Dear Raigan,

I’ve been lost in memories recently, remembering things about your father I had forgotten about. Like the tune he always hummed before banquets. It itches that I can’t remember how it went. Or the glass figurine of a rabbit he used to hold down the papers on his desk in the summer when all the windows were cranked open to let a breeze through—whatever happened to that thing? There was broken glass on the floor when I found him. Maybe it fell.

There’s one memory I can’t seem to get out of my head, and it’s one you and I don’t share.

It was a cool winter night at the palace, during that strange time when you first began courting your now wife. I was halfway through my learning as a Listener, and we were so caught in our own worlds, days sometimes passed without glimpsing each other. When a knock came late at my door, I thought it must be you. But it was your father I found standing in the hallway.

I’d been awake reading over how the Merchant’s Council partitioned the rights of Reliquaries on Inlay, so I let him in gratefully. He was holding a bare candlestick in his hand. It was half burned down, and he didn’t seem to notice the drying trails of wax covering his knuckles and the signate ring marking him King of Samwhin.

When I was little and barely confident enough to walk from one end of the palace to the other on my own, your father used to visit in the evenings with a book in hand, and we’d whittle away the blue hours reading in our respective corners. It had been a long time since he’d done that—years, even.

But that night, there was no book in your father’s hand, and he was missing the bashful smile that said he was trying to help without making it too obvious. His cheeks were drained of color and there was an oily sheen at his temples when he stepped into the greater lamplight of my room. He became transfixed staring at the arched window set into my wall. It was a moonless night, but his eyes were flashing bright, and it was hard to believe there wasn’t something illuminating them.

“I’ve had the strangest dream,” he said in a low voice. “A ghost asked me for a favor.”

He told me that in his dream, he’d stood in a forest in front of an archway made of thin stone. On the other side of the archway, there had been a child sitting and drawing something on the ground. The creature seemed dangerously vulnerable where it sat next to the gargantuan trunk of a sledgetree, but it jabbed at the ground with a predatory sharpness. It wasn’t drawing but working its way down a scattered column of ants, crushing them one by one. Not a child after all.

I dropped my book closed and let it rest heavy in my lap. “What did it ask you for?”

The Old King stood with his back to me, staring out over the gardens. The window was just wide enough that he could have jumped through without brushing his shoulders against its frame. I had the sudden urge to pull him away from the ledge, but he was a king, not a toddler, so I kept my hands folded.

“It asked me to find something for it.” He sounded confused. “Some sort of component.” His nose was nearly touching the glass and his breath fogged against it, making a halo plume around his head, then disappear.

Ever since finding these letters from your father’s Seekers, I’ve been waking up distressed to find myself on unfamiliar bedrolls and an unforgiving ache in my knee. It takes a while for me to remember that I am not seventeen anymore, waking with my arms folded over a book and your father asleep in the chair next to my window, too lost in thoughts after telling me about his dream to have realized he’d been falling asleep.

This morning (yesterday morning; it’s past midnight now) was no different. But there wasn’t time for tears or overthinking. I was in Badgerpool, and I only had so much time.

The sheen of heated sweat coating my skin cooled once I climbed out from under the thick, scratchy sheets and left me shivering. I hurried to wiggle by toes into the boots I bought special from a merchant out of Squidrich, lined inside with hide from a seal and nubbed with little spikes on the bottom. They’re atrocious and heavy at the end of my legs, but without them I doubt I could walk from one end of Badgerpool to the other without breaking my neck, and that’s only a few blocks.

I stood carefully on a stool to peak out the small window high on the wall of my room, wobbling when my huge boots almost slipped off the seat. I’d been grateful to get a window at all when we’d arrived numb and dripping with piles of fresh snow on our shoulders only hours before. The room next to mine, the tavern below us, and the dark blocky houses huddled along the streets were sealed up tight as coffers. It made sense when I brought my face close to the glass and the tip of my nose stung; windows do little to keep out the cold.

Approaching on the narrow road leading away from the Dive, the Tavern is easily the tallest structure in sight at four stories. It lifts from the center of town with a lantern the size of a portly child swinging from its prow and overlooks the snow-packed square below like a lighthouse amidst a vast frozen sea. The innkeeper—a man named Mikron with huge dark eyes and a black braided beard he keeps slung over one shoulder—didn’t blink when our party of four stumbled in from out of nowhere in the night and he herded us all the way to the top with an unimpressed shake of his head. I’d sent a messenger many weeks ago to reserve the rooms for us and was glad for it. Every door we passed on the way up creaked with activity.

Icicles the size of my leg hung from the eve above my window, but through their teeth was a view of steep shingled rooves shrugging off snow from the night before in clumps, and a wide building at the end of the street with a wooden porch that served as the mayor’s house, and beyond that the flat dip of the frozen lake to the west of Badgerpool.

To the east, I remembered from our bleary walk in, was the white wall of the Skyclipse Mountains, and the deep gouge of the snow-pit standing between them and town. It’s the deepest pit ever measured in the north. At a mile wide, and nearly as deep, it can swallow a snowslide down whole.

Mouse Writ must not have done his reading before deciding to abandon the town for lost, but you remember how restless he could be in a library, and how good he was at getting out of things. Remember when he convinced your father the summer catch in Squidrich required his oversight? He’d schedule it during the week of Open Council. I’d be left to dictate the endless trail of grievances brought forth by citizens lined up and down the streets, undaunted by waiting outside in such nice weather. Meanwhile, he was off wandering the beach and swallowing fresh oysters. I miss him. It wasn’t fair we lost them both so close to each other.

Anyway, as I was peeking through my window yesterday morning, squinting over a fresh glaze of snow, I caught movement out on the lake. Figures covered in dark furs were moving towards shore, hauling long poles and heavy nets over their shoulders.

I cursed and climbed down. With my detour to the Grove, I had a day, maybe two to spare looking around Badgerpool before my absence was noticed at Dive, and I’d already missed the morning fisherman.

My guards’ room is next to mine. I’d thought there would be three of us, so I only requested the two rooms. But then you’d insisted I take that little Select apprentice, Miser. There was room for him to bunk with Brawin and Cerla, even if it meant sleeping on the floor. But when Brawin flung the door wide after only the second pound of my cane, I scanned the room and there was no sign of him.

“You’re up early, m’lady,” came Cerla’s tired voice. He sat up on the side of his bed, scrubbing his hands over the peach fuzz on his cheeks. Both men were half changed into their leathers; thick enough to stop a knife, but lighter and warmer than armor. They must have heard me struggling with the stool and gotten up themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me—the walls at the Tavern are more like screen board. Brawin snores like a bear on a full stomach.

“Where’s Miser?” I was more worried he’d wondered off and gotten into trouble than anything. The Select are brutal and smart, and fully capable of taking care of themselves, as he’s been sure to remind us.

“He left to take a—I-I mean, to relieve himself, my lady.” Brawin coughed into his hand on the guise of clearing his throat.

Cerla worked his foot into a sock. “Yeah, and the little grub never came back.”

The way Brawin squinted at Cerla reminded me of teacher’s face when she was contemplating swatting me with the end of her quill for being insolent. Brawin was a big man, late in his years with excellent posture and a squared beard that made him look perpetually stern. Cerla, either not paying attention or having come to know Brawin past his outward appearance, didn’t pay him any mind and continued fumbling with his laces.

“Get your boots on,” I snapped, only feeling a little bad when Brawin startled. By the time they fastened all their buckles, we’d be lucky to catch any of the night fishers before they locked themselves away to sleep for the day. “We’re late. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

Brawin grimaced. “Perhaps it would be wiser to wait up here, Lady Lascar.”

Behind him, Cerla wobbled, balancing on one leg trying to get his boot on and watching to see how I would take this. I met his overly concerned eyes and he glanced away hurriedly.

“I’ll have more than enough time to act wisely later,” I told Brawin plainly, and headed for the stairs.

Behind me, he cursed and thudded back into the room to pull together the rest of his clothing. “Hurry up!” I heard him tell Cerla with thinly veiled panic.

I shook my head. All there is to getting anywhere is putting one foot in front of the other, and I can certainly do more than that without two watchdogs licking at my heals. What does it matter if I need my cane for it? Since we’ve ridden out of the Interior, you’d think I need someone to follow me around making sure I don’t catch the ends of my hair on fire with how close those two cling to me.

As for my third apparent guard, he was already downstairs.

Miser leaned back against the bar top, one hand fiddling with a stack of gold coins he’d made. The other he had resting casually on his hip, right above the hilt of a knife in his belt. His black bearskin coat was draped over the barstool behind him so that the claws still hanging from its arms scraped against the floor like it might be trying to crawl away.

Even though it was early, the Tavern hosted a scattered crowd. Most of them leaned over steaming bowls of brown porridge, but only a few were eating. Instead, they stared open and hungry at Miser and his stack of gold. I made my way over. The sound of my cane clicking against the stone was steadying.

“Miser,” I said to him cordially and grabbed the barstool next to him. I positioned it so that when I sat down, the gold was blocked from most of the room. I leaned my elbow on the bar and said softly, “If you don’t stop showing off, you’ll have everyone in this room looking for the best place to sheath a knife in your spine.”

Miser tilted his head slowly from side to side, as though listening to a song. I despise whoever decided the Select need to look so much like wasps in those masks.

“You’ve got such a gentle heart, Miss Mercy,” he said and flicked the stack of coins with his gloved finger.

They toppled and went scattering loudly over the bar top, pounding like little picks into the icy silence. I tried to disguise my horror as one clattered to the slate floor and bounced on its end. It rolled all the way to the other side of the room before thudding against someone’s boot and dropping thunderously still.

