“What the fuck do you mean he ain’t here?” Fia asked, her eerie eyes boring into the face of the woman standing before her.

The woman was trying her best to maintain a haughty composure, but her best wasn’t nearly good enough. In spite of her greatest efforts her eyes kept skittering around Fia’s face, taking in the mud and dust caked hair that she’d tied up, the half-healed scratches on her cheek, the Kynish tattoos that adorned the shaved sides of her scalp and ran down the sides of her neck like incantations.

Fia wasn’t sure how she was looking after over a week on the road, four days of which had been spent on the run with Gunn in tow, while she utilised every skill and ounce of cunning she had to stay ahead of his pursuing gang of vengeful longriders, but she doubted she was ballroom ready.

The room that she, Gunn and this unexpected woman were standing in was extremely comfortable, extremely clean. Unlike the rest of the Three Horseshoes Inn, this small suite of three rooms, located right under the eaves and accessible only by a narrow staircase, seemed to have received the sort of recent scrubbing that it probably hadn’t had since the building had been knocked up however many hundreds of years before. The cushions were plumped, the upholstery on the couches free from stains or wear. A set of decanters sat winking invitingly at Fia on a side table under the larger of the two windows. There was no sign of dust, nor a single cobweb to be seen in the beams above. It was all very pleasant, except for the fact that it was bereft of one significant feature.

“I said, what the fuck do you mean Gray ain’t here?” Fia repeated. “Meet him back here in Last Hallow, at the rooms at the top of the Three Horseshoes Inn, he said. With this man,” and she jerked her head at Gunn who sat, still shackled at the ankles and wrists, on a chair by the window, “still breathing, he said.”

The woman took a breath, glancing from Fia to Gunn. She was dressed in a garb that was all too familiar to Fia: the dark blue and charcoal grey of a soldier of Frekifold. She licked her lips. Straightened her back.

“As I have vouchsafed to you already, Miss McCrae, I am just a dispatch rider sent by Captain Gray, who’s been called away on other business. As a captain of the Tribeland of Frekifold, right hand to the current commander of the armed forces of Countess Vanora, it’s no wonder that he is detained by affairs of greater import than meeting with the likes of you.”

“Ouch,” Gunn said, staring unconcernedly out of the window.

“I’ll just leave this piece of shit with you, then,” Fia said, her words rime-covered. “If you’ll hand over the gold Gray promised me, I’ll be riding on.”

The messenger swallowed again. Fia noticed that she made no move to produce a purse.

“He’s fucked me,” Fia said.

Gunn barked a laugh from behind her. “That’s somethin’ you come to learn quickly about Captain Cameron Gray, Miss McCrae: if he’s talkin’, chances are he’s lyin’.” His tone was light, but Fia detected a vitriolic anger underlying his words. “That son of a bitch’s word’s worth less than mine––‘course, my word’s rare as grass around a boar wallow, but when I give it I keep it. Gray though, he’d piss on your back and tell you it’s raining just for fun.”

It was odd, but Fia had never thought that about the man when she had known him before. Of course, she’d had a different life then, with different cares.

Fia let out an inaudible sigh through her nose. She beat her hat against her leg a couple of times raising road dust from her trousers. Outside, rain began to patter on the wooden roof tiles of the Three Horseshoes Inn.

“Guess you better just fucking tell me what the deal is then, messenger,” she said, one hand coming to rest on the hilt of her broadsword. “The new deal that is.”

“I’m authorised to speak the words Captain Gray ordered me to pass onto you,” the Frekirie messenger said. “I have no power to bargain with you. If you’ll accept the alteration then that’s all to the good. If not, the captain says that the punishment will be the same. He believed that you would be amenable to the change, as you’re no doubt already being pursued by Gunn’s band.”

“I’m going to have to keep movin’, that’s for certain,” Fia said.

“Captain Gray orders you to bring the prisoner to Frekifold,” the messenger said crisply, trying hard to maintain eye contact with Fia, but finding her unwavering, unfathomable stare impossible to match. “He requires that the outlaw be brought to Castle Dreymark.”

Fia’s innards writhed and shrivelled like leaves caught in a forest fire.

“Why?” she asked, the word slipping from her in a weak croak. She wasn’t even sure if she was asking the message-bearer specifically, or the world itself.

