“I have a task for you.”

The Baron turned to me as the doors of the same dining hall where the council had been held the night before closed at my back. He was standing near the same chair he’d occupied the previous night, his green-cloaked attendant at his side. Otherwise, the hall was empty.

I supposed the others wouldn’t be morning people.

I approached the table and nodded to Orson Falconer. “That was fast. What do you have in mind?”

The Baron quirked an elegant eyebrow at my lack of decorum, but didn’t otherwise comment. He sat and studied the breakfast that had been laid out before him. He gestured and I sat as well.

“I trust you rested well?” The lord asked, tucking into his meal.

I studied the breakfast set out in front of my own seat. My eyes fixed on strips of seasoned bacon. Some kind of sauce had been artfully lathered across them. My mouth began to water at the smell, and I tried not to think about the last time I’d had a decent meal. I’d been too anxious to eat during the council the night before. “Well enough, lord.” I hadn’t slept at all, actually, but I was used to going without sleep.

“Good, good.” The Baron ate for a while, patted at his mouth with a cloth, and then laced his fingers over a half empty plate. “A few months ago, the preoster of my domain’s largest village passed in his sleep. He only had one disciple, who is too young for the role.. The Church is sending a new one to replace him.” A cold smile tightened the corners of his lips. “I’m certain they wish to have their tithes secured.”

“When’s this new preoster set to arrive?” I asked.

“Sometime tomorrow morning,” the Baron said. “Tragically, the Church’s representative met an ill fate on the road. The wild chimera in this region can be quite fierce.” His violet eyes flickered to meet mine.

My appetite fled, and I set down the strip of meat I’d been about to finish. I drummed my fingers on the table a moment. “You want me to kill him before he arrives.”

The Baron inclined his head. “Can I trust you to see it done?”

I leaned back in my seat and folded my arms, thinking. “Won’t the Church just send another one? If your priests keep dying, it’s going to rouse suspicion. They might even end up sending the Priorguard.”

“True,” the Baron said, nodding his agreement. “But what I need now is time.” He stood and moved to one of the thin, fog-glassed windows on the far side of the room. Pale morning sunlight tinted the blue glass with eddies of bright silver and gold. “I don’t need the clericons questioning the presence of my mercenaries. Once my guests have departed, I will send the Mistwalkers to garrison some of my family’s old holdings in the south. For now I need them here, as a show of strength.”

“Why not disguise them as your own house guard?” I asked. “Change of uniform is all it would take.”

“I considered it,” the Baron said. “But it is important for some of the factions represented here to see that I’ve bought the Mistwalker legion… even if only a single cohort of it. Appearances matter right now. Besides, many of the Church’s preosters are proper clerics — I can’t risk them sensing the guards’ true nature.”

I pushed my seat back and stood, wiping my hands on a cloth set with the dishware. I needed a moment to think — more than a moment.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I wouldn’t, but I’d have to figure out how I’d make that work later. For now I needed the lord not to be suspicious of me.

The Baron turned and graced me with a bright smile. “Good! And, just to ensure there are no complications, I will have one of the Mistwalkers accompany you.”

The lord held up a hand and a gray-uniformed figure clad in a battered breastplate stepped from the shadows between two pillars. Tall, lanky, and wheat-haired, the mercenary dipped into a lazy bow before straightening smartly. I recognized him — Quinn, the guard who’d welcomed Catrin and me to the castle.

“I’ll expect news before nightfall,” Orson Falconer said, returning to his seat and turning his attention back to his unfinished meal. “Good luck. And if you need to make confession for killing a priest, you’re welcome to use the castle’s chapel.”

***

The mist followed us as we road down the winding dirt trails beyond Caelfall Village. Part of me believed it was following us. Something told me there was a touch of sorcery in the creeping fingers of vapor which chased the padding feet of our chimera.

“You ride well,” Quinn noted, bringing his own beast to a halt as we crested a shallow hill. Hazy woods and marshland stretched as far as the eye could see, which was not far. The land of Cael seemed choked by skeletal trees and cancerous wetland.

I tugged on the chimera’s reins with a savage jerk, forcing it to stop next to the Mistwalker’s own mount. It let loose a low, bubbling snarl, baring a mouthful of teeth thicker than my fingers. It was a ghastly thing born in the far reaches of the west — front heavy, with a huge head and powerful jaws, as well as a tendency to produce an eerie, undulating yip uncomfortably like a laugh. It was dark gray and dust brown, spotted, with a mohawk strip of course hair running from the back of its heavy skull to the spiky tuft at the end of its long, lashing tail.

Quinn laughed at the strained look on my face. “Feisty beasts, aren’t they? Damn good in a fight, though. You won’t see them break a phalanx like the war chimera you Urnic knights ride, but they can tear across rough terrain like you wouldn’t believe and snap steel plate with those jaws.”

