The miles passed quick as trees in a forest. Soon enough, the sun lit the east, filtering wan through the omnipresent gloom squatting jealously over those lands.

I usually couldn’t see the bleak clouds of ash and storm above Seydis so clearly. I ended up shutting the coach’s window and turning to the girl.

I’d woken an hour or so before, my dreamless rest leaving me quick as a dissatisfied lover. I ran a thumb along my dream-trap ring, secure now in its usual place on my right index finger. I felt half relieved that it still worked, and half disappointed.

That dream had been so vivid. So had the pain. I clenched my jaw, shutting the memory out with an effort of will. Those visions were poison.

Emma had fallen asleep after I had. She slept still, her head pressed against one wall of the coach’s interior. Several strands of dark hair had escaped from her conservative bun to fall over her face. She looked even younger in sleep, the sharp lines of her avian face softening.

Too young for this nonsense. She’d still be a handmaiden or squire in any noble family at her age. What had drawn her into Bloody Nath’s clutches? I needed to try and get her to tell me what this was all about, find out what danger she was in, and deal with it quickly so I could return to the Fane and check on the knight-captain. I should have done it during the night, but I’d let my frustration get the better of me.

It could wait until she woke on her own. I’d meant what I’d said, about getting rest before whatever trial the two of us faced came our way.

That trial came sooner than I’d thought. Without warning, the coach dipped. I had to grab my weapon and the girl’s to keep either of us from getting injured.

On closer inspection, her sword was a truly beautiful weapon. Very nearly a longsword, with a surprising heft to it and an intricate basket-hilt pommel. The straight, double-edged blade was long as my arm and hand together. Silver designs enwrapped the hilt, done in ivy patterns ending in intricate spirals. They matched similar motifs on the black leather sheath. The image of a hawk with wings outstretched dominated the crossguard, a small red teardrop stone clutched in its talons. The ruby matched the ring Emma wore on her hand.

Emma slid in her seat and woke with a start, catching a hand on one wall. Her eyes landed on her sword.

“Don’t touch that,” she snarled, reaching for it. I let her snatch it back, bemused.

“We’re descending,” I told her.

Emma frowned. “We must be near Hunting lands.”

I frowned, recognizing the name. “That’s House Hunting?”

Emma nodded. “Lord Brenner is my guardian. I live on a manor in his lands.”

“I see,” I said, rubbing at the stubble on my face. “You’re his ward?”

Emma shrugged, adopting a remote expression. “I suppose.”

That implied she didn’t have parents, or at least didn’t live with them. More mystery.

The girl’s circumstances were less important to me than the task she needed my services for. Leaning forward as the flying coach continued its descent I said, “so, tell me why Nath handed me off to you. What trouble are you in, lass?”

At her wrathful expression I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “What trouble are you in, my lady.”

Though hardly mollified, Emma didn’t press the issue. She crossed one leg, adopting the arrogant posture she’d maintained the past night. “We’ll speak of it when we’re safe in my manor. I have some questions of my own.”

She ignored the irritated set of my mouth, studying me thoughtfully. “First,” she said, “why do you keep that hood up? Are you hideous? Scarred?”

I’d completely forgotten about the cowl. I’d become so used to wearing it. I traveled often at night, or in dark places heavy with od, and the need to keep myself wrapped in shadow to ward off wild magic had become necessity. I’d kept it up the previous night half for dramatics.

I reached up and doffed my cloak’s pointed cowl, letting my copper hair fall freely down to my shoulders. I met the girl’s eyes, letting her see my scars, the unnaturally bright touch of gold in my eyes.

If it affected her at all, she hid it well. Emma pursed her lips critically. “Well, I was right about the scars, at least. You’re not nearly as hideous as I expected.”

“Disappointed?” I asked.

She shrugged. “When Nath told me she’d loan me an agent, I’d half expected some deformed brute or demon. You…” she canted her head to one side. “Just seem a man. You aren’t a changeling, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“Vampire?”

