Lias… where do I even begin with him?

He’s one of my oldest friends, and I don’t trust him a wit.

He’s been with me through some of my bloodiest and best years, and I’d trust him with my life.

Part of me had believed I’d never see him again. Part of me had hoped I wouldn’t — I didn’t like the idea of meeting someone I’d known so well, only to see and feel like a stranger.

We made a fire in the cover of the trees. Whatever power Lias held over the weather, it didn’t seem capable of taking any of the chill out of the air. I didn’t let him use his sorcery to start up a flame, wanting the time it took to gather firewood and light it to gather my thoughts as well. Then we sat for a while, neither of us seeming to know what to say or how to begin.

Lias had never much liked silence. He broke it first. “Been a long time,” he said. He had a light voice, quick as a bird-trill sometimes, so you had to keep sharp if you wanted to catch every word.

I grunted something halfway to acknowledgment. I had a long stick in my hands, which I idly broke into smaller pieces. My eyes were on the stick and the fire — I felt a strange anxiety that if I looked at Lias, he might vanish like one of the ghosts who strayed close most nights.

“I like the cape,” Lias observed. “Suits you, better than that green one the Table gave you anyway.” He sniffed, and wrinkled his long nose. “Ugh. I take it back, that thing reeks of Briarfae. Where’d you get that?”

“A wicked angel,” I said. “In return for saving a girl.”

Lias lifted his one visible eyebrow. I saw no hint of gray in the loose strands of black hair escaped from his head wrap, and he had few wrinkles on his sun-kissed skin. How old was he? Forty-five? He’d been the oldest of our trio, and I’d expected some of that age to show. Other than his strange garments and the missing eye, he’d hardly changed.

“Heh.” Lias began fishing around in his packs, laid out by his side where he’d propped himself along with his staff against a fallen tree. “I’d almost forgotten your lack of verbosity. I ask you about your faerie cloak, and you give me barely a sentence and a book’s worth of questions.”

He pulled a pipe out of his belongings, the motion drawing attention to the rings on his hands. It was a beautiful piece, black wood with inlays of silver and onyx, crafted into the shape of two serpents entwined together. He put it between his teeth and it lit on its own, flaring briefly with ruddy light before emitting a curling line of smoke. He blew some of that smoke out of his nostrils, then his lips, and sighed in satisfaction.

Perhaps it was just the light, but the smoke looked too dark. Like gaseous shadows.

“Bloody hard finding you,” he said, leaning back against his packs. “Smart, hiding in an old Sidhe sanctuary. I couldn’t find a way in, even covered by the blizzard. Thought the faerie spiders would come out and eat me if I strayed too close, so I started making noise, and what do you know!”

He twirled the long fingers of his left hand, as though presenting me like the magician he’d once been, then settled back. “Glad you came out, anyway, and not something else.”

I had so many questions — what had he been doing in the eight years since I’d seen him last? Was he well? Was Rose well? Why hadn’t he tried to find me sooner? Why hadn’t he spoken to me after the trial? I remembered it still, that day. The shame I’d felt, Markham Forger’s somber voice, the dull heartache I hadn’t been able to quench with three years of war.

What did he want? Because he had to want something.

Instead, I swallowed all that bitterness and said, “How did you find me?”

“Interesting story, really.” Lias smirked and leaned forward, a bit of black smoke trailing through his teeth as he flashed them. “Honestly, I’ve been hearing rumors about you for years. Or, well, I assumed they were about you. Rosanna kept dismissing them, chose to believe all the nobles who said these sightings of a shadowy vigilante in a red cloak who fit your description were just tall tales — easy to attribute every death and assassination across the land to a bogeyman, especially if it keeps fingers pointed off the nobles.”

I believed I caught most of that barrage. I had to suppress a flinch at his casual mention of Rosanna.

“But then!” Lias gesticulated at me with his ornate pipe, causing smoke to curl in complex shapes with every motion. It seemed to linger in the air rather than evaporating — probably just the cold. “You showed up at old Harrower’s sendoff, wielding the axe yourself. Word’s spread about that little show, let me tell you. Course, hard to say whether everyone’s more interested in the Red Hood or the Burnt Elf. Poor Maerlys. I saw her last year, briefly. Mad as you like, now.”