The woman the boot belonged to paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth and turned to regard us. She had a cap of curly grey hair and deep wrinkles around her eyes and a mouth that bespoke a wide smile, but when she looked Miser up and down, her expression was anything but cheerful.

She pushed her chair slowly away from the table, its legs making a wooden screech against the slate, and I held my breath as she looked down to see what had struck her.

“Pick it up, if you want it,” Miser said to the woman, and I gripped the stool beneath me so hard my nailbeds hurt.

He remained slouched, but I’d seen him slip the small blade from his belt and dance it over his fingers enough times to know he was reaching for it.

I swear brother, someone it going to strangle the wheeze out of that boy before this trip is done.

The woman’s face remained calm as she stooped to pick up the coin. When she eased to standing, turning the gold between her fingers, I wasn’t the only who watched her raptly. Even Mikron paused in throwing a fresh log into the hearth as she walked slowly over to Miser and me.

The woman was a head taller than Miser, and she held her shoulders as though there were an iron bar running through them. I was glad in that moment that Brawin and Cerla were not there; Miser was making a spectacle all on his own without them trying to stand in her way.

The woman ran her thumb over the coin, studying it through a cut of short, grey lashes and frowned. She reached between us and dropped the coin on the bar top, unflinching even as her eyes stared into Miser’s masked face. “Save your money for Lakeday,” she said coldly.

She glanced at me as she turned, but there was nothing more to it than marking my face. She lumbered back to her table and tucked her chair in. When she raised the spoon and began eating once more, I relaxed back in my seat. The other patrons must have felt the same because the room filled with the sound of spoons scraping against bowls.

Miser plucked the coin from the countertop and pocketed it with a small chuckle.

“Count your fortune well that didn’t end in blood.” I looked up to find Brawin standing behind me with his arms crossed over his chest disapprovingly. Further down, Cerla waved Mikron over to order breakfast.

Miser drummed his fingers hollowly against his mask, just over where his lips were hidden. “But fortune does so well in blood. Speaking of which, I’m running late for an appointment. Lady Lascar.” Miser snatched up my hand and pressed his mask to it in a mock kiss. When I pulled it back, I had a small scrape from the wood where the skin was thinnest over my knuckle. He waved cheerfully at the woman with the grey hair on his way to the door; luckily, she ignored him in favor of her food. The door snapped closed loudly behind him, returning the bar to comfortable gloom.

At this point, the only thing that surprises me is he hasn’t gotten us run out of town. Or stabbed. From the little I’ve seen of Badgerpool, stabbing is more likely.

If I didn’t know better—and I only do, brother, because at the time I’m writing this letter, you still don’t know about my detour—I’d say you insisted I travel with a Select only to prevent me from getting anyone in this town to talk to me.

Mikron arrived with three bowls of porridge. I was anxious to get going but couldn’t deny I was hungry. I fumbled with my spoon though when he reached under the countertop and lined three glasses barely larger than thimbles in front of us.

I looked at Cerla in disbelief. “Did you order drinks?”

“What? Of course, I didn’t,” Cerla said, already swallowing down a spoonful of porridge. Brawin didn't looked convinced.

Mikron hefted a lidded clay jug from underneath the counter. He set it down with a thunk and pulled the lid off. “Rubs aren’t for buyin’,” he said seriously.

Have you ever heard of a ‘rub’? I had not, and would have preferred never to encounter one. Mikron must have kept the pot under the counter so the drink could be poured quickly. Before there were too many questions.

The drink slid over the broad spout of the pot thick and white and even with Mikron’s steady hand, some spilled over the glasses and pooled beneath them. He clapped the lid back onto the pot and left us with the drinks, not bothering to clean up what had spilled.

Brawin pinched one small glass between his fingers and brought it to his face. He sniffed and recoiled. “I don’t recommend that,” he said and set it back down.

Cerla dipped his finger into what had spilled. “Ugh, why is it sticky?”

I bent down and sniffed my own glass. It smelled of milkfat and lamp oil. “Brawin’s right. It’s very kind of him to offer, but I don’t think we should—Cerla.”

It was too late. Cerla smacked the glass back down onto the table, his eyes scrunched closed, and his cheeks flushed red. He held his mouth open as though he might try and regurgitate what he’d just drunk.

Brawin rubbed a hand over his face, leaving his thick eyebrows spiked in odd directions.

“What?” Cerla said and swallowed thickly. “Everyone was—” hiccough “—looking.”

I checked around the room. Cerla was right. Mikron was glancing up at us from where he’d returned to stoking the fire, although the room was getting stuffy with heat already. A few people were nodding approvingly at Cerla, though they were still eyeing Barwin and me skeptically.

I stared at the drink again and considered the state of my stomach. The little that had spilled looked to be drying into a tacky paste, welding the bottom of the two undrunk glasses to the countertop.

“No,” I said aloud. “No, I’m not drinking that.”

Brawin’s warm hand patted my shoulder. “There is some time for wisdom, my lady.”

“I don’t know,” Cerla said. He blinked rapidly and appeared unaware that he was swaying. “It wasn’t so bad. Maybe you sho’ try some.” Brawin caught him when he tried to stand from his chair and tilted towards the ground instead. “Whoops.”

“Brawin.”

“I know, my lady,” Brawin hurried to say, looking somewhere between distressed and furious as Cerla leaned bodily against him and draped an arm around his shoulders. “Just wait here, I’ll put him back in the room.”

Cerla nodded in agreement. Halfway to the stairs, Brawin lost patience dragging him and lifted him over his shoulder before racing up the stairs. Chuckles sounded around the room.

“Your friend is pure of heart,” Mikron said as he trundled back over to where I sat. He stared between me and the two remaining glasses suggestively.

“He is,” I said carefully. “Unfortunately, we’re only here for a short time, and I’d hate to dilute my experience with drink.”

Mikron furrowed his brows, his huge eyes searching my own. “You’re going to miss Lakeday?”

“Yes,” I said. He’d mentioned something about Lakeday when we’d come in last night as well, but I’d been too tired ask about it. I guessed it’s what had the Tavern’s rooms filled up. “And it’s very unfortunate.”

Mikron’s face darkened and he swung his beard from over his shoulder. It arched over his belly and hung almost to his knees. He tugged on it sharply.

“Is Lakeday something that happens out on the… what is the lake’s name again?” These were not the questions I’d been hoping to ask, but it was a start. Mikron had treated us warmly enough so far, and if I got him talking, I may be able to lead one thing into the other.

I’d made a mistake, though, because Mikron leaned away as though I had bad breath. “The lake’s Badgerpool,” he said.

“Oh, right.”

His eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. “If you’re not here for Lakeday, why are you here?”

That was a question with a complicated answer. How could I explain that I was here in search of lights in the sky, and stones and mirrors, and how it all might explain your father’s death? How it might prove that he’d been killed. That he didn’t…because he wouldn’t…

The proof was here somewhere, I knew it, but I didn’t know how to ask Mikron for all that.

I was saved from answering by the steady thud of boots over stone. The woman with the grey hair was marching toward us, a scowl carved into her face. I braced myself for a confrontation, the edge of the bar digging painfully into my back. She lifted a hand, and I froze. I’ve never been in a fight before. I wasn’t even sure what I’d done to cause one.

“Wait—”

I stopped. She was reaching behind me.

The barstool Miser had been using to hold his coat clattered to the ground as the woman hauled a man in front of her. He looked young, barely out of his second age if I had to guess, with white-blonde hair tied back in a short ponytail at the back of his neck. The woman held him by it like she might a kitten by its scruff.

“Give it back, Callum,” the woman said to him, her voice level and dangerous as a butcher’s block. The boy twisted and clawed at her arm, but she held firm. “It’s Lakeday, you know the rules.”

The boy stopped struggling and barked an incredulous laugh. “I know the rules? Funny you’re telling me that, when you let Til—”

He cut off with a hiss when the woman’s calm anger broke into a snarl, some spittle escaping her lips and she tightened her grip painfully on his hair.

“There’s no need for—” She cut me a look and I clicked my mouth closed. Teacher would love her.

“Give her back her money,” she said again, her voice straining for calm.

Instinctually, I reached for my belt. My coin purse was gone.

“She’s not even staying for Lakeday. You heard her!” Callum whined, but the woman didn’t budge. Mikron watched on from my side, his face impassive. “Fine.” Reluctantly he pulled my purse from inside his coat and dropped it on the counter. “Sorry,” he muttered without meeting my eyes.

He must have known that’s what the woman wanted to hear, because she let go of his hair at last. The second he was free, Callum ran for the door and slipped outside. The woman watched him go, her grey hair shadowing her face like thunderheads.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Brawin’s boots, sewn with a border of Samwhin silver, appear on the stairway and I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief.

“Watch out for that one.” I startled; the woman was talking to me. Being the center of all her focus made me want to squirm in my seat. “You can’t trust a word he says.” She glared at me for emphasis and stepped away right as Brawin came hurrying over.

“Are you alright? What was that about?” He looked between me and the woman as though considering whether he should be going after her. I turned back to Mikron, but he had left and was filling the cup of someone at the back of the room. He and the man where whispering together and glancing at Brawin and I suspiciously. My opportunity was lost.

“I’m fine, come on.” I took a huge bite of my otherwise untouched porridge and climbed to my feet. My leg had stiffened while I’d been sitting so tense, and I tried to shake it out under my gown without Brawin noticing. “Let’s go, we may catch the fishermen before they retire.”

There was one other bar in town—small and unnamed. No windows, of course, and no rooms for rent above it. It sat perched on the edge of the lake and there were boot prints leading to the front door that I found that encouraging.