The corners of my lips tightened. “No.”

Emma started counting off fingers. “Deathless warrior risen from the grave? A faerie prince? Demon bound in a man’s flesh? Automaton? Disguised deva? Lycanthrope? Homunculus?”

When I’d refuted all of these, the young noble huffed and propped her cheek on one fist. “Boring. You’re boring.”

“Life’s full of little disappointments, milady.”

“Well,” Emma said with a sigh, leaning back again. “So long as that pretty axe of yours isn’t for show, I suppose you’ll have to do.”

I started to ask her for clarification when the coach landed. I grit my teeth, grabbing the iron handhold on the ceiling now I knew its purpose. After another minute of rough going, the coach stopped.

Emma frowned. “We should still be miles from the estate.”

“Why not just fly all the way?” I asked.

“It’s dangerous,” Emma said, again infuriatingly vague. Was this how other people felt when I did that to them? I at least had good reason. This aristo brat just didn’t seem to think it worth explaining herself.

Before I could press for more information, the noble slid a wooden plate on the wall behind her. I caught sight of the black-clad driver, back turned to us and attention on the reins, a forested road beyond.

“Why have we stopped?” Emma asked the driver.

It surprised me when the previously mute driver replied. “People ahead. Could be trouble.” They had a light, husky voice that could have been male or female, old or young. Hard to tell with that cloth mask muffling them.

Emma frowned, trying to peer ahead. I couldn’t see well past her and the driver through that tiny window. “People? Are they bandits?”

“They’re armed,” the driver said. “And they don’t look happy.”

“Can we take to the air again?” Emma asked, worry creeping into her voice.

“Not with the sun up,” the driver said. “This carriage uses moonsilver to keep aloft. Won’t work except at night. ‘Sides, the chimera are exhausted.”

Emma pursed her lips in frustration, indecision writ across her features.

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I sighed, grabbed my axe, and pulled my cowl up to cover my face. “Stay here,” I ordered her. Then I opened the coach door and jumped to the ground. I found myself in a light wood. The kinds of trees around were starkly different from the lands I’d been in only the previous night, the climate warmer. We’d gone far north, I thought, and west. The early autumn that’d crawled across the subcontinent’s heartlands hadn’t yet reached this region. Morning dew clung to the leaves, and birds flitted through the trees.

I turned in the direction the coach and its chimera faced. A woodland road stretched before me, just wide enough for a single vehicle. It had been blocked. A tree had been cut down to stop our vehicle from progressing, and ten men — no, seven men and three women — stood in front of the wreckage, or atop it. They held simple weaponry, mostly homemade spears or farm tools, and only one wore armor — a hunched, elderly man with a battered breastplate and helm. I took him for an old veteran, for his scars and relaxed stance. The rest looked nervous.

Either farmers turned bandit, or just farmers. I stepped up to stand beneath the coach’s bench and spoke to the masked driver. “If this goes sour, I’ll clear you a path. Get the girl out of here.”

“If it goes sour?” The driver’s big tricorn dipped as they stared at me with those bright green eyes. “And how do you expect to clear a path through that big ash?”

“Just get her out of here,” I insisted, then walked forward to stand in front of the chimera before the driver could argue. The beaked creatures croaked in agitation, perhaps sensing the tension in the air. The group’s eyes fell on me. Some shifted nervously, others tightened their grips on their weapons. One, a big woman with a hefty axe I assumed had been used to fell the huge tree, glared at me. I let them take in the sight of my shadowed face, the faerie-forged axe in my hand, and the hint of black chainmail beneath my red cloak.

The old man in the scarred infantryman’s armor stepped forward. He had an old crossbow propped on his shoulder, loaded. “Hail, stranger.”

“Hail,” I greeted him.

He nodded to the coach. “We know who’s in that fancy wagon. We’d like you to hand her over to us.”