I tried not to look at the jaws in question, forcing the angry chimera under control before turning my attention to the landscape beyond. “The preoster is supposed to arrive by this road,” I said. “If something in the wild didn’t get him first.” Perhaps I’d get lucky, and the baron’s quip about wild beasts killing the new priest would end up being prophetic.

Quinn leaned forward, squinting with pale blue eyes into the fog. “Can hardly see a thing.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a Mistwalker? I’d think this would be your own playground.” I gestured toward the thickening haze.

The mercenary shrugged. “That’s just branding. Makes us sound more devilish.”

I shook my head, fighting the smile that wanted to form on my lips. Quinn had an easy way about him, a callous insolence I could learn to like — but I couldn’t forget he was also a creature who ate the remnants of souls off of the dead to sustain his own unnatural life. Further, he was here to make sure I killed this new priest. I didn’t doubt the baron had sent him along as a test. A spy.

A question formed in my mind and came to my tongue before I could stop it. “How do you know Catrin?”

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Quinn glanced at me and raised a yellow eyebrow. “Cat? Why do you ask?”

I shrugged one shoulder, then cursed as my chimera tried to shake me off. I fought the beast back under control, matching its snarl with my own, and then turned my attention to the mercenary.

He hadn’t bothered hiding his amusement. “Not an animal person, Alken?”

I wasn’t, and didn’t miss the irony in that. “I just wanted to understand why she helped me,” I said, returning to the previous topic. “She didn’t know me, but stuck her neck out when your comrades thought I was an intruder. I asked her, but she didn’t really give me an answer.”

No, I thought. She did, you just didn’t believe her.

Quinn ran a gloved hand through his blond goatee, considering. “Cat is…” he laughed. “Well, she’s an enigma. One of the Keeper’s girls, so it’s no surprise.”

“Who is this Keeper?” I asked.

“No one really knows,” Quinn said. “Not really.” He ran a hand along his chimera’s neck, and it let out an almost catlike purr at his touch. He got on with the fiendish beast better than I did mine. “He runs the Backroad Inn. It’s a sort of gathering place for the outcast and the misbegotten. Sorcerers, changelings, witches, hired killers, lost wanderers… they come and go, but their secrets tend to stay. The Keeper collects secrets and bargains with them.”

“He sounds like a devil,” I said.

Again, Quinn let loose that easy laugh. “Maybe he is! As I said, no one knows. But he’s been around a long time, and he’s got a whole coterie of helpers. Cat’s one of them. She serves drinks at the Backroad, entertains guests, and learns things for the Keeper to add to his collection.” His expression sobered and in a less easy tone he added, “I’d like to say she’s harmless, but be careful what you tell her. They say the Keeper’s used his secrets to bring kingdoms to ruin.”

I frowned, considering this. How had I never heard of this man in all my years with the Table? Surely the knights, or at least the legion of scholars who dwelt in the Gilded City, would have known about some sort of dark spymaster lurking like a shadow in the land.

Then again, I’d never known all of their secrets, had I? Maybe they had known. The idea formed a bitter kernel in my thoughts.

“What’s a barmaid doing here?” I asked. “Involved in all of this, I mean.” I waved back in the vague direction of the castle.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Quinn asked, grinning to take the edge off the words. “She’s a spy, man. The Keeper’s a spider, and she’s one line of his web. The Baron could hardly deny him a part in all of this — the old spider’s too well connected. But that doesn’t mean his lordship or any of the others are happy to have the Keeper’s fingers stuck in their business, so they go out of their way to disclude her. More than that, it’s something of an insult. I mean, she might not be ordinary, but she serves drinks in a pub. Not really the type to rub elbows with the mighty, you know?”

I answered with a slow nod, chewing on these new details. Perhaps Catrin’s opposition to the lord of House Falconer wasn’t feigned, after all. Still, it set me ill at ease to think what kind of man this Keeper might be, to employ changelings as his eyes and ears. “So how do you know her? You two seemed well acquainted.”

Quinn coughed. I think there might have even been a blush touching his pallid cheeks. “Well, the regiment’s made use of the Backroad more than once. Soldiers and ale, you know?”

More like soldiers and wenches. I kept my silence.

“We should get moving,” Quinn said, clearing his throat. “Better not to do this thing so close to the village.”

We spurred our mounts forward. The Mistwalker beasts bounded across the land with a predatory lust, yipping and snuffling. They were not pleasant to ride. Their backs were oddly shaped, and even the complicated leather saddle I sat on did little to help. I had to lean forward, one hand on the saddle’s horn, digging my knees into the chimera’s sides to keep myself in place.

Quinn rode with practiced ease, his attention more on the landscape than his toothy mount. He noticed something ahead before I did and slowed his beast. “Something ahead.”

I squinted, and saw a shape in the distant mist. The Alder’s gifts let me see through darkness, but not smoke or fog. I went forward a ways and the shape began to clarify.