“You were there?” I asked him. “At Rhan Harrower’s execution?”

“No, no,” he said, waving a hand so the black vapor scattered before his face. “I have contacts. Spies. I’m a spymaster, now!” He grinned and spread his hands out again, displaying himself.

“When weren’t you?” I asked, letting a wry note creep into my voice.

“Oh, piss off. Fair, though. Well, it’s official nowadays. I am now, officially, the Master of Crows for the Azure Round, Lord of the Mirrors, Chamberlain of the Accorded Realms.” He dipped into a courtly bow, which looked odd from his seated position. “Feel free to be very impressed.”

“I would be,” I said. “Only, I’d have to be surprised to be impressed. You always did have your sights high, Li.”

That old diminutive shifted something between us, cutting a cord of tension I’d felt and struggled to name. Lias’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and I felt some of my own uneasiness ebb. Not all, though. I had a suspicion I knew where this led.

“So it really is you?” Lias asked. “You’re the Headsman of Seydis, Al?”

I tore my eyes from his, looking off into the woods. “Yes.”

“How long?” My oldest friend asked.

“Five years. No, six now.” I frowned, thinking back. “I wandered for a time after the war. Got lost.”

Lias seemed to understand the weight of those last two simple words. He didn’t interrupt, a rare boon from him.

“One day, in late fall — I remember the air already felt like daggers on my skin — I stumbled piss drunk into an old shrine. One of those you find on the road sometimes, that travelers pray to. I prayed.”

I turned my head back to meet his eye. “They answered, Lee. The Choir. They told me I’d played a part in breaking everything, but I could do something to fix it too. The land was full of rot, little cancers scattered all over. They gave me this to prune them.”

I placed my hands on the axe. Lias’s eyes went to it. A small frown touched the corners of his mouth.

“Only,” I continued, “it’s hard to believe in it anymore.” I tossed the bundle of sticks I’d broken up into the fire.

“What’s that?” Lias asked, leaning forward.

“Evil,” I said. “Everyone’s so angry. They hurt people. They hurt themselves. There are tyrants and madmen, and most of them I didn’t feel much guilt cutting. But I don’t feel… righteous. I don’t feel like I’m dispensing justice, or making the world gentler. I just feel like I’m putting down sick, angry old chimera too lost in their own pain to know what’s happening to them. I’m tired, Li.”

I hadn’t meant to say it. There’d been a time we’d talked like this, and I guess I just… slipped back. I regretted the words immediately.

“Sorry,” I said. “Five minutes, and I’m already unloading my baggage on you.” I ran a hand through my hair, sighing. “You’re probably not here to reminisce, mighty man you are now.”

Lias gave me a wistful smile. “Afraid not.”

“You here to kill me?” I half whispered the words. A log in the fire split, scattering sparks into the air. Not a single wisp or ghost had approached us from the woods — the Magi scared them off.

Lias went very still. “Is that what you think?” He asked, all emotion draining from his words.

I shrugged. “You’re an agent for the Accord. I know what I must look like to the lords. A vigilante, or a murderer, or an unsanctioned assassin. They’d speculate, but it all boils down to the same.” I flashed my own chill smile. “You and I both know you’re the one they’d send, if they decided to do something about it.”

Rosanna would send Lias if she decided to be rid of me, an iron-cold part of my soul whispered.

Lias sat up straight, bracing one hand on his knee. He propped the elbow of his right arm on the other knee, so the pipe hung loose in his fingers. There was definitely something wrong with the smoke. It didn’t evaporate, only curled and formed new shapes in the air. I thought I saw a near consistent shape — something serpentine. It coiled around his arm, his head. Alive.

I hadn’t taken my hand off the head of my axe, either. I hadn’t yet decided if I’d defend myself.

“You have changed,” Lias finally said. “If you believe Rose would do that.”

