black stallion at the lead of the small column, shunning idle talk, but his presence was a silent reminder that no harm could come to any of them while he was near.

“So is it the road that bothers you, or what lies at its end?” Leesha asked.

Rojer looked at her, wondering how she could just pick thoughts right out of his head.

“What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew full well.

“You never told me how you came to be at my hospit last year, beaten near to death,” Leesha said. “And you never went to the guard over it, or told the Jongleurs’ Guild you were still alive, even after they buried Master Jaycob.”

Rojer thought of Jaycob, Arrick’s former master who had been like a grandfather to him after Arrick died. Jaycob took him in when he had nowhere else to go, and put his own reputation in the hat to start Rojer’s career. The old man paid a heavy price for his kindness, beaten to death for Rojer’s crime.

Rojer tried to speak, but his voice caught, and tears filled his eyes.

“Shhh, shhh,” Leesha whispered, taking his hands and drawing them tighter around her. “we’ll talk about it when you’re ready.” He leaned into her, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair, and he felt himself grow calm again.

They were two days from the city, not far from where the Painted Man had first found Rojer and Leesha on the road, when he turned his horse and rode into the trees.

Leesha kicked her horse ahead, picking her way through the trees until she came alongside the Painted Man. With no natural path to follow, much less one wide enough for two, they had to continually shift and duck to avoid low-hanging limbs. Gared was forced to get down from his horse entirely and walk.

“Where are we going?” Leesha asked.

“To get your grimoires,” the Painted Man replied.

“I thought you said they were in Angiers,” she said.

“The duchy, not the city,” the Painted Man said with a grin.

The path soon widened, but still in a way that seemed natural to the untrained eye. Leesha was an Herb Gatherer, though, and knew plants better than anything.

“You cultivated this,” she said. “You felled trees and widened the path, then hid your work so it doesn’t seem a path at all.”

“I value my privacy,” the Painted Man said.

“It must have taken years!” Leesha said.

The Painted Man shook his head. “My strength has some uses. I can fell a tree almost as fast as Gared, and drag it off easier than a team of horses.”

They followed the secret path deep into the woods until it veered off to the left. Ignoring the clear path, the Painted Man turned right, and again plunged into the trees. The others followed, and when they pushed through the branches they gasped as one.

There, hidden in a hollow, was a stone wall, so covered in ivy and moss that it had been invisible until they were upon it.

“I can’t believe this is just sitting here, so close to the road,” Rojer said.

“There are hundreds of ruins like this in the forest,” the Painted Man said. “The trees reclaimed land quickly after the Return. A few are common Messenger stops, but others, like this one, have gone unnoticed for centuries.”

They followed the wall to a gate, ancient and rusted shut. The Painted Man took a key from his robes and inserted it in the lock, which turned with a smooth oiled click. The gates opened silently.

Inside was a stable that seemed collapsed from the front, but the rear half of the structure was intact and clear, with a large covered cart and more than enough space for the four horses.

“Miraculous that half the stable should survive the years so well, and the other half not,” Leesha noted with a grin, lifting some ivy out of the way to reveal fresh wards on the stable’s walls. The Painted Man said nothing as they brushed down the horses.

Like the rest of the compound, the main house was in ruins, the roof caved and looking decidedly unsafe. The Painted Man led them around the back to a servant’s house, still quite large by the standards of anyone raised in the hamlets. The place was half collapsed, like the stable, but the door the Painted Man led them through was heavy, thick, and locked.

The door opened into one great room, restored to function as a workshop. Warding equipment lay on every surface, along with sealed jars of ink and paint, various half-finished projects, and piles of materials.

There was a small cupboard by the fireplace. Leesha opened it to find one cup and one plate, one bowl and one spoon. A knife was stuck in a small cutting board by the cold pot hanging in the hearth.

“So cold,” Leesha whispered. “So lonely.”

“He doesn’t even have a bed,” Rojer murmured. “He must sleep on the floor.”

“I used to think I was alone, living in Bruna’s hut,” Leesha said, “but this…”

“Over here,” the Painted Man said, moving to a corner of the room with a large bookshelf. That got Leesha’s attention immediately, and she headed over.

“Are those the grimoires?” she asked, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.

The Painted Man glanced at the shelf and shook his head. “Those are nothing,” he said. “Common wards and books, histories and basic maps. Nothing you can’t find in the library of any Warder or Messenger worth the name.”

“Then where…?” Leesha began, but the Painted Man moved over to a nondescript section of the floor and stamped his heel down hard in a precise spot. The board was on a fulcrum, and as one end dipped into a hollow in the floor, the other rose, revealing a small metal ring. The Painted Man grasped the ring and pulled, opening a trapdoor in the flooring, its edges uneven and filled with sawdust, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding floorboards.

He lit a lantern and led the way down the steps into a large basement. The walls were stone, and the room was cool and dry. There was a hall leading in the direction of the collapsed main house, but a giant stone block had fallen to bar the path.

Painted weapons lay stacked and hung everywhere. Axes, spears of varying length, polearms, and knives, all delicately etched with battle wards. Dozens of crank bow bolts. Literally thousands of arrows, stacked in gross bundles.

There were trophies of a sort, as well, demon skulls, horns, and talons, dented shields and broken spears. Gared and Wonda drew wards in the air.

“Here,” the Painted Man said to Wonda, handing her a bundle of arrows, delicate wards entwined along their wooden shafts and metal heads. “These will bite coreling flesh deeper than the ones in your quiver.”

Wonda’s hands shook as she accepted the gift. Speechless, she bowed her head, and the Painted Man bowed in return.

“Gared…” the Painted Man said, looking around as Gared stepped forward. He selected a heavy machete, its blade etched with hundreds of tiny wards. “You can hack through wood demon limbs like errant vines with this,” he said, handing the weapon to Gared hilt-first. Gared dropped to his knees.

“Get up,” the Painted Man snapped. “I ent the ripping Deliverer!”

“Ent callin’ you any names,” Gared said, keeping his eyes down. “All I know is I spent my whole life acting the selfish fool, but since you come to the Hollow, I seen the sun. I seen how I let my pride and my…lusts,” his eyes flicked to Leesha, just for an instant, “blind me. The Creator blessed me with strong arms to kill demons, not to take whatever I wanted.”

The Painted Man held out his hand, and when Gared took it, he pulled the man roughly to his feet. Gared weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he might as well have been a child.

“Maybe you seen the sun, Gared,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I showed it to you. You’d lost your da just a day before. That’ll grow any man. Show him what’s important in life.”

He held out the machete again, and Gared took it. It was a huge blade, but it seemed little more than a dagger in Gared’s giant hand. He looked at the delicate warding in wonder.

The Painted Man looked at Leesha. “Those,” he pointed to a series of shelves at the far end of the room, “are the grimoires.” Leesha immediately moved toward the shelves, but he caught her arm. “I let you go there and we’ll lose you for the next ten hours.”

Leesha frowned, wanting nothing more than to pull her arm away and bury herself in the heavy, leather-bound tomes, but she suppressed the urge. This was not her home. She nodded.

“we’ll bring the books with us when we leave,” the Painted Man said. “I have other copies. Those will be yours to keep.”

Rojer looked to the Painted Man. “Everyone gets a gift but me?”

The Painted Man smiled. “We’ll find you something.” He moved over to the blocked corridor. The keystone that had collapsed from the archway looked to weigh hundreds of pounds, but he lifted it away easily, leading them to a heavy, locked door that had been hidden in the darkness.

He produced another key from his robes and turned it in the lock, opening the door and stepping inside. He touched a taper to a huge stand lamp by the door, and it flared to life, reflecting off large mirrors carefully placed around the room. Instantly the huge chamber was filled with bright light, and the visitors gasped collectively.

Carpets, rich and thick, woven in faded design from ages past, covered the stone floor. The walls were hung with dozens of paintings of forgotten people and events, masterworks in gilded frames, along with metal-framed mirrors and polished furniture. Treasures lay piled in rain barrels around the room, filled to bursting with ancient gold coins, gems, and jewelry. Machines of unknown purpose lay partially disassembled alongside great marble statues and busts, musical instruments, and countless other riches. There were bookshelves everywhere.

“How is this possible?” Leesha asked.

“Corelings care little for riches,” the Painted Man said. “Messengers picked the easily accessible ruins clean, but there are countless places they’ve never been, whole cities lost to demons and swallowed up by the land. I’ve tried to preserve whatever survived the elements.”

“You’re richer than all the dukes combined,” Rojer said in awe.

The Painted Man shrugged. “I have little use for it. Take whatever you like.”

Rojer gave a whoop and ran through the room, running his fingers through piles of coins and jewelry, picking up statuettes and ancient weapons. He played a tune on a brass horn, then gave a cry and ducked behind a broken statue, reappearing with a fiddle in his hands. The strings had rotted away, but the wood was still strong and polished. He laughed aloud, holding the prize up in delight.

Gared looked around the room. “Liked the other room better,” he told Wonda, and she nodded her agreement.

The gates of Fort Angiers were closed.

“During the day?” Rojer asked in surprise. “They’re usually open wide for the loggers and their carts.” He sat now in the driver’s seat of the cart from the Painted Man’s keep, pulled by Leesha’s horse. She sat beside him, in front of several bags of books and other items used to disguise the cart’s false bottom. The hidden hold was filled with warded weapons and more than a little gold.

“Maybe Rhinebeck’s taking the Krasian threat more seriously than we thought,” Leesha said. Indeed, as they drew closer to the city, they saw guards armed with loaded crank bows patrolling the walltop, and woodworkers carving arrow slits at the lower levels of the wall. Where the gate had once had a single pair of guards, now there were several, standing alert with their spears at the ready.

“Marick’s tale likely set things in a frenzy,” the Painted Man agreed, “but I’ll wager those guards are there more to prevent thousands of refugees from pouring into the city than they are to ward off any Krasian attack.”

“The duke couldn’t possibly refuse all those people succor,” Leesha said.

“Why not?” the Painted Man said. “Duke Euchor lets the Beggars of Miln sleep on the unwarded streets every night.”

“Ay, state your business!” a guard called as they approached. The Painted Man pulled his hood lower and drifted toward the back of the group.

“We come by way of Deliverer’s Hollow,” Rojer said. “I’m Rojer Halfgrip, licensed to the Jongleurs’ Guild, and these are my companions.”

“Halfgrip?” one guard asked. “The fiddler?”

“The same,” Rojer said, lifting the newly strung fiddle the Painted Man had given him.

“Saw you play once,” the guard grunted. “Who are the others?”

“This is Leesha, Herb Gatherer of Deliverer’s Hollow, formerly of the hospit of Mistress Jizell in Angiers,” Rojer said, gesturing to Leesha. “The others are Cutters come to guard us on the road; Gared, Wonda, and, er…Flinn.”

Wonda gasped. Flinn Cutter was her father’s name, a man killed in the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow less than a year earlier. Rojer immediately regretted the improvisation.

“Why’s he all covered?” the guard asked, pointing his chin at the Painted Man.

Rojer leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “He’s badly demon-scarred, I’m afraid. Doesn’t like people looking on his deformity.”

“It true what they say?” the guard asked. “Do they kill corelings in the Hollow? They say the Deliverer has come there, bringing with him the battle wards of old.”

Rojer nodded. “Gared here has killed dozens himself.”

“What I wouldn’t give to have my spear warded to kill demons,” one guard said.

“We ’ve come to trade,” Rojer said. “You’ll have your wish soon enough.”

“That what you got in the cart?” the guard asked. “Weapons?” As he spoke, a few other guards walked back to inspect the contents.

“No weapons,” Rojer said, his throat tightening at the thought of them discovering the hidden compartment.

“Just looks like warding books,” one of the guards said, opening one of the sacks.

“They’re mine,” Leesha said. “I’m a Warder.”

“Thought he said you was an Herb Gatherer,” the guard said.

“I’m both,” Leesha said.

The guard looked at her, then at Wonda, then shook his head. “Women warriors, women Warders,” he snorted. “They’ll let ’em do anything out in the hamlets.” Leesha bristled at that, but Rojer laid a hand on her arm and she calmed.

One of the guards had moved back to where the Painted Man sat atop Twilight Dancer. Much of the stallion’s magnificent warded barding was hidden away, but the giant animal himself stood out, as did his cloaked rider. The guard moved in, trying to peek under the Painted Man’s hood. The Painted Man obliged him, lifting his head slightly so a sliver of light could reach under the shadows of his cowl.

The guard gasped and backed away, hurrying over to his superior, who was still speaking to Rojer. He whispered in the lieutenant’s ear, and his eyes widened.

“Clear the way!” the lieutenant shouted to the other guards. “Let them pass!” He waved them through, and the gate opened, allowing them passage into the city.

“I’m not sure if that went well or not,” Rojer said.

“What’s done is done,” the Painted Man said. “Let’s move quickly before word spreads.”

They headed into the bustling city streets, boardwalked to prevent corelings from finding a path to rise within the city’s wardnet. They had to dismount and lead the horses, which slowed things considerably, but it also allowed the Painted Man to virtually disappear between the horses and behind the cart.

Still, their passage did not go unobserved. “We ’re being followed,” the Painted Man said at one point when the boardwalk street was wide enough for him to come up alongside the cart. “One of the guards has been drifting along in our wake since we left the gate.”

