They came for her in the morning.

Fog lingered over the fort, a white shroud that dampened the moods of its inhabitants further than their already morose demeanors. The doing of their esteemed guests, who whispered behind closed doors about matters none knew and whose very presence sent pinprickles across the skin. It had not been intentional on their part. Their guests, the Vigilants, kept to themselves as part of professional duty, gracing the rest of the castle with their presence only during mealtimes, and often enough not even then, opting to take their meals from the quarters afforded them.

Yet their discretion, necessary as it was, was the cause of much strife. Day after day, the fort’s servants gossiped on the nature of the Vigilants’ visit, gossip which would eventually blossom outward into grander and grander tales, the topics of which always centered on the rumored deeds of the Vigilants. Disappearances, assassinations, entire castles put to the stake. Rumors all, and most false.

Then there were the rumors that involved her. Some guessed the truth well enough, but others regaled one another with make believe that was hard to accept any would take for fact. Amice was the concubine of some duke or another, claimed one, while others said she was a spy from Hilva, or the Vigilant’s spy, or the Emperor’s bastard daughter, or his concubine. Or both, as the cook liked to claim as he baked his pies.

Only she knew what they spoke of, and even then it was only what little she could make out through the castle walls. Heightened as her senses were, she could only make out so much through the many walls of stone between their rooms.

Most of the topics were of specific knights in the realm, from Drygallis and Hilva both. Those who had achieved great deeds or were making their mark during the battles along the border, and all of them young. Alden was among the oldest mentioned. The youngest was a knight residing in Coalben, by the name of Aethelwulf. They were particularly interested in him.

Then there was, of course, their business with her. The Vigilants met with her near every day, often in the mornings. The meetings went the same each time. Ormar would do the talking, while the dour Idmaer and the apathetic Aelfred would stand behind him, both silent as the grave and twice as frightening.

They had gained nothing from her, or so she liked to believe.

“How did he grow so quickly?” they had asked. Always the same question, or some variation of it. And always about Alden.

“He is unique,” she would say, in every variation she could manage. The truth, and at the same time a lie, one of omission. Yet it was enough, and the dour Idmaer grew more and more irate as the days passed as it became ever more clear that she would not give them what they desired.

“What of you, then,” Idmaer finally asked, after several days. “Where does your strength originate?”

“From Mother,” Amice responded simply.

“That won’t do. What did you do, exactly? How did you train, what method? Are you aware that disobeying a Vigilant is a capital offense?”

The change in questioning was inevitable, yet the results were as fruitless as before.

“I will not say,” she had said. They were empty threats. Even if not, her body refused to let her answer any other way.

Idmaer had grown red in the face with anger at that, until Ormar raised a hand.

“Her mother is from the southern mountains,” Ormar said, and that was that.

She had been frightened to learn they knew of her mother. By all accounts, Amice inherited little of the look of her mother, whose eyes were thin and irises dark, having taken more of her feature’s from her father’s line. And though she felt that she shared little in the way of looks with her father, she was unmistakably his, she knew.

Her father had always loved his mother so, and had kept a painting of his mother during her youth mounted high above the main hall’s staircase, and as Amice grew older the more she came to resemble her grandmother. Albeit with the strangeness of her white hair and red, almost pinkish eyes.

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They had ceased their incessant questioning after that, having left her alone completely for the past three days until that morning, when Aelfred came to get her. He had knocked three times against her door, each strike loud and demanding. She had hesitated to open the door, having watched Aelfred leave the Vigilants quarters alone until he stood outside her chambers, uncertain as to his intentions. But Aelfred was not to be denied, and so knocked three times again, louder than before, and she opened the door.

“Ready your items,” he said. “We leave within the hour.”

A sort of invigorating relief had washed over her after that, and again as she saddled herself atop the rouncey afforded her and gazed down the road leading away from the castle.

She stretched out her arms one by one as she waited, surprised to find herself smiling. She felt good for once. The feeling was almost foreign. She had been cooped up for too long.

“Ready?” Ormar asked. He sat atop a fierce black destrier a hand and a half taller than her own horse. Cloaked in a caparison of red and gold, the animal would have seemed almost regal, if not for its impatient whinny's.

“I am ready.”

“Good. Let us be off.”

The roads surrounding Dolansgrove were well maintained, if empty, though the farmlands beyond were filled to the brim with farmhands bringing in the latest harvest. Beans, carrots, corn, tomatoes, and more besides. She could already taste the stews that were to come, including one particular dish served to her and her family by a foreign trader which made use of spicy peppers, beans, tomatoes, and meat. That one had been her favorite, though she longed for the spicy peppers the trader had brought most of all. They were not native to Hilva or Drygallis, being a crop from further east, near the continent's edge, and her father had refused to import more, complaining vehemently about the heat and the pain it brought his tongue.

“Do you have no care as to where we are taking you?” Idmaer asked after a time.

Amice shrugged. “If I was to die, you would have already killed me already. And I do not expect you would allow me to go free, regardless.”

“Just so,” Idmaer said.

“We received a bird this morning with interesting details, so we are heading north, to Coalben,” Ormar explained.

“So you may meet with Alden.” It was not a question. They had shown interest in him from the start. And, it seemed, did not find her answers satisfactory enough to remain still any longer. “You will be disappointed in him.”

The fog had begun to clear by now, and in the distance birds flew in a circle over the roadway, appearing as gray specks through the white shroud. Ormar focused on them intently, concerned for the first time since they had met. She could not understand why. She could see clearly through the fog, and saw that the birds hovered over the corpse of some animal nearly stripped clean of flesh. A doe, perhaps. She did not see antlers.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, refusing to take his eyes off the birds.

“You are interested in his power, that much is clear. Sorry to say, however, but the man is weak. Strong enough to attain knighthood, perhaps, but still beneath notice.”

“Knighthood outside the Curtain rarely is worthy of notice,” Aelfred said. “But it is not his strength we are interested in. It is his potential.”

“His potential?” she asked.

“You said it yourself, did you not? That he will surpass us all, in time. You certainly believed as much, at the least. So we are going to confirm it ourselves.”

Amice fell back to silence.

Eventually they came to the corpse in the road and stopped to look at it. A doe, as she’d suspected. Whatever had killed it had left the majority of its bones, from which the remnants of the animal’s flesh dangled, brown and rotting. A flock of the black birds dispersed as they approached; crows, they took flight and cawed angrily at their trespassers.

“Not wolves,” Idmaer said.

“A flesheater, then?” Aelfred asked.

“Hard to tell. It’s been here some time. Could have been some local hunter, young and seeking a thrill.”

“No,” Ormar said, pointing off to the side of the road. The grass that grew beside the road was tall, easily reaching Amice’s waist. A section of it had been parted, and parts of the grass had been trampled beneath the weight of something heavy. Even through the grass she could see the prints it left behind. Large, the prints were almost hand-like, and clearly taloned.

“A flesheater,” she said. “Aelfred was correct.”

“Damn. Hate it when I’m right,” Aelfred muttered.

“Want one of us to pursue?” Idmaer asked Ormar.

Ormar relaxed into his saddle as he thought, the concern he had before gone. He shrugged and urged his horse forward. “We’ll send a bird once we reach Aleford. Let some contractor deal with it.”