The dispatch rider looked haughtily at her.

“Why? Why is no concern of yours,” she said, reaching for the long travelling cloak that draped the back of a chair nearby. “When the order comes to ride to Castle Dreymark, logic dictates that Captain Gray is issuing a command from Viscount Redmond Marr himself.”

Fia closed her eyes involuntarily and tilted her head up at the ceiling.

So, she thought, it happens at last. The storm breaks and I must walk out the other side and see what kind of person it has shaped me into.

She opened her eyes and saw own face staring back at her, from a queer bronze mirror sat on top of a heavy wardrobe in the corner of the room. Something about the ornament tugged at a memory from long ago.

She blinked slowly, allowing the thought of the contents of the decanter behind her to enter her mind.

Oblivion. Forgetfulness. Death, if she stuck it out.

“How many men have you got coming for us, Gunn?” she asked, still looking dully at the bronze mirror.

“Now, why’d you think I’d tell you somethin’ like that, Miss McCrae?” the outlaw said. “Besides, a few of my likely lads and ladies catching up with us shouldn’t give you the shivers, surely? You’ve been throwing your weight around just fine if you ask me.”

“That’s the thing though, ain’t it, you sack of horse shit; when you’re throwin' your weight around, you can bet your arse that it’s only a matter of time before it’s thrown around by somebody else.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Fia’s eyes slid across to the face of the dispatch rider. “You see where I’m going with that question though, can’t you?” she asked. “His crew’s only a day or so down the trail behind us. It’s all very well and good if Gray wants to change the deal, but there’s no way this side of the pit I’m going to be able to get Gunn all the way to Castle Dreymark on my lonesome.”

“I was also instructed to tell you that Captain Gray has manned Last Hallow with enough Frekirie soldiery to deter even the stupidest or most determined longriders,” the stern-faced messenger said. “Their orders are to stay here for three days and three days only. This should give you ample time to gather a crew of however many riders you deem necessary to get the job done. On the third night Captain Gray recommends you sneak out of this settlement under the cover of nightfall. His men will maintain their position for two days after that, which should give you enough time to escape any pursuit.”

Fia’s knuckles clenched white around the pommel of her broadsword. She squeezed her eyes shut again, willing herself to be calm. She’d half hoped that she’d be forced to stand and fight and fall here. Dying out under the sky might be a sight better than what might await her at Castle Dreymark, if she was recognised.

With her eyes closed, she could hear the subtle chattering buzz of the faerie lights out in the corridor, could smell the beguiling whiff of pipe smoke and roasting meat creeping under the door from the common room downstairs. There might be one night of pleasure left her at least.

She opened her unreadable eyes.

“Fine,” she said, “but unless you know where I can find some extremely charitable mercenaries, I’m going to need coin to hire riders.”

In answer, the dispatch rider reached into her jacket and tossed a fat purse at Fia’s feet.

Behind her, Gunn let out a low whistle.

“Redmond fuckin’ Marr himself, heir to the High Seat of Fallaros, going to all this trouble and expense just for me,” he said. “I must really be goin’ up in the world.”

* * *

Some sixty miles north of Last Hallow, on the northern edge of the Foldwood, the belt of tangled woodland that divided Arifold and Frekifold, Cameron Gray sat back in the comfortable upholstered armchair and ordered the witch to clear the scrying glass. As the drawn, pasty man muttered a few words and waved a tremulous hand across the sheet of copper that had been floating an inch above the surface of a bowl of mercury, Gray folded his hands in his lap. He noticed a slightly ratty fingernail and pulled out a small knife to trim it.

Across from him, the thaumaturgist watched him nervously, hands now tucked back into his voluminous coat. The man had the slightly emaciated face, twitching fingers and feverish eyes of someone assiduously working towards death by the bottle-rot, but Gray knew that excessive drink was not what ailed the man.

Thaumaturgy. All the power that these witches are said to possess and this is what becomes of them. Why bother at all? he thought to himself. They become so engrossed in their art, in their quest to understand the world and everything in it, Bent on changing and meddling the very fabric of things so that they might make them ‘better’, that they drive themselves mad.

“I hope that my good captain is satisfied?” the pale witch asked in a quavering voice.