It shouldn’t have been possible, but word must have already somehow spread of our interactions at the Tavern, because Brawin and I barely had time for our eyes to adjust before the barkeep spotted us and scooped two small glasses and a clay pitcher from beneath the counter.

“Oh no, please,” I tried to dissuade her.

Her eyebrow arched and she filled one glass right to the brim before sliding it towards me and the other in front of Brawin. She shook her hand to rid it of the droplets that had escaped over the glass and gotten onto her fingers.

I smiled at her bravely. “I’d much prefer a cup of hot wine, if you have it.” When she raised her chin in challenge, I added, “Although I do appreciate the pour, and I will absolutely pay for it, as well as my companion’s.”

Brawin glanced at me gratefully, but the barkeep wasn’t charmed. She leaned forward on her elbows. In the heat of the bar, she wore a sleeveless shirt and her biceps bulged. The lobes of her ears were stretched wide around what looked like wolf fangs.

“Rubs aren’t for buying, little rabbit,” she said and dipped her finger into the puddle that had escaped onto the countertop. She sucked the pad of her finger into her mouth along with a drop of milky liquid. “But if doesn’t fit your tastes, I’ll go and fetch you a cup to lay your money on.”

She pushed away and we were left standing awkward as ducklings in a dark wood. I looked around, but the few people clustered inside watched us just as guardedly from behind their cups as those at the Tavern. The barkeep returned with two steaming cups of wine smelling of a sharp spice that made my mouth water, but my stomach still flipped when she poured the two rubs back into the clay pot with a long drizzle and moved away from us before I could ask her a single question.

Do you remember what Mouse Writ used to tell us? There are two surefire ways to get a story from someone—share a drink and know when to shut up. Maybe teacher was right to scold me for not paying attention. I’d thought my training as a Listener would give me some advantage that a Seeker might not have, but how am I to listen when I can’t get anyone to speak?

I gulped the wine to keep my spirits up and waved Brawin back out into the cold. I decided to try the lake next, since the baffling holiday surrounding it seemed to be the only thing anyone could talk about.

“Keep it for Lakeday,” yet another man grumbled to me, glaring resentfully at the coin I had offered him for showing us to the lake shore.

“What is Lakeday?”

He looked at me baffled, then grumbled something and walked away.

There are no more than five streets running through town, all of them ending at the lake. I could have found the frightful thing myself and not had to endure the man stiff shouldering all my small talk.

I looked up at the sound of shovels scraping over ice. A group was working to clear a patch in the center of the lake. They were spread out in a ring around a tall stone pillar sprouting from the center of the water and rising almost as tall as the Tavern. With people next to the stone, I’d be surprised if it’s base wasn’t thicker than a sledgetree. The shovelers dodged skillfully around holes cut into the ice, each one just large enough for the early morning fishers to drop a line for the sluggish creatures still alive and swimming in the frigid water. As they cleared more ground, others followed behind them and began erecting colorful tents.

We weren’t the only newcomers to Badgerpool out walking along the lake and observing the activity. I spotted other outsiders strolling in pairs, or alone. They were easy to distinguish with their own blank-faced protectorate trailing behind, keeping a watchful eye on the shadowed alleys their convoy ignored in favor of the view. One couple we passed were wearing broad brimmed hats that would have stacked up like a cake if it were snowing, and appeared to be wearing jewel-crusted fishnets wrapped around their necks.

“Lady Lascar, please,” Brawin begged me under his breath when we passed them.

I patted Brawin’s arm. It isn’t the worst admonishment I’ve received for staring. You’ll remember teacher tugging my braids before I grew accustomed to ducking my head for the foreign company your father sometimes hosted.

The only group I saw without protection was a cluster of three clerics, wearing the thin white robes of the Savior’s Sect. They ignored the couple in hats and moved together out onto the ice, headed for the shovelers.

I question if there aren’t still eyes under the bandages that wrap their heads in and if those bandages aren’t thin enough to see through. I also question if their robes aren’t warmer than they look; they don’t move as though they're half-frozen. Outside of the shovelers on the lake who walk on the ice like they were born to it, the Saviors fluttered gracefully as a snow drift.

“What do you think they’re up to?” I asked Brawin as I watched one of the clerics hold his bare hands up to the face of one of the shovelers.

“What they’re always up to, my lady. They’re searching for the Savior.”

The white cleric bowed in thanks to the shoveler and moved on to the next, his hands outstretched.

“15 years left until Calamity. They’re cutting it close, aren’t they?”

Brawin shrugged. “Is it ever too late to save the world?”

I looked at Brawin. In Samwhin, it’s impolite to ask what people believe about Calamity. Some have been known to faint when reminded of the date. But it was just Brawin and I. “So, you believe what the Reliquaries say? I wouldn’t have taken you for a nihilist, Brawin.”

“It’s my job to prepare for the worst-case scenario, my lady. The end of the world is about the worst-case something can be.”

“And, are you prepared?”

Brawin squared his shoulders. “I’m always prepared for death, ma’am.”

What is they’re teaching soldiers in Samwhin, brother? I for one, am in no way prepared for death, or defeat of any kind. Which is why I grew increasingly frustrated as the day wore on and eventually ended and I had not succeeded in getting a single person in Badgerpool to speak more than two words to me.

When we slumped back into the Tavern that night, my moral was low and the next person who told me to save my coin for Lakeday was getting a cane in their big toe. Cerla was back at the bar, sipping from a glass of chilled water bigger than his head with his short brown hair slicked flat against one side of his head.

Brawin clapped a firm hand on his back in greeting. “Sleep well?”

Cerla groaned and sucked his lips between his teeth, looking for a moment like he might vomit.

I flicked my eyes around the room, sweating in the heat from the hearth and irritated. “Where’s Miser?” I was getting tired of asking that question.

Cerla took another tentative sip of water. “Asleep, upstairs.”

“Really?” This surprised me. Miser never went to sleep before us, and he was always out of bed first, even on our earliest mornings. So far as I’d seen, the boy didn’t sleep at all.

I’d had a suspicion for a while that Miser snuck off somewhere to sleep during the day so he could wander at night without us noticing. Why, I had no idea, but if he was sleeping now, he must be resting up for something big.

I let lose a yawn. “I think I’ll turn in as well.”

Brawin smiled at me warmly. “Very wise, Lady Lascar. We can try again tomorrow. Just remember, we need to leave by—”

“By midday, yes I know.”

I was due to arrive at the Dive for the first Listener Council of the winter season the day after tomorrow. If they had no record of my arrival by at least the night before, letters would be written, and parties sent out in search. A whole fuss I’d rather avoid.

Upstairs, I sat on my mattress to give my leg a rest, but I did not lay down. I waited and thought over the questions I’d gathered since discovering your father’s letters. My chances of finding my proof of his murder were looking bleak, but whatever Miser was up to was one mystery I could solve.

Not much later, footsteps crept down the hallway and the door next to mine opened and closed softly as Brawin and Cerla turned in for the night. I climbed off my bed and sat down on the stool with my ear pressed to the door. I waited.

Determination kept me awake the way it always has when I’m focused on something. Heavy clouds had rolled in outside and the glow of the Tavern’s lamp was shining along the windowpane when I at last heard a squeak in the floorboards. He made no more noise than a rat skittering from its den, but I was certain Miser had just clicked the door closed behind him.

I sat up and watched his shadow move across the crack beneath my door. Trained guards are light on their feet even in plate armor, but they could not have walked the creaking hallway without making a sound.

I twisted my cane in my hands and counted to thirty before following. The short hallway outside was dark and biting with cold. Holding my cane under my armpit to keep its tapping from waking Brawin and Cerla, I clung to the bannister and limped down the stairs.

Mikron was still up, but the bar was otherwise empty. He paused where he knelt shoveling ash from the hearth to watch as I hobbled to the door, but otherwise ignored me.

Northern night blistered cold over my cheeks as I pushed open the door. I followed the fresh footsteps leading around the corner of the inn and down one of the narrow side streets, then out onto the wider main street. Miser was headed for the lake.

I didn’t look closely into the shadows between buildings in case I should see eyes looking back. It was so cold, I told myself, no amount of furs would allow anyone to sit outside and still in the snow without freezing them through. There was nothing to be afraid of.

It was still clear, the clouds overhead not yet shedding their weight, and Miser’s footsteps picked an even line of craters down the center of the main street. But I did not see him ahead of me, not even when I rounded the corner of the mayor’s porch and the only place left to go was the flat slice of the lake.

I crossed over the street’s end and sunk to my ankles in the deeper snow on the lakeshore. I stared grimly at the trail; Miser’s footsteps paced twice more in front of me and stopped.

Wind loped over the rolling white landscape and flew into my face. My eyes watered and I reached back for my hood. A dark appendage appeared in the corner of my eye and tugged the fur of the cloak low over my eyes. I swung my cane wide, but it passed through air. Behind me, Miser was standing, one hand scratching his scalp through the thick lining of his own coat.

“You’re out late, Miss Mercy.” The round eyes of his mask caught the moonlight and hung magnified and disembodied from within the cavern of his hood. “And with no one to protect you.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why? Are you not merciful, my lady?”

“That depends. Where were you going?”

His attention drifted away from me, skittering over the lake then to the lights still shining greasy and yellow from the mayor’s window. “Oh, there’s not too many places to go around here. Aside from the obvious, of course,” he jabbed his thumb skyward then hid his hands into his coat pockets abashedly. “Try to get anywhere else and you end up walking in circles. You know the feeling.”

