“Who are you?”

Pirin stopped. He squinted, straining his weak eyes in the darkness. He blinked a couple times, trying to clear his vision, before he spotted her.

Myraden Leursyn. She walked across the plaza towards him, hidden under a storm-gray cloak. She stepped into the flickering light of a torch. Pirin caught a glint of silver armour and brown, sleeveless gambeson below her cloak—it was tattered and a few sizes too small, but she didn’t seem to care.

Gray trilled nervously, but Pirin held his arm out. “She’s a friend,” he said to the gnatsnapper.

Myraden pointed her spear at him. Gray squawked.

Pirin swallowed. Supposedly, he knew her—even if he couldn’t remember.

“I’m also a friend,” said Pirin, this time directing his words at Myraden. He pulled his mask off. The runes disengaged and dimmed, and the Ichor glommed together in his blood. He pulled down his hood, then plucked his glasses out of his haversack and put them on.

“Pirin?” She tilted her head and pulled her own hood down. It had barely fit over her sprite antlers, which were nearly a half-foot tall each.

Pirin exhaled with relief. “Do you…uh, recognize me?”

“And why would I not, vejgum?”

Pirin blinked a few times, trying to parse the last word she had said. Was he starting to forget words now, too? Or was her accent—a thick, foreign accent, though he couldn’t place it—too much for him?

“You forgot already?” Myraden demanded. She tapped her spear on the ground, and a spark of Essence glittered beneath her fingertips. The turquoise fabric of the spear’s shaft fell loose again. There was no true shaft, only winding layers of silk. Controlling it must have been her Bloodline Talent. She wound it around her shoulder and down to her hip like it was a ceremonial sash, and the spearhead waited at her hip like a tiny knife.

“Forgot?”

She sighed, then whispered, “Vejgum means ‘idiot’, Pirin. In…in a friendly way. And it’s not Low-Speech.” For a moment, she looked as if she was about to rush forward and catch him in a warm embrace, but she grimaced and looked away.

Was he supposed to…know that? Well, Hir Venias had said she was an old friend. “Right. Sorry. I—” He cut himself off, and his gaze drifted to her spear. “What kind of wizard are you?”

She scrunched her eyebrows. “I have been gone for six months, and you fall apart? Are you alright, Pirin?”

He glanced around, then back at Gray. He should probably answer honestly—there was no way he could pretend that nothing had happened to him for the next…however long. She’d find out eventually. She spoke with a familiarity that he just couldn’t reciprocate, and she probably knew more about him than he knew about himself.

If she even agreed to come with him.

“Uh…well, no, not really,” Pirin said. “But not in the way you think. I’m—”

“Why are you here?” She pulled her cloak up and away from her shoulder, revealing a dented metal pauldron pressed against bare skin. With a grunt, she tightened the pauldron’s straps. A trickle of blood ran down her arm—she had been nicked by something.

“I need help,” Pirin said. “I need a teacher, and you’re the only wizard in this land who won’t try to kill me on sight.” He braced himself for failure. Whatever answer she could give, he didn’t think he’d like it much.

“I cannot teach you,” she stated.

Pirin nodded slowly. After a few seconds, when he realized she wouldn’t elaborate, the previous acceptance fled from his mind, and he needed a better answer. “Is there…a reason why?”

“Yes.” She glanced around the shaded plaza, then tilted her head down one of the alleys. “We need to talk later. We cannot stay here. More soldiers will be here any minute, and I would not like to be caught.”

“And where are we going?”

“A place where we will not be caught.” She pulled her cloak back up and fastened it tight around her shoulders, then marched off toward the shaded alleyway. On her way, she said, “Kythen, allírs-yre.”

Pirin didn’t understand that, either, and after a moment, he realized that she was speaking in a different language. When she spoke it, she used the same constricted, controlled breaths that Pirin did to communicate with Gray.

Pirin leapt out of the way of her Familiar just in time. The beast, a horse-sized goat with horns of glistening scarlet crystal, came barrelling down the street. Its hooves thundered against the cobblestones and its beard of white fur wagged in front of it.

The creature was a bloodhorn, as best as Pirin could recall. It ran to Myraden’s side and nuzzled her with its chin, and she scratched the side of its neck. Then, she spoke another few words to it in whatever language she was speaking, and it bleated in a deep tone.

“It has been a while since Kythen has seen you or Gray,” Myraden said as she walked. She looked over her shoulder, drawing Pirin’s attention to a ruined wagon down the alley Kythen had bounded away from. “He was destroying the convoy, and I was dealing with the guards.”

“Trashing a wagon, more like,” Pirin muttered. At least, as best as he could tell, this district was abandoned.

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“It was heaping with alchemical bombs. They would have been used on Sirdian soldiers.”

Pirin bit his lip, then clicked his tongue. “I didn’t mean…”

He trailed off, and for a few minutes, neither of them spoke. They walked out of the plaza and headed towards the coast. Every step, the buildings grew sturdier. There was less rotting wood and abandoned barrels. There was less rust and mould. People walked down the streets once more, and a couple Aerdian soldiers ran down the street in the opposite direction. He tugged his hood up quickly, hoping no one spotted them.

His eyes widened. Their Familiars would give them away. A gnatsnapper and a bloodhorn weren’t terribly common. But, as they drew closer to the shore, more bizarre, imported beasts there were. Some rode in wagons in cages, and others pulled wagons. There were rideable birds of all shapes and colours, and even more four-legged creatures. Cheetahs, bottled scrap wraiths, a raccoon-dog, and a pair of large, tame foxes with antlers.

More than just the animals, there were entire wagons full of spices, fruits, and other foreign goods. The smells made his mind wander, curious of all the wonderful lands that they had come from.