I scoffed. “She’s a queen. More than that, now. She’s a leader of the Accord, and has nations to look after. It’s exactly what she’d do, and you know it. She’s done it before, with you and me as her hands.”

Lias’s jaw clenched, then unclenched. Finally, spitting a curse he said, “I’m not here for that.” After a moment’s pause he added, almost thoughtfully, “You idiot.”

Not quite a denial of the possibility. Even still, I found some of the tension in my shoulders easing. I slipped my hand off the axe. “Then what are you here for, O’ Mighty Wizard?”

“In part,” Lias admitted, “for curiosity. I wanted to know if it really was you, if you were still… I don’t know. Alive, I suppose. I’ve kept tabs on you, or tried to, but those faerie knights taught you well. You kept losing my familiars, and I had so many distractions. I…”

He sighed, and spread his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I gave up. It seemed like you wanted to be left alone, so I left you alone.”

I grunted. “Then what changed?”

“…A lot.” Lias sighed and propped an arm on his packs. “Things are happening across the land, Alken. The Accord is struggling, and those of us trying to keep it together are starting to feel the strain. Not to put too fine a point on it, but trust is awfully short these days. When King Rhan was caught, we thought that might be a win — but between the Sidhe Princess playing at being the next Face of Darkness, and then you…” He trailed off.

“What about me?” I asked, frowning.

“Well,” he continued, clearly hedging, “the Headsman has been a dark rumor for years. Now his — your existence is confirmed, everyone’s casting around blame. Of course, no one knows your true identity, but that hardly matters. What everyone knows is that there’s some enigmatic executioner running around chopping golden heads, and it has the aristocracy unnerved.”

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He leaned forward again, narrowing his one visible eye. “Leonis Chancer, the Bishop of Vinhithe… was that you?”

I opened my mouth, formed a lie, but before I even knew what I’d say Lias cursed and rubbed at his temple.

“Of course that was you. Whole blasted city spread a story about a red-cloaked devil cutting a bloody swathe through the streets… did you really mount the bishop’s head on the statue of the Heir in his own cathedral?”

“What?” I shook my head. “Of course I didn’t. And I didn’t cut a bloody swathe, I…” I did a swift count. “I killed maybe five people.”

“Fuck,” Lias spat. “Well, here’s my point — the nobles are already at one another’s throats, and now they all think you’re some secret weapon culling dissenting heads. Leonis Chancer was an advocate for more radical elements of the Faith, and a malefactor who publicly questioned the Emperor’s edicts. His death didn’t go over well, let me tell you.”

I felt a trickle of horror curl through me more cutting than the winter wind by far. “No,” I said, half to myself. “I didn’t… that was supposed to stop things from getting worse. They said…”

The Onsolain had told me Leonis Chancer would rile the Church into a bloody new crusade, an era of hate and oppression driven by zealotry.

Yet, he’d been dead more than a year when I’d laid eyes on the mark of the Inquisiton over a rural village.

Another thought, almost as terrible, came to me. “They think I’m working for the Emperor,” I said, meeting Lias’s eye again. “They think I’m Markham Forger’s assassin.”

“His,” Lias confirmed with a nod. “Or someone with near as much authority as him. The College. The Empress.” He shrugged. “As I said, fingers are being pointed all around. Even still, it’s a dark time in the cities, especially the capital. Garihelm is astir with conspiracy these days. Though, it’s not all bad. Western trade has brought in some truly wondrous things. There are as many polymaths rubbing elbows with the mighty as priests these days, and I have no qualms with that.”

He grinned suddenly, his eye alighting with the flicker of excitement I’d once been very familiar with. “You should see it all, Alken. Automatons, alchemical craft… they have these constructs that help print books faster. And the art! Hah! There’s a renaissance happening in the north right now.”

It seemed impossible. Then again, I’d been in the hinterlands so long, the Heir of Heaven might have returned and I’d have missed it.

“Is Rosanna in danger?” I asked. The question came out almost reflexively.