Rojer looked back and caught a glimpse of a city guard’s uniform just before the man ducked behind a vendor’s stall.

“What should we do?” he asked.

“Not much we can do,” the Painted Man said. “Just thought you should know.”

Rojer knew the mazelike streets of Angiers well, and took them on a circuitous route through the most crowded areas to their destination, hoping to shake the pursuit. He kept glancing over his shoulder, pretending to look appreciatively at passing women or vendors’ wares, but always the guard was there, just on the edge of sight.

“We can’t keep circling forever, Rojer,” Leesha said at last. “Let’s just get to Jizell’s before it starts to get dark.”

Rojer nodded and turned the cart directly for Mistress Jizell’s hospit, which quickly came in sight. It was a wide, two-story building, made almost entirely of wood, as were all the buildings in Angiers. There was a small visitors’ stable around the side.

“Mistress Leesha?” the girl minding the stable asked in surprise, seeing them pull up.

“Yes, it’s me, Roni.” Leesha smiled. “Look how you’ve grown! Have you been keeping to your studies while I was gone?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am!” Roni said, but her eyes had already flicked to Rojer, and then drifted on to Gared, where they lingered. Roni was a promising apprentice, but she was easily distracted, especially by men. Fifteen and full-flowered, she would already be married and raising children of her own if she had grown up in the hamlets, but women married later in the Free Cities, and Leesha was thankful for that.

“Run and tell Mistress Jizell we ’ve arrived,” Leesha said. “I didn’t have time to write, and she may not have room for all of us.”

Roni nodded and ran off, and before they were done brushing down the horses, a woman shouted “Leesha!” Leesha turned, only to find herself smothered against Mistress Jizell’s prodigious bosom as the older woman swept her into a tight hug.

Just shy of sixty, Mistress Jizell was still strong and robust despite the heavy frame under her pocketed apron. A former apprentice of Bruna much as Leesha was, Jizell had been running her hospit in Angiers for more than twenty years.

“It’s good to have you back,” Jizell said, pulling back only after all the air had been squeezed from Leesha’s slender frame.

“It’s good to be back,” Leesha said, returning Jizell’s smile.

“And young Master Rojer!” Jizell boomed, sweeping poor Rojer into a similarly crushing embrace. “It seems I owe you thrice! Once for escorting Leesha home, and twice more for bringing her back!”

“It was nothing,” Rojer said. “I owe you both more than I can repay.”

“You can help work that off by playing your fiddle for the patients tonight,” Jizell said.

“We don’t want to put you out if there’s no room,” Leesha said. “We can stay at an inn.”

“The Core you can,” Jizell said. “You’ll all stay with us, and that’s final. We have a great deal of catching up to do, and all the girls will want to see you.”

“Thank you,” Leesha said.

“Now, who are your companions?” Jizell asked, turning to the others. “No, let me guess,” she said when Leesha opened her mouth. “Let’s see if the descriptions in your letters do them justice.” She looked Gared up and down, craning her head back to meet his eyes. “You must be Gared Cutter,” she guessed.

Gared bowed. “Yes’m,” he said.

“Built like a bear, but with good manners,” Jizell said, slapping one of Gared’s burly biceps. “we’ll get along fine.”

She turned to Wonda, not flinching in the least at the angry red scars on the young woman’s face. “Wonda, I take it?” she asked.

“Yes, mistress,” Wonda said, bowing.

“It seems the Hollow is full of polite giants,” Jizell said. She was by no means short by Angierian standards, but Wonda still towered over her. “Welcome.”

“Thank you, mistress,” Wonda said.

Jizell turned last to the Painted Man, still hidden in his hooded robe. “Well, I guess you need no introduction,” she said. “Let’s see, then.”

The Painted Man’s loose sleeves fell to his elbows as he reached up to draw back his hood. Jizell’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of his tattoos, but she took his hands and squeezed them warmly as she looked into his eyes.

“Thank you for saving Leesha’s life,” she said. Before he could react, she hugged him tightly. The Painted Man looked at Leesha in surprise, awkwardly returning the embrace.

“Now, if the rest of you can tend the horses, I’d like a few minutes to speak to Leesha alone,” she said. The others nodded, and Jizell escorted Leesha into the hospit.

Jizell’s hospit had been home to Leesha for several years, and still held a warm familiarity, but somehow it seemed smaller than it had just a year earlier.

“Your room is the same as you remember it,” Jizell said, as if reading her thoughts. “Kadie and some of the older girls grumble about it, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s your room until you say otherwise. You can bed there, and we can put the others in spare cots in the patient wards.” She broke into a smile. “Unless you’d like one of the men to share your room.” She gave Leesha a wink.

Leesha laughed. Jizell hadn’t changed at all, still trying to find Leesha a match. “That’s quite all right.”

“Seems a waste,” Jizell said. “You told me Gared was handsome, but you shorted him even so, and half the Jongleurs and Tenders in the city whisper that your Painted Man may be the Deliverer himself. Not to mention Rojer, a fine catch by any girl’s standards, and we all know he shines on you.”

“Rojer and I are just friends, Jizell,” Leesha said, “and the same goes for the others.”

Jizell shrugged and let the matter drop. “Just good to have you home.”

Leesha put a hand on her arm. “It’s only for a short time. Deliverer’s Hollow is my home now. The village has swollen into a small city, and they need all the Herb Gatherers they can get. I can’t stay away long; not ever again.”

Jizell sighed. “Bad enough I lost Vika to the Hollow, but now you, too. If the place is going to keep stealing my apprentices, I might as well sell the hospit and set up shop there.”

“We could use the extra Gatherers,” Leesha said, “but the town’s got threefold more refugees than we can feed. It’s no place for you and the girls right now.”

“Or the place we ’re needed most,” Jizell said.

Leesha shook her head. “I expect you’ll have refugees aplenty in Angiers, before long.”

CHAPTER 17 KEEPING UP WITH THE DANCE

“OPEN UP, IN THE name of the duke!” a voice barked shortly after dawn. The shouted command was accompanied by a loud pounding on the hospit door, still barred for the night.

Everyone at the breakfast table froze, looking at the door. The apprentices had long since eaten and were bustling about serving breakfast to the patients, leaving Jizell and the others alone in the kitchen.

It seemed to Rojer that long minutes passed in stillness, but in truth it could not have been more than seconds before Mistress Jizell looked up at them all.

“Well,” she said, wiping her mouth and rising to her feet, “I’d best see to that. The rest of you keep your seats and clean your plates. Whatever the duke wants, it’s best you not handle it on an empty stomach.” She straightened her dress and strode out to the door.

She had not been gone more than a second before Rojer sprang from his seat, putting his back to the wall next to the doorway to listen in.

“Where is he?!” a man’s deep voice barked when Jizell opened the door. Rojer crouched low and tilted his head to peek around the door frame, revealing little more than his eye and a strand of red hair. A tall, powerfully built man in bright lacquered armor loomed over Mistress Jizell. He had a fine gilded spear strapped across his back, and his breastplate was emblazoned with a wooden soldier. Rojer recognized his strong-jawed face immediately.

Rojer turned quickly to the others. “Duke Rhinebeck’s brother, Prince Thamos!” he hissed, putting his eye back around the frame.

“We have many patients, Your Highness,” Jizell said, sounding more bemused than threatened, “you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Don’t toy with me, woman!” the prince barked, putting a finger in Jizell’s face. “You know well—”

“Highness, please!” a high male voice cut the prince off. “There’s no need for this!”

A man appeared, spreading his arms between them to passively ease the prince’s arm and pointing finger away from Jizell’s face. He was in many ways the exact opposite of the prince, small and uncomely, with a bald crown and a pinched face. His lank black hair was long, falling into his high collar, and his thin beard drew to a point at his chin. His wire-framed glasses sat halfway down his long nose, making his eyes seem like two tiny black dots.

“Lord Janson, the duke’s first minister,” Rojer advised the others.

Thamos glanced at the minister, who flinched back as if afraid the prince might strike him. The prince glanced at Jizell, then back to the small man, but his stance eased, and after a moment, he nodded. “All right, Janson, it’s your stage.”

“My apologies for the…urgency, Mistress Jizell,” the first minister said, bowing, “but we wanted to arrive before your…ah, guest had a chance to move on.” He hugged a leather paper case to his chest with one hand and pushed his glasses back up his nose with the other.

“Guest?” Jizell asked. Prince Thamos growled.

“Flinn Cutter,” Janson said. Jizell looked at him blankly.

“The…ah, Painted Man,” Janson said. Jizell’s look became more guarded.

“He is in no trouble, I assure you,” Janson added quickly. “His Grace the duke simply wishes me to ask a few questions before he decides whether to grant an audience.”

There was a thump, and Rojer turned from the door to see the Painted Man rise from the table. He nodded to Rojer.

“It’s all right, mistress,” Rojer said, stepping through the doorway.

Janson looked over at him, and his nose twitched. “Rojer Inn,” he said more than asked.

“I’m honored you remember me, Minister,” Rojer said, bowing as the others followed him out of the kitchen.

“Of course I remember you, Rojer,” Janson said. “How could I forget the boy Arrick brought back with him, sole survivor of the destruction of Riverbridge?” The others looked at Rojer in surprise.

“Still,” Janson went on, his nose twitching again, “I would swear I read a report last year from Guildmaster Cholls that said you were missing and presumed dead.”

He looked down his glasses at Rojer. “Leaving a considerable unpaid debt to the Jongleurs’ Guild, as I recall.”

“Rojer!” Leesha cried.

Rojer put his Jongleur’s mask in place. The money had been restitution for breaking the nose of Janson’s nephew, Jasin Goldentone. Of course, Jasin had already taken payment in blood.

“Did you come all this way to discuss the Jongleur?” the Painted Man asked, moving in front of Rojer. His hood cast his face in shadow, giving him a dark countenance frightening even to those who knew him. Prince Thamos put a hand to the short spear strapped to his back.

Janson twitched nervously, his tiny eyes darting from one man to the other, but he recovered quickly. “Indeed not,” he agreed, turning his attention from Rojer as if he had been doing nothing more significant than examining a ledger. He shifted his feet as if he were ready to run and hide behind the prince if anyone made a sudden move.

“You’d be…him, then?” he asked.

The Painted Man pulled back his hood, showing his tattooed face to the prince and minister. Both of their eyes widened at the sight, but they gave no other sign that they had seen anything out of the ordinary.

Janson bowed deeply. “It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Flinn. Allow me to present Prince Thamos, captain of the Wooden Soldiers, youngest brother to Duke Euchor, and third in line for the ivy throne. His Highness is here as my escort.” He gestured to the prince, who nodded politely, though his eyes lost none of their challenge.

“Your Highness,” the Painted Man said, bowing smoothly in accordance with Angierian custom. Leesha dropped into a curtsy, and Rojer made his best leg. Rojer knew the Painted Man had met both men before, in his Messenger days, but it was clear that even Janson, whose memory was legendary, did not recognize him.

Janson turned to his left, where a boy who had been lingering in the doorway appeared. “My son and assistant, Pawl,” he noted. The boy was no more than ten summers old, small like his father, with the same lank black hair and ferretlike face.

The Painted Man nodded to the boy. “An honor to meet you and your son as well, Lord Janson.”

“Please, please, just Janson,” the first minister said. “I’m as commonborn as any; just a clerk with a visible post. Forgive me if I seem a bit awkward at this. The duke’s herald, my nephew, usually handles this sort of thing, but as luck would have it, he’s out in the hamlets.”

“Jasin Goldentone is the duke’s new herald?!” Rojer exclaimed.

All eyes turned back to him, but Rojer hardly noticed. Jasin Goldentone and his apprentices beat Rojer and his guild sponsor Jaycob a year ago, leaving them for dead as night fell. Rojer had survived only because Leesha and a few brave city guardsmen had risked their lives for him. Master Jaycob had not. Rojer never made charges, however, pretending not to recall his assailants for fear Jasin might use his uncle’s connections to escape punishment and come after him again.

Janson, however, seemed to know none of this. He looked at Rojer curiously, his eyes flitting to the side, as if checking some forgotten ledger.

“Ah, yes,” he said after a moment. “Master Arrick and Jasin had something of a rivalry once, didn’t they? I’m sure he won’t be pleased to hear about this.”

“He won’t hear,” Rojer said. “He was cored on the road to Woodsend three years ago.”

“Eh?” Janson said, his eyes widening. “I’m sorry to hear it. For all his faults, Arrick was a very good herald and served the duke well, not only for his heroism at Riverbridge. It’s a shame about the brothel incident.”

“Brothel incident?” Leesha asked, half amused as she turned to Rojer.

Janson turned bright red, and he turned to Leesha, bowing deeply.

“Ah…Ah…Forgive me, good woman, for bringing up such indelicate matters in the presence of a lady. I meant no disrespect.”

“None taken, Minister,” Leesha said. “I’m an Herb Gatherer, and used to indelicate matters. Leesha Paper,” she extended a hand for him to take, “Herb Gatherer to Deliverer’s Hollow.”

The prince’s nostrils flared and the clerk’s nose twitched again at the new name the people of Cutter’s Hollow had chosen, but Janson only nodded, saying, “I’ve watched your career with some interest since you apprenticed to Mistress Bruna.”

“Oh?” Leesha said, surprised.