Simple. Direct. No idle banter or beating around the bush. I could appreciate that.

“Why do you want her?” I asked.

The old soldier opened his mouth to reply, but one of the others — the heavyset woman with the lumber axe — shouted over him. “Because she’s a devil-spawned witch.”

The old soldier winced. The others, however, looked like they more than agreed with the woman. The veteran fixed his attention on me after glaring the others to silence. “Who’s the girl to you, stranger? I can see you’re well armed. She hire you? You a mercenary?”

I rested my axe against on one shoulder, mirroring how he held his crossbow. “Close enough. I wasn’t aware the Inquisition recruited farmers to do their work for them. In fact…” I flashed a smile. “I wasn’t aware there’d been an inquisition since the Fall War.”

The old man shrugged. “Church has nothing to do with this. The Carreon girl’s presence threatens our families.” His tone turned reasonable. “You don’t even have to hand her over.” He nodded to the coach. “Just turn that wagon around and go. Don’t come back, you or her, and this business can be done.”

“Denic!” The woman with the axe snapped, outraged.

“We don’t need to solve this with blood,” the old man, Denic, shot back. “She’s a child, Agnes.”

“She’s a blight who brought this evil down on us.”

“I hate to interrupt,” I said, drawing their attention back to me, “but I admit, I’m not fully caught up on this whole…” I waved a hand vaguely at them. “Drama. What exactly is my charge responsible for?”

It was the burly woman, Agnes, who answered me. “There’s an evil that walks these lands, and she’s responsible. Her bloodline dabbled with dark things and got themselves cursed. Now she’s afflicted the rest of us with that curse. More than that, she’s invited wicked things to Lord Brenner’s demesne, after he took her in and sheltered her. She dabbles in sorceries and heresies of the vilest sort.”

I nodded slowly. “You’ve witnessed this?”

Agnes lifted her chin. “I lost two brothers and an uncle to the hellspawn her family brought to these lands.”

“And this vile sorcery?” I pressed, canting my head to one side.

Agnes’s nostrils flared. “If you don’t believe me, then surely you’ll believe the word of a holy man! He’s seen it with his own eyes. Eskinder!”

She had an impressive voice. Several of those standing near her winced at the shout. After a moment, a scrawny man in his middle years with a tuft of prematurely gray hair and dark skin slid into view. He’d been cowering behind several of the villagers. He adjusted his golden-brown preacher robes and made a visible effort to stand straighter, though his features looked ashen with nervousness.

“I saw it,” he said. “Near the lake south of our village. She spoke with a dark apparition there, a fiend right out of the smoldering Pits.” He swallowed, clutching the auremark dangling from his neck. “A she-elf upon a monstrous steed pierced by many blades, with black wounds for eyes and hair like spindle-woven shadow about her pale dress. Fair she was, and terrible to behold!” He’d started to breathe heavier during his speech, and clutched his auremark tightly.

I lifted an eyebrow, and the old soldier threw a sidelong glance at the preoster.

Agnes didn’t seem to note the edge of infatuation in Eskander’s speech. She squared her shoulders in triumph. “There! Consorting with witch-elves and fiends out of Hell. Do you need more proof than that of a priest’s own word?”

Dennic sighed, scratching at a neck red with rash-marks. “This business about a dark spirit haunting our land is true, stranger. It showed up around the same time her clan did, and it’s haunted us for years. If we don’t act, we’ll all end up on the spit.”

“The Burnt Rider will leave us alone if we hand her over!” One of the others cried out.

“Nay,” another growled, “we need a cleansing. Llynspring and Kilcast were spared the wars because we burned the Recusant out before their rot could set in.”

“A Recusant, am I?”

All went silent. I sighed and turned to meet Emma’s angry amber eyes. “I told you to wait in the coach.”

The young noble met my gaze evenly. “I am of the blood of a High House. I do not cower from peasants.”

I winced. The reaction from the “peasants” was immediate, and predictable.