The man’s wheedling tone added to Gray’s mounting annoyance of where he was and what he had just seen. The witch should have spoken in the voice of one that was able to crack stone, make it rain scalding lead, or have a man’s blood boil in his veins should he be provoked. Instead…

Gray flicked the nail paring onto the floor of the witch’s hovel, studied the result and found it satisfactory.

He did not put the little knife away.

“Am I satisfied?” he sighed, running a hand back across his oiled silver hair. He looked around at the five Frekirie guards stationed around the witch’s hovel. Their eyes were studiously staring at the walls opposite, their faces blank. They were good men. Loyal. Discreet.

A pity, after what had just appeared in the scrying glass, that he would have to have them all killed to ensure their silence.

“Am I satisfied?” Gray repeated, his cold blue gaze returning. “Is that what you’re asking me? Or are you inquiring whether or not the duty I asked you to provide me with was adequately valuable?”

The thaumaturgist opened his mouth tentatively to answer.

Gray raised the little knife and waggled it at him. The man’s mouth closed with an audible snap of yellowing teeth.

“You’d say that the answer is one in the same, perhaps,” Gray said, “but you’d be wrong in this case.”

Ever so slowly, he placed the tip of the knife to the arm of the chair and drew it along it as he got smoothly to his feet. There was a silken sound of parting cloth. Feathers spilled silently out onto the rug-covered floor.

“Goose,” Gray said appreciatively. “Thaumaturgists may call their abodes hovels, but they are not without a certain easefulness. Thaumaturgy, it seems, is a lucrative business, though my master and I have always been of the opinion that it’s full potential has never really been effectuated.”

Gray walked slowly around the back of the witch’s chair. He could smell the man’s rank sweat, even over the scent of the many bundles of dried herbs that hung from the ceiling.

“Am I satisfied?” Gray asked himself once more. “With your service? Unquestionably. With what your unique, heathen abilities revealed to me? No.”

The little knife slid up and around the back of the armchair that the witch sat in, spilling feathers all over the cadaverous, wide-eyed thaumaturgist’s shoulders, piling them into his lap.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, witch,” Gray said, leaning down so that his minty breath tickled at the skinny fellow’s ear, “you showed me something that I can only describe as an afterclap––the word my father used to describe some unexpected happening that occurred after an event, or a person, was thought to be dead and buried.”

Gray straightened. Tapped the knife blade thoughtfully on the witch’s shoulder, lost in his musings.

He still couldn’t believe she was alive. He’d stood talking during his meeting with the young tracker styling herself Fia McCrae––with her surly manner, Kynnish scalp tattoos and enigmatic eyes––with his instincts and memories all jumbled up and falling over one another, nudging him to recall her from some hazy place in his past. It was only as they were finishing up their chat and he was laying the cards out on the table for her, that the impossible notion of who she reminded him of struck him over the head like a blackjack. He’d slipped her name into the conversation as a test, and her resulting reaction had been cagey enough for him to risk riding north to bully this thaumaturgist, a foul heathen he knew to be particularly skilled in the art of scrying, to spy on her.

It had been a gamble. If the dour-faced bitch with the uncanny knack of finding lost things had not been who he suspected she might be then there was a risk that he might lose Gunn. However, if it had turned out to be her, as he was now most assured it was, he had wanted to be relatively close to Castle Dreymark so that he could race back and get instructions from his master.

“Yes,” Gray muttered to himself, as he continued tapping the knife blade on the shoulder of the rigid, sweating thaumaturgist, his shrewd eyes unfocused, “her resurfacing will interest Viscount Marr greatly—might change everything. The risk of losing Gunn is an acceptable one if it means my lord might be able to finally rid himself of the doubt that has so long gnawed at him.”

“Wh-what was that, captain?” the witch whispered, thinking that Gray was talking to him.

“Hm? Oh, nothing, nothing,” Cameron Gray said. He pocketed the little knife and rested a hand on the witch’s shoulder. Felt the man, filled with thaumaturgy as he might’ve been, trembling.

Bloody pathetic; a waste of martial potential, it really is.

“Still, perhaps not for much longer, eh?” he said in a low voice to the spooked thaumaturgist.

Gray turned to his men.

“Tie him to the bed and burn the cottage down around him” he ordered. “We ride north. I’ve news for Viscount Marr that will not wait.”