The fabric was huge on his slight form, making him look like a round hen balanced on spindly legs. Still, I did not like that I couldn’t see his hands as much as I could not read his face.

“Speak plain, Miser.” I could not resist glancing up, but there were only clouds. “If you’re out for a walk, I’ll walk with you.”

“The King doesn’t keep Select for strolling,” he snapped. He seemed to swallow, then hummed and the sound echoed from behind his wooden mask. “And I don’t think my friend will like you. She doesn’t like anybody, these days. She loved the Old King. Maybe even more than you did.”

It was easy to push down the well that opened in my heart, I’m growing more used to it by the day. It was harder to ignore the sudden feeling of eyes at my back. There was only us out in the cold, I reminded myself. Even the earliest fishermen wouldn’t be awake for hours.

“The closest thing you have to a friend here is me. The mission you have is mine.” I pointed the end of my cane at him—it has a metal cap on the end. I like that people can hear it clicking when I pace, but it’s also the closest I’ve ever come to carrying a weapon. “And I am telling you to take a stroll with me. We’ll talk, like good friends do.”

Miser sighed, his whole body rising and falling as he dropped his shoulders. “This is becoming embarrassing.” It took me a moment to realized he didn’t mean for himself. I’ve never actually hit someone with the cane before. But, like a vulture scenting rot, Miser’s head ticked to something over my shoulder and he seemed to forget I was there. He giggled, high and sweet, and pointed with his pinky.

The whisper of voices carried over crunching snow and I turned to look despite my instinct to keep Miser in my line of sight. A huddle of people had come down from the mayor’s porch. The man in front carried a flickering torch, the light revealed a closely trimmed dark beard adding shape to a round face.

I had not spoken to the mayor, which was impolite for a Listener. I had spotted him several times standing on his porch sucking on a pipe, overseeing the clearing of the lake in a toe-length robe embroidered with black thread. He was dressed in the same robe tonight, clutching the hood to keep it from blowing off the crown of his head.

I made out four people behind him. Two were hauling a third between them, and at the end of the party was an unmistakable tuft of grey hair—the surly woman who had returned Miser’s coin this morning. The snow parted around her calves like waves cut by a clipper.

“What are they doing?” I wondered aloud.

I glanced back when I got no answer. Where Miser had been standing, footprints lead behind the bar Brawin and I had visited that morning.

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I chased down his trail, wincing at the sounds my feet made, and threw myself behind the corner of the building. The alley was quiet, and the wall was cold even through my glove. I could not see further then the length of my arm.

“Miser!” There was no answer, even though he must have been close enough still to hear me.

“It wasn’t my fault!” The voice came from the group, getting closer to my hiding place. It sounded familiar. I edged closer to the corner.

The mayor held his hands out for balance as he stepped onto the shoveled surface of the lake. He didn’t slip, but it looked to be a close thing. “Bruna saw you.”

The other four followed him. The woman at the end didn’t seem to notice the change in surfaces.

The boy being held at the center--by what I now saw were two men--grumbled; “She would have, wouldn’t she?”

The mayor’s voice grew faint as they moved further in, heading in a straight line for the lake’s center. “She wasn’t the only one,”."

Callum—I was sure it was him from the tuft of blonde hair poking out the back of his coat—was docile for a moment. It didn’t last long. He thrashed and kicked the knee of the man holding his left arm. The three of them fell as one, arms flailing to keep from landing face-first on the ice. He might have gotten away, but the woman with the grey hair wrapped her arms around Callum’s shoulders and lifted him, kicking, into the air. It was enough for the men to regain their hold on him.

Callum’s teeth flashed in a snarl under the torchlight. There was a shadow of scruff on his cheeks, but compared to other beards in Badgerpool, it made him look like a child.

“Keep an eye on him, Bruna,” the mayor said unnecessarily, and was quick to walk further in, taking the torchlight with him. The woman with the grey hair—Bruna—and the others followed behind in the same steady pace they had been.

I considered the alleyway and the tracks Miser had left. He was either gone or toying with me. I kicked snow over them. I’d made it across town with only myself watching my back—I could manage Badgerpool on my own for a little while longer.

When the group was far enough onto the lake the torch was only a matchstick hidden mostly by the scattered tents that had been erected that morning, I crept after them. The ice groaned deep below my feet and I hesitated to bring my cane down too firmly. It was only through luck I made it all the way to the first tent without slipping. I crouched behind it just long enough to check that I hadn’t been spotted before dashing to the next one.

At the last tent, the uncleared line of snow piled thigh-deep next to me and the mayor and his party stood a stone’s throw away. The monolith of stone rose behind them. I was wrong before; up close it was taller than the Tavern. Darkness seemed to coalesce around it a shade darker than the rest of the landscape despite the torchlight, and us small and exposed.

Bruna pulled something metal from a strap along her back and lowered to one knee. The grind of her saw cutting through ice rattled my teeth. The mayor bounced on his feet and held the torch dangerously close to his face, probably trying to get warm. Callum sucked in a huge gulp of air and blew it from his mouth like pipe smoke. His arms hung limp in the grip of his captors, his focus narrowed on Bruna and the ice. The uncleared snowbank rippled in a low wind and I edged closer to the tent.

Bruna stopped sawing and something that had been winding tight in my chest relaxed, but then she rose to her feet and stomped down onto the patch of ice. A shoulder-width circle depressed under a sheen of clear water. She pulled from her belt a hook, as long as her forearm and with a sharp point at the end. When the ice bobbed unevenly back to the surface, she brought the hook down like a hammer, its end piercing the cold slab of lake with a bandy crunch. She hauled the cylinder out of the water and stepped away.

“This is the second time this season, Callum,” the mayor said and rubbed his eyes. “Next time the furs stay on. Be glad for Mayor Rookra’s passing; she’d have done it already. And if you’d made it off the ice, she’d have dragged you back out a second time, just for it being so close to Lakeday!”

A muscle twitched along Callum’s jaw but he stayed quiet, his eyes wide and stuck on the black circle of water. When he moved his arms to wrap around his center, the guards let him.

The mayor looked him up and down and gripped his robes tighter against a gust of wind. “Do you need a push?” Callum met the mayor’s eyes briefly, his expression dark. The mayor pursed his lips and nodded to the guards. They stepped away, but not far. A threat hung between them.

In a jerky motion, Callum bent and begin unlacing his boots with shaking fingers. The bare flesh of his feet touched the ice and pinkened immediately. He undid the ties of his coat then the shirts underneath, unwound the long scarf from his neck, shimmied out of his pants and the woolen trousers underneath until he was standing naked and hunched against the cold.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from hissing in sympathy; he was thinner than I would have thought under all the furs. I didn’t want to watch him shaking, so I watched Bruna instead. She bore the sight, her mouth grim.

The mayor was here. This was an administration of justice. That did not stop my tongue from sitting dead and dry in my mouth. In Samwhin, a thief may face anything from the stocks to the headman’s axe, depending on the magnitude of his crime, but always in the light of day.

“Alright,” the mayor said his voice tight as though he were the one bare in the cold. The two guards placed their hands on Callum’s shoulders and maneuvered him closer to the edge of the water. “We can count down, if you’d like.”

Callum was shaking furiously, his breath quick and shallow. At the Mayor’s question he dropped his arms from where he’d been clutching them around his center for warmth and took a single shuddering breath. He shot one last glare at Bruna; he got nothing back but a blink.

“Just d-do it,” he said though chattering teeth.

Without another word, one of the men—the one who’d suffered the kick to the knee—pushed. Callum’s feet slipped over the edge, and he let out a small cry. Then he was gone, vanished under the surface with hardly a splash, the cloud of his breath still clinging in the air.

I didn’t realize I’d let out a gasp until the light wavered. The mayor swung the torch and studied the flat landscape. I pulled myself further behind the tent just in time to escape notice and bit into my glove. I held my breath and counted the seconds. How long could someone survive in that water?

“It’s cold tonight.” That was Bruna’s voice. I chanced looking back around the tent. Her tone was flat, but her hands were fists at her sides and her eyes were on the mayor.

He shuffled his feet. “Yes, best to get this over with. Bring him up,” he said to the guards.

The same man who’d pushed Callum in plunged his bare arm into the water without question. Callum’s head broke though the surface, and he sucked in a breath. The two men had him hauled out of the water and set down next to his pile of clothes before his next one. They drew away from where he lay curled in a quaking ball. His skin was white, the back of his neck blooming red.

The mayor handed his torch to one of the men and knelt. He placed a hand on Callum’s shoulder and said something to him I could not hear. Callum nodded frantically and sniffed. The mayor stood and wiped his hand off on the side of his robe.

“Cold indeed,” he grumbled and reclaimed the torch. “Back to bed.” He nodded towards the shore and began trekking back, the two guards at his side.

Bruna bent at the waist to pick up the saw from where she’d left it and paused.

“Next time, you keep your mouth shut,” Bruna said to Callum once the other three were out of earshot. “Then maybe I don’t need to watch you so closely.”

“It’s not me you need to watch,” Callum spat through clenched teeth and reached a shaking hand to drag the coil of his scarf closer to him.

Bruna watched him, then shook her head and stood with the saw in hand. She caught the other end of his scarf under the toe of her boot. It slipped from Callum’s trembling fingers, and he growled in frustration. “You, y-you...”

“I don’t want to see you die out here, Callum. It’s a fool’s death. Are you a fool?”

Callum said nothing, he didn’t look at her. At last Bruna removed her foot from the scarf and stalked off after the retreating firelight. The lake fell dark and quiet once more, the bleak outline of the stone pillar the only thing to be made out against the starless sky.