It was a carriage. All black wood, elegantly made, with a golden auremark set on its roof.

“Church carriage,” I said, as though the symbol rising from the carriage’s top like a ship’s mast didn’t say it well enough. I walked my mount along the vehicle’s side, letting the beast snuffle at the carriage suspiciously. I saw no sign of the chimera that would have pulled the transport — no carcasses, no blood. The shaft lay on the ground, no signs of tack attached to it.

Quinn moved his own beast around the carriage, letting it sniff as mine did. The creature let out a doglike whine and the mercenary shook his head. “No one inside.”

I dismounted and checked the carriage, as cautious of my own mount’s sharp teeth as any threat that may lay inside. Quinn was right. The comfortable interior of the transport was barren.

“This held our preoster, right?” Quinn glanced at the auremark, blue eyes narrowed.

“Doubtless,” I said. I moved to the shaft, studying the damp ground. The road was mostly just a cleared path along higher ground less prone to flooding, stones spaced unevenly to mark it. It was damp, and I saw signs of clawed feet furrowing the moss. And human boots.

“There wasn’t an attack,” I said. “If this was bandits, then the preoster and his driver gave up without a fight.” My eyes tracked more signs scattered across the road. “They didn’t take the chimera. See there?” I pointed to a spot off the path. “And there,” I pointed to another. “They let the animals run off into the wild in random directions, probably to keep pursuers off the trail.”

Quinn stroked his goatee, impressed. “You think they were being chased?”

I moved along the road behind the carriage, considering the signs. “No,” I said, then cursed. “Maybe. Something’s off.” I knelt and studied a cluster of prints near the tall grass that marked the path’s boundary. “It’s like they just let their animals go and wandered off into the wild. I don’t see enough marks here for a band of thieves, and if a monster attacked them there would be blood.”

Quinn had also dismounted, and moved to stand at my side. He couldn’t see what I did, the telltale signs that told the story of what might have happened on that lonely road, but he looked for them all the same. “Irks?”

I sighed. “It’s possible.” I hid my discomfort at Quinn’s casual use of the word — I’d known more than a few wood elves, and they weren’t fond of the term. Standing, I turned to the Mistwalker and adjusted my red cloak, the only piece of clothing I hadn’t replaced in the castle. “If it was wyldefae, they wouldn’t leave tracks unless they wanted to.”

Quinn nodded. “If our priest was kidnapped by the Sidhe, I don’t think you and I are going to get him back. We should head back to Cael, let the baron know.”

I took a few steps off the road, my eyes fixed on the edge of dark forest beyond. I knelt and studied the trampled grass at the road’s edge. There were tracks. Several sets of them, heading off into the countryside. “I think someone warned the priest about us,” I said. I showed the mercenary what I’d seen.

Quinn scowled. “Damn. A traitor?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Looks like they went in there.” I nodded toward the distant lines of trees, half obscured by rolling banks of mist.

Quinn blew out a breath and gripped the pommel of his sword. “The Irkwood.”

“Aye,” I said, matching the mercenaries sigh. Had Catrin warned the priest? She’d admitted to eavesdropping already.

If so, why hadn’t she warned me? Was this part of her mysterious plan?

Perhaps part of it was getting rid of me.

“You head back to the castle,” I said. “Tell the Baron what we found and that I’m dealing with it.”

Quinn hesitated, uncertain. “I can’t just let you wander off alone. You’ll get yourself killed. We should get more steel from the cohort, go in with strength.”

“You can send an army into those woods and have not a man come back,” I told him, not bothering to hide the harsh edge in my voice. “That’s wyldefae territory, and your company murdered one of their own — they will be out for blood.”

Quinn’s face, already deathly pale, turned to ash. “What makes you think you can come out alive?”

“I’ve dealt with the Sidhe before,” I said. “And I’m not a Mistwalker.” I smiled and added, “this is what the Baron wanted of me. It won’t be my first time dealing with elves, trust me.”

Uncertainty stalled the mercenary’s decision. For a moment, I considered just killing him. I could handle the situation with the missing preoster as I pleased, and tell Orson Falconer whatever story I wanted.

I dismissed the idea. I didn’t need more suspicion from the castle’s inhabitants, and Quinn was more useful as a messenger.

“I’ll make sure the preoster doesn’t come back alive,” I said. “If he isn’t dead already.”

With that show of bravado, I left the mercenary on the road and forged into the wild. I had no intention of killing the missing priest if he was still alive. I wasn’t certain the forest dwellers were actually saving him from the grim fate the Baron had in mind — they were just as likely taking their vengeance on any human they found near their woods. Whatever the case, I could send the man back with a warning for the Church, and perhaps give others a chance to stop Orson Falconer if I failed.

I’d have to convince the beings who dwelt in the forest of that, and hope they weren’t too angry to give me a chance to explain myself.