Janson gave her that same curious look. “It should come as no surprise. I review the duke’s censuses every year, and take special note of prominent citizens in the duchy, especially ones like Bruna, a woman who registered every year since the first census, taken by Rhinebeck the First more than a century ago. I’ve kept watch over all her apprentices, wondering which would inherit her mantle. It was a great loss when she passed last year.”

Leesha nodded sadly.

Minister Janson gave a respectful pause for the deceased, then cleared his throat. “While we’re on the subject, Mistress Leesha,” he looked down his glasses and affixed her with the same reproachful stare he had given Rojer, “your annual census report is months late.”

Leesha blushed as Rojer snickered behind her.

“I…Ah…We’ve been a bit…”

“Preoccupied with the flux,” Janson nodded, “and,” he glanced at the Painted Man, “other concerns, of course, I understand. But as I’m sure your father can tell you, mistress, paper makes the engine of state run.”

“Yes, minister,” Leesha nodded.

“Please, Janson,” Prince Thamos interposed himself, pushing the first minister to the side. His sharp eyes took in Leesha’s body with a predatory seeming, and Rojer bristled. “The Hollow has been through enough of late. Spare them a moment of your endless paperwork!”

Janson frowned, but he bowed. “Of course, Highness.”

“Prince Thamos, at your command,” the prince told Leesha, bowing low and kissing her hand. Rojer scowled as Leesha’s cheeks colored.

Janson cleared his throat and turned to the Painted Man. “Enough shuffling the papers. Shall we address the duke’s business?”

When the Painted Man nodded, Janson turned to Jizell. “Mistress, if there were a place we could speak quietly…”

Jizell nodded, escorting them to her study. “I’ll bring in a fresh pot of tea,” she said, and returned to the kitchen.

Prince Thamos offered Leesha his arm on the way, and she took it with a bemused look on her face. Gared hovered near them protectively, but if Leesha or the prince took any notice of him, they gave no sign.

Pawl took his father’s paper case and scurried to Mistress Jizell’s desk, laying out a sheaf of notes and some blank pages. He set a quill and inkwell at the ready with a blotter, then pulled out the chair for his father, who sat and dipped the pen.

He looked up suddenly. “No one minds, of course, my penning our discussion for the duke?” Janson asked. “I will, of course, strike anything you consider inaccurate or indiscreet.”

“It’s fine,” the Painted Man said. Janson nodded, looking back to his paper.

“Well then,” he said. “As I told Mistress Jizell, the duke is eager for an audience with the representatives of…ahem, Deliverer’s Hollow, but he is concerned about the authenticity of that representation. May I ask why Mr. Smitt, the Town Speaker, has not come in person? Is it not the first and only legal duty of the Speaker to represent the town in instances such as these?” As he spoke, his hand was almost a blur, taking down even his own words in an indecipherable shorthand, his quill flicking back to the inkwell every few seconds, with never a drop spilled.

Leesha snorted. “Anyone who thinks that has never spent any time in the hamlets, minister. The people look to their Speaker in a crisis, and with refugees from Rizon still trickling in, and those already arrived lacking even basic necessities, he couldn’t pull away. He sent me in his stead.”

“You?” Thamos asked, incredulous. “A woman?”

Leesha scowled, but Janson cleared his throat loudly before she could retort. “I believe what His Highness means is that proper succession should have had your Tender, Jona, come in Mr. Smitt’s stead.”

“The Holy House is overflowing with refugees seeking succor,” Leesha said. “Jona could no more come than Smitt.”

“But the Hollow can spare its Herb Gatherer in this time of need?” Thamos asked.

“This presents a problem for His Grace,” Janson said, looking up at Leesha even as his hand continued to take down their words. “How would it look at court if he received a delegation from one of his vassalages who did not think enough of the ivy throne to even send their proper Speaker? It would be seen as an insult.”

“I assure you, no insult was meant,” Leesha said.

“How not?” Thamos demanded. “Regardless of crisis, your Speaker could have come. Cutter’s Hollow is only six nights hence,” he looked to the Painted Man, “but it appears that this Deliverer’s Hollow has moved farther off.”

“What would you have me do, Highness?” Leesha asked. “Spend a fortnight fetching Smitt when there’s an army at our doorstep?”

Prince Thamos snorted.

“Please don’t exaggerate, Miss Paper,” Janson said, still writing. “The royal family knows all about the Krasian raids on Rizon, but the threat to Angierian lands is minimal.”

“For now,” the Painted Man said. “But those were no simple raids; Fort Rizon and its hamlets, the grain belt of all Thesa, are now under Krasian control. They will dig in for a year at least, levying troops from the Rizonans and training them. Then they will move on to swallow Lakton and its hamlets. It may be years before they turn north and head for your city, but I assure you, they will, and you will need allies if you hope to stand against them.”

“Fort Angiers isn’t afraid of a handful of desert rats, even if your tampweed tales were true!” Thamos barked.

“Highness, please!” Janson squeaked. When the prince fell silent again, Janson looked back to the Painted Man. “May I ask how is it you know so much of the Krasians’ plans, Mr. Flinn?”

“Do you have a copy of the Krasian holy book in your archives, minister?” the Painted Man asked.

Janson’s eyes flicked away for a moment, as if checking an invisible list. “The Evejah, yes.”

“I suggest you read it,” the Painted Man said. “The Krasians believe their leader is the reincarnation of Kaji, the Deliverer. They are fighting the Daylight War.”

“The Daylight War?” Janson asked.

The Painted Man nodded. “The Evejah details how Kaji conquered the known world before turning its collective spears on the corelings. Jardir will seek to do the same. His advancements may be followed by consolidation periods, where the conquered people are broken to Evejan law,” he fixed Janson and the prince with a hard look, “but don’t let that fool you for a moment into thinking that they’ve ceased their advance.”

The prince glared defiantly, but the color slowly drained from Janson’s face. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead, even in the cool spring morning. “You know much about the Krasian people for a Cutter, Mr. Flinn,” he noted.

“I spent some time in Fort Krasia,” the Painted Man said simply. Janson made another mark in his strange shorthand.

“You see why we must speak with His Grace, minister,” Leesha said. “The Krasians can afford to take their time. With their grain silos, Rizon has resources to support an army indefinitely, even as they cut off the flow of food to the north.”

Janson did not seem to notice she had spoken. “There are some who say you are the Deliverer, yourself,” he said to the Painted Man.

Thamos snorted. “And I’m a friendly coreling,” he muttered.

The Painted Man didn’t look at him, keeping eye contact with the minister. “I make no such claim, Lord Janson.”

Janson nodded, writing. “His Grace will be relieved to hear that. But on the matter of the fighting wards…”

“They—” Leesha began.

“They will be shared with all who want them, free of cost,” the Painted Man cut her off, drawing looks of shock from everyone.

“The corelings are the enemies of all humanity, minister,” the Painted Man said. “In this, the Krasians and I agree. I will deny no man the wards to combat them.”

“If they even work,” Thamos muttered.

The Painted Man turned to face Thamos fully, and even a prince could not long weather his glare. Thamos dropped his eyes, and the Painted Man nodded.

“Wonda,” he said without turning to the young woman, who started at the sound of her name, “give me an arrow from your quiver.” Wonda took an arrow and placed it in the waiting hand he threw over his shoulder. The Painted Man laid the missile flat across his hands and presented it to the prince, but he did not bow, standing as an equal.

“Test them, Your Highness,” he said. “Stand atop the wall tonight and have a marksman fire this at the largest demon you can find. Decide for yourself if they work.”

Thamos drew back slightly, and then straightened quickly, as if trying not to appear intimidated. He nodded and took the arrow. “I will.”

The first minister pushed back from his seat, and Pawl darted forward to blot the wet pages and shuffle them back into the leather paper case. He collected the writing implements and wiped down the table as Janson got to his feet and went over to Prince Thamos.

“I believe that should be all for now,” Janson said. “His Grace will receive you in his keep tomorrow, an hour past dawn. I will send a coach here for you in the morning, to avoid any…unpleasantness, should you,” his eyes flicked to the Painted Man, “be seen on the street.”

The Painted Man bowed. “That will do well, minister, thank you,” he said. Leesha curtsied, and Rojer bowed.

“Minister,” Leesha said, moving close to the man and dropping her voice. “I have heard that His Grace…has yet to produce an heir.”

Prince Thamos bristled visibly, but Janson held up a hand to forestall him. “It is no secret that the ivy throne is heirless, Miss Paper,” he told Leesha calmly.

“Fertility was a specialty of Mistress Bruna’s,” Leesha said, “and it is one of mine, as well. I would be honored to offer my expertise, if it were desired.”

“My brother is quite capable of producing an heir without your help,” Thamos growled.

“Of course, Highness,” Leesha said, dipping a curtsy, “but I thought perhaps the duchess might bear examination, in case the difficulty is hers.”

Janson frowned. “Thank you for your generous offer, but Her Highness has Herb Gatherers of her own, and I would strongly advise you not to broach this topic before His Grace. I will mention it along the proper channels.”

It was a vague response, but Leesha nodded and said no more, curtsying again. Janson nodded, and he and Thamos headed for the door. Just before he left, the minister turned to Rojer.

“I trust that you will be visiting the Jongleurs’ Guild to clarify your status and settle your outstanding debts before leaving town again?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Rojer said glumly.

“I am certain tales of your recent adventures will be of great value to the guild, and likely pay your debt in full, but I hope you will show discretion regarding certain,” he glanced at the Painted Man, “subjective interpretations of events, however tempting it may be to use the more…sensational interpretations.”

“Of course, minister,” Rojer said, bowing deeply.

Janson nodded. “Good day, then,” he said, and he and the prince left the hospit.

Leesha turned to Rojer. “Brothel incident?”

“A copse of wood demons couldn’t get me to tell you about it,” Rojer said, “so you might as well quit asking.”

Leesha watched from Jizell’s kitchen window as a coach pulled up the next morning, its wide doors emblazoned with Rhinebeck’s seal—a wooden crown hovering over a throne overgrown with ivy. The coach was accompanied by Prince Thamos in full armor astride a great charger, and a squad of his elite guardsmen, the Wooden Soldiers, following on foot.

“They brought an army,” Rojer said, coming up beside her and peeking out. “I can’t tell if we ’re being protected or imprisoned.”

“Why should the day feel any different from the night?” the Painted Man asked.

“Maybe it’s normal for those the duke has invited to audience,” Leesha said.

Rojer shook his head. “I rode in that coach plenty of times when Arrick was herald. Never needed a squad of Wooden Soldiers at our backs for a ride across town.”

“They must’ve tested the arrow last night,” Leesha said, “which means they know that what we ’re offering them is real.”

The Painted Man shrugged. “What will be, will be. Either they’re here as escorts, or Rhinebeck will have a squad of crippled soldiers.” Leesha’s mouth fell open, but the Painted Man walked out into Jizell’s courtyard before she could respond. The others followed him.

The coach’s footman placed a stair beside the coach and held the door. Thamos watched them from astride his charger, nodding to the Painted Man slightly as they climbed into the coach. They were quickly clattering along the boardwalk toward Rhinebeck’s palace.

The duke’s keep was the only structure in the city made entirely of stone, a tremendous show of wealth. As with Duke Euchor of Miln, Rhinebeck’s keep was a self-sufficient mini-fortress within the larger fort of the city proper. There was open ground on all sides of the thirty-foot-high outer walls, which were carved with great wards, the grooves filled with bright lacquer. They were impressively permanent, though they had likely never been tested by anything more than a lone wind demon. If the walls of Fort Angiers were breached and demons entered the city in numbers, Rhinebeck could shut the gates and await the dawn in safety, even if the entire city were in flames around his keep.

Inside the walls, they passed the duke’s private gardens and herds, along with dozens of buildings for his personal servants and craftsmen, before reaching the palace. Its sheer walls climbed several stories, with lookout spires reaching even higher, past the keep’s wardnet.

The palace wards were works of art as well as function, and Leesha could sense the strength of the symbols, her eyes dancing along the invisible lines of power they created.

“Please follow me,” Prince Thamos said to the Painted Man when the carriage pulled to a stop at the palace entrance. Leesha frowned as they followed the prince into the palace, wondering if she was to be ignored in favor of the Painted Man throughout the interview. He had said repeatedly that he took no responsibility for the Hollow, any more than Marick did the Rizonan refugees. Could she trust him to speak the town’s needs before his own?

The vaulted ceiling of the entrance hall soared overhead, but the great room was empty of petitioners. The prince led them away from the main throne room, down halls thick with carpet and covered in tapestries and oil paintings. They came to a waiting room with velvet couches and a warm fire, set in a marble mantel. “Please wait here on the duke’s pleasure,” Thamos told the Painted Man. “The attendants will see to your refreshment.”

“Thank you,” the Painted Man said as a valet arrived with a tray of drinks and small sandwiches. Two Wooden Soldiers stood rigid outside the door, spears at the ready.

Time went by, and Rojer, bored, began to juggle their empty teacups. “How long do you think Rhinebeck will have us wait?” he asked, his feet beating a pattern on the floor as he moved to keep his crippled hand in position to throw and catch.

“Long enough to establish that he’s holding the reins,” the Painted Man said. “Dukes make everyone wait. The more important the guests, the longer they’re left to count rug threads. It’s a tiresome game, but if it makes Rhinebeck feel secure, there’s no harm letting him play it.”