“Always,” Lias said. “But that’s being a monarch. Still, things are… difficult, these days. She’s speaking for her own people, as Queen of Karledale, and for the Realms at large as one of the Accords leaders. She has a lot on her plate, our girl. She’s changed too, in a lot of ways.”

He eyed me, as though taking my measure. He’d done much the same, when I’d been a surly teenager and he an ambitious young magician not much older.

“There’s a darkness in the capital,” he said, with all the gravitas of a conspirator, or a wizard. “A string of murders across this past year, all grisly, all inexplicable. I’ve detected traces of something… larger. It’s hard to untangle the web. The Edaean Guilds are embedding themselves in the streets, the nobles are weaving their own intrigues, and the Church — or more precisely the Priory — has revived the old Inquisition. Their veiled thugs have been in the streets, even questioning members of the nobility with little fear of reprisal. Some say they’re behind the killings, while others say they’re trying to find who’s responsible their own way.”

“They’re really back?” I asked, leaning forward and clasping my fingers together. “The heretic hunters?”

Lias nodded. “They’ve made small pushes out into the countryside — started in rural churches, really, zealous preosters whispering behind their pulpits, but they’ve gotten enough support to get the Clericon College to officially reinstate their office. They have this representative in the Emperor’s court, even, a Presider. Ghastly man.”

“I’ve seen them,” I said. “Or, signs of them.”

Lias nodded. “They’re but one of a host of problems swarming us, Al. Rosanna and I are trying to keep things together, but we’re not altogether trusted. Rose earned herself a rather draconian reputation back during the House War in the Dales, and I’m, well…” he sighed. “Having near half of Urn’s magi, including the most famous of them, throw in the with the Recusants didn’t do much for people’s trust in wizards. Not to mention, I’m Rosanna Silvering’s right hand. Folks don’t like talking to me much.”

He trailed off after that, leaving me to chew on everything he’d told me. It tasted like a particularly dense bit of tack, for certain. I listened to the fire, and tried to quiet my mind without much success.

“There’s something I’ve found out too,” I said. “Not sure it’s connected, but…” I shrugged.

Lias leaned closer to the fire. The smoke around him seemed to slow its coiling pattern, as though pausing to listen as well. “Tell me,” he said.

A wild thought struck me — what if Lias already knows?

What if he’s part of it?

The past decade had made me so paranoid. Lias was my friend, my oldest, like a brother to me.

I’d believed Fidei had been the love of my life. I didn’t believe I could truly trust anyone anymore, and hadn’t for a long time.

But Lias had the ear of the Accord, and it was the smart play. I told him about Caelfall, about Orson Falconer’s gathering of malefactors, about the fiend they’d bound, and about what I’d learned from Catrin and Karog. By the time I’d finished, the night had aged and I’d replaced the logs on the fire.

Lias didn’t reply immediately. Shaking his head as I sat back down he said, “Talsyn. I’ve had eyes and ears on Hasur Vyke for years, and I’ve warned the Round he’s still dangerous many times. They really had one of the demons from Elfhome with them?”

“I’m as certain as I can be,” I said. I hadn’t told him about my dream. I wouldn’t tell him. I was still trying to decide how to explain about the Crowfriars and the breaking of the Riven Order.

It was all too much. Too big.

Lias’s eye shot to mine. “Come back to the city with me, Alken. Help me get to the truth of these happenings.”

I flinched, having known where this was probably heading. Shaking my head I said, “I’ve never been any good at intrigue, Li, you know that. I’d just…” Mess things up again. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Lias gestured toward himself with the pipe. “That’s why you have me, old boy. I have contacts, a few places we can start.” His lips peeled back in a malicious grin. “It will be just like old times.”

Damn him. He knew what those words would do, how’d they would pull at me. He knew how badly I must want things to be like old times.

“I have responsibilities now,” I said. “People I’m looking out for. The Choir might call me any time. Besides…” I averted my gaze. “I doubt Rose would much like me being underfoot. Or within fifty miles, even.”

“She doesn’t blame you for any of it,” Lias said softly. “It was a war, Al. Wizard plots and royal conspiracies.”