I kept my breath even and quiet as I waited for my eyes to adjust in the ambient light from the shore. Now that the mayor and the others had left, I could hear Callum scuffling over the ice, cursing between bouts of chattering teeth as he tried to pull his clothes back on.

I unfolded from my hiding place.

It was still difficult to see, but I could make out Callum’s features. His face was pale from the cold and he moved shakily, tremors lancing down his back on every other breath. He’d pulled his pants around his waist; they were too large on him, coming up past this navel and cinched around the hollow of his stomach with a piece of twine. He sat on his rump trying to pull a boot onto his foot. His fingers slipped, and he cupped them to his mouth for warmth.

Ice creaked beneath my foot, setting the whole lake shuddering.

Callum’s head snapped up, his eyes hunting as though looking for wolves. When he spotted only myself, he assessed my cloak—the one you gifted me before I left, dyed using honeysuckle and lined with white fox fur—and put his back to me, snatching up his boot to try again.

“Last Lakeday, a white robe came through. He wanted to feel the face of everyone in town. It’s fun to humor them; this one kept poking at my dimples.” He grinned wide over his shoulder at me, showing the dips in his cheeks. The expression held no warmth though and he turned back to his boot. “No hero to be found in them, I guess. The next day, he came out here and hopped in a fishing hole, right over there.”

I looked at the hole he’d just been submerged in. I’d been trying to ignore it. Each time I blinked, it felt like dark water swallowing over my eyes.

“He took that bath with his clothes on,” Callum continued. “Those white robes must be heavier than they look because he stayed under. Clothes ‘ll drag you to the bottom.”

I leaned heavily on my cane to keep the weight off my bad knee and sat at his feet. He watched me but tried to hide it with another tug at his boot.

“Why did you tell me that?”

He rubbed his nose on his bare shoulder. “You out here to feel the lines of my face?” He got the one boot on and reached for the other, his fingers still too clumsy with cold to try tying them.

“No.” I tugged off my gloves and picked up the ends of his laces. A firm tug closed the gap between the leather and his goose pebbled skin. “But I’ve had as much luck making you out as that white cleric must have.”

Callum leaned away from my proximity, but he did not stop me. “You’re one of those southland nobles,” he said staring at the crystal ring on my finger that distinguishes me as a Listener. Transparent, for truth. It’s edges are still sharp, even though it was cut for me an age ago. It used to chafe me badly, but I’ve since grown thick calluses on the insides of my fingers. When I get to the Dive, they will give me a second ring. A sapphire one, for wisdom. I wonder what new scars that will leave me.

Callum’s finger’s twitched like he might try to touch it, but he snatched his hand away.

With some effort—my knuckles are not as demure as they used to be—I wiggled the ring from my finger and weighed it in my palm. After a moment’s thought, I held it out to him. “You can look closer if you’d like.” I’m not marked for wisdom yet, brother.

Callum’s looked me straight in the eye for just a moment, then checked around us to make sure no one was looking. “Are you sure?” He sounded so young. The moment the question left his lips, he tightened his fist like he’d let something slip.

I handed him the ring anyway. I could tell he was afraid to stop watching for what I might do, but he gave in quickly and curled over a little. He turned the gemstone, thumb feeling over the rough, glittering surface. His lips parted like he might try to bite it, but at the last moment he froze. He gave it back, looking a little embarrassed.

With its weight back in my palm came relief. The Dive could make me another ring if Callum had decided to try his luck stealing this one—I calculated it once; this much crystal is worth 10,000 gold; enough to start a farm in Samex, and I don’t necessarily carry this cane around for beating up street ruffs—but had I lost it, I could never have truly replaced it.

“A friend gave me this ring.” I almost stopped myself from saying it aloud but was surprised to find I didn’t mind sharing the thought. I skinned my knuckle a bit working the ring back on my finger, but I hardly felt it, it was so freezing out there. “He died, just a few weeks ago.”

Did you know, that’s the first time I’ve said it out loud?

I realized Callum was looking at me strangely and reaching slowly for his coat as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to move. I pushed the remaining clothing over to him with my cane so he would resume covering himself from the cold.

“Why did they do this?” I asked him, meaning the punishment the mayor had delivered.

Callum smiled without humor. The creases of his face were set deep for so young a man, and one of his canines was chipped. His pointed nose and jaw made him look a bit like one of the starved foxes I’ve seen some of the nobility keep for sporting hunts.

“They do this sometimes when they’re trying to make me learn something I won’t forget.” He said it jokingly, but it wasn’t enough to mask the resentment.

“And did you learn it this time?”

He grinned roguishly. “Always do.” The look was diminished when he wrapped his scarf at last back around his long neck and it looped around four times before he ran out of fabric.

“What could you possibly have done to deserve that?”

He looked at me again like I might be trying to rattle him somehow. “Like you don’t remember this morning,” he grumbled and got to his feet. He watched me slowly climb to my own. The cold tweaked at my knee, but I made it to standing with my shoulders back.

“You know, it is like a lordling to forget the value of money,” he said, and I sensed he was gathering for something. “I bet you wouldn’t have even noticed it missing. But then, it wasn’t even your fault, was it? I’m no moonlighter; no one would have said anything if Bruna had just let it go.” He tucked his hands deep into his pockets. “You never actually said what you were doing out here, all alone without the muscle in your shadow.”

I thought of my pointless need to best Miser. He hadn’t been wrong; the Select’s business here would only be yours, not my own. You would have no other good enough reason for making him come all this way just to escort me when I already had Brawin and Cerla.

“I’m not sure what I was trying to do.” I exposed my throat to examine the fogging winter sky; it was starting to snow. “I had at least hoped I’d see some color in the sky while I was here.”

“You are backwards. No one wants to see the lights.” Callum shifted his heel a small step backwards. “You should count your luck twice you’re only here for Lakeday. They don’t come out in winter. More fishers in Badgerpool cast out at night in the summer than anywhere in the north, even though the lake isn’t frozen and the silverdon aren’t biting. Some people get the aurora in their dreams at night. Visions. It scares them.”

“Who’s them?” I asked.

Callum looked like he wanted to get off this dark plain as much as I did, so I wasn’t surprised when he shrugged and shuffled in the direction of shore. He walked just slowly enough for me to limp after him.

“It’s mostly the moonlighters, not regular folk.” He looked me up and down again, taking in my fine cloak again. “Don’t worry, the mayor keeps them wrapped up for Lakeday.” His mouth soured. “Though his grip’s not as tight as he thinks it is.”

We both hunched as a gust of frigid wind blasted over the lake. I don’t know how Callum walked so easily; I was slipping even with the special spikes on my shoes.

“Moonlighters?” I called over the wind. A cold fleck of snow broke against my eye. “What have they got to do with anything?”

Callum let out a disbelieving chuckle. “You came all the way here to see the spirits clash and you don’t even know about moonlighters?”

“No, I’ve heard of them,” I hurried to correct him. “But I don’t see what they have to do with the lights over Badgerpool.”

Callum’s jaw moved as though he were chewing something. “You don’t know; if you’d seed them in action, you’d know there’s nothing for it but dark magic. The aurora? They’re spirits that died in the last War, still fighting and lighting fires. At least that’s what they say up north.” He turned to me and smiled darkly, his cut tooth a dark hole in his grin. “Witches, dragons, all sorts of evil things that draw their power from the Sledge, they go there too, where they’re imprisoned. They’re barred from rest in Calma but unable to taste life. And moonlighters—they aren’t like other Talented. You must have at least seen that. There are four fingers of human magic.” He counted off on his fingers. “One to heal, one for strength, one for the elements… and one that tempts your greed? Even you must admit that one’s the thumb.”

“Moonlighters sense things of value.”

Callum stopped and swung to me. He pointed a finger into his palm. “And it makes them hungry for things they can’t have. They can’t help themselves. When more than one person wants something, a moonlighter will want it the most. They’re born with a hole in their soul, and it’s just large enough for some of that old evil magic to slip inside.”

In my head, I saw a pool of wine spreading out from underneath your father’s door. Not wine though, too thick. “You’re saying they’re possessed?”

At that moment, the light of two new torches appeared coming down the main road towards the lake. Brawin’s bulky lumber and Cerla’s elbow jutting at an angle from where he kept one hand clutched on the hilt of his sword were impossible to mistake. Their heads swiveled as they peeked between alleys along the lake’s perimeter. Without a torch ourselves, we must have been invisible.

Without thinking too much about it, I pushed Callum back in the direction of the stone pillar. He leaned away and slipped from my reach at the last second. He pulled his fists from his pockets and glared at me as though ready to fight.

“Lady Mercurial!” Brawin’s voice boomed unabashedly from the shoreline. Cerla, bless him, waved at him to lower his voice.

A hand twisted in the shoulder of my cloak and pulled. I nearly slipped as Callum dragged me back to the stone pillar and out of sight behind it. The rock was rounded and no warmer than the ice beneath our feet where we leaned against it, but we were well hidden. Another shout of my name came from shore.

“He’s going to wake half the town,” Callum hissed, sounding more worried than angry. “Calma, you didn’t tell me you were missing. If they find me out here alone with you…”

“They won’t hurt you,” I tried to assure him. “And I’m not missing.”

He looked at me skeptically through the icy strands of his hair. “Not them, maybe. But if he keeps yowling like that, Bruna will hear.” He slid down to sit on his butt and punched his fists into a crease of snow that had collected against the pillar.

Sighing, I lowered myself again to the ground next to him. My thighs were starting to burn from the work. “I would explain to her that you’ve done me no harm.”

But Callum paled and grabbed again onto my cloak as though he thought I might hurl myself from my hiding place and run into the arms of my guards at any moment. “No! Just, stay here until they’re gone.”