“I should have brought my needlepoint,” Leesha said.

“I have a great number of unfinished hoops, dear,” a voice behind her said. “I’ve always been good at starting patterns, but somehow I never get to the end.” Leesha turned to find Minister Janson standing in the doorway, holding the arm of a venerable woman who looked to be in her late seventies.

Rojer gave a start, and Leesha winced as one of the cups he was juggling hit the floor. Thankfully, it bounced on the thick carpet and did not break.

The woman fixed Rojer with a look that would have done Elona proud. “Arrick never got around to teaching you manners, I take it.” Rojer’s face turned redder than his hair.

The woman was small, even for an Angierian, barely five feet tall from the white Krasian lace at the hem of her wide, green velvet gown to the top of the lacquered wooden circlet resting upon the severely pinned gray hair atop her head. The circlet’s points were banded in gold and set with precious stones. She was thin like a reed, and stooped slightly, leaning on the first minister’s arm. The hands that clutched him were covered in wrinkled, translucent skin. A velvet choker around her neck was set with an emerald the size of a baby’s fist.

“Please allow me to present Her Grace the Lady Araine, Duchess Mum, mother to His Grace, Duke Rhinebeck the Third, Guardian of the Forest Fortress—”

“Yes, yes,” Araine cut him off. “Everyone in the world knows my son’s titles, and I’m not getting younger as you recite them for the thousandth time this week, Janson.”

“Apologies, my lady,” Janson said, bowing slightly.

Leesha dipped into a curtsy at the introduction, and the men bowed. In her men’s breeches, Wonda had no skirts to spread, and assumed an awkward posture that was neither.

“If you’re going to dress like a man, girl, then bow like one,” Araine said, looking down her nose. Wonda blushed and bowed deeply.

The duchess mum grunted in satisfaction and turned to Leesha. “I’ve come to rescue you from all this tiresome men’s business, dear.” She glanced at Wonda. “The young lady, as well.”

“Apologies, Your Grace,” Leesha said, curtsying again, “but I am serving as Speaker for Deliverer’s Hollow, and must remain for the audience.”

“Nonsense,” Araine tsked. “A woman Speaker? They may practice such frivolity in Miln, but Angiers has the right of things. Women were not meant to handle affairs of state.” The duchess mum let go Janson’s arm and latched on to Leesha’s, pulling her toward the door even as she pretended to lean on it for support.

“Leave the men to their ledgers and proclamations,” Araine said. “We will speak of more feminine matters.”

Leesha was mildly surprised at the woman’s strength. She wasn’t quite as frail as she appeared. Still, the idea of sitting around with a bunch of pampered women vapidly discussing weather and fashion while the men charted the course of Deliverer’s Hollow was unacceptable.

Janson leaned in to Leesha as she resisted the old woman’s pull. “It isn’t wise to upset the duchess mum,” he whispered. “Best humor her for now. The duke will not receive the others for quite some time, and I will come for you before you’re needed.”

Leesha looked at him, his face unreadable, and frowned. Not wanting to antagonize the royal family, she reluctantly allowed herself to be led away.

“The women’s wing is this way, dear,” Araine said, leading Leesha down a long, richly appointed hall. Outside of the Painted Man’s treasure room, Leesha had never seen such largesse as in the duke’s palace. Her father had been the richest man in Cutter’s Hollow while she was growing up, but the duke made Erny’s wealth seem like the scraps that one might throw to a dog after a great feast. Lush carpets caressed and cushioned her every step, woven with vibrant patterns, and tapestries and statues on marble pedestals lined the walls. The ceiling was painted gold, and glittered in the light of the chandeliers.

Throughout the duchy Rizonan refugees were starving, but could the royal family ever truly understand what that meant, surrounded by such opulence? It reminded Leesha of her mother, always seeing to her own comfort first and others’ only when someone was watching.

Araine’s shuffling steps became firmer as they went, the frail-looking old woman guiding Leesha through the vast palace as a man might lead a woman through a dance. Wonda trailed along silently behind until they passed through a final door and Araine looked back at her.

“Be a dear and close the door, there’s a good child,” she said. Wonda complied, pulling the sturdy oak portal shut with a click.

“All right then, let’s have a look at you,” Araine said, releasing Leesha’s arm with a push that sent her into a spin for the duchess mum’s inspection.

Araine looked her up and down, her lip curling slightly. “So you’re the young prodigy Bruna was so proud of.” She sounded less than impressed. “How many summers have you seen, girl? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-eight,” Leesha said.

Araine snorted. “Bruna used to say a Gatherer wasn’t worth two klats before fifty.”

“You knew Mistress Bruna, Your Grace?” Leesha asked, surprised.

Araine cackled. “Knew her? The old witch pulled two princes from between my legs, so yes, I’d say I knew her. Pether was nigh fifty years ago, and Bruna was almost as old then as I am now. Thamos was a decade later, a giant babe like his brothers, but I wasn’t as young then as I was for the others, and needed more than some glorified midwife. Bruna was in her eighties by then, and reluctant to leave the Hollow even when I sent my herald to get on his knees and beg. She grumbled the whole time, but came just the same, and stayed in the palace for months. She even took on a pair of apprentices, Jizell and Jessa, while she was here.”

“Jessa?” Leesha asked. “Bruna never mentioned a Jessa.”

“Hah!” Araine barked. “That’s no surprise.” Leesha waited for the woman to elucidate further, but she did not.

“I’d have made Bruna Royal Gatherer if she’d wanted it,” Araine went on, “but the wretched old woman turned and headed back to the Hollow the moment Thamos’ cord was cut. Said titles meant nothing to her. All that mattered were her children in the Hollow.”

The duchess mum looked at Leesha. “That how you feel as well, girl? Putting the Hollow above all, even your duty to the ivy throne?”

Leesha met her eyes and nodded. “It is.”

Araine locked stares with her for a moment, as if daring Leesha to blink, but she finally grunted in satisfaction. “I wouldn’t have trusted another word from you if you’d said otherwise. Now, Janson tells me you claim some of Bruna’s skill with fertility.”

Leesha nodded again. “Bruna gave intensive lessons on the topic, and I have years of practical experience.”

Araine looked down her nose at Leesha again. “Not too many years, I expect, but we’ll forgive you that for now. Can’t hurt, you checking her. Everyone else has.”

“Her?” Leesha asked.

“The duchess,” Araine said. “My latest daughter-in-law. I want to know if the girl is barren, or if it’s my son that’s seedless.”

“I won’t be able to determine the latter by examining the duchess,” Leesha said.

Araine snorted. “You’d be out on your pert bottom if you claimed you could. But first things first. Have a look at the girl.”

“Of course,” Leesha said. “Is there anything you can tell me about Her Highness, before I examine her?”

“She’s fit as a courser, with a sturdy frame and wide breeder’s hips,” Araine said. “Not the sharpest spear on the rack, but that’s how an Angierian lady of quality is expected to be. Her brothers are canny enough, so we’ll call it nurture and not nature. After Rhinebeck’s last divorce, I picked her out of all the well-bred young hopefuls myself, with an eye on the nursery. Lady Melny was the youngest of twelve children, two-thirds of them male. She has three sisters, and all have children of their own; two boys for every girl. If anyone should be able to give the ivy throne an heir, it’s her. Of course, all my son cared about was the size of her paps, but Melny has meat enough there to suckle even a big baby like Rhiney.”

“How long have they been wed?” Leesha asked, ignoring the comment.

“Over a year now,” Araine said. “The Royal Gatherer brews fertility tea and I have Janson close the brothels when she’s cycling, but still she reddens her wadding each moon.”

Araine brought Leesha through the maze of private halls and stairs used by the women of the royal family. She saw many servants, but not a single man. Finally, they came to a plush bedchamber filled with velvet pillows and Krasian silks. The duchess was standing before one of the great stained-glass windows in the chamber, looking out over the city. She wore a wide dress of green and yellow silk, cut low in the front and laced tight at the waist. Her hair was put up behind a gold and gem-studded tiara, and her face painted exquisitely, ready at any moment in case the duke should summon her to his chambers. She was no more than sixteen summers old.

“Melny, this is Mistress Leesha of Cutter’s Hollow,” Araine introduced.

“Deliverer’s Hollow,” Leesha corrected. Araine gave her a look of bemused tolerance.

“Mistress Leesha is an expert in fertility,” Araine went on, “and will be examining you today. Take off your dress.”

The girl nodded, not hesitating in the least as she reached behind herself for the laces of her corset. It was clear who was in charge among the duke’s women. Her handmaids quickly moved to help with the fastenings, and soon the duchess’ dress was folded beside the bed.

“Examine as you see fit,” Araine muttered while the handmaids worked, too low for anyone else to hear. “The girl’s been poked and prodded more times than a two-klat inn tart.”

Leesha shook her head, feeling sorry for the poor girl, but she bent and opened her herb pouch on the duchess’ vanity, laying out a series of bottles and swabs. She had hoped for this opportunity, and came prepared with the proper chemics.

The young duchess stood meek and silent as Leesha went about her examination, but her heart was thudding in her chest when Leesha listened to it. The girl was likely terrified, afraid of what would happen to her if she failed to produce an heir like the duchesses before her. Leesha wondered if she had even been given a choice in the union, or, as was common throughout Thesa, it was arranged by her parents without a thought to her desires.

She took a sample of the duchess’ urine and swabs of her vaginal fluids, mixing the samples with chemics and leaving them to interact. She felt at the girl’s womb, even going so far as to slip in a finger to examine her cervix. Finally, she smiled at the duchess. “Everything seems in order, Your Highness. Thank you for your cooperation. You can get dressed now.”

“Thank you, mistress,” the duchess said. “I hope you can find what’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t think anything’s ‘wrong’ with you, dear,” Leesha said, “but if something needs correcting, rest assured, we will.” The duchess smiled weakly and nodded. Likely she had heard the same thing from a dozen other Gatherers. She had no reason to think Leesha any different.

The duchess went back to the window as Leesha went over to the vanity to check on her test results. The duchess mum drifted over to her.

“There’s nothing wrong with that girl,” Leesha said. “She’s fit to breed an army.”

Araine handed her a bit of netting full of dried herbs. “The tincture the Royal Gatherer makes to brew her fertility tea.”

Leesha sniffed the packet. “Standard. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but I could brew stronger…not that it matters.”

“You think the problem is with my son,” Araine said.

Leesha shrugged. “The next logical step would be to examine him, Your Grace.”

Araine snorted. “The stubborn ass will barely let a Gatherer look down his throat when he’s caught a chill and coughing up his innards. Little chance he ’ll let you anywhere near his manhood…” she looked Leesha up and down and smiled wryly, “…unless you want to examine him and collect your samples the old-fashioned way.”

Leesha scowled, and Araine laughed.

“I thought not!” she cackled. “we’ll make the girl do it! What else is a young duchess for?”

Minister Janson remained behind after the duchess mum left with Leesha and Wonda. He produced a slim oak box, lacquered smooth, and handed it to Rojer.

“We found this in Arrick’s chambers after his dismissal,” Janson said. “I messaged the Jongleurs’ Guild informing him I had it held in trust, but your master never bothered to retrieve it. I confess, it baffled me; Arrick took everything but the feathers from his mattress when he left, including a few things that weren’t precisely his, but this he left on a table, plain as day.”

Rojer took the case and opened it. Inside, on a bed of green velvet, lay a gold medallion on a heavy braided chain. Molded into relief upon the medallion were crossed spears behind a shield with Duke Rhinebeck’s crest: a leafed crown floating above an ivy-covered throne.

Rojer remembered enough of Arrick’s heraldry lessons to recognize the medallion immediately: the Royal Angierian Medal of Valor. The duke ’s highest honor. Rojer stared at it, amazed. What had Arrick done to earn such a prize, and why would he leave it behind? Beyond even the symbolic value, the medal itself was worth a fortune. In metal-poor Angiers, the braided chain alone was worth a mountain of klats, and the gold…

“His Grace bestowed the medal upon Arrick for his bravery at the fall of Riverbridge,” Janson said, as if reading his thoughts. “It would have been enough if he had saved himself and returned to report the fall to the duke, but to face the corelings and rescue you as well, a boy of only three summers who could not run or hide on his own…” He shook his head.

Rojer felt as if the minister had slapped him. “I can’t imagine why he would have left it behind,” he said hollowly, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Thank you for keeping it safe.” He closed the case and slipped it into the multicolored bag he carried across his shoulders.

“Well,” Janson said, when it became clear Rojer had no more to say. He looked to the Painted Man. “If you’re ready, Mr. Flinn, His Grace is ready to receive your delegation.”

“But Leesha…” Rojer began.

The minister pursed his lips. “His Grace does not care to receive women in his throne room,” he said. “I assure you, Mistress Leesha is in good hands with the duchess mum and her ladies-in-waiting. You can relate the audience to her after His Grace has dismissed you.”

The Painted Man frowned, and he locked stares with the minister. The little man seemed petrified under those hard eyes, but he did not recant. His eyes flicked to the guards by the door.

“Very well,” the Painted Man said at last. “Please lead the way.”

Janson masked a sigh of relief and bowed. “This way, please.”