“It’s her!”

“Heir of Heaven preserve us—”

“Now everyone, calm—”

“Surrender, Carreon fiend!”

Hard to say who said what. I stepped in front of the girl and brandished my axe. As I drew on power, a ghost wind stirred my red cloak around me.

“Do not move.”

My auratic command struck the forest road like a thunderclap. All sound ceased. The leaves stopped dancing in the wind, the forest animals stopped chittering. Every person on the road froze. Agnes had lifted her axe and stepped forward as though to cleave me or Emma in twain, and I saw her eyes go wide as the magic washed over her.

Emma twitched at my side, gasping. She lurched, one hand on the sword she’d half drawn from its sheath. I hadn’t directed my Command to any specific person, knowing she’d do something stupid too. That lack of focus made it briefer and less powerful — I needed to figure something out, and fast.

Diplomacy seemed to have gone out the window with the young noble’s appearance. I made my voice commanding, though lessened the weight of aura in it. “Get back in the coach.”

Emma blinked, turning to me. “But—”

“Now!” I snapped. She flinched. I didn’t have time to make sure she followed my order. Instead, I turned toward the local commonfolk and their barricade and focused on my inner wellspring of power — my Shadow Self.

All people, all things, have aura. Humans, Eld, beasts. Even trees and hills, rivers and mountains. Not every being is aware of their own soul, and fewer still know how to wield it like a second limb, or a blade.

I made mine a guillotine. I muttered under my breath, increasing in volume as I felt my power shape itself. I have no Art of my own — I called on one of the myriad phantasms I’d inherited from my vows, the memory of a long passed Knight Alder who’s technique had been alloyed into the Table, and from it into me.

I’d once watched a member of my order use Godsven’s Dawn to sever a hurricane in half, faltering the worst of the storm. I had nowhere near that potency, even before my powers had been crippled. Still, I believed it would be enough to smash an already fallen tree. I lifted my axe, and as I did an amber-tinted light bloomed around me. It condensed around my weapon, making the axe appear larger, brighter.

The villagers let out cries of shock and awe. I’d have to hope they’d already overcome my Command, and would get out of the way. With an echoing shout, I swung the axe down in a movement that used every muscle in my body, nearly sinking the weapon’s bit into the road. A column of pale golden light sliced down the roadway, barely thicker than the blade of the instrument I used. There was sound — a strange, surreal tone not unlike music — and a ripple as though a blade of narrow sunlight had broken through a gap in high clouds.

The fallen ash erupted. Wood rippled and cracked, as thought it had been in a campfire for too long, and shrapnel scattered through the forest. I probably should have anticipated that, and inwardly winced.

When the dust had cleared, the locals had scattered, or thrown themselves to the ground in panic, and the tree had a trench carved through it. The edges of that wound glowed with heat, and the woods were strewn with debris. It wouldn’t be wide enough for the coach, not quite, but we’d have to make do.

“Move!” I roared. Thankfully, the driver heard me. The chimera let loose angry squawks as reins cracked, and the wheels of the coach began to grind against the loose cobbles of the road. I dodged aside right before the claw-hooves of the beasts trampled me, grabbing one of the vehicle’s ornate rungs to hoist myself up.

We barreled toward the splintered tree. Gold-tinted fire still crawled across parts of the road, but I didn’t worry about it setting the woods ablaze — mine wasn’t a natural fire, and its touch on the natural world tended toward the gentle. The would-be bandits shouted curses at us. One even tossed their hatchet, bouncing it harmlessly off the side of the carriage.

I kept clutching the vehicle’s side, glaring at the ambushers as the chimera smashed through the blasted tree. I remained on alert until we’d torn down two hundred feet or more of road, leaving them well in our wake. Only then did I peek into the coach’s window. Lady Emma sat inside, glowering and sullen.

“You and I,” I told her, “need to have a chat.”

Emma scowled, propped her head on her fist, and tsk’d.