“Anna! I am here.”

Anna stepped down from the porch of the Beaufort residence, and noticed a stern reindeer waving at her from the street. He had short, polished antlers, and Yvon’s clothing, and trunk, and…voice.

Oh dear.

“Yvon?”

The reindeer scraped a hoof against the ground. Anya noticed he had attached a wooden Clary claim-seal to his coat.

“Years ago, I spent a fortune on a glamour-ring from the Black Forest covens, but have had little opportunity to put it to use. Given our next outing, I thought it best to be inconspicuous.”

Anya examined the illusion, it seemed perfect, down to the shine of the hooves and the twitching of his ears in the breeze, and he even smelled of prey-musk and hay. And something more, underneath.

“Um, are you meant to smell of estrus? It’s not much, but-”

“Yes, I know. A slight error in the glamour. Well, with these horns, there should be no confusion.” Self-consciously, he drew his coat tighter.

“Yvon, I…don’t think it’s an error. Caribou women have horns too.”

Yvon discreetly pulled his shirt tight to reveal a small bosom, his snout contorting into utter mortification.

“Why did no one tell me? Am I supposed to walk around all of Parisi looking like a cow?” He self-consciously drew his jacket tight.

“It will be inconspicuous. Just two ladies out for a stroll.”

“Saints preserve me,” Yvon whined. “Oh, before we go, put this on. The seal on your ribbon is too discreet.”

He pulled another wooden claim-seal from his coat and handed it to her.

“Too discreet for what?”

“Very few people in the grass-eater slums are claimed, so hunters often venture in to prowl for kills. It is something of a rite of passage for adolescents, even among the nobility.”

“Not so different from my brothers visiting the knocking-shops to plunder their first does.”

They set off past rows of neat townhouses, the façades all done up in stone and marble. The temperature had dropped precipitously while they had been inside, and slate-grey clouds had occupied the sky.

The next thirty minutes passed in silence. The streets grew narrower, and the buildings changed to ramshackle half-timbers, their overhanging upper stories casting deep shadows. There were more people here - mostly small grass-eaters, but a few weasels and deer - but they were furtive, carefully flowing around the rabbit and caribou. Almost all of them had simple claim-seals.

“You think I treated the Beauforts too harshly.”

“You have made up your mind. Any thinking on my part seemed superfluous.”

“The Clary family employs over a hundred servants, cooks, tailors, et cetera. Add to that the few dozen families with which we do business, and we issue around five hundred claim-seals. Action on behalf of any individual must be weighed against its risk to the whole.”

“Oh? Do you have the values of our lives tallied up in a ledger? I would like to know what fraction of a Sofia I am worth.”

“There are certain matters I am not qualified to rationally judge.” Yvon sighed. “The son should have known better, and the father must bear responsibility. But the daughter is wholly undeserving of the pain I have wrought. Perhaps I could send a surrogate to the Bastille…no, we are in enough danger as-is. Best to stay the course.”

He pressed his hands together, as if trying to wring out something foul.

“If she views me with disdain, it is for the best. Grass-eaters should have their pride, and should not place their trust in the whims of hunters.”

“And I? Should I view you with disdain as well?”

He paused, fixing her with the sensitive brown eyes of his glamour.

He’s pretty like this.

“If you like. It would simplify matters between us.” He spoke loosely, but a heavy silence followed.

Anya thought about the airy room, and the way Yvon had spoken to Manon as one might an unreasonable child.

“If your cruelty is a mask, you wear it too well for my liking.”

She expected him to argue, or snarl, or strike her, but he merely nodded and returned to his walk.

A few more minutes, and they came to a place where the cobblestones broke up into dirt. The buildings down the road were like strange mushrooms, bursting from the earth as lopsided agglomerations of brick and wood. Most of them seemed to be built above burrows dug directly into the earth, their circular entrances covered with planks or scraps of colorful cloth. Plumes of charcoal-smog burst from dozens of hollow windows, mixing with the smells of dampness and sewage.

Two marmot men leaned against a wall, guarding what seemed to be an invisible boundary. They wore no claim-seals, and carried rough spears. Anya and Yvon drew examining gazes, but the men did not move.

Anya was surprised that Yvon had called this area a slum - in her home city of Kiev, she had seen far worse.

“Yvon, have you ever…prowled…here?”

“No. I have never killed, and even if I wished to, my hunting instincts are not the sharpest.”