I had no intention of going anywhere and I wrapped my arms around my knees to emphasize that, and to preserve what body heat I still had. Callum let go of my cloak but kept watch on me from the corner of his eye.

“Did Bruna mean what she said? Would she really let you die for…” I trailed off. What had she said? For not keeping his thoughts to himself?

“Bruna always means what she says.”

“And that’s why the mayor listens to her?”

Callum scoffed and curled his fingers tightly over a palmful of snow. “More because she’s the only one who can catch the silverdon. We’d lose half out visitors come Lakeday without their scales to sell. Last time the mayor went against her, she started putting things in boxes and missing mornings on the lake. People started saying she was getting ready to move back to her birthplace—some little fishing hole north of here where she’s an heiress, or a chief, or something. That had the mayor bending her way and backwards quickly enough. Even looked the other way when she let a moonlighter have his pick of the catch.” He uncurled his fingers from the packed ball of snow and chucked it at the ground between his feet where it burst apart.

The shouting from the lakeshore had stopped, either because Brawin had listened to Cerla, or more likely, they’d moved further into town. Callum seemed not to have noticed and was poking a drawing into the snow with a frown on his face.

“And he’s from up the mountain!” The words must have been building in Callum for a while. “If it were any other family, they wouldn’t have been let back over the snow pit.” He thunked his head against the stone behind him. “Everyone loses their minds on Lakeday.”

“You’re talking about this moonlighter?” I asked.

Callum froze, but if he wanted to keep secrets, he should have stopped talking a long time ago.

“Bruna protects him,” I said when Callum gave me nothing more. “My brother and I, we aren’t related. His father took me in when I was very small. I think he came to love me as he would a daughter, but anytime my brother got something I didn’t, I worried about what it meant.”

“It wasn’t fair,” Callum whispered.

“It wasn’t.” I did not risk tipping the common ground I’d built by mentioning how the care you showed me was a balm to these thoughts. It was clear Callum did not feel the same for Bruna’s moonlighter.

“I was just doing what I was supposed to do, for once.” Callum crossed his arms over his heart and looked away over the lake and the sheet of snow building on top of it. “Since when does the mayor care if I’ve seen a moonlighter stealing? It should have been enough to point out the way he’s been eyeing the jewels on the lordling’s dresses. I’m not the only one who can recognize the longing sickness, I’m just the only one brave enough to say something.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and seemed to relax a little when he saw I was still listening. “All it took was Bruna’s word against mine to get me out on the ice. She’s lucky she’s got the mayor’s ear. If she didn’t, and I told the town half the things I’d seen her let the kid get away with, she’d be the one freezing her nuts off.”

Teacher always said a smart Listener tells her stories with intention. I saw in Callum someone who had never received much sympathy, and might be craving it, even if he didn’t know he wanted it. “My friend’s father; I was the one who found him after he died. He was in a locked room with a knife in his hand. But he wouldn’t have hurt himself.” Callum flinched away and I realized I’d snapped the last part. I’ve grown defensive of the subject. “Someone killed him, I know it,” I said more quietly. “But no one believed me either.”

Callum rubbed the sleeve of his coat under his nose and leaned a little further against the stone, apparently ignorant of the frost that was making my entire behind numb. “Not even that brother of yours, huh?” He shook his head. “That’s what they do; they give you just enough to make you think you’re one of them, but do something they don’t like, and you’re out on your ass in the snow.” He flicked the scattering of snow between us for emphasis.

“This boy that Bruna took in,” I started carefully. “Why is it different for him? If he is a moonlighter, and you said he came from up the mountain”—the thought seemed impossible looking up the white wall of cliffs looming over Badgerpool—“what reason could she have to protect him?”

Callum frowned. “Who knows why the old bear does anything? It’s not like she got along with his parents before they died, but he comes wandering down the mountain in the off-season soaked in a little blood, and you’d think he was her grandson.”

“Covered in blood?”

Callum sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, like he’d told this story a dozen times already. “The family went up the mountains before I was around. After that, they only came down on Lakedays. Spots on the lake are reserved for Badgerpool, our people, but each winter, they’d show up with bushels full of clipse wool. That had even the old mayor drooling, and she believed in keeping outsiders where they belonged.

“Last season, there was a clap of thunder from up near the pass and we got a snowslide that half-filled the pit. Later that night, Tora’s dogs woke the town barking and Bruna came to have a look. She found the kid squatting outside the kennel, covered head to toe in blood and trying to pet Tora’s mean old hound though the slats.” Callum paused and swiped his hand through the prints he’d been making in the snow. “Don’t know how he made it down. The mountains are near impossible to climb with a full party and picks, even when the snow is solid. Far as I know, he still hasn’t said peep to anyone—not about how he made it down or what happened to his folks. But anyone with a pulse can figure out it wasn’t anything good. Bruna says they got caught in the snow slide.” His mouth twisted and he spit to the side. “She’s being thin—snow kills clean, and the kid was anything but.”

“How old was he?”

“Seven. But age has nothing to do with anything in Badgerpool. Least it never has before.” Callum flexed his hands and wiggled his feet, at last growing restless after sitting still for so long in the cold. “The kid’s been hanging around Lakeday snatching things when his folks weren’t looking before he could talk. Like I said, it’s not fair—if it’d been anyone else, the whole family would have been tossed out years past. You think a moonlighter born in Badgerpool is bad enough? Try one born on front step of spirit world.” He nodded up the mountain.

“What’s this boy’s name?” I wasn’t looking forward to finding a way around Bruna to get to the boy, but a seven-year-old surviving the trip down the Skyclipe Mountains alone? Maybe the north is onto something about possession. Murk Lake spoke more than once in his letters about the lights getting inside dreams, and later people doing things that were otherwise unthinkable.

Callum stiffened and I noticed why a moment later when I heard footsteps crunching in the snow. Callum sprung to his feet, but it was too late. Before he could round the corner of the stone, an arm reached out and grabbed him by the hood. He spun with breathtaking speed and raised his hand like he planned to stab it into the arm holding him but stopped at the last second and stared at his fist sourly as though only then realizing it was empty.

Brawin emerged the rest of the way from behind the stone, a flickering torch held high in one hand, the other still holding onto Callum’s hood. “There’s no need for that. Tell me, have you seen—” He cut off when he spotted me sitting in the snow, too stiff with cold and surprise to have moved.

Callum pulled back at the same moment Brawin let him go, and he ended up falling back on his butt. Brawin ignored Callum’s “hey!” and rushed toward me. He dropped the torch to the ground so he could raise both hands to my face. I managed to dodge him just in time and pull myself to my feet. It was a little unsteady; I could barely feel my appendages for the cold and my teeth had begun to chatter.

“Callum.” Bruna emerged from where Brawin had come, her hands empty of firelight, the shadows from Brawin’s dropped torch casting her blank face in dark shadows as she took in the scene before her. Callum swallowed and did not move from where he was.

“Did you all not hear me asking you to slow down?” Cerla rounded the opposite side of the pillar behind me and leaned against it panting, not seeming to notice the tension hanging over the four of us. He was still looking green and his arm holding the torch drooped under its weight..

“Cerla! Watch what you’re doing,” Brawin sighed when the torch came dangerously close to catching on Cerla’s pantleg.

“Right,” Cerla said and stood up straighter, taking in the scene with bloodshot eyes. “Oh! Lady Mercurial. Are you alright?” He looked where Bruna and Callum were still glaring at each other. “We’ve been calling for you.”

“Apologies Cerla. Brawin,” I said and adjusted my cloak on my shoulders as I might when standing up after tea—it was considerably more difficult for the snow that had begun melting through the fabric, but I clenched my jaw to hide the shiver. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“My Lady, you should have woken us. You must not wander off on your own.” The look Brawin threw at Callum implied it was especially true in present company.

“Strange,” Bruna said, her voice even as ice over still water. “He was shouting loud enough for me to hear by the snowpit.” Her eyes flicked oddly up the side of the stone pillar. “Was something occupying you?”

“Occupying?” Brawin repeated before turning to me, looking a cross between terrified and exhausted. “Were you being occupied, my lady?”

I rolled me eyes, which was about all the movement I could manage at that point without folding over myself for warmth. Standing, the air seemed that much colder. “I was out for a walk and I ran into Callum. We were just talking” I said firmly when Brawin looked disbelieving. “Miser was with me but left off quick enough.”

Cerla’s shoulders slumped. “You mean to say Miser knew where you were this whole time?”

Brawin broad face reddened with anger. “He let you come out here alone?”

I patted the stone pillar. “He wasn’t as interested in seeing this close up as I was.”

“'Talking',” Bruna said slowly, and I wished I could take the word back at Callum’s wince. “And did you have a good chat? Did you get a close enough look?”

Something about the way she asked the question had my mouth going dry. I swallowed, and it felt like the silence stretched longer than it should have. “It was fine enough.”

Bruna raised an eyebrow. “I heard it was Lakeday you were interested in, not stones and mirrors.”

My heart about stopped in my chest. “Stones and mirrors?” I asked and could not help but glance at Callum, though the words seemed to have passed over him unnoticed. “What do you know of stones and mirrors?”

Bruna’s brow dropped and she bent to take up the torch Brawin had dropped. Brawin moved like he might stop her, but her glacial look had him freezing. She raised the torch high and pointed it to a spot on the stone pillar high above our heads. In the shadows cast by the fire, an etching stood starkly against the smooth face of stone; a tall, narrow arch over a four-pointed star.

“Must not have gotten as fine a look as you thought,” Bruna mused when she saw my expression.

