Hesperus, Finn and Master Keating all crowded into a corner of the apothecary where dried sprigs of lavender hung from the ceiling, insisting that she went first, to get to Sir Edwin faster. There was no couch to lounge on, no table for tea, but Finn gazed with wonder at a series of intricate drawings of a firefly, dangling from a string among the lavender.

‘You like those?’ said Master Strond. ‘Take them, boy. I was studying those little fuckers during midsummer, thinking I could harvest their light and make something out of it for the fire mages, but nothing came of it. They are beautiful creatures though.’

‘You’re very rude, but you’re pretty good at drawing,’ said Finn.

‘Ha! I’ll tell you something about life that Hes won’t. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t make you a good man. That’s the way of the Fated One.’

‘I know that already.’

Master Strond shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘Children. Can’t stand them.’

‘But you brought up His Majesty,’ said Ari. Which was one of the reasons she’d wanted to visit the apothecary in the first place. She tried to picture the young male lead, not yet the man she’d met, languishing where Hesperus stood, picking crumbling flowers out of his hair.

‘Fat lot of good that’s done me.’ He waved her into the only chair in the apothecary, rested three waxy fingers on her upturned wrist and pressed down on her pulse points, then beckoned her to switch to the other arm. He furrowed his brows, then pressed down harder, and went back to check the first wrist. ‘That’s odd. My lady, you have developed a stronger affinity to earth since I last saw you. It is very slight, and might I add, a lesser apothecarist – naming no names – would have easily missed it. I shall adjust your medication accordingly.’

‘Your skills are truly exceptional. If your relationship with the guards from La Petite Mort does not improve, may I offer the position of my personal apothecarist at Wingshill House before you turn to making odd signs for Lady Langsley again?’

‘A kind offer indeed! Truly… I shall think upon it. I am attached to this place, you see. Been here since I was a despicable child myself. For now, let’s up the dosage of turmeric. It’s good to keep your wind aspect balanced anyway, and even better for earth. Perhaps also keep it lighter on the frumenty and the cheese.’

‘Cheese as well?!’ Claribel’s outrage burst forth.

‘You can still eat it, but in smaller quantities.’

~If this is your fault, I am finding it difficult to forgive.~

‘And… about your hair tonic… I will also increase the dosage.’

‘Good. The last one made very little difference.’

‘If I am honest with you, this one will also make very little difference. If there was a tonic or a pill that you could buy with money, Lord Keating over there would already be with eyebrows.’

Master Keating set down a glass jar that contained a withered claw and scoffed. ‘Between you and me, Lady Claribel, I am planning to employ an artist from their guild to paint a face on the back of my head. Should Master Grayham manage to add any further complaints to the agenda before he’s sent off to the Southern Mages, I shall simply show my painted face and sleep. That’s the benefit of having no eyebrows. The artists will only charge for eyes, nose and mouth.’

As he jabbed at the shiny top of his head, things finally connected in Ari’s head: Claribel’s thinning locks, the failing hair tonic, Sir Dagon’s comment about mages with radiance heads. A look must have crossed her face as she imagined Claribel, as devoid of hair as Master Keating, standing before all her jewels and gowns, and for a brief moment, she felt Hesperus’s gaze upon her.

He reached into his pouch and scoffed down some sort of biscuit, then tapped Finn on the shoulder. ‘You said you wanted to see a fire puppet show, didn’t you? Come on.’

‘But… You said you were too tired to–’

‘Did you say your name’s Tilly? Do you want to see it too? Let’s step outside.’

‘But it’s stinky outside,’ said Tilly.

‘You’re only thinking about that right now because you’ve never seen a fire puppet show. What’s your favourite colour?’

‘Purple!’

‘And your favourite animal?’

‘Dragon!’

‘A purple dragon it is for you then. Come on.’

‘Are you making it with fire? I thought you were Hesperus of the blue flames?’

‘Come and you’ll see.’ He ushered the messenger boy to the door too, and beckoned Master Keating. ‘I have improved the efficiency of my burn. I would like to hear your thoughts.’

‘Oh come now, Hes, I have nothing more to teach you.’ But he went nonetheless.