“It’s not just that…” I sighed. Why did I have to explain to him, of all people? “I betrayed my oath to her, Li. I left after the war, deserted. Now I’m working for someone else. That’s the sort of thing you get your monarch’s leave for, you know?”

“Rosanna never was the forgiving type,” Lias agreed, wincing. “It’s true, she refused to talk about you for a long time.”

I narrowed my eyes, hearing something more in those words. “She send you for this? She ask me back?”

If he says yes, that’ll be it. I’ll go with him, and I won’t look back. I clenched my hand into a fist, waiting.

“You know her,” Lias said, the apology in his eyes telling me the truth of it. “She doesn’t ask for help. She has expectations, needs, and people she trusts to fill them.” He gestured toward himself. “I need someone who isn’t tied to any existing faction in the city. Someone who can handle himself, and most of all, someone who can be trusted. You fit all the criteria.”

He leaned closer, his hairless chin almost over the flames. “We need you, Alken. Please.”

I looked into his eye a long while. My Alder-blessed eyes could cut through lies and deceptions. I tried to see if he was lying to me. But his green eye remained clear, full of resolute earnestness.

Even still, I couldn’t be certain. Lias had always been a very, very good liar. I wanted to believe he’d be honest with me, but it had been fifteen years since we’d last worked together as First Sword and Court Mage.

People change. I’d changed. How much had he? I remembered a scrawny, flighty young man who always had a plot in mind and a deception on his tongue. The confident, flamboyant magicker in front of me seemed a far cry from that, though I could still see my old friend through all the melodramatic finery.

Propping my elbows on my knees and clasping my hands I said, “it’s a long road to Reynwell, and… it’s a lot to consider. I have responsibilities. People I’m looking out for.” I took a steadying breath. “I might need some time to think it over.”

Thinking it over was the smart play, no matter how much I wanted to go with him right then. Part of me wanted to sullenly send him packing, too, let him feel given up on.

An unworthy thought. Still, an honest one.

Lias stared at me a long while, framed in dark smoke like a watchful dragon, his one green eye too bright in the firelight. Then, nodding slowly he said, “is it Them?” He gestured toward the sky and the surrounding forest, encompassing everything in that motion. Then, leaning forward with an expression suddenly very intense he said, “I can protect you from the Onsolain, Alken. I’ve become very powerful these past years.”

I felt an involuntary shudder run through me that had nothing to do with the cold. I didn’t much like the almost manic light I saw in my old friend’s eye, as though he were eager to test himself against the Immortals.

“That’s part of it,” I admitted. “But there’s more. I have a ward now. More than that, I’m an excommunicate. Walking into the center of this new Inquisition’s attention seems reckless, and like to cause you more problems rather than solve any.”

Lias leaned back, ran his long fingers over his chin once, then held that same hand up in a gesture of surrender. “I understand.”

He stood then, picking up his staff and gathering up his pack.

“You don’t have to go so soon.”

Curse my traitorous mouth. I’d meant to let him leave remembering my silence.

“I’d like to catch up, old friend.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “But you know how it is. I can’t be away long, not these days.” He held up a finger. “In any case, I also wanted to give you a warning. These new agents, these inquisitors, they have very little respect for the old order. They won’t care that you once served Tuvon, and they hardly think of the Sidhe as holy. Step lightly, Alken. Times are growing stranger.”

Before he walked off into the night, he paused and looked back. I hadn’t stood yet. “If you do happen to find yourself up north, ask for a nobleman by the name of Yuri of Ilka. It’s one of my pseudonyms. Word will get back to me, and I’ll find you. Take care, Hewer.”

I nodded. “Take care, Hexer.”

He smiled, his bright eye glinting with mischief. “I’m a wizard. I can afford to be a bit reckless.”

As he walked into the night, the dark smoke emanating from his pipe grew thicker. It swirled around him, until he was lost in a veil of black vapor. A gust of wind caught the little cloud, and when it blew away the wizard had vanished.

Gone as suddenly as he’d appeared.