Duke Rhinebeck was tall for an Angierian, but still shorter than most of the folk of Deliverer’s Hollow. He was thickly set, a man in his mid-fifties, the muscles of youth now run to flab. His gravy-stained doublet was emerald green, and his leggings brown, both of rare, Krasian silk. He wore the lacquered wooden crown of Angiers atop his oiled brown hair, shot through with gray, but his fingers and throat were bedecked with rings and necklaces of Milnese gold.

To the duke’s right and on a lower dais sat his brother, Crown Prince Mickael. Almost as old as the duke if a bit more robust, Prince Mickael was clad in equal finery, his hair held in place with a gold circlet. To the duke’s left sat Shepherd Pether, Rhinebeck’s middle brother. The Shepherd was even fatter than Rhinebeck, despite the austerity implied by his plain brown robe and shaved head. Unlike the rough material most Tenders wore, the Shepherd’s robe was made of fine wool, tied with a belt of yellow silk.

Prince Thamos kept his feet, standing at the bottom of the dais in his ward-lacquered breastplate and greaves. He held his spear at the ready, as did the Wooden Soldiers at the door, though Rojer and the others had been searched and stripped of their weapons before entering the throne room. Even so, beside Gared and the Painted Man, Rojer felt as safe as if he were standing in Deliverer’s Hollow under the bright sun.

“His Grace, Duke Rhinebeck the Third,” Janson announced, “Guardian of the Forest Fortress, Wearer of the Wooden Crown, and Lord of all Angiers.” Rojer dropped to one knee, Gared following suit. The Painted Man, however, only bowed.

“Bend knee to your duke,” Thamos growled, pointing to the Painted Man with his spear.

The Painted Man shook his head. “I mean no disrespect, Your Highness, but I am not Angierian.”

“What nonsense is this?” Prince Mickael demanded. “You are Flinn Cutter of Cutter’s Hollow, Angierian born and raised. Do you mean to say the Hollow no longer considers itself part of the duchy?” Thamos tightened his grip on his spear, leveling it at them, and Rojer swallowed hard, hoping the Painted Man knew what he was doing.

The Painted Man seemed not to notice the threat. He shook his head again. “I mean nothing of the sort, Your Highness. Flinn Cutter was only a name given at the gate for expedience’s sake. I apologize for the deception.” He bowed again.

Janson, who had retreated to a small desk beside the dais, began scribbling furiously.

“Your accent is Milnese,” Shepherd Pether said. “Are you beholden to Euchor, perhaps?”

“I have spent time in Fort Miln, but I am not Milnese, either,” the Painted Man said.

“Then state your name and city,” Thamos said.

“My name is my own,” the Painted Man said, “and I call no city my home.”

“How dare you?!” Thamos sputtered, advancing with his spear. The Painted Man gave him the bemused look a man might give a young boy who put up his fists. Rojer held his breath.

“Enough!” Rhinebeck barked. “Thamos, stand down!” Prince Thamos scowled, but he did as he was told, retreating to the foot of the dais and glowering at the Painted Man.

“Keep your mysteries for now,” Rhinebeck said, raising a hand to forestall any further questions. Prince Mickael glared at his older brother, but kept his tongue.

“You, I remember,” Rhinebeck said to Rojer, apparently hoping to cut some of the tension in the room. “Rojer Inn, Arrick Sweetsong’s brat, who thought my brothel was a nursery.” He chuckled. “They called your master Sweetsong because his voice made women sweet between the legs. Has the apprentice become the master?”

“I only charm corelings with my music, Your Grace,” Rojer replied with a bow, painting a smile on his face and hiding his anger behind a Jongleur’s mask.

Rhinebeck laughed, slapping his knee. “As if a coreling could be taken in like some wood-brained tart! You have Arrick’s humor, I’ll give you that!”

Lord Janson cleared his throat. “Eh?” Rhinebeck asked, turning to look at his secretary.

“The word from Messengers passing through the Hollow is that young Mr. Inn can indeed charm demons with his music, Your Grace,” he said.

The duke’s eyes widened. “Honest word?” Janson nodded.

Rhinebeck coughed to hide his surprise, then turned back to them, looking at Gared. “You are Captain Gared of the Cutters?” he asked.

“Er, just Gared, Y’Worship,” Gared stuttered. “I lead the Cutters, yeh, but I ent no captain. Just handy with an axe, I guess.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, boy,” Rhinebeck said. “No one praises a man who won’t praise himself. If half of what I hear about you is true, I may give you a commission myself.”

Gared opened his mouth to reply, but it was clear he had no idea what the proper response was, so he simply bowed, dipping so low Rojer thought his chin might strike the floor.

Leesha sipped her tea, her eyes flicking over the rim to regard the duchess mum, who watched her in return with similar quiet candor. Araine ’s servants had set a polished silver tea service on the table between them, along with a pile of pastries and thin sandwiches, before vanishing. A silver bell sat beside the platter to summon them back when needed.

Wonda sat rigidly, as if trying to make herself as invisible to the duchess mum as she was to corelings in her Cloak of Unsight. She stared at the plate of sandwiches longingly, but seemed terrified to take one, lest she draw attention to herself.

The duchess mum turned to her. “Girl, if you’re going to dress like a man and carry a spear, stop acting like some timid young debutante whose first suitor has come to court. Eat. Those sandwiches aren’t piled there for show.”

“Sorry, Y’Grace,” Wonda said, bowing awkwardly. She grabbed a fistful of the finger sandwiches and shoved them into her mouth, neglecting napkin and plate alike. Araine rolled her eyes, but she seemed more amused than put off.

The duchess mum then turned to Leesha. “As for you, I can see the questions on your face, so you might as well ask them. I’m not getting any younger while we wait.”

“I’m just…surprised, Your Grace,” Leesha said. “You’re not what I expected.”

Araine laughed. “From what, my frail crone act in front of the men? Creator, girl, Bruna said you were quick, but I’ve my doubts if you couldn’t see through that.”

“I won’t be fooled again, I assure you,” Leesha said, “but I confess, I don’t understand why the act was needed at all. Bruna never pretended to be…”

“Doddering?” Araine asked with a smile as she selected a delicate sandwich from the tray and dipped it smoothly in her tea, eating it in two quick bites. Wonda attempted to mimic her but left the sandwich in her tea too long, and half of it broke off in the cup. Araine snorted as the girl quickly swallowed tea and sandwich alike in one quick gulp.

“As you say, Your Grace,” Leesha said.

The duchess mum looked down her nose at Leesha in that reproachful way she had. It reminded her of Lord Janson’s look, and she wondered if the first minister had learned it from her. “It’s necessary,” Araine said, “because men turn to hardwood around a sharp woman, but around a dullard they are soft as pulp. Live a few more decades, and you’ll find my meaning.”

“I’ll remember that in the audience before His Grace,” Leesha said.

Araine snorted. “Keep up with the dance, girl. This isthe audience. What goes on in the throne room is all just for show. Whatever they may think, my sons no more run this city than your Smitt does the Hollow.”

Leesha choked on a pastry and almost spilled her tea. She looked at Araine in shock.

“It was ill planned to come without Mr. Smitt, though,” Araine tsked. “Bruna hated politics, but she could have taught you the bare rudiments. She knew them well enough. My boys take after their father, and have little use for women at court unless they’re putting food on a table or kneeling under it. They’ve naturally assumed your Mr. Flinn—if that’s even his name—leads the dance now, and will give even that ape Gared and Arrick’s brat more respect than you.”

“The Painted Man doesn’t speak for the Hollow,” Leesha said. “Nor do the others.”

“You think me dim, girl?” Araine asked. “One look at them told me that. It makes no difference, though. All the decisions are already made.”

“Excuse me?” Leesha asked, confused.

“I gave Janson his instructions last night after I read his report, and he’s seeing to them now,” Araine said. “So long as none of those peacocks starts a real fight while they strut and posture in the throne room, the result of the ‘audience ’ will be this:

“You will return to the Hollow to await a team of my best Warders to study your combat wards. Before winter, I want every two-klat Warder in Angiers etching weapons until every wood-brained huntsman who can pull a bow has a quiver of warded arrows and warded spears are cheap at the boardwalk kiosks.

“Thamos and the Wooden Soldiers will accompany the Warders,” Araine went on, “both for their protection and so your Cutters can train them in demon hunting.”

Leesha nodded. “Of course, Your Grace.” Araine smiled patiently at the interruption, and Leesha realized as far as the duchess mum was concerned, these were royal commands and not topics for debate.

“The Tenders of the Creator are in turmoil over your painted friend,” Araine went on. “Half of them think he’s the Deliverer himself, and the other half think he’s worse than the mother of all demons. Neither side seems to trust your young Tender Jona, though he seems to be leaning toward the former category. They wish to inquisit him. I’ve exchanged missives with my advisors on the Council of Tenders, and have agreed that a replacement, Tender Hayes, will be sent to tend the faithful in the Hollow while Jona is called here to give testimony before the council. Hayes is a good man, not crazed with zealotry and no fool. He will gauge the Hollowers’ beliefs about the Painted Man even as the council gauges Jona’s.”

Leesha cleared her throat. “Your pardon, Your Grace, but the Hollow isn’t a city with dozens of Tenders. The people trust Jona to guide them because he has earned that trust over many years. They won’t just follow any man in a brown robe, and they won’t take well to the idea of your dragging Jona off to an inquisition.”

“If Jona is loyal to his order, he ’ll go willingly and quell any doubts,” Araine said. “If not…well, I wish to know where his loyalties lie as much as the council.”

“And if the council’s inquisition ends unfavorably?” Leesha asked.

“It’s been a while since the Tenders burned a heretic,” Araine said, “but I expect they still know the recipe.”

“Then Tender Jona will not be going,” Leesha said, putting down her cup and meeting the duchess mum’s eyes, “unless you intend to test your Wooden Soldiers against men who cut trees by day and wood demons by night.”

Araine’s eyebrows raised, and her nostrils flared. The serene veil returned in an instant, so quickly that Leesha thought she might have imagined the flash of vexation. Araine turned to regard Wonda.

“Is that true, girl?” she asked. “Will you take arms against your duke, if the Wooden Soldiers come for your Tender?”

“I’ll fight whoever Leesha tells me to fight,” Wonda said, sitting up to her full height for the first time since meeting the tiny duchess mum.

Even at fifteen summers, Wonda Cutter was taller than most men in Deliverer’s Hollow, men known to be the tallest in the duchy. She towered over the diminutive old woman, but Araine seemed more amused by her than cowed. The duchess mum nodded as if to dismiss Wonda back to her previous state and looked at Leesha, tapping a nail on her delicate teacup.

“Very well,” she said at last. “I will personally vouch for Tender Jona’s safety and return to the Hollow, though he may return stripped of his robes.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Leesha said, bowing her head in acceptance of the terms.

Araine smiled and raised her teacup. “You may be Bruna’s heir after all.” Leesha smiled, and they drank together.

“The Painted Man,” Araine said, after a moment, “will go alone to Miln, to carry his story about the Krasians to Euchor and make our plea for aid.”

“Why the Painted Man and not your herald?” Leesha asked.

Araine snorted. “Janson’s fop nephew? Euchor would eat the boy alive. If you haven’t heard, Euchor and my son despise each other.”

Leesha looked at her, but the duchess waved the look away. “Don’t try to meddle with those wards, girl. The ivy throne and the metal one have been at odds long before the current occupants sat their overweight bottoms down on them, and will be long after they’re gone. It’s the way of men to glower at their rivals.”

“That doesn’t explain why it should be the Painted Man and not a Royal Messenger,” Leesha said. “I assure you, if he even agrees to go—and you may find him harder to steer than you think—he will go with his own agenda, and not yours.”

“Of course he will,” Araine said, “which is precisely why I want that man as far from my city as possible. Whether he means it or not, his very presence will incite people to mad zealotry, and that’s no way for a state to run. Let him go and cause a stir in Miln; Euchor may agree to whatever we want, just to be rid of him.”

“And what, exactly, do ‘we ’ want?” Leesha asked.

Araine eyed, her, and Leesha could not tell if she was more amused or annoyed at her audacity. “An alliance against the Krasians, of course,” the duchess mum said at last. “It’s one thing to bicker over some carts of wood and minerals, but quite another for the sheepdogs to keep nipping at one another when there are wolves at the pen.”

Leesha looked at the woman, wanting to argue, but she found herself agreeing. Part of her felt so safe when Arlen was around, she never wanted him to leave the Hollow. But there was another part of her, a growing part, that found his presence…stifling. Just as he had feared, the Hollowers and refugees were looking to him to save them rather than saving themselves, and hadn’t Leesha done the same? Perhaps it was best for all that he go for a short while.

When the moment for Leesha to reply had passed with no word spoken, Araine nodded and turned back to her tea. “I have yet to decide what to do with Arrick’s boy. His so-called fiddle magic bears closer examination, but I have no designs on it as yet.”

“It’s not magic,” Leesha said. “Not as we know it, anyway. He just…charms the corelings, like a Jongleur works a crowd’s mood. It’s a useful skill, but it works only so long as he continues to play, and he hasn’t been able to teach the trick to others.”

“He might make a good herald,” Araine mused. “Better than Janson’s fop nephew, at any rate, though that says little.”

“I would prefer that Rojer stay with me, Your Grace,” Leesha said.

