Ryn raced through the woods on the cochobo, driving his ankles into its flanks, air whistling in his ears.

Nuthea lay across the creature’s back in front of him. Still she did not move. Her blood had stained some of the bird’s feathers.

Ryn drove his ankles into the creature’s sides again. Sunlight passed across his face as he pulled the reins to weave around a tree.

Gods, I hope I’m going the right way.

Sagar would be furious that Ryn had unseated him and taken Nuthea in his place. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

Ryn gasped with relief as the tree line broke and the cochobo sprung out into open grassy fields. These quickly became crops marked off by wooden fences, which the cochobo was easily able to leap--though Ryn put one hand a Nuthea’sback when it did to stop her flying off.

There. In the distance, smoke rising from a chimney; wood and brick structures; people moving about among them. Nont. He drove the bounty hunter’s cochobo onwards.

Nobody in the town paid him any notice. He reined up the cochobo and called down to the first person he came to—an elderly woman wrapped in a shawl walking with the aid of a stick.

“Excuse me!”

The woman stopped and looked up at him with a wrinkly squint. “Hello?” she said hesitantly.

“Excuse me, but I need to find a healer, fast. Do you know where one lives?”

The woman’s eyes landed on Nuthea. “Oh my.” She put a hand to her mouth, then pointed. “Straight down the street till you get to the central square. It’s the house with the red scarf tied to the door knocker.”

“Thank you,” breathed Ryn, and gatehred the reins.

“Wait, lad!” said the woman and waved her walking stick. “Don’ you know there’s been an invasion? Morekemian soldiers have taken control of our town. Theres some posted outside the healer’s house. They won’t let the Healer treat anyone but Morekemians.”

Ryn’s blood ran cold. If Nuthea has an Imperial bounty on her head, they’ll take her for sure. ‘Dead or alive’ the bounty hunter had said. “But I don’t have time!” Ryn said aloud.

The woman’s eyes went to Nuthea and then up to Ryn again. “Might be best to convince the healer to come to you, perhaps?” she suggested.

“But I don’t have anywhere for my friend to wait while I fetch the healer!”

The woman sucked her teeth. “Let me take her, lad,” she said. “I’ll look after her till you can bring the healer. Come this way; I live just round the corner.”

“Thank you!” said Ryn, overawed by her kindness. “Thank you so much.”.

At the woman’s house he reined up then swung himself down from the cochobo. He tied itto an iron ring on the side of the woman’s house, then hooked his hands underneath Nuthea’s arms and slid her from the creature’s back as delicately as he could. Her feet flopped down to earth until he scooped her legs up and carried her in his arms.

She didn’t protest, or make a single noise. Ryn could swear she weighed less than before. His midriff started to dampen with her blood.

The old woman’s house was small.

“Over here, young man,” she said, beckoning him towards a bed in the cotner.

Ryn lay Nuthea down like he was returning an egg to its nest. Her head lolled back. He looked at her red bandage.

“Quick as you can, young man!” the woman said. “Hurry, you must fetch the healer now!”

An invisible cord held Ryn, refusing to let him leave Nuthea’s side. But he knew if he was to have any hope of saving her then he must.

‘She’ll bleed out in an hour or so,’ the bounty hunter’s voice rang in his mind, ‘and my blade is coated in poison.’

“Please, look after her,” Ryn said to the woman.

“I’ll do what I can. Now you go, lad!”

“Yes,” Ryn said meekly, and ran.

He blinked in the sunshine outside, then sprinted between the buildings in the direction that the old woman had indicated before.

The town square barely merited the name. But from the way the houses around formed a quadrangle with a grassy space in between them he knew this must be it, and slowed his sprint to a walk.

Ryn spotted the Healing House at once from the scarlet silk scarf tied to its bronze door knocker—just as the woman had said it would be.

His stomach lurched.

Sure enough, standing outside were two men in black armour.

He walked up to a wooden noticeboard that stood in the middle of the square. When he stopped behind it most of him was out of sight of the soldiers, but for his legs. He could pause a moment here to collect himself.