After many blocks, and several rounds of consultations of a surprisingly well-drawn map Yvon produced from his pocket, they came to a street with a single wizened tree. To Anya’s surprise, Alain and Renee sat on the roadside. They wore plain clothing, and Alain did not have his sword.

“Yvon! Is that you? You smell like-” Alain said.

“I know. Come on, let us get this over with. Alain, you stand outside while we go in.”

Renee led them across the street, to a sunken courtyard hemmed in by stone walls. The tree grew in its center, roots strangling the cobblestones, and several clotheslines were run between its branches and the surrounding structures. It shaded a dilapidated well. There was a single burrow-door, bearing a Clary claim-seal below a metal bee. The same saint-symbol the deceased maid had wore.

“Anna, can you use your arts to sense inside the building?” Alain asked.

“Alright.” She pulled the knife from her sleeve and ran it across her palm, feeling the loose vitality around her coalesce into distinct heartbeats. “A dozen people, all my size or smaller. Nothing unusual.”

Renee nodded.

She approached the door and cautiously knocked. After a long silence, the door opened a sliver, revealing a gnarled old rat clinging to a staff.

“The lass with the coin purse hasn’t come by just yet, and you got your share of her last take. You know we don’t got anything else of worth.”

“Bernard? It’s me, Renee. Mirabel’s friend.”

“Oh, Renee! So sorry, so sorry, my eyes aren’t much good now. What’re you-” He trailed off as he opened the door and noticed Anya, Yvon, and Alain.

“Who’re these folk? They look too posh to be anything but trouble.”

“Um, there’s no trouble, but, but…” Renee shivered, bringing a hand to the saint-symbol she wore. “Miri passed away. The prince wanted you to be told in person.”

All emotion sloughed from the grandfather’s face, and his claws dug deeply into the wood of the doorway. Anya felt his heart tremble, as if it meant to burst from his chest.

“…Alright. Guess you’d all better come in.”

He shuffled away from the door, and they followed him into a dim cubical space. The walls were ancient stonework, patched up by straw and mud, and the only objects in the room were a crude tripod stove and a crudely painted portable shrine depicting a dormouse woman holding an oversized bee. Anya carefully scanned the room for signs of wasps, straining her ears for the buzz that had spent the last few days seeming to linger at the ended of her hearing.

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Anya, Renee, and Yvon squeezed into a corner - the room was sized for small people, and Yvon was forced to crawl. Ten other family members poured in from the other rooms, regarding them with apprehension. Based on the people Anya had passed on the street, she expected signs of malnourishment, but they all seemed healthy enough. A few of the children stared at her, and she realized they had likely never seen a rabbit before.

“Best to just get it out,” the grandfather said.

“Lord Clary?”

Yvon removed a silver ring, and flickered back to his usual self. The rats shrunk back, and a few younger children screamed before adults could forcibly cover their mouths.

“Clary! Lord Clary! Um, please, please, make yourself at ease. Adele, get the cushion from the other room. Would you care for mead, my Lord? It will not be up to your standards, but-” The grandfather fell to his knees, straightening his jacket and making an obsequious bow.

“Whatever you have to offer, I assure you I have no need of it.” Yvon straightened, scraping his head on the sooty ceiling. “Now, as I mentioned, your granddaughter, Miss Blanchet, passed away within my house. Someone planted a draugr-seed in her, with the aim of assassinating my wife. While my wife was ultimately unharmed, the draugr had overcome Miss Blanchet. Her end was a mercy.”

Anya felt the rats’ hearts tense and quiver. Some looked to Renee, who slowly nodded. Her hand found Anya’s, and she squeezed hard, claws carving crimson lines in white fur.

“If she is…” A woman of the right age to be Mirabel’s mother spoke in a whisper. She was heavily pregnant, her taut belly at odds with her slender frame. “If she is dead, what have you done with her body?”

Yvon revealed a miniscule metal box from his jacket, placing it before the rats.

“Her body was sent to the Royal Institute for a flame-consecration, in case any lingering corruption remained. This is all that was returned to us.”

“Cockshit.” A younger man, perhaps a nephew of the woman, spoke up.

“I beg your pardon?” Yvon’s eyes narrowed.

“Ya ate her, didn’t ya? Bet she tasted real nice in ya muzzle. But yer one o’ the good ones, ya don’t eat shitstains like us, so you and yer grass-eater buddies make up some dick-in-the-nob story about draugr and pass off some bloody dust. I told her to stay away from nobles’ business, but she brought in more coin than the rest of us together, so she went to that saints-damned house again and again.”