“Oho! Would you?” Araine asked, amused. She reached over the table and pinched Leesha’s cheek. “I like you, girl. Not afraid to speak your mind.” She sat back, looking at Leesha a moment, and then shrugged. “I’m feeling generous,” she said, refilling their teacups. “Keep him. Now, for this ‘Deliverer’ business.”

“The Painted Man does not claim to be the Deliverer, Your Grace,” Leesha said. She snorted. “Night, he’ll bite the head from any that suggest it.”

“Whatever he claims, folk believe it,” Araine said, “as evidenced by the sudden change of your hamlet’s name…without royal permission, I might add.”

Leesha shrugged. “That was the town council’s decision and none of mine.”

“But you did not oppose it,” Araine noted.

Leesha shrugged again.

“Do you believe it?” Araine asked, meeting her eyes. “Is he the Deliverer come again?”

Leesha looked at the duchess mum for a long time. “No,” she said at last. Wonda gasped out loud, and Leesha scowled.

“It appears your bodyguard does not agree,” Araine said.

“It’s not my place to tell people what or what not to believe,” Leesha said.

Araine nodded. “Just so. Nor is it your town council’s. Janson has already penned a royal condemnation of the name change. If your council is wise, they will repaint their signs in a hurry.”

“I’ll inform them, Your Grace,” Leesha said. Araine narrowed her eyes at the vague response, but said nothing.

“And the refugees?” Leesha asked.

“What about them?” Araine asked.

“Will you take them in?” Leesha asked.

The duchess mum snorted. “And put them where? Feed them what? Use your head, girl. Angiers accepts them, but the fort cannot hold so many. Let them swell the hamlets like yours. The Warders and soldiers I send the Hollow will show the duke’s full support for our neighbors in this time of need, and we’ll forgive the lumber shipments the Hollow has failed to make.”

Leesha pursed her lips. “We need more than that, Your Grace. We have groups of three sharing blankets, and children running about in rags. If you have no food to spare, then send clothing. Or wool from Shepherd’s Dale, that we might make our own. It’s their shearing season, is it not?”

Araine thought a moment. “I’ll have a few carts of raw wool sent, and drive a hundred head of sheep, as well.”

“Two hundred,” Leesha said, “at least half of breeding age, and a hundred milking cows.”

Araine scowled, but she nodded. “Done.”

“And seed from Farmer’s Stump and Woodsend,” Leesha added. “It’s planting season, and we have the labor to clear land and grow a full crop, if they have sufficient seed to plant.”

“That’s in everyone’s interest,” Araine agreed. “You’ll get as much as we can spare.”

“How can you know the men will come to these terms?” Leesha asked.

Araine cackled. “My sons couldn’t tie their shoes without Janson, and Janson answers to me. Not only will they decide as he advises, they’ll go to their graves thinking it was all their own ideas.”

Leesha still felt doubtful, but the duchess mum only shrugged at her. “Hear it for yourself, when your men come out and tell you what they ‘negotiated.’ Until then, let’s finish our tea.”

“Why have you come before the ivy throne?” Rhinebeck asked.

“The Krasian advance threatens us all,” the Painted Man said. “Refugees flood the countryside, more than the hamlets can easily absorb, and when they move on Lakton—”

“This is ridiculous,” Prince Mickael cut him off. “At the very least, show your face when addressing the duke.”

“Apologies, Highness,” the Painted Man said with a slight bow. He drew back his hood, and in the sunlight streaming in through the windows, the wards seemed to crawl across his skin like living things. Thamos and Janson, having seen this before, kept composure, but the other princes could not entirely hide their shock.

“Creator,” Pether whispered, drawing a ward in the air before him.

“Since you have no name, I suppose you’ll want us to call you Lord Ward?” Mickael asked, twisting the surprised look on his face into a sneer.

The Painted Man shook his head, smiling wanly. “I’m as peasant as they come, Highness. No lord in any land.”

Mickael snorted. “Circumstances of birth notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe a man who styles himself the Deliverer doesn’t think himself as much a lord as any of royal blood. Or do you think yourself above such things?”

“I’m not the Deliverer, Highness,” the Painted Man said. “I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

“That’s not what your Tender in Cutter’s Hollow believes, by his own reports,” Shepherd Pether noted, waving a sheaf of papers in the air.

“He’s not my Tender,” the Painted Man said, scowling. “He can believe as he wishes.”

“Actually, he can’t,” Janson interrupted, “if he is representing the Tenders of the Creator in Angiers, he owes his loyalty to His Grace the Shepherd and the Council of Tenders. If he is preaching heresy…”

“That’s a fair point, Janson,” Pether said. “we’ll have to look into that.”

“You could perhaps have the Council of Tenders summon and inquisit Tender Jona, Your Grace,” Janson suggested.

“Hear, hear,” Mickael said. He looked to his brother. “You should do that with all haste, brother.” Pether nodded.

“Your former mentor, Tender Hayes, would be fit to replace him in the Hollow and minister the refugees, Your Grace,” Janson suggested. “He has experience working with the poor, and is loyal to the ivy throne. Perhaps you can convince the council to send him?”

“Convince them?!” Pether demanded. “Janson, I am their Shepherd! You tell them I said to send Tender Hayes!”

Janson bowed. “As you say, Your Grace.”

“As for you,” Pether said, turning back to the Painted Man, “why did the Hollowers rename their hamlet Deliverer’s Hollow if you have no sway there?”

“I never wanted the change,” the Painted Man said. “They did it against my wishes.”

Mickael snorted. “Save that ale story for a taproom of drunks. Of course you wanted the change.”

“To what end, Highness?” the Painted Man asked. “It does nothing but further a notion I would rather quash.”

“If that is so, you will have no argument if His Grace sends the town council a royal decree commanding that they change it back, of course,” Janson said.

The Painted Man shrugged.

Rhinebeck nodded. “Do it.”

“As you wish, Your Grace,” Janson said.

“All this is neither East nor West,” Prince Thamos snapped, stamping his spear butt on the floor. He looked at the Painted Man. “We tested your wards. I killed a wood demon myself with that arrow. I want more. And the other combat wards you’ve developed, along with training for my men. What do you want in exchange?”

“It matters not what he wants,” Rhinebeck said. “The Hollowers are my subjects, and I won’t pay for what they owe the ivy throne regardless.”

“As I told Prince Thamos and the Lord Janson, Your Grace,” the Painted Man said, “the corelings are the real enemy. I won’t withhold warded weapons from any who want them.”

Rhinebeck grunted, and Thamos’ eyes took on an eager light.

“I can consult with the Warders’ Guild to select Warders to send to the Hollow, if Your Grace wishes,” Janson said. “Perhaps with a contingent of Wooden Soldiers to guard them?”

“I’ll lead them personally, brother,” Prince Thamos said, turning to look at the duke.

Rhinebeck nodded. “Very well,” he said.

“What of the refugees from Rizon?” the Painted Man asked. “Will you take them in?”

“My city has no room for thousands of refugees,” Rhinebeck said. “Let them succor in the hamlets. We can offer them…what was it again, Janson?” Rhinebeck asked.

“Royal asylum,” Janson said, “and the protection of the crown to any who swear an oath of loyalty to Angiers.” Rhinebeck nodded.

The Painted Man bowed. “That is very generous, Your Grace, but these people are starved and penniless, lacking basic necessities of survival. Surely, in your mercy, you can offer more than that.”

“Very well,” Rhinebeck said. “I’m not heartless. Janson, what can we spare?”

“Well, Your Grace,” Janson said, flipping open a ledger and scanning its contents, “we can forgive the Hollow its delinquent lumber shipments, of course…”

“Of course,” Rhinebeck echoed.

“And while in the Hollow, your Royal Warders can offer their expertise in protecting the refugees in the night,” Janson went on, “as can the Wooden Soldiers.”

“Of course, of course,” Rhinebeck said.

Janson pursed his lips. “Please allow me to review further, Your Grace, and I will present you with detailed lists of what resources we have available.”

“See to it,” Rhinebeck said.

Janson bowed again. “As you command.”

“And what of the Krasian advance?” the Painted Man asked.

“I’ve seen no evidence that the Krasians will advance, apart from your own claims,” Rhinebeck said.

“They will,” the Painted Man assured. “The Evejah demands it.”

“You know a lot about the desert rats and their heathen religion,” Pether said. “Lord Janson says you even lived among them for a time.”

The Painted Man nodded. “That’s correct, Your Grace.”

“Then how can we be sure of where your loyalties lie?” Pether said. “For all we know, you’re a corespawned Evejan convert yourself. Night, if you won’t tell us who you are and where you’re from, how do we even know you’re not a Krasian yourself under all those wards?”

Gared growled, but the Painted Man held up a finger, and the giant Cutter fell silent. “I assure you, that isn’t the case,” the Painted Man said. “My loyalty is to Thesa.”

Rhinebeck smiled. “Prove it.”

The Painted Man tilted his head curiously. “How shall I prove it, Your Grace?”

“My herald is out in the hamlets,” Rhinebeck said, “and cannot travel as swiftly as you, in any event. Go to Fort Miln for me and speak to Duke Euchor. Invoke the Pact.”

“The Pact, Your Grace?” the Painted Man asked. Rhinebeck looked to Janson, who cleared his throat.

“The Pact of the Free Cities,” the minister said. “In the year zero, after the first wardwalls were finally built and a semblance of order restored to the ravaged countryside, the surviving dukes of Thesa signed a mutual nonaggression pact called the Pact of the Free Cities. In it, they recognized the death of the king of Thesa and the end of his line, and accepted one another’s sovereignty over their territories. The pact bans the taking of territory by force, and promises the unity of all cities in putting down its violators.”

“Did the Krasians sign this Pact?” the Painted Man asked.

Janson shook his head. “Krasia was not part of Thesa, and thus was never subject to the Pact. However,” he held up a hand to forestall further response as he set his spectacles at the end of his nose and lifted an old parchment, “the exact wording of the Pact is as follows:

“Should the territory or sovereignty of any duchy be threatened by human design, it shall be the obligation of all signees and their posterity to intercede in unity on behalf of the threatened party.” Janson set the parchment down. “The Pact was so worded to outlaw all warfare among men, because there were so few of us left after the depredations of the Return. Thus, it remains binding, regardless of whether the Krasian leader signed it.”

“Do you think Duke Euchor will see it so?” the Painted Man asked Janson.

“Are you in audience with my secretary, or me?” Rhinebeck demanded loudly, drawing all eyes back to him. Rojer saw that the duke had gone red in the face, as angry as he had been the night he had caught seven-year-old Rojer sleeping in the bed of one of his favorite whores.

The Painted Man bowed. “Apologies, Your Grace,” he said. “No disrespect was meant.”

Rhinebeck seemed somewhat mollified by the response, but his reply remained gruff. “Euchor will try to find a way out of the Pact like a coreling longs for a gap in the wards, but without support from him, Angiers cannot afford to commit to attacking the Krasian host.”

“You would violate the Pact yourself?” the Painted Man asked.

“Intercede in unity, the Pact says,” Rhinebeck growled. “Should I clash with the desert rats alone, only to have Euchor sweep in and destroy both our weakened armies and declare himself king?”

The Painted Man was silent a long time. “Why me, Your Grace?”

Rhinebeck snorted. “Don’t be modest. Every Jongleur in Thesa sings of you. If your arrival causes half the stir in Miln that it has in Angiers, Euchor will have no choice but to adhere to the Pact, especially if you sweeten the call with your battle wards.”

“I won’t withhold them for political gain,” the Painted Man said.

“Of course not,” Rhinebeck said, grinning, “but Euchor need not know that, ay?”

Rojer edged closer to the Painted Man. A skilled puppeteer, he could shout or whisper without moving his lips, even making the sounds appear to come from another place.

“He’s just trying to be rid of you,” he warned, so the others did not hear or notice.

But if the Painted Man heard him, he gave no sign. “Very well, I’ll do it. I’ll need your seal, Your Grace, so Duke Euchor knows the message is authentic.”

“You’ll have whatever you need,” Euchor promised.

“Your Grace,” the lady-in-waiting said, “the Lord Janson bade me to inform you that the duke’s audience with the delegation from Cutter’s Hollow is at an end.”

“Thank you, Ema,” Araine said, not bothering to ask how things went. “Please inform Lord Janson that we will meet them in the antechamber when we have finished our tea.” Ema curtsied smoothly and vanished. Wonda threw back the rest of her cup and got to her feet.

“There is no need for haste, young lady,” Araine told her. “It does men good to have to wait for a woman now and again. It teaches them patience.”

“Yes’m,” Wonda said, bowing.

The duchess mum got to her feet. “Come here, girl, and let me have a proper look at you,” she said. Wonda came closer, and Araine walked around her, examining her worn and patched clothes, the jagged scars on her homely face, and reaching out to squeeze her shoulders and arms like a butcher examining livestock.

“I can see why you chose to lead a man’s life,” the duchess mum said, “you being built like one. Do you regret missing out on a life of dresses and blushing at suitors?” Leesha got to her feet, but the duchess mum raised a finger at her without even turning, and Leesha kept her tongue behind her teeth.

Wonda shifted her feet uncomfortably. “Ent never given it much thought.”

Araine nodded. “What’s it like, girl, to stand among men when they go to war?”

Wonda shrugged. “Feels good to kill demons. They killed my da and a lot of my friends. Some of the Cutters treated us women different at first, trying to keep us behind them when the demons came, but we kill as many as they do, and after a few of them got pounced on for looking out for some woman instead of themselves, they wised up quick.”