As the door jangled to a close, Ari soaked in the privacy that Hesperus had tried to grant Claribel. He’d have lured her outside with the promise of a… a red… raven.

Outside, the sky turned purple, and Tilly squealed in delight.

Inside, Claribel leaned forward in their seat and lowered her voice. ‘How long have I got before it all falls out?’

‘At the current speed of hair loss, a year. In a year’s time, some strands may still remain, and if you keep using the tonic, you may still keep the hair on your brows. You’d be wise to familiarise yourself with some wigmakers soon, my lady.’

Claribel sniffed, and Ari swallowed the salty taste in the back of their throat.

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~I’m so stupid. It’s just hair. I get to control the wind in exchange for my hair. Why wouldn’t I? There’s nothing wrong with wearing a wig. In fact, there are styles that can only be worn with wigs.~

~If I am honest, I want to cry. I liked my hair.~

~Don’t you give me empty platitudes. It’s half gone. It used to be so shiny. When I was a girl… I… Mother would brush it for me. Her braids weren’t as neat as the chambermaids’, but I liked them best of all.~ Claribel’s spirit drifted outside, where a sparkle of gold intwined with green and shot up into the sky, but her voice echoed still in Ari’s head. ~I was nine when I decided to dedicate my life to the wind. Eleven when I entered the academy. Thirteen, or was it fourteen, when Master Strond told me I was pushing my talent too far. I never had raw talent. Not like Hes. Not like Tilly. But I thought I could make a difference. I thought I had to. Here I am. I’ve made a difference. There are black mana stones, charged by mages, paired with white mana stones, where anyone could make use of that magic. There are windmills in Aquilon, no longer at the mercy of the sea winds. There are halls and walls that could glow warm with inner fire, even in the depth of winter.

~There’s Master Reece’s wife, now a widow. There’s the Temple of Merta – the things they do there, in their mana stone mines. And here I am. Twenty-one, bound by the choices I made as a child. Back then, twenty-one seemed a lifetime away. And now, here I am. For a moment, I had a thought. I thought, ‘Now the world is here to collect its dues.’ I thought that. About hair. It is nothing compared… Nothing. So why do I… Why do I…~

Silently, Master Strond passed her a cotton handkerchief. It took Ari a moment to realise that Claribel’s silks had been stained with tears.

*

Tilly was practically glowing when Hesperus set her down on Master Strond’s only chair. She glowed some more when her powers were declared to be ‘the strongest he’d ever felt’.

‘Wait, wait, feel my pulse next! Mine’s even stronger, right?’ Finn cried, bouncing on the spot.

‘He’s checked yours before,’ said Tilly, crossing her arms and cocking her head. ‘You’re obviously weaker.’

‘My lady?’ Hesperus brushed aside a branch of dried lavender and settled himself next to her. ‘I am taking Finn to the play near Levia’s sun arches after this. As you are heading to the crematorium, would you like Tilly to come with us? If you are planning to collect letters from the House of Giving later, you will find us on the Long Wall.’

Sir Edwin’s messenger boy cleared his throat. ‘Are you not going to Tristram’s last rite? I heard of your friendship with–’

‘I can see the smoke from the sun arches, and I have already said my goodbyes.’

Ari considered the offer. Hesperus could probably pass a criminal record check better than she could, without the Institute pulling strings. Perhaps, if she left a guard…

‘Granny Gertrude’s already taking me to the crematorium tomorrow. They’re doing Ma’s last rite. I don’t want to go to the crematorium today,’ said Tilly, sealing the deal.

*

The crematorium was not the grey-stoned building with gaping furnaces, like she’d pictured. Instead, they arrived at the western edge of the city, past the guilds and temples, where a muddy river ran southwest – as Claribel informed her, all the way down to the River Whye, which drew water from Lake Una itself.

A row of stone steps had been built into the riverbank, leading down to wooden pyres that burned atop the water, sending thick white smoke to smart they eyes of the grieving living who lined the banks, standing as still as the dead.

‘Lady Claribel, this way!’ Sir Edwin strode out from a wooden hut, painted red and gold, even as two men shuffled past her, carrying a body in a stretcher. It looked less like a body, and more like a work of art. It had been tightly wrapped in a white sheet, mummy-like, then covered with dried flowers and cedar branches. Its head peeked through the sheet, painted black with soot, where only an eye-shape had been traced in rose madder on its forehead, left pale.