I traced the lines of the carving. A long time ago, Songsparrow had written to your father about an archway, and something bright shining through, in a cave beneath the Partways Plain. “What does it mean?” I heard myself say, my voice shaking.

“Callum must not have been in a very talkative mood if he didn’t tell you. Unless you were out here talking about something else.” Bruna looked at Callum.

“She wanted to know about the spirits,” Callum said, not meeting her eye. “That’s all we talked about. Not how they get here.”

“How do they get here?” I wanted to know the answer to the question, but I also wanted to move the conversation away from Callum. I didn’t like the way Bruna was frowning at him.

Bruna studied me up and down. “Spirits are a reflection of the living, and it’s through mirrors that they get from the afterworld to ours. Every now and then, you’ll hear stories of someone spotting one popping up in the distance or crawling from under some rock.” She sounded disdainful.

“But not you?”

“Snow plays tricks on the eyes—you go looking for something in a storm, you’re bound to see it, especially on nights with the aurora.”

“What about the stone?” I studied the star on the carving. Murk Lake had mentioned a stone. Or whatever he’d been talking to had, before he died.

“Doors need keys,” Bruna said simply. She flicked her torch at where Callum sat. “You, get back to town.”

Callum didn’t need to be told twice. He leapt to his feet and strode away with one last curious look at me. I did not see him again. I can only hope Bruna didn’t later hunt him down to fulfill the threat she’d made.

“Do people see the stone too?”

Bruna was watching after Cullum, but she stopped at my question. She still had the torch over her head and it darkened the pits of her skull. I reminded myself that Brawin and Cerla were standing by my side.

“People look for it. Some think they find it. If they’re smart, though, they leave it alone. It’s just a legend.”

“Which people?” I knew I’d struck something when Bruna’s face smoothed to blank. “Moonlighters?”

She didn't answer my question and instead pointed behind me. “Legend is, the Stone will unlock the door to the afterworld come Calma, and those lights you see will come to ground and swallow the Sledge.”

I turned to look. A green glow was visible above the crevasse between two mountain peaks. When a ripple ran through it, looking like an eel sliding beneath the surface of a tidepool, I recognized them for what they were. Beside me, I heard Brawin curse.

“I thought the lights didn’t come out during Lakeday,” I whispered.

“They usually don’t,” Bruna said and frowned at them. “All the more reason not to go looking for trouble with rumored treasures. Better to take what’s in front of you and make do with it.”

I got the sense from the flat way she spoke, that she was not talking about me.

“Miss Bruna,” I started, already knowing I’d gotten off to a bad foot when her mouth twitched on the word “miss”. “I heard a story today from one of the shopkeeps in town—I can’t remember her name—but the story was about a boy who appeared down from the mountains, nearly a year ago.” Bruna’s face was solid enough to crack stone, and I got no trace of what she might be thinking. “I heard he has a Talent for valuable things. He wouldn’t happen to know more about the Stone… a treasure, even if it does what they say it does?”

Bruna was quiet for a long time and I became very aware of the pick she still had hanging from her belt. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the torch as though trying to squeeze the life from it.

“Do you know where I could find this boy? I’d appreciate speaking with him.”

“My lady…” Brawin warned.

“He might have known more, aye.” Bruna said at last and Brawin froze to watch her as I did. Cerla was being unusually quiet. “But he died. I’m sure whoever this shopkeeper was, she told you about the state we found him in; bloody after having been caught with his family in a snowslide. He was able to crawl into town, but he didn’t make it through to morning.”

She was lying to me. Callum would not have been so bitter over a dead boy. But at that moment, Bruna gripped the head of her axe and narrowed her eyes dangerously. “I’ll not have strangers bothering that which has already been laid to rest, Lakeday or no.”

“Of course not,” Brawin said quickly. “Lady Mercurial is naturally curious, she is destined for a seat in the Dive, after all.” The underlying threat of his words went unsaid. Harming a Listener would not be tolerated, even in a place so remote as Badgerpool. Bruna must have known this for she dropped her hand from her axe and walked away into the snow.

“Then you had best be getting her there. Badgerpool’s not such a good place for curiosity.” Her voice came to us ever more faintly as she left us.

“Never a truer thing said,” Cerla muttered once Bruna was out of ear shot.

“What were you doing out here on your own?” Brawin demanded of me while I stood trying to make out the carving on the pillar once more, though it was too dark now that Bruna had taken the second torch away. “You’re looking for answers,” he said, gentler this time. “But you cannot put superstitions before your own safety. I must insist that we leave for the Dive tomorrow morning. You’re already late in getting to your post. The King will being to wonder what’s happened to you.”

If anything, his gentle prodding rankled me more than if he’d tried bullying me back to our rooms with a sword and dagger. “You are not here to give me orders, sir.”

Brawin nodded. “You’re right my lady. We’re here to protect you. Which we cannot do if you insist on dodging us.”

“No one will talk to me with you two lurking in the background,” I told him, trying to sound reasonable, but it came out as more of a whine.

“Were you able to learn anything from the thief?” Cerla asked, oblivious to the sharp look Brawin shot him.

A good question, and I thought it over walking in line between Brawin and Cerla all the way back to shore. Callum had said moonlighters are possessed by the same rippling lights that were slowly spreading in the sky above us. And I suspect this stone is a treasure coveted by moonlighters. I’m beginning to suspect they are not the only ones—whether it be a key to unlocking the afterworld which will bring about Calma, or something else entirely, your father was following a legend with stones and mirrors. Maybe something possessed him too.

Brother, this may not be enough to convince you, and I know it is not much, but it is enough for me—your father was killed, either by someone hunting for the same thing he was or by something less real that got inside him nonetheless.

The lights were still on in the mayor’s house when we got back to shore. A man all in black was on the porch leaning against the railing. I pulled the three of us to a stop and stared at Miser.

“Have a refreshing walk, Miss Mercy? I see you found someone to take your arm after all.”

“You could have saved us all some time finding her,” Brawin growled at him. “That boy could have been dangerous.”

“Oh, a boy? I must not have seen him. It can be hard, wearing these things,” Miser said and waved a hand in front of the glassy eyes of his mask before resting his chin on his palm.

The door to the mayor’s house opened and a beam of yellow lamplight spilled over the porch and down onto us beyond. A woman’s figure emerged, dressed in the dark clothes of the Select and wearing a long coat down to her ankles. The only thing to distinguish her from Miser was her mask; it only covered the top half of her face down to the bridge of her nose. If I remember my lessons, this means she’s above Miser in whatever hierarchy the Select hold. Behind her, a woman with short hair shuffled dejectedly onto the porch, her head down and neck retreated into the pile of wolfskins around her shoulders.

“If you insist on going now, don’t just stand there. Hurry on.” From behind the woman, the mayor squeezed out through the doorway wearing a look of annoyance. His eyes widened though when he spotted us at the bottom of the steps.

“Oh, my lady.” His voice was tight, and his eyes locked onto the crystal ring on my finger. “An awfully cold night to be out, don’t you think? If you’re here for introductions, I apologize for my rudeness. During less busy seasons, I’d have come round to welcome you for Lakeday, but, well, it’s just you’ve come at an awkward time.”

“We’re going.” The woman with the half mask spoke her words with a snarl, and her canines flashed; they were pointed and golden like fangs.

I had seen that somewhere before.

“An excellent idea, Lady Mantis.” Then the mayor said to me: “I apologize for the rudeness of my guests my lady, they’ll be gone soon if you’d like to come in for some tea, they’re just here to…uh.”

Mantis took a grip on the shoulder of the woman with the spiked hair, who looked to be trying very hard not to flinch. Mantis dragged her down the porch steps. “Miser, keep up.”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” Miser said, but did not yet move from where he leaned against the railing.

Mantis twitched her head back at him as though a wasp had buzzed past her ear. She did not stop as she brushed past us, and the woman she pushed forward kept her eyes on the ground.

The mayor brushed his hands together as though clearing them of dirt. “Now that unpleasantness is taken care of, would you care for a sip of something hot?” It was clear he hoped I’d go on my without another word.

“Who was that?” I asked, watching the two move down the street. Mantis’ long coat caught a bluster of wind and snapped audibly.

“Do you mean the prisoner, my lady? Or the, uh,” the mayor ran out of words, his small dark eyes watched Miser nervously as the younger Select descended from the porch with a bounce in his step.

“That’s not really your business, Miss Mercy,” Miser said, and leapt down the last two porch steps to stand in front of me.

“I disagree,” I pressed, entirely too tired and cold to put up with any more of Miser’s antics, Select or no. “You came here as a member of my party. You will tell me what you’re doing.”

Miser cocked his head from one side to the other as though thinking. “No… I came here for the King’s orders. These two shields are the ones here for you.” He stepped back from me and pretended to tip an imaginary hat. “Enjoy your vacation, Mercy. My companion and I will be taking our leave now.”

He strode past us, waving sweetly in the face of the glare Brawin sent after him.

“What are you going to do with that woman?” I tried again, but it was too late. The snow was coming down in wet clumps and catching on the fringe of my hood and eyelashes. Miser slipped into the shadows between the falling flakes and disappeared after the woman with the gold teeth. Mantis.

“My lady, please, it’s not something you’d like to hear.” The mayor tucked his hands into the sleeves of his black robe.

“It is my mission to listen, my lord.” The mayor set his shoulders back a little at the honorific. I can’t imagine too many in Badgerpool refer to the man as a lord. “And Miser is not the only one here in service of the Samwhin throne.”

The mayor licked his lips. “Well, I suppose,” he said thoughtfully. “You may already know, but the Select were here to collect a prisoner for the King.”