“The men here would be worse, by far,” Araine said. “I had to abdicate power when my husband died, even though my eldest son was an idiot, and his brothers little better. Creator forbid a woman sit the ivy throne. I’ve always been a little jealous of the way old Bruna dominated men openly, but that sort of thing just isn’t done here.”

She eyed Wonda again. “Not yet, anyway,” she allowed. “Stand tall in the night for me, girl. Stand tall for every woman in Angiers, and never let anyone, man or woman, make you stoop.”

“I will, Y’Grace,” Wonda said, making a proper bow at last. “I swear it by the sun.”

Araine grunted and tapped her chin for a moment, then snapped her fingers. She snatched up the little silver bell on the table and rang it. In an instant one of her ladies-in-waiting appeared. “Summon my seamstress immediately,” Araine said. The woman curtsied and scurried off, and moments later another woman arrived, assisted by a young girl with a leather-bound book and a feathered quill.

“The girl,” Araine said, pointing to Wonda. “Take her measurements. Everything.” The royal seamstress nodded and produced a series of knotted strings, calling the measurements out to the girl, who noted them in her book. Wonda stood awkwardly while the woman worked, moving Wonda’s limbs about like a doll’s, and running her hands over places that made the girl blush furiously. The white scars on her face became even more prominent as her cheeks colored.

The seamstress came over to Araine and Leesha when she was finished. “It’s a challenge, Your Grace,” she admitted. “The girl is flat where a woman should be curved, and broad where a woman should be narrow. Perhaps a few ruffles on the dress to distract the eye, and a fan to help her hide the scars…”

“Am I an idiot?” Araine snapped. “I’d as soon put Thamos in a gown as that girl!”

The woman paled, and dipped into a curtsy. “Apologies, Your Grace,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet,” Araine said. “It will come to me, I’m sure. Run along now.” The woman nodded, quickly gliding out of the room with her assistant in tow.

Araine turned to Leesha as she and Wonda prepared to go. “Bruna and I were great friends, dear, something that was of great benefit to both of us. I hope we can be friends, as well.”

Leesha nodded. “I hope so, too.”

CHAPTER 18 GUILDMASTER CHOLLS

“WHY DID YOU AGREE to go?” Rojer asked in a low voice after Janson had escorted the men back to the parlor and left them alone to wait for Leesha and Wonda. “Rhinebeck is just trying to be rid of you because he’s afraid his own subjects will flock to you.”

“I don’t want that any more than he does,” the Painted Man said. “I don’t want people to start thinking of me as some kind of savior. Besides, I have my own reasons for wanting to visit Miln, and going under Rhinebeck’s seal is too good an opportunity to let slip past.”

“You’re going to give them your battle wards,” Rojer said.

The Painted Man nodded. “Among other things.”

“All right,” Rojer said. “When do we leave?”

The Painted Man looked at him. “There is no ‘we ’ here, Rojer. I’m going to Miln alone. I’ll be traveling at speed through the nights, and I don’t need you slowing me down. Besides, you have apprentices to train.”

“What’s the point?” Rojer asked. “Whatever it is I do to the corelings, it’s not something I can teach.”

“Demonshit,” the Painted Man snapped. “That’s quitting talk. You’ve only been training apprentices for a few months. We need those fiddle wizards, Rojer. You need to find a way to get them ready.” He took Rojer’s shoulders, looking into his eyes, and Rojer saw the endless determination that burned in the man and, more, his confidence in Rojer. “You can do this,” the Painted Man said, squeezing his shoulders. He turned away, but that stare remained with Rojer, and he felt as if some of the man’s determination had passed on to him. If he couldn’t train the apprentices, he knew who could. All he needed to do was swallow his fear and go to them.

Gared came to the Painted Man, dropping to one knee. “Let me go with ya,” he begged. “I ent afraid to gallop at night. I won’t slow ya.”

“Get up,” the Painted Man snapped, kicking at Gared’s bent knee. The giant Cutter rose to his feet quickly, but kept his eyes down. The Painted Man put a hand on his shoulder.

“I know you wouldn’t slow me, Gared,” he said, “but you’re not going, either. I’m going to Miln alone.”

“But you need someone to protect you,” Gared said. “The world needs you.”

“The world needs men like you more than it needs me,” the Painted Man told Gared, “and I don’t need a bodyguard. I have another task in mind for you.”

“Anything,” Gared promised.

“I don’t need a guard, but Rojer does,” the Painted Man said. Rojer looked at him sharply, but the Painted Man ignored him. “As Wonda guards Leesha, I want you to watch over Rojer. His fiddle magic is unique and irreplaceable, and may turn the tide if we can harness it.”

Gared bowed deeply and stepped into a sunbeam streaming in from a window. “I swear it by the sun.” He looked at Rojer. “I won’t let him leave my sight.”

Rojer looked at the giant, unpredictable Cutter with not a little apprehension, unsure if he should be comforted or terrified. “Let me use the privy in peace, at least.”

Gared laughed and slapped him on the back, knocking all the air from Rojer’s body and nearly throwing him to the floor.

“I’m leaving for Fort Miln before the north gate is barred tonight,” the Painted Man told Leesha on the carriage ride back to Jizell’s hospit, after filling her in on the rest of his audience with the duke, which had gone precisely as the duchess mum had predicted. “In fact, I mean to go as soon as I can pack Twilight Dancer for the journey.”

Leesha had instructed Wonda to keep a straight face if the men confirmed Araine’s words. The girl performed admirably, but Leesha herself had to force down the smile that threatened to turn up the corners of her mouth. “Oh?”

“Rhinebeck wants me to go as his agent to Duke Euchor, petitioning him for aid in driving the Krasians out of Thesan lands,” the Painted Man said.

Leesha pretended to nod grimly, awed at the duchess mum’s power. What she wouldn’t give to bend men to her will so, without their ever knowing!

The Painted Man looked expectantly at her. “What?”

“No protests at my leaving?” He seemed almost disappointed. “No insistent offers to accompany me?”

Leesha snorted. “I have business back in the Hollow,” she said, not meeting his eyes, “and you’ve made no secret that you want to spread the battle wards to every city and hamlet. It’s for the best.”

The Painted Man nodded. “I think so, too.”

They passed the rest of the ride in silence, and arrived back at the hospit as the apprentices were taking the linens off the lines.

“Gared, please help the girls haul the laundry baskets,” Leesha said as the empty carriage pulled away. Gared nodded and went off.

“Wonda,” Leesha said. “The Painted Man will need ammunition for his ride north. Please fetch a few bundles of warded arrows.”

“Ay, mistress,” Wonda said, bowing, and headed inside.

“Five minutes at court, and everyone’s bowing to everyone else,” Rojer muttered.

“Rojer, would you ask Mistress Jizell to have the girls pack food for his saddlebags?” Leesha asked.

Rojer looked at them and scowled. “Might be best I stay and chaperone.”

Leesha gave him such a withering glare that he shrank back. He bowed with a sarcastic flourish and headed off. Leesha and the Painted Man went to the stables, and he fetched his warded saddle and the stallion’s barding.

“You will be careful, won’t you?” Leesha asked him.

“I wouldn’t have survived so long if I wasn’t,” he said.

“Fair point,” Leesha said, “but I didn’t just mean with the corelings. Duke Euchor has a…harder reputation than Rhinebeck.”

“You mean he’s not led around by the nose by his councilors?” the Painted Man asked. “I know. I’ve met Euchor before.”

Leesha shook her head. “Is there anywhere you haven’t been?”

The Painted Man shrugged. “Over the eastern mountain range. Through the western wood. Past the Krasian Desert to the seashore.” He looked at her. “But I’ll see all those places one day, if I can.”

“I’d like to see them as well, Creator willing,” Leesha said.

“Nothing stopping you or anyone from going anywhere, now,” the Painted Man said, holding up a tattooed hand.

I meant with you, she wanted to say, but swallowed it. His words said it all. She was his Rojer. There was no point in pretending otherwise any longer.

The Painted Man reached out his hand. “You be careful, too, Leesha.”

Leesha slapped his hand away and embraced him. “Goodbye.”

An hour later, he was galloping north from the city, and though her eyes were wet, Leesha felt as if a great weight had lifted from her.

Leesha fell into her old patterns at the hospit, giving the apprentices a lesson and doing rounds while Jizell caught up on her correspondence. Part of her thought hungrily of the books of warding in the satchel in her room upstairs, but she resisted the temptation to immerse herself in Arlen’s lore, for she knew once she did, she would be able to think of nothing else. Learning was as addictive to Leesha as the jolt of magic that came with killing a coreling with his warded axe was to Gared. But for a few hours, at least, she decided to take comfort in the simple pleasure of grinding herbs and treating patients with nothing worse than a broken bone or a bad chill.

When last rounds were completed and the apprentices shooed off to bed, Leesha brewed a pot of tea and took a cup to Jizell’s sitting room. The room would be empty at this time of night, and there was a warm hearth and a small writing desk there. Leesha had her own correspondence to catch up on, Herb Gatherers throughout the duchy that she kept in touch with, many of whom had yet to be informed of Bruna’s passing last year. Like grinding herbs, keeping in touch with old friends was another thing Leesha had not had time for since she and Rojer met the Painted Man.

But as she drew near the sitting room, she heard the sound of breaking glass. She entered the room to see Rojer behind Jizell’s desk, a carafe of brandy open in front of him. The fire hissed and popped angrily, and there were wet shards of glass on the stone of the fireplace.

“Are you trying to burn the whole building down?” Leesha shouted, pulling a rag from her apron and running to wipe up the alcohol before it caught flame.

Rojer ignored her, taking another glass and filling it.

“Mistress Jizell won’t be pleased at you shattering her glass, Rojer,” Leesha said.

Rojer reached into the motley bag he carried everywhere. It was old, stained, and weather-worn, but Rojer still referred to it as his “bag of marvels.” Indeed, he could reach into it at will and pull forth something to widen the eyes of even the most skeptical audience.

He threw a handful of the Painted Man’s ancient gold coins on the desk. They bounced with a clatter, and half of them fell to the floor. “She can buy a hundred more now.”

“Rojer, what is the matter with you?” Leesha demanded. “If this is about sending you away before…”

Rojer waved his hand dismissively, taking a pull from his glass. Leesha could tell he was already very drunk. “Don’t care how you and Arlen said goodbye in the stable.”

Leesha glared. “I didn’t stick him, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Rojer shrugged. “Your business if you did.”

“Then what is it?” Leesha asked softly, coming over to him. Rojer looked at her a moment, then reached into his bag of marvels again, producing a slim wooden box he opened to reveal a heavy gold medallion.

“Minister Janson gave this to me,” Rojer said. “It’s a Royal Medal of Valor. The duke gave it to Arrick for saving me the night Riverbridge fell. I never knew.”

“You miss him,” Leesha said. “It’s only natural. He saved your life.”

“The Core he did!” Rojer cried, grabbing the chain and hurling the medal across the room. It struck the wall with a heavy thunk and dropped to the floor with a clatter.

Leesha put her hands on Rojer’s shoulders, but his lips curled and for a moment, she thought he might strike her. “Rojer, what happened?” she asked softly.

Rojer pulled away from her hands and turned away. For a moment she thought he would remain silent, but then he began to speak.

“I used to think it was just a nightmare.” His voice was strained and tight, as if it might break at any moment. “We were dancing, my mother and I, while Arrick played the fiddle. My father and a Messenger, Geral, were clapping along. It was off-season, and there was no one else in the inn that night.”

He drew a deep breath, swallowing hard. “There was a crash, as something hit the door. I remember my father had been arguing that morning with Master Piter, the Warder, but he and Geral said not to worry.” He chuckled mirthlessly, sniffling. “I guess we should have, because as we all turned to the sound, a rock demon burst through the door.”

“Oh, Rojer!” Leesha said, covering her mouth, but Rojer did not turn.

“The rock was followed by a blaze of flame demons, pouring in around its legs as it smashed the lintel and jambs of the doorway to fit through. My mother snatched me up in her arms, and everyone started shouting at once, but I don’t remember what was said, except…” He sobbed, and Leesha had to fight the urge to go to him.

Rojer composed himself quickly. “Geral threw his warded shield to Arrick and told him to get my mother and me to safety. Geral took his spear and my father an iron poker from the fireplace, and they turned to hold off the corelings.”

Rojer was silent a long time. When he spoke again, it was a cold monotone, lacking any emotion at all. “My mother ran to him, but Arrick shoved her aside, snatched up his bag of marvels, and ran from the room.”

Leesha gasped, and Rojer nodded. “Honest word. Arrick only helped me because my mother shoved me into the bolt-hole with him, just before the demons took her. Even then, he tried to leave me.”

He reached out to Arrick’s bag of marvels, running his fingers across the worn velvet and cracked leather patches. “It wasn’t threadbare and faded then. Arrick was the duke’s man, and this bag was bright and new, as befit a royal herald.

“That’s the truth of Arrick’s valor,” he said through clenched teeth. “Saving a bag of toys!” He snatched up the bag in his good hand, clenching it so tightly his knuckles showed white. “A bag I carry around with me everywhere, like it’s just as important to me!” He shook the bag in Leesha’s face, then his eyes flicked to the fire roaring in the hearth, and he moved around the desk toward the fireplace.