“If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone who will,” Pirin said to Myraden. They rounded a corner and climbed up a sloping street. She led him parallel along the wharf.

“How?” she asked. “You are an Embercore, Pirin, and though you might have all the desire in the world, there is little you can do. And even if you could improve, what is there for me to teach?” For a moment, she turned and walked backwards, and she lifted out two necklaces of braided silk. They were the same pale turquoise colour as her spear. “Two jeskr neckbands, two advancements. Just two. I am a Catch. I do not even have a…what do you call it? A Flare-stage body?”

He sighed. “I’ve…almost formed a Reyad with Gray. I advanced our cores to Spark. I can learn, and I can improve.”

“You…you did? How?”

“I’ll tell you, but—”

“Tell me when we get inside.”

Pirin raised his eyebrows. “Are you not worried about me…I dunno, reaching inside your mind and making you help me?”

“Your Talent does not work on people with equal or stronger wills than you. I am not concerned.”

The street curved closer to the wharf again, and through the gaps in the buildings, Pirin caught glimpses of the cargo harbour. As the day drew to a close and the sun neared the horizon, the workers at the harbour sped up—offloading crates onto wagons and loading the ships back up for a long journey across the ocean. They were heading all the way to the Mainland.

When Pirin and Myraden passed a set of especially large gantry cranes, Myraden turned toward an old wooden ladder that ran up the back of a building. She began to climb, and Pirin followed. Any second, he feared the wood would crumble in his hands. Admittedly, it was an absurd concern. With her armour and normal-weighted sprite bones, Myraden was surely heavier than him—even if she was just as slender.

They climbed up to a ramshackle platform, then up a stairway that ran behind a lantern-lit moving smoke advertisement. Candles and torches flickered to life all across the lower city, and colourful lumawhale oil signs flickered.

“This way,” Myraden said. She pushed open a door in the daubed walls of the nearest building, revealing a dark room. Pirin stepped inside, but held the door open until she lit a candle, illuminating the entire room.

Kythen and Gray barely fit through the door behind him. The bloodhorn had intelligent, inquisitive eyes, and he seemed to know something was off about Gray.

Fishing nets hung from the ceiling, holding up loose thatch and bundled tarp. It was barely an attic, and from the mouse holes and mildew, Pirin guessed it had been abandoned for a long while before Myraden had taken up residence in it. A hammock had been strung up along one wall, and a small ring of stones waited near the front wall, where she had probably made fires.

“You’ve been roughing it, then?” Pirin asked, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

“Close enough.” She set the candle down and walked over to the front wall, where the holes in the boards let in the light of the setting sun. “There is a decent view of the harbour, though.” She unbuckled her cloak and hung it off one of the splintered boards, then started peeling off her armour. She only had a cuirass, a pauldron, a vambrace, and greaves, but it fit her perfectly, like it was made especially for her. Runes ran across it, along with other etchings. It was a mural. Deers, foxes, and hawks, all embossed into the steel. That would’ve been hard to come by.

“So,” she began, “what happened, Pirin?”

He sat down in a corner, cushioning his back with his hands. Gray settled down beside him, and though he couldn’t communicate with his mask off, he doubted she’d lost her sapient mind. Kythen tucked his legs beneath him and laid down between Myraden and Pirin.

Pirin explained how he’d hunted the karebain and lost his memories, and he explained how he’d patched the leak and travelled across Aerdia with Alyus and Brealtod. He told her everything, up to him entering the city and finding her.

“I would say that you are lucky, but I do not think it feels that way,” she said. She offered a sad smile, then turned away from the window. “Just because you are brave does not mean that I, barely a wizard myself, can train you. I have no Bloodline Talent for minds—only the manipulation of Ískan Silk.” She laid a finger on the unwound shaft of her spear. “And even if I did have the same Bloodline Talent, I could not tell you how to prepare yourself for the next stages of wizardry, nor give you a proper foundation fitting for a king.”

Pirin sighed. “No…I suppose not. But you can help me, still, can’t you?”

“What do you need?” She held out her hands hesitantly, and Pirin supposed she was right to be cautious. “I am here to help Sirdia,” she continued, “more than simply standing around north of the border, pushing paper across a desk or advising a council. But…you would not remember that.”

“I’m sorry, Myraden,” Pirin said softly. “But…my memories of you came in glimpses, and only in short bursts, if at all.”

She rolled her lips inwards and nodded slowly. He thought he could see a little moisture glistening at the edge of her eye, but she looked away before he could tell for certain.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” he said. “However, I could still use someone with abilities like yours. You could help get me across the ocean and to the Mainland, and help me find a teacher. I can’t do it alone. They’d find me and kill me as soon as they caught wind of me.”

“It is not a lot to ask,” she said, stepping around Kythen. She knelt in front of Pirin. “I am a Northern Sprite, and we have no home anymore. But Sirdia took me in when I had no one else to turn to. I love that nation like it is my birthland, and if this is how we protect it, then this is what we must do.”

Pirin inhaled slowly. He wasn’t sure how to respond. “Then we need a ship.”

“Passenger liners arrive and leave at all hours,” she said. “But in the middle of the night, we would be more difficult to see.”

“Tonight?”

“After my ambush, they will be on high alert. But…in three days’ time, the new years’ celebrations will begin. Winter will be officially over, and spring will begin. There will be alchemical fireworks and celebrations, and they will be too busy watching the celebrations to notice us slipping onto a passenger liner.”

“If you’ve been attacking something every day…” Pirin muttered.

“I have never attacked a ship. They will not expect it.”

“Alright. In three days.” Pirin nodded. “Do you…uh, mind if I sleep here?”