Yvon began to growl, but before the man could continue, the grandfather struck him across his head. The man collapsed, and Anya flinched as his blood oozed onto the floor.

“Lord Clary, please, you must forgive us. My grandson was possessed by grief, and didnae mean a thing he said to you.”

“Lay the blame on me, if you must. I told her about the job, and what to say for the the interview. I swear on St. Niamh I never meant…never meant to put her in danger.” Renee’s claws dug further into Anya’s palm, and the weasel choked back tears. Her accent had slipped, and she spoke nearly alike to the rats.

“Renee, we know you were only trying to give us some help. Without Miri, things would’ve been a great deal harder.” The pregnant woman moved to Renee’s side, carefully skirting around Yvon, and held Renee’s other hand to her chest.

“Enough. Renee, control yourself,” Yvon said. He tried to speak with force, but the emotion in the room seemed to make him hesitant.

He removed a bulging coinpurse from his trunk, handing it to the grandfather.

“Madame Blanchet’s wages for the rest of the year, and four years after. In exchange, I need to know everything you remember about your granddaughter’s last few months. Any suspicious acquaintances? Did she return from work with more coin than usual?”

“My Lord, I swear on St. Artimus my daughter was nothing but a pious lass.”

“Everything.” Yvon bared his teeth.

“My lord, our church is small, and our patron saint is hardly known in Gaul. We had a small…hiccup lately, one of our relics acting improper, and our priest’s saint-arts weren’t enough to make it right. Then a man comes with him one day, a real queer sort, and fixes everything up. He never says much, but our priest trusts him, and when Mirabel gets real sick, he offers to work some arts on her. Next day, two weeks ago, she seems right as rain, so she goes back to your manor.”

“I need your priest’s name, and the location of your church.”

“We can put you in touch with the priest; he lives just down the road. But the church is holy ground, and we cannae just-”

“I nearly watched my wife die, St. Galaad be damned! Was four years not enough? Out with it before I have your heads, you ungrateful bastards!” Yvon snapped and nearly lunged forwards. Anya flinched, and she felt the rats’ hearts jump in their chests.

“Lord Clary, the priest is enough, for now at least. You know as well as I the perpetrator will be long gone, and there is no point is disturbing their custom.” Renee spoke up, switching back to upper-class Gaulish.

Silence. Anya felt the rats’ pounding heartbeats, felt her own as Yvon’s eyes stalked across the room.

‘I have never killed.’ Bastard. You smell our fear, and you like it.

“Grrh. Fine. Mr. Blanchet, you should hope this priest of yours proves useful.”

Renee exhaled in relief.

“Konstantinos Levidis. He lives just to the south, in a burrow with a red door next to the broken wall with the apple tree. Renee will know where t’find it,” the grandfather said.

“Papi?” The pregnant woman spoke. “You’re talking about the man with the hood, right? The one who did the healing for Miri? He looked at George too, and gave him some medicine.”

“George?” Anya replied. A weight settled in her stomach.

“My husband. He’s resting just in there.” The woman pointed to a cloth covering the entrance to a side room.

A vision lodged in Anya’s mind. A family of corpses, wasps pouring out of every orifice, crawling through gaps in the walls and rising up into the city.

“Ma’am, I need to see George. He could be in danger.”

“No. You’ve brought enough misfortune for one day,” the grandfather interjected.

“Annette, my companion is a trained physician. I trust her,” Renee said to the pregnant woman.

A few seconds of whispers between the grandfather and Eloise.

“The rabbit can come. You two stay.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Yvon shook his head in exasperation. “Make it quick.”

Anya was escorted into a bedroom. Fraying blankets were strewn across nearly the entire ground, and a fire in the corner filled the air with smoke. A sickly weasel - George - rested in a wall alcove. He woke at their entrance and made a weak smile at Annette.

“Dear, someone’s come to take a look at you,” Annette said. She sat next to him, resting her head against his.

“The man Mirabel found? With the Jerusalem letters? Way he looked at her gave me the creeps.” George’s voice was breathy and weak.

“No. A woman this time. If you don’t like her, we’ll have her leave.” Annette beckoned Anya closer. The nephew made eye contact and swiped his finger across his throat.

Anya sat down, introduced herself, and dispatched the nephew to boil water and find a rag. As she began pulling blankets from the man, she realized her fingers were trembling - with every layer, she expected to find perfect hexagons, pulsating grubs.

You’ve done this hundreds of times, she thought. Get it together.