The soldiers had been watching him, he was sure of it.

Something caught his eye.

‘WANTED’ read one of the parchment notices pinned to the board in black ink. It was pinned at the top, but the bottom had rolled up, obscuring whatever was depicted below.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

With a horrible sinking in his guts, Ryn rolled down the rest of the parchment.

He gasped, then put his hand to his mouth to muffle it.

A line drawing of Nuthea. It wasn’t perfect, but the likeness was quite good, and it was detailed, right down to the circlet that she wore underneath her hair, her proud, high cheekbones, and the elegant cut of her dress.

‘5000 GOLD PIECES ALIVE’ read the letters under her drawing.

And underneath that:

‘2500 GOLD PIECES DEAD’.

Damn the Morekemians! They weren’t going to have her, dead or alive, if Ryn had anything to do with it. He had to get to this healer.

He looked around quickly at the rest of the noticeboard. Hm. The bounty hunter had known about Sagar as well, but Ryn couldn’t see a poster of the skypirate anywhere. Either there had been one and someone had removed it, or the bounty on Sagar was more recent and a poster of him hadn’t been put up here yet. The poster of Nuthea looked fairly old, after all. If that was the case, maybe this town hadn’t heard of Ryn and his flame powers yet.

He peeked out from behind one side of the noticeboard. The soldiers weren’t coming for him. Good. They can’t have found him that noteworthy.

One was shorter and stocky. The other was taller and spindly.

Sponge and spike, Ryn thought, recalling a story that his mother had told him when he was a child. Mum. He shook his head to try to dispel the stab of grief and halt the train of his intrusive thought, then returned his attention to the soldiers. Both wore swords.

Ryn swallowed his saliva and stepped out from behind the noticeboard, deliberately looking at the scarf on the door of the house.

I have to seem confident.

He wasn’t sure what the proper procedure was so he just walked right up to the door without saying anything.

He had nearly reached it when Spike put out a hand to stop him.

“Hold it!” the soldier snapped in a nasal voice. “Where d’you think you’re going, boy? What are you doing out of your house?”

Ryn’s bowels turned to water. “Um...I need to see the healer.”

“What’s wrong with you?” said Sponge in a deeper, gruffer voice. “You don’t look ill to me.”

Think, Ryn, think. All he could think of was Nuthea, and his mother. “Um...I have flu.” He remembered having flu once when was little and his mother nursing him back to health.

The soldiers each took a step away from him. “Flu?” said Spike, cocking his head. “If you had flu you wouldn’t be up and about! You’d be home and in bed! Where do you live, anyway? Why aren’t you in your house waiting for your conscription order like all the other young men?”

Oh poodoo oh poodoo oh poodoo. Why hadn’t he thought about this before approaching the guards?

“Er, it hasn’t set in properly yet.” Ryn desperately tried to remember the sort of things his mother had said when he had been ill. He did remember having to stay in bed, and her putting her hand on his forehead and repeating all sorts of stock phrases. “But I think I’m coming down with something. My head feels hot. I just want to see the healer.”

Spike regarded him with tilted head for a moment.

Ryn hoped against hope that the soldier would believe him. Just then he remembered he had flame-projection abilities. His fingers twitched.

Sponge broke the silence. “Come on, Wedge, let him in,” the larger man said. “He’s clearly harmless.”

“I suppose you’re right, Biggs,” said the thinner man. Morekemians had such strange names. “In you go then, boy. Get on with it.”

Ryn pushed open the door, and tried to stifle the sigh of relief that welled up from within him as he entered the Healer’s House.

Inside was a large room with wooden floorboards and no windows. At the far end in front of another door stood a makeshift plywood desk with a clerk behind it. Ryn had seen enough of his father’s business dealings to work out that the man was a clerk from the pile of parchments and the quill and ink pot on the desk and the way the small, bespectacled man sat hunched over it, writing.