Tristram lay in the hut, on a plain grey slab, covered by the same white sheet.

‘There’s something I’d like to show you, my lady,’ said Sir Edwin, studying her face closely. ‘You… may find this slightly disturbing, but as you have already gone through identifying Tristram’s body, I thought I’d leave the choice up to you.’

‘I am already here. Have I not made my choice clear enough?’

He bowed his head. ‘Then… Let me explain. You may not know this, my lady, but flies are attracted by the smell of death. Winter though it is, the days before Tristram’s death had been mild and snowless. It was warm enough during the day for a few stragglers to lay their eggs on new carcasses, I’m afraid. In summer, they’d usually get to a body before the day is over, but as things are now, I’d give it up to two days before we see the usual signs. But… here we are.’

He lifted the sheet. Tristram now laid face up, nearly as naked as before, except for a smaller sheet that they’d draped over his privates. His mouth was hanging slightly open, as mouths often did in death. His once-muscular form had gained bloat around the waist, and a greenish patch had formed on his lower right side: an indication that his intestines was digesting itself. Strange red patches had also formed around his stomach, a much brighter crimson than the cherry-pink livor mortis that still plagued his back.

‘What is that…?’

‘We removed what we could find,’ said Sir Edwin, ‘out of respect for the body right before his cremation, but this is what I found.’

He pulled out a small glass vial and untwisted the top. A large red ant crawled out from within.

Ari didn’t know her fauna as well as she knew her flora, but she could have sworn that it was some type of fire ant.

‘…No thank you,’ she said, taking a step away from it. As much as she liked insects, a fire ant was no friend of hers.

Sir Edwin seemed to retain some of his senses, as he quickly popped the thing back into his glass vial.

‘So!’ he said.

‘So…?’ she replied, though part of her knew what he was getting at.

There were no telltale white dots around the body’s eyes and freshly-bitten wounds, even though he’d been dead long enough for maggots to claim their feast. Of course not. The body had been colonised by the fly’s predator. No maggot could have survived those ants.

‘So… still no maggots,’ he said, speaking her thoughts aloud, ‘and there won’t be any on day three or day four either. I’d assumed that the body was recently deceased when we’d first found it, but now? I’m not so sure. You see, Tristram was last seen in La Petite Mort a whole day before Malory’s burning, where he met with a mysterious figure.’

Claribel stiffened.

‘The question is,’ he carried on, fixing her with a piercing gaze, ‘did he die a day earlier? And if so, who would want to make it seem like he’d died a day later, the night after Malory’s burning?’

‘But… wouldn’t that be more by chance than on purpose? You said so yourself. Winter can throw off the timings anyway, and ants… well… ants are everywhere. It’s not like someone put those on him on purpose.’

‘You are right of course, my lady,’ said Sir Edwin with a shallow bow. ‘It is my nature to be suspicious, so please forgive me. In my time as coroner thus far, I have not seen a body as badly bitten by ants as this, but yes, of course, it may mean nothing.’

‘But the mysterious figure…’ said Ari, trying to untangle yet another half-formed thread.

‘Yes indeed. The ladies at La Petite Mort gave quite an interesting description of the man. Blond, muscular, tall, wearing boiled leather armour and wine-red hose. He was also scarred and terrifying, so none of them dared make small talk with him. Have you seen anyone of that description?’

~Oh…~

‘I’m afraid not. That’s… very specific,’ said Ari. Just as Natty, who didn’t want to be found, described a landing place to the Chief via the dedications page in the first edition of the book, unnecessary details sometimes signalled a lie. ‘If he was so distinctive, other guests must have seen him…’

‘I haven’t been able to locate any other witnesses. No one has seen him, except for all the attendants at La Petite Mort.’ Sir Edwin smiled knowingly. ‘Just a little something to bear in mind. Might or might not be important. Let’s not let it distract us from one of our prime suspects though. You brought him to my attention yourself, my lady. Lord Coell is here to attend Tristram’s last rites. Isn’t it lucky that he’s here early? Would you like to accompany me to take his account?’

Ari nodded.