That much was obvious, but I remained patient. “What was her crime?”

“Moonlighters are rampant in the north,” the mayor said somberly. “The King has been known to take a few off our hands from time to time.”

I nodded, but this made no sense. I know as you do from the letters sent to your father that the Select have acted as wardens before. But that is not usually their duty, and the Old King died three weeks ago. “And where are they taking her?”

The mayor looked at me confused. “I wouldn’t know my lady. Only that the King believes in keeping them somewhere they can do no harm. We believe the same here, mind you, but Badgerpool won’t store someone who can’t work.”

What he wasn’t saying was that Badgerpool did not have the recourses, or the inclination to feed and house someone in a jail cell.

“Of course,” I made myself smile at him. “Goodnight, sir.”

He looked relieved. “Are you certain you don’t want to…” he flapped his hand at the doorway behind him.

“No, thank you, I am very tired.”

I started walking away so Brawin and Cerla had no choice but to follow or risk me going “missing” again. I walked quickly, but they did not complain. They thought I was going back to the inn. The stretch was good for me knee, even though it was aching badly.

The tracks were filling with snow when we got to the turn for the inn and I quickened my pace after them.

Cerla’s footsteps faltered behind me. “Actually, my lady, it’s this way.”

“Lady Mercurial!”

I broke into a run and I heard Brawin curse, but did not look back to see if they were chasing me. I cannot run very fast anymore, but with the snow coming down in sheets, I did not need to be fast.

I turned a corner, and circled back around to the footprints on the main street. Brawin and Cerla could have run off in the other direction or been ten paces behind me and we would not have seen each other through the storm rolling in. My hood blew from my head and instantly began filling with falling snow, melting against my skin and trickling down my back. I kept my eyes on the outlines of the three sets of footprints, squinting when they became faint.

I looked up when I was at the edge of town, and the end of Badgerpool’s torchlight. Beyond was only swirling snow and a low, groaning wind. The footprints did not stop, so I hiked my dress and cloak high around my knees and leapt into the uncleared snowbank. The boots and thick pants I had on underneath offered some protection, but water quickly made its way down to my toes and I was wheezing for breath before I’d waded ten paces. Even when the joint of my knee felt like it might be freezing around a shard of ice, I kept moving.

“Miser! Mantis!” I called. But that wasn’t her name, was it? “Fly!” Still, there was no answer.

Some ambient light, either from the town or the moon, allowed me to see the snow falling at the end of my arm, but the rest was a mesmerizing swirl of grey spots. I was lucky I could tell up from down. I looked back over my shoulder to see if Brawin and Cerla had caught up to me.

I could not see Badgerpool. I breathed, I must have gotten turned around, but as I slowly turned, there was no light anywhere.

A sudden wind ripped at my cloak and I pulled it tightly around me. I could not feel my feet. “Brawin!” I called now. “Cerla?” Through my chattering teeth, it sounded like I was pleading.

How silly would it be, for me to die only a few feet away from safety all because of a blasted storm?

In my moment of confusion, the tracks I’d been following had been completely covered over, but mine were still imprinted behind me. I could follow them back the way I had come.

“Hello?” I called one last time, staring searchingly into the abyss of night between myself and Skyclipse.

The cold was becoming too much to bear, and I was about to turn back while I still could when something moved to my side.

I squinted, not certain my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. But it was there, again, someone all in black shifting back and forth on their feet. It was Miser, slim and shorter than I was, moving in that restless way of his.

Walking was like lifting two anvils by my knees, but I dragged myself after him. He stayed in place and I kept quiet, worried he would try to dodge me again if he knew I was coming.

As I got closer through, the figure seemed to get smaller, not larger. Maybe he had heard me after all and was moving away, stringing me along little by little, trying to draw me further away from town.

It was this thought that had me stopping in my tracks, but I had already gotten close enough to see that what I had been chasing was not Miser.

The person was nothing more than a shadow from where I stood, small and crouched in the snow, sitting with their arms crossed over their knees like a child. They were angled just enough for me to make out the spinal knobs running down their back as they rocked on the balls of their feet. That shouldn’t have been possible. Even the lightest child would be sunken to the calf in this snow.

The figure stopped rocking, and the world hushed. The wind guttering in my ears, my wheezing breath, the sound of my own heartbeat, it all disappeared.

The figure began moving again with incredible slowness, turning to look at me. I saw the thin shell of an ear, the rounded curve of a cheekbone…

Standing, frozen and quaking in the snow staring at the curled shadow in front of me, I remembered the dream your father had told me about. I wondered if I was dreaming. I blinked, but it was still there. It had stopped just short of facing me, but I could tell from the tilt of its head, it was listening.

“H-hello.” My voice cracked, barely a whisper, but loud in my ears. I tried again. “Hello.”

The thing did not move, so I had to. I pulled my leg from the snow, my thigh shaking and muscles burning with cold.

Something caught in my hood and yanked. I fell back with a strangled yelp, hands flying to my throat. I fell onto my back in the snow, and whatever had choked me let me go. I stared blinking up into the sky. Through the haze of snowfall, a ripple of blue and green light bled through the clouds like soaked cotton. A masked face with bulging glass eyes leaned over me.

Mantis folded herself into a crouch with her elbows resting on her knees. With her face inches from mine, I could not look away when she swiped her tongue over pale, cracked lips. She looked from me to where I had seen the creature. I followed her gaze and stopped breathing.

Just beyond my toes, the hard white line of snow cut to yawning black. I could not see the other side of the snowpit, but I followed its line to either side of me, where it stretched in a long even line. The pit is nearly a mile deep, and I’d been about to step off its edge. I looked around, but the creature I had seen was gone.

“You called for me.”

I jumped, nearly having forgotten that Mantis was there.

“W-what are you doing here?” The shivers had gotten to me, and my voice no longer commanded any authority..

Mantis unfolded and leaned back on her heels, looking down on me like she was considering a cockroach trapped in the bath. “The mayor already told you,” she said simply, sounding a little annoyed. She moved like she was about to walk away.

“Wait!” I scrabbled to get to my feet, but my limbs were so numb I fell once and had to right myself before finally standing. Mantis had stopped a few steps away and turned slightly to watch me. “You’re looking for something, aren’t you?” Manti’s face—the part of it I could see—showed nothing. “You’re…digging for something. A stone, or a mirror?”

Mantis scoffed, the dry lines of her lips stretching flat in a scowl. She began walking away again.

“Fly!” I shouted. That stopped her. “The Old King, did he tell you to look for… a component?”

Fly looked me up and down again and her frown deepened when she seemed to come up with only the same things she’d seen in the first place.

I pressed what little luck I had. “Are you still looking for it?” I swallowed. “For my brother?”

Mantis closed the distance between us and my instincts rang at me to get away. I would have, but then I remembered the chasm still hanging behind my heals. I stood on its edge with my back straight and gripped my cane.

When Mantis stopped, I could feel her breath hot across my nose. My reflection stared back at me, twisted and small in her glass eyes and her mouth twitched into a mean smirk, one of her golden fangs peeking out and scraping along her lower lip. I watched it, expecting a bead of blood to well up from the chapped skin.

“You,” she said, her voice like two pieces of flint striking. “Are no blood of the throne.”

She pulled away and I swayed forward from the edge. She left me standing there gaping after her. A moment later and she was gone, swallowed once more by the dark and snow.

“Mercurial! Mercurial Lascar!”

A sob broke from me at the sound of Brawin’s voice carrying on the wind. By the time he and Cerla found me—accompanied once more by Bruna, who was somehow able to navigate us back to the edge of town, though her exhaustion was beginning to show through even her stony expression—my tears had frozen in place.

I leave for the Dive tomorrow. It is now close to morning, and I’ve been soaking my feet in a bath of lukewarm water since midnight. Brawin has alternated between giving me lectures on the dangers of running into snowstorms (not something I need reminding of, but I see where he’s coming from) and asking unendingly if I’m warm enough (the answer it always yes; I swear, he’d be turning me over a spit if I let him).

Cerla is awake and pacing in the hall, either not sure what to do with Brawin distracted, or worried I’ll escape again.

Miser has not returned. Neither has Mantis, or Fly, or whatever her name is, or the prisoner they led away.

I’ve told no one about what I saw last night. Not even Bruna, who looked at me like she was waiting for me to break some terrible news to her the whole trek back to town.

The truth is you are the only one I plan on telling any of this.

I debated a long time on whether I should share these letters with you. You remind me too much of him sometimes, in just the way that makes me start to worry you may have his same illness of obsession. These things I have seen since leaving home do not put me in good faith.

This hunt of your father’s… It’s no coincidence that he and I have both seen this creature now. Whatever it is, it killed him. I know it in my soul, Raigan.

Murk Lake saw something too, right before he died.

Maybe now you’re having dreams. About a creature asking you to find something.

Raigan, you are my brother in every way but blood, which means you must have adored me even more to put up with me. Trust me now because it must be the first time of many. Let me do what I am supposed to; be the heart which learns the world, and acts as your conscience in times of need.

I will listen, I will learn, and I will guide you where the Sledge requires you, which is away from whatever nightmare may be eyeing your heart.

Listen to what I’m saying: he didn’t leave us, Rai, he loved us. This creature from the Grove sent him after something and it got him killed.

And if it wants you too, I’m going to figure out a way to stop it. A way to kill it, if that’s what it takes. Or I’ll find someone who can; there’s no way that boy from the mountains is dead.

With all the love I have left,

Mercurial Lascar, Ward of the Old King, Inaugural Listener to Skyclipse Dive

Age 1.5 Until Calamity