“Oh come on, Raz!” Ysara squealed. “You’re not even trying, now. There’s almost no way that’s true!”

“Almost no way? You know it’s true!” I laughed. “A rat.”

“Course!” Her eyes sparkled.

“It was highly embarrassing, to say the least. I even did a wee when I smelt some other rats. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone else about that…”

She was in tears, and her husband Pegoras was smiling broadly, which must’ve been a testament to my tale about the time I had a tail. The man never laughed, barely ever even grinned.

I waved them goodbye, heading over to Enzon’s stall for a pastry. I wrinkled my nose at the stench of tuna on the air, trying to focus on the sourness of the cherries in my mouth as I chomped down on my favourite filled treat. Leaning on a rail overlooking the docks below, I sighed, lifting my face to the warm sun in temporary bliss, letting the chaotic sounds of the marketplace wash over me.

“Bikkog! Kakili! Aefel-kin moot!” Clams! Cockles! Get them here! Herga sold notoriously dodgy seafood, and most non-tourists avoided her like she had the plague.

“Mifo! Mifo akar! Festa ba blagori, tekku tim ar faragak!” Toys! Toys galore! Goblins and imps, fresh out the shop! Mr. Okeleb’s little wonders were probably fresher than Herga’s clams. I hoped the surge of interest in such miniature terrors had something to do with my influence.

There were many others whose words were less comprehensible to me.

A tall man with barrels containing something-something-scales, used in making poultices for the curing of… something.

A stout old dear hiring people for a something to find the bones of… something. That sounded ominous.

Someone looking for a something-something… someone who sounded desperate, enraged.

An arch-sorcerer, my paranoia whispered. He’s looking for you.

I smiled, and kept my eyes shut.

My worries had lessened, over the past weeks. I walked around wearing my face, if you didn’t count the scar. My robe was my old one with its colours adjusted by illusion, Feychilde’s mask still secreted in the deep inner pocket. I told stories that could identify me. We kept our fake names, but half the people I interacted with on a daily basis now seemed to be under the impression I was a former hero of some kind. While I didn’t have much cause to dissuade them from that notion, I avoided talking about it whenever it came up. I couldn’t give away too much, but I found that I wanted to be as honest as possible with people – and not because I still wanted to be Kas.

Quite the opposite. Raz was a slightly different person, I found. He had less baggage, carried less of a burden. If anything, I would’ve said that life now was the most-complete it’d ever been: that Raz was my best self. By the end, Kas had been a mess of a person. This was a fresh chance, a new start, and I was embracing it to the utmost of my ability.

Clinging to it. Desperately.

I realised by now that most of the lies I wanted to tell were needless. Mundians were rare here, and those passing through Telior clearly weren’t looking for me; my only nod to hiding was to avoid the crews off Mundian ships. If Timesnatcher scried-out the fact that Duskdown or Neverwish had returned to the city, he might’ve figured out by now that I’d followed his instructions and escaped Zyger – but even if that had happened, he clearly hadn’t informed Zakimel. I was free and clear, thousands of miles away, in a remote port on the edge of the world. I could afford a few minor risks. I’d even sent Pinktongue to Xantaire with a note and enough gold to pay for sea-passage, but in her letter she said that she wasn’t ready to leave – at least not yet. By the sounds of things, she was working with that Garet bloke I’d left in charge of Wyre’s operation, and according to my imp there were are whole bunch of new kids living in my parents’ old apartment somehow. I was still considering what to say in my response.

Maybe Timesnatcher could’ve informed Zakimel – or maybe the old arch-diviner could’ve simply figured out where Xantaire was planning to move her family some other way – but I quite literally wasn’t worth the trouble. I was certain they had bigger things to deal with. Was I being foolish to be so worried? Orcan had said it all, months ago now. The money and the fame and the power, it was all those people ever thought about. Would hunting me down bring them greater glory? Riches beyond measure? Did I have some secret hoard of magical items for them to plunder? No. I was a meaningless target, if I were one at all.

I was nothing.

I was no one.

With all these thoughts swirling about my mind, the very moment that my satyr-reflexes finally kicked in and warned me of someone at my elbow, I span about –

Dislodging a gobbet of dark-red jam from the end of the half-eaten pastry in my hand, sending it to splat on the side of Nafala’s face.

She regarded me in shock for a moment. I froze, watching, as she slowly reached up to her face and took the cherry-bits carefully onto the edge of her finger.

“I’m… sorry?”

My apprentice’s dark eyes swelled with emotion. It looked as though she were about to start crying.