I sat a while with the fire, thinking. My old friends were in danger. My queen, the woman who’d made me a knight and set me on this journey a lifetime ago, was in danger from a host of enemies. Lias believed I could help them.

Garihelm was the capital of Reynwell, Markham Forger’s realm, which lay in the north. Talsyn was in the north. The Church and the Accord centered their power in the north.

The Council of Cael had been in Talsyn within the past year. A new Inquisition spread its shadow across the land with the backing of the theocracy. The Dead were restless, and Rysanthe had been in the north, quelling supernatural predators.

The Choir had been silent for far too long.

Powers moved in the world, and I was out of the loop. I felt like a man on a raft out at sea, feeling the distant winds of approaching storms. I’d sat still, my hands idle on the oar, for too long.

The world changed around me. I could ignore it, accept whatever came, and continue to linger in the Fane until the Onsolain finally gave me a new task. I could continue to do their work dutifully, maybe doing some good where I could. I had my responsibilities, as I’d told Lias. I wasn’t a spy or a master of intrigues. What could I do about these great happenings?

I’d left that life behind. For good, I’d believed.

It was dangerous to go, for me and Emma. She’d abandoned the nobility, and House Hunting hadn’t been happy about losing their ticket to greater heights. Lord Brenner had put out a bounty on my head within a week of us leaving Venturmoor, claiming I — a trickster sorcerer and sellsword — had kidnapped his young ward. Reynwell was far from Venturmoor, but I still suspected it might circle back around to trouble us one day.

More than that, traveling in this overlong winter would be foolhardy to the extreme. No telling when it would finally break, but still.

Emma had told me I was very good at coming up with excuses for not doing what I wanted to do.

“Maybe she has a point,” I said aloud.

She hadn’t clued in that I didn’t know what I wanted, most times. I longed to go back, to end this long exile. I’d also wanted to spit in Lias’s face. How dare he find me after all this time, only when he needed my help?

The fire crackled cheerfully in response. I sensed nothing malign in it this night, but I could still remember the voice I’d heard in it weeks before. Soon, it had crooned. So soon.

Lias hadn’t seemed to linger on my warning about the Council of Cael. He’d even claimed to be able to protect me from the wrath of the Onsolain, implying I could abandon their service — had he truly grown so strong?

Or was he just as arrogant and reckless as he’d been when we were younger?

Whatever the case, a storm gathered around Garihelm, the governing seat of the Accorded Realms. People I still cared about, including a woman I’d once sworn to serve and protect to my dying day, were in that city. Maybe she didn’t want to see me, but she didn’t need to. If her enemies were in the shadows, I could fight them there.

I stood, letting my red cloak settle to drift along the forest floor beneath me. I paced around the circle once, the faerie cloth trailing behind me until it circled the flame like a slow swirl of blood. I had my axe in my hand, and I studied its mirror-bright edge in the firelight, seeing my own reflection.

I’d waited years for a cause I didn’t have to question. One had fallen into my lap. Why did I balk?

Reaching into my collar, I fished out my medallion. My knight’s mark, with the golden aldertree of Seydis ringed in the silver sun of House Silvering.

Dei had asked me why, when I’d given it to her. What had I said to her?

As much as I want this to mean something, it’s just noise. I never cared about fighting for a nation, or a code… better you keep hold of it. You can remind me what’s worth fighting for, when I lose my way.

This is like your heart. You spent your whole life reaching for it. Are you certain you want to give this to me?

I’m certain.

How could I have been so stupid? Alken Hewer, the shame of the Table. They’d given me golden eyes to see evil, and I’d let it—

I clutched the burnt thing in my hand, feeling its torn edges biting at my palm. It would serve as a reminder now. A lesson. I’d never been a dashing knight in shining armor, no noble hero. Just a soldier with a strong arm and a thick head, easy to lead this way and that.

Well, I had a direction now. I had a war to fight. And long before I’d been either an Alder Knight or a headsman, I had sworn an oath.

North, then.

image [https://i.imgur.com/W82TpkS.png]