With the last layer off and the man’s bandages removed, she revealed patchy fur surrounding a deep gash in his flank. An awful scent of rot and pus filled her nostrils, and Annette turned to the side and vomited. The necrotic flesh around the wound seemed to have been shredded, and its recesses were filled with yellowish gunk. A few dead fly pupae fell out of the blankets.

“George? I’m going to feel your heart and your lungs. If it hurts, please let me know.”

She washed her hands and began her work, draping one ear over his bony chest. His heartbeat was weak but steady, and there seemed to be no fluid in his lungs. He moaned in pain when she touched one of his swollen lymph nodes.

“Wound infection, leading to localized necrosis and lymphadenitis,” she recited. “It hasn’t gone septic yet, so he has a chance.”

“A good chance?” Annette’s voice wavered.

Anya took Annette’s furless hand and tried to smile. “No. But a chance. Um, with my arts, I could fix it easily-”

“No. No arts. If we are marked when we pass, our souls’ll never find the Golden Wood.” She seemed to be referring to an afterlife, although not one that Anya knew.

“Does that mean…Mirabel…” Anya regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. Annette nodded, quiet agony written across her face.

Anya thought it best she remained silent, and so retreated into the work of cleaning and dressing the wound. Her fingers danced, maneuvering across the man’s chest with only the slightest touch of conscious input. She worked efficiently, and was done within a ten minutes.

“Alright, I’ve done what I could. The black flesh is dead, and the yellow gunk is caused by tiny creatures that are eating his body. Buy some honey and rub it into the wound; it helps kill off the creatures. Then find some maggots and place them in the wound. They’ll eat the dead flesh and fall off.”

Anya gave George’s dressings one more check and stood to go, but Annette caught her hand.

“Miss, if I…Miri and Georgi both…he was always there when the kits came…ah, a hundred blessings on your heart,” Annette sobbed. Anya’s skin tingled at the sudden contact, and she tried to worm away, but the rat was deceptively heavy. She relented and placed a hand on the velvety fur of the rat’s neck.

Perhaps Annette sensed Anya’s discomfort, as she pulled away.

“Oh…I shouldn’t have…”

“No. It’s alright. I’m just glad I could help. By the way, is everything fine with,” she gestured at Annette’s belly.

“Yes. It’ll hardly be the first time.”

“They’ll be half-bloods, right?”

“My little lap-belettes. Miri too, though you’d never know. Miss, do you have children?”

“No. Not yet.” The rat’s nonchalance was strange to her. Anya imagined herself with child; her organs would contort themselves as her kits (cubs?) squeezed more and more space and blood from her. There seemed a terrible loneliness to it.

You tried, once before. And all that came of it was blood.

“I should go.”

Anya turned away and crouched under the doorway, stepping over a group of children who had clearly been listening. Yvon was still curled in the corner, holding his trunk between himself and the mass of rats.

“Before you go, my Lord,” the grandfather began hesitantly, “I know we ain’t in your employ no more, but we were hoping you’d be so charitable as to let us keep the claim-seal on our door for a little while longer.”

To Anya’s horror, Yvon’s lips began to form a negative.

“Of course!” She replied.

Yvon’s eyes nearly bugged out of his skull, and his claws dug into the trunk. The trunk!

“We brought a seal for each of you. Least we could do.”

Come on, you dumb cur. You hate losing control, but I think you hate people knowing you’ve lost control even more.

Yvon fixed her with a single murderous glare, then nodded and slid the trunk over.

“Save your flattery. I have heard enough grass-eater prattle today for a lifetime.” He began to leave, placing a hostile grip on Anya’s shoulder and leading her to the door.

Whispers behind them.

“The rabbit may visit our church, if she wishes. You too, Renee. Ask for the beekeeper at the old reliquary.”

Anya tried to turn back and glimpse Annette one last time, but Yvon pushed her into the light.

“Did you find any leads?” Alain asked. He sat against the well, polishing his sword. He rose as he noticed Yvon’s grim expression.

He led her up the courtyard stairs and around the wall, just out of sight of the burrow, before his hand reached around her neck. She expected it to clench, for her to be dragged into the air, but he merely held it, fingers tensing a mere fraction of an inch from her skin.

“Why on St. Ferdiad’s bloody corpse did you do that?” He whispered through clenched teeth.

She tried to squeal a reply, but her throat was numb and some deep part of her brain was screaming at her to play dead. After what seemed like an eternity, he sighed and drew his hand back, and she collapsed to her knees in the dirt. He stared at his palm for a long while, as if it had surprised him.

“We should start walking. It will be a long ways home.”