“I…” I had no idea what to say. “You missed… a bit.”

Still she said nothing, just staring at me, chest rising and falling heavily.

Hesitantly, I reached out and tried to clean up the rest of the jam with a single go of my thumb, but I still didn’t get all of it.

“You missed a bit,” she growled softly, and before I knew what was happening she was bringing her hand up to my face.

I stayed very still, letting her decorate the tip of my nose with the stuff. It was most outgoing behaviour I’d ever witnessed from her.

When she was done she spun on her heel as quickly as I’d spun on mine, grating out as she turned: “Ghena sent me. She needs you.”

“Hold on.”

I took her arm as she went to stalk back towards the tower, and she didn’t wrest it free, permitting me to turn her back.

“Vot?” she asked quietly, suddenly averting her eyes.

“I… Do you want to help me finish this?” I gestured lamely with the pastry remnants, but I knew her weakness for such luxuries. “It’s the least I could do, really…”

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“A half-ate dessert?”

I shrugged, smiling.

“Fine.” I could see the blush already making its way to her cheeks. “Just… take zat off your nose. You are looking stupid.”

The moment she joined me at the rail overlooking the docks and took a nibble of the pastry, I felt something change between us. There was a warmth to the silence that settled between us as we stared out at the bay.

Gulls squawked mindlessly, specks weaving across the white sky.

“I envy them, sometimes.”

She swallowed half her mouthful. “Mmm. Enzon’s?”

I nodded.

“Is good.” She swallowed again. “You envy ze birds? But you can fly like zem.”

“It’s not the flying… It’s… Never mind.” I laughed at myself, and hoped I didn’t sound too bitter. “What did Ghena want, anyway?”

“Ah… ze first of ze Shipbuilders’ orders is ready, avaiting your inspection.”

I rolled my eyes. It could wait. The saws of enhanced speed and durability we’d created weren’t due until next week anyway. But our early finish meant we could finally start processing the prototypes for the healers’ wands.

There was so much politics involved in it all. I did my best to stay out of it. I’d wanted to pledge our services to the all-female group of druidesses and priestesses, the Sisterhood of the Teal Stone. The women were in charge of all healing in Telior, and from what I saw they did a good job of it, ministering to the poor and rich alike with every penny, every reagent, every second at their disposal. The sooner I could start work on their implements, the better, as far as I was concerned. King Deymar assured me that Orcan would contact the mysterious Greenheart, somehow, and have them imbued with various restorative spells. But apparently prioritising their requests over those of the Shipbuilders would’ve stepped on a large number of toes. Deymar had glanced surreptitiously at my broken foot, and said to me in whispers that I should be aware of what that felt like.

I’d understood the implication. It wasn’t that he feared for me. He feared for his own foot. The throne had always had a good relationship with the Shipbuilders, Roba had told me at one point, and their leaders were well-in with the naval captains. That was one guild the king didn’t want to get on the wrong side of.

So I acquiesced. The Sisterhood had waited decades for a solution to their problems. They could wait a few more weeks. And then I’d get to do something with official sanction which the powers of Mund had forever held beyond the reach of the unsanctioned archmage.

Give things out, freely. Share the limitless possibilities of our magic with the people.

Why not? Why had it always had to be monetised? Why did the Magisterium always have to twist everything, even the most beautiful things, into a warped and malign shape before they’d brand it with their seal of approval?

Soon we would give it away.

“Ze price of dead-men’s plasma has, ah, gone up through the roof.” I nodded at her encouragingly, and she smiled briefly. “I do not think zere is any short amount. I think zey are trying tricks.”

“We can afford it. We can’t do without those shipments, Nafala.”

“Unless… my Lord Raz vould cast ze spells himself.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and she giggled, pushing her hair behind her ear.

I could feel the tightness of my smile as I turned back to face Northril.

When I was with Nafala, I was more than capable of experiencing physical passion; my body underwent the correct amused responses when she joked around; I even felt a strong bond of friendship… Yet there was something missing. An emptiness, a hollow in the centre of me, a cold whirlpool to drag down the song in my heart and drown it, swallow the echoes away.

I was holding back.

Suddenly the silence felt awkward.

“What’s raberak?” I asked.

“Raberak?”

“I heard someone talking about it – someone was looking for raberak-bones, and –

“Ah…” She laughed a little. “You have me worrying zen. Raberak, zis means ‘dragon’.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And this doesn’t worry you?”

Why are Mundians going so far afield to find dragon-bones? Has the craze really taken off so much that they’re coming to Telior for more? Is it because there’s less competition?