“Rojer, no!” Leesha shouted, moving to intercept him and grabbing the bag. Rojer held on tightly so she could not pull it away, but he did not try to push past her. They locked stares, Rojer’s eyes wide like a cornered animal. Leesha put her arms around him, and he buried his face in her bosom, weeping for some time.

When his convulsions finally eased, Leesha let go, but Rojer held her tight. His eyes were closed, but his mouth moved toward hers. She pulled back quickly, catching Rojer as he stumbled drunkenly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she said, guiding him back to the desk chair where he sat heavily and held a breath, as if to suppress a roiling stomach. His face was pale and sweaty.

“Drink my tea,” Leesha said. She took the bag of marvels from him, and Rojer let it go without resistance. She set the bag in a dark corner, well away from the fire, and retrieved Arrick’s gold medallion from where it lay on the floor.

“Why did he leave it behind?” Rojer asked, looking at the medallion. “When the duke threw us out, he took everything in our chambers that wasn’t staked to the floor. He could have sold that medal along with all the other things he peddled over the years we drifted. It could have fed and boarded us for months. Night, it could have paid every bar tab Arrick had in the city, and that’s saying something.”

“Maybe he knew he didn’t deserve it,” Leesha said. “Maybe he was ashamed of what he ’d done.”

Rojer nodded. “I think so. And for some reason, it’s worse. I want to hate him…”

“But he was like a father to you, and you can’t bring yourself to do it,” Leesha finished. She shook her head. “I know that feeling well.”

Leesha turned the medallion over in her hands, feeling the smooth back. “Rojer, what were your parents’ names?”

“Kally and Jessum,” Rojer said. “Why?”

Leesha laid the medallion on the desk and reached into one of the many pockets of her apron, pulling forth the small leather bundle that held her ward-etching tools. “If this medal is meant to honor your being saved from the massacre at Riverbridge, then it should honor everyone.”

With a smooth, flowing script, she etched KALLY, JESSUM, and GERAL into the soft metal. When she was finished, the names glittered in the firelight. Rojer looked at them with wide eyes as Leesha took the heavy chain and put it over his head. “When you look at this, don’t think of Arrick’s failure. Remember those whose sacrifice went unsung.”

Rojer touched the medallion, tears falling onto the gold. “I’ll never let it out of reach.”

Leesha put a hand on his shoulder. “I think you will, if it comes down to saving the medal, or someone’s life. You’re not Arrick, Rojer. You’re made of sterner stuff.”

Rojer nodded. “Time I proved it.” He got to his feet, but wobbled so unsteadily he had to slap a hand onto the desk for balance.

“In the morning,” he amended.

“Hold on to your wits and let me do the talking,” Rojer told Gared as they entered the Jongleurs’ Guildhouse. “Don’t be fooled by the bright smiles and motley. Half the men in here can slip the purse right from your pocket without you ever knowing.”

Gared reflexively slapped his hand to his pocket.

“Don’t clutch it, either,” Rojer added. “You’re just advertising where you keep it.”

“So what should I do?” Gared asked.

“Just keep your hands at your sides and don’t let anyone bump into you,” Rojer said. Gared nodded and followed close behind as Rojer navigated the halls. The giant Cutter, his warded axes crossed on his back, drew a few stares in the guildhouse, but not too many. The Jongleurs’ Guild was all about spectacle, and those who stared were likely only wondering what part the big man was playing, and in what production.

Finally, they came to the offices of the guildmaster. “Rojer Halfgrip to see Guildmaster Cholls,” Rojer told the receiving clerk.

The man looked up sharply. It was Daved, Cholls’ secretary, whom Rojer had met before.

“Are you mad, coming here after all this time?” Daved asked in a harsh whisper, glancing down the hall to see if anyone was watching. “The guildmaster will have your stones!”

“Not if he wants to keep his own, he won’t,” Gared growled. Daved turned to him, seeing only a pair of burly crossed arms, and had to crane his head up to look Gared in the eye.

“As you say, sir,” the clerk said, swallowing hard. He got up from his tiny hallway desk. “I will inform the guildmaster you’re waiting.” He went to the heavy oak doors of the guildmaster’s office, knocked, and vanished inside at the muffled reply.

“Here?! Now?!” a man cried from inside, and a moment later the doors burst open to reveal Guildmaster Cholls. Rather than the motley almost all Jongleurs wore, the guildmaster was dressed in a fine linen shirt and wool waistcoat, his beard trim and his hair combed neatly back with oil. He looked more like a royal than a Jongleur. As he thought about it, Rojer realized he had never once seen the guildmaster perform. He wondered if Cholls was a Jongleur at all.

The guildmaster’s face was a thunderhead, pulling Rojer from his musing. “You’ve got some stones, coming back here, Halfgrip! We had a ripping funeral for you, and you still owe me…” He glanced at Daved.

“Five thousand klats,” Daved supplied, “give or take a few dozen.”

“We can sort that first,” Rojer said, pulling a purse of the Painted Man’s ancient coins from his pocket and tossing it to the guildmaster. The coins were worth twice his debt, at least.

Cholls’ eyes lit up at the glitter of gold as he opened the purse. He snatched a coin at random and bit it, his scowl vanishing at the imprint his teeth made in the soft metal. He looked back to Rojer.

“I suppose I can make some time to hear your excuses,” he said, stepping aside to allow Rojer and Gared into his office. “Daved, bring some tea for our guests.”

Daved brought in the tea, and Rojer slipped him another gold coin, likely more money than the clerk saw in a year. “That’s for the paperwork to make me alive again.”

Daved nodded, his smile wide. “You’ll be off the pyre and back among the living by sunset.” He left the office, closing the door behind him.

“All right, Rojer,” Cholls said. “What in the night happened last year and where in the Core have you been? One day you and Jaycob are raking in the klats to pay your debt, and the next I get a note from some clerk, asking me to pay for the pyre for Master Jaycob’s body in the city coldhouse, with you just vanished!”

“Master Jaycob and I were attacked,” Rojer said. “Spent months in hospit recovering, and when I was well, I thought it best to leave town for a bit.” He smiled. “But since then, I’ve been witnessing the greatest ripping tampweed tale anyone’s ever seen, and the best part is, it’s true!”

“Not good enough, Halfgrip,” Cholls said. “Attacked by who?”

Rojer gave the guildmaster a knowing look. “Who do you think?”

Cholls’ eyes widened, and he coughed to cover it. “Ay…well, what’s important is that you’re all right.”

“Someone put ya in the hospit?” Gared asked, balling a fist. “Jus’ tell me where to find ’em, and I’ll—”

“We ’re not here for that,” Rojer said, laying a hand on Gared’s arm, but looking at Cholls as he did. The guildmaster blew out a breath, seeming to deflate.

“To the Core with tea,” Cholls muttered, “I could do with a real drink.” His hands shook a little as he reached into his desk, producing a glazed clay jug and three cups. He poured a generous portion in each and handed them out.

“To choosing our battles wisely,” the guildmaster said, raising his cup and exchanging a look with Rojer as they drank.

Gared looked at them both suspiciously, and Rojer wondered if the burly Cutter was really quite as dim as everyone thought. After a moment, though, Gared shrugged and tossed back the cup, swallowing it all in one gulp.

Immediately his eyes bulged, and his face turned bright red. He bent over, coughing violently.

“Creator, boy, you don’t gulp it!” Cholls scolded. “That’s Angierian brandy, and likely older than you are. It’s meant to be sipped.”

“Sorry, sir,” Gared gasped, his voice gone hoarse.

“They’re used to watered ale in the Hollow,” Rojer said. “Great foaming mugs that giants like Gared throw back by the dozen. What little spirit they have goes right from the fermenting tub to the glass.”

“No appreciation for the subtle,” Cholls agreed, nodding. “And you, Halfgrip?”

Rojer smiled. “I was Arrick’s apprentice, wasn’t I?” He took another pull from his cup and swished the liquid in his mouth, savoring the taste as he exhaled the alcohol burn through his nostrils. “I was drinking brandy before I had hair on my seedpods.”

Cholls laughed, reaching into his desk again and producing a leather weed pouch. “They do smoke in the Hollow, ay?” he asked Gared, who was still coughing a little. Gared nodded.

The guildmaster gave a start, whipping around to look at Rojer. “The Hollow, you say?”

“Ay,” Rojer said, taking a pinch from Cholls’ pouch and packing it into a pipe that appeared in his crippled hand. “I did.”

Cholls gaped. “You’re the Painted Man’s fiddle wizard?!”

Rojer nodded, lighting a taper from the lamp on the guildmaster’s desk and puffing the pipe to a glow.

Cholls sat back, regarding Rojer. After a moment, he nodded. “Guess it’s not too much of a surprise, at that. I always thought you had a bit of magic in your fiddling.”

Rojer passed him the taper, and Cholls puffed his own pipe to life, passing it to Gared.

They smoked in silence for a time, but eventually Cholls sat up and knocked the dottle from his pipe, setting it on its small wooden stand on his desk. “All right, Rojer, you can sit there smugly all day, but I have a guild to run. You’re telling me you were in Cutter’s Hollow for the coming of the Painted Man?”

“I wasn’t just in the Hollow for the coming of the Painted Man,” Rojer said. “He arrived with me and Leesha Paper.”

“The one they call the ward witch?” Cholls asked.

Rojer nodded.

Cholls’ eyebrows narrowed. “If you’re spinning some ale story at me, Rojer, I swear by the sun I’ll…”

“It’s no ale story, this,” Rojer said. “Every word is true.”

“You and I both know that we ’re talking about a story every Jongleur alive would kill for,” Cholls said, “so let’s skip to the end. How much do you want for it?”

“I’m not motivated by money anymore, Guildmaster,” Rojer said.

“Don’t tell me you’ve had some kind of religious awakening,” Cholls said. “Arrick would roll over in his grave. This Painted Man may fill seats at a Jongleur show, but you don’t actually think he’s the Deliverer, do you?”

There was a loud crack, and both men looked to see one of Gared’s chair arms had broken off in the big man’s grip. “He is the Deliverer,” Gared growled, “and I’ll have at any man that says otherwise.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Rojer snapped. “He’s said himself he isn’t, and unless you want me to tell him what an ass you’re making of yourself, you’ll keep your peace.”

Gared glared at him a moment, and Rojer felt his blood run cold, but he met the stare with one of his own and didn’t back down an inch. After a moment, Gared calmed and looked sheepishly at the guildmaster.

“Sorry about the chair,” he said, trying lamely to put the arm back on.

“Ah…think nothing of it,” Cholls said, though Rojer knew the chair cost more than most Jongleurs ever had in their purse at once.

“I’m not qualified to say he’s the Deliverer or not,” Rojer said. “Until last year, I thought the Painted Man’s very existence was an ale story. I spun more than a few of them, myself, making them up as I went along.” He leaned in to the guildmaster. “But he ’s real. He kills demons with his bare hands, and he has powers I can’t explain.”

“Jongleur’s tricks,” Cholls said skeptically.

Rojer shook his head. “I’ve dazzled my share of yokels with magic tricks, Guildmaster. I’m not some bumpkin taken in by sleight of hand and flash powders. I’m not calling him Creator-sent, but he has real magic, sure as the sun shines.”

Cholls sat back, steepling his fingers. “Let’s say you’re telling the truth. That still doesn’t explain why you’re here, if you aren’t looking to sell me the story.”

“Oh, I’ll sell it,” Rojer said. “I composed a song, ‘The Battle of Cutter’s Hollow,’ that will be called for in every ale house and square in the city, and there are enough stories from the last year to keep your Jongleurs working just to empty their collection hats so the people can fill them again.”

“Then what do you want, if not money?” Cholls asked.

“I need to train others to use fiddle magic,” Rojer said. “But I’m no teacher. I’ve had apprentices for months now, and they can fiddle well enough to spin dancers in a reel, but none of them can shift a coreling’s mood from more than ‘blood-crazed’ to ‘savage.’ ”

“There are two aspects of music, Rojer,” Cholls said, “skill and talent. One is learned, the other is not. In all my years, I’ve never seen someone with talent like yours. You have a natural gift that no fiddle instructor can teach.”

“So you won’t help?” Rojer asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Cholls said. “I just want you forewarned. Perhaps there’s something we can do, even so. Did Arrick teach you sound signs?”

Rojer looked at the guildmaster curiously and shook his head.

“It’s using your hands to give instructions to a group of players,” Cholls said.

“Like a conductor,” Rojer said.

Cholls shook his head. “A conductor’s players already know the piece. A sound signaler can compose on the spot, and if his players know the signs, they can immediately follow.”

Rojer sat up straight in his chair. “Honest word?”

Cholls smiled. “Honest word. We have a number of masters who can teach the art. I’ll send the lot of them to Deliverer’s Hollow, and assign them to follow your word.”

Rojer blinked.

“It’s not entirely unselfish of me,” Cholls said. “Whatever stories you give us now will do for a short while, but Deliverer or no, this is the defining event of our time, and the tale is still unfolding. The Hollow is clearly at the crux of it, and I’ve wanted to send Jongleurs there for some time, but with the flux at first and then the refugees, no one has had the stones to go. If you can promise safety and board, I’ll…persuade them.”

“I can guarantee it,” Rojer said, smiling.