Ryn ran up to the desk. “Excuse me, I need to see the healer as quickly as possible.”

Just then a muffled scream came from behind the door that the clerk’s desk was positioned in front of, then a faint cry of what sounded like “No!”, followed by another scream, followed by—silence.

Ryn shuddered. He had never had to visit a healer before, even when he had been ill. What did they do to people? Was this really the best place to look for help for Nuthea?

Slowly, the clerk raised his eyes and regarded Ryn over the top of his spectacles like he was looking at a misbehaving infant. “You and half of Nont,” he said and gestured with his hand.

Ryn followed the gesture to see people sat on wooden chairs along one wall of the room. He had missed them completely when he entered. All those that could looked back at him. They were all in various states of ill health: A man with his arm in a cloth sling. A girl whose skin was almost green and who looked like she might vomit any moment. Another man who was missing an arm, although he couldn’t have lost it recently, asleep. Another man on crutches who just then hacked and coughed like he had a rat stuck in his throat. And an older man with a white beard and a leather bag slung round his shoulder--though Ryn couldn’t quite see what was wrong with him. After that man were three more chairs, unoccupied. Strange—the old woman had said they would only treat Morekemians. She must have been mistaken.

“In case you hadn’t realised,” the clerk sneered, “you’ve recently been invaded. Quite a bit goes on during an invasion—lots of people needing to see the healer. Join the back of the queue like everyone else.”

“But this is urgent!”

“Urgent?” The clerk sneered, looking him up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve—I’ve…”

Ryn winced as another muffled scream issued from behind the door.

He couldn’t think of a better lie. He wished he had more experience of being ill. “I’ve got the flu!”

“You look well enough to me,” said the clerk, though he moved his head backwards slightly.

“Please…” Ryn floundered, “It really is urgent! I need to see the healer as soon as possible. I...I can’t tell you why...it’s...embarrassing… It’s a personal problem...” he finished lamely.

The clerk stood up. He did not get much higher. Through gritted teeth, in an unnervingly quiet voice, he said “Get to the back of the queue, boy, or I will call in the soldiers.”

Fear gripped Ryn’s guts and he hung his head, slinking away from the desk to go and take a seat next to the old man with the leather bag.

What am I going to do? All he could see in his mind’s eye was an image of Nuthea slowly turning paler and paler as her lifeblood seeped out of her. Not her too… He thought about praying, but what good had that done him in life? Enwit hadn’t stopped his parents and hometown being taken away from him, why should he stop Nuthea from dying now? What about Nuthea’s God...maybe he should pray to ‘The One’?

“I can’t help but notice that you’re having a spot of trouble.”

Ryn started. The old man next to him had spoken in a whisper.

Ryn wasn’t sure why, but he answered in a whisper too. “I really need to see the healer, as soon as possible.”

“So I gather,” said the man. He didn’t look at Ryn when he talked, but stared straight ahead, like he was trying to avoid attracting attention to their conversation. “But you honestly don’t look like you have influenza.”

Ryn felt the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Should he tell this stranger about his predicament? He had trusted the old woman with Nuthea automatically—but she had been so kind. This man was strange and nosy and he had big white bushy eyebrows. Could anyone with eyebrows that big be trusted?

Ryn was desperate.

“It’s not for me, it’s for my friend,” he whispered. “She was attacked in the woods nearby and is in urgent need of a healer’s attention.”

The eyebrows raised high as the man looked at Ryn. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he whispered more urgently. “Quick, come with me!”

“What?”

But the man was already up out of his seat with his leather bag, taking Ryn by the arm and pulling him up too. The clerk didn’t even give them a second look.

Outside the man kept walking, dragging Ryn along. “Which way to your friend?”

Too bewildered to protest, Ryn pointed. “Er, that way.”

“Good. We must be quick if she is in as bad a state as you say.”

“What are you doing?”

“What d’you think I’m doing?” said the old man. “I’m a healer. We need to get to your friend as quickly as possible so I can attend to her.”