But what she said next was even more confusing.

“Hm?” She looked genuinely surprised at my concern. “Zis is a… vell, my grandfazzer, he voz a… how you say, adventure?”

“Adventurer.”

“Ad–ven-choora… He voz alvays selling ze dragon-parts, not just ze bones, vhenever he voz lucky enough to come across zem.”

“Did he?”

“He even killed one, once. So Fazzer says. Viz about thirty people… Zis voz a small one, zough. Half a longship, and it may have… grown in ze telling.”

“Wow.” My throat, tongue, lips formed the appropriately-awed word – I even smiled at her impressive use of the Mundic turn of phrase – but my mind was adrift. “So, this has always been a trade? This is the first I’ve heard of it. Here, at least. It was new in Mund – I think…”

I supposed there must’ve always been nuts who were interested in collectibles derived from the carcasses of dragons and other equally-interesting magical monsters. I was probably making something out of nothing.

“Why haven’t I seen dragon-skulls on the walls and all that?” I wondered aloud. “You’d think, if it’d been an industry here for, what, decades? that there’d be more of the dropping things on display. I’ve been right through the High Hall –”

“Oh, no, zey are all sent overseas, I am sure! Zey are vorth, vell, not zeir veight in gold, but –“

“I get it.”

I frowned, and she was starting to pick up on it.

“But you did not have zese, zese trophies in Mund?”

I shook my head. “No, and I went to some of the poshest houses we’ve got. Trust me, if it was big enough to fuel an industry over here – even getting people to set off on expeditions looking for them – I’d have seen some. People don’t really think or talk much about dragons, there. There aren’t… well, until recently a dragon hadn’t been to Mund in centuries – or so we all thought, anyway…”

It had me confused-enough that my suspicious nature came to the fore.

Once I had Ghena pacified, the Shipbuilders’ saws checked, and everyone working on the Sisterhood’s wands, I headed back to the market. Enwraithed, I watched the organiser of the expedition as dusk fell. The stout old woman in a grey dress… whose slumped posture vanished entirely between one step and the next once she was three streets away. I caught a glimpse of her face beneath the hood when I ranged ahead of her on a lower level – her soft, winning smile had been replaced by a cold expression, and her eyes darted into every nook and cranny, almost as though she were aware of me.

Okay, little lady. Now you’ve got me curious.

She probably didn’t have a clue I was following her, to be fair, given the fact I moved silently and invisibly high above her eyeline – but she seemed nervous. Maybe it was just that she had a healthy sense of self-preservation, or some past event made her mistrust corners, dark recesses. Whatever it was, I doubted any ordinary rogue could’ve come upon her unawares, given her hyperactive gaze.

She’d been inviting her applicants to join them on the nineteenth of Chraunost – Koronov, here, but it meant the same thing. That was three days away. From what I’d been able to tell, she’d only gotten about four or five potential hirelings, sellswords by the looks of them. They were to meet aboard her ship, the Starfall. I half-expected her to head down to the harbour and board her vessel, but she didn’t. She headed inland, towards the ‘back streets’ of Telior.

When she finally entered a house, tucked away against the looming cliff-face, I followed through the dwelling’s planks. We were entering a dingy hovel where a bunch of drugged-up low-lives sat in their own drop, gibbering and pawing at each other. I wouldn’t have given the place a second glance, but the old woman strode with purpose through the strewn-about, sweaty limbs, moving to the back wall –

Where she opened a grimy cupboard and climbed inside, shutting it firmly behind her from inside somehow.

Okay. Okay… This is totally a Yearsend gift…

I went with her, penetrating what turned out to be stone, drifting along with only my face extending into the tunnel she followed.

I waited while she lit a lantern from her knapsack, and trailed along the dripping ceiling behind her as we traversed more tunnels, hundreds of feet of them. The damp passageways were largely man-made, hewn by mining tool and in a few places moulded by wizardry, but at least some of the caverns had to have been natural formations. As we proceeded, the woman quickened her pace, almost swinging her arms in her urgency despite the unevenness of the ground, despite the lantern she carried flailing about, casting deranged shadows across our rocky surroundings.

I was starting to get uncomfortable – the wraith-form was a blessing, but too much of this reminded me of the pits beneath Mund. The only reason I could still breathe was that I knew I could escape at any moment. Had I been here the way she was, a default person, just walking around without the power to phase through solid stone… I would’ve left already, I was certain.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before I sensed what lay ahead. Her destination.

A vampire.

Her vampire master.

* * *