~ MACEL ~

Sam was gone for five days. Lieutenant Bennett huffed when they told her where he was, and she huffed again each morning when Sergeant Malleston called the roll and he wasn’t back yet. It’s not like he’d missed anything. Other than some exercise each day, and the tedium of the night watch, Bennett had found nothing for her soldiers to do. Sergeant Malleston’s skeleton crew had done the heavy lifting in building the fortress before they arrived.

Macel had spent some of his downtime at the stables, helping Bess out, but horses weren’t his specialty. He quickly found he was a hindrance there, especially once there was no more need to carry lumber and processed wood into place to build the stables and the horse-handlers’ little cottage to Speke’s satisfaction.

In the absence of anything better to do, the soldiers took to drinking. There was a kindling shed in the rear courtyard, flush against the outer wall of the barracks and overlooking Speke’s cottage; it had been well-stocked with firewood, but the weather had thus far remained warm, and there’d been little need for fires. Bored soldiers gathered there in the day. It was well-shaded, and away from the prying eyes of Bennett and Sergeant Donnelly.

Macel was sat with Delie and Dana Shroot, an old hand who’d been a homesteader in the backwaters of Malindei in her old life and had thus come up to help with Sergeant Malleston during the building phase of Plateau Watch, when Matt Grogan announced his presence. “I hope you’ve saved some ciders,” he said. “Look what just washed in.”

Behind him came Sam, looking sheepish with a bandage visible on the ankle. “You don’t all need to rush to me at once,” he said.

“You needn’t stress about that,” said Delie.

Sam smiled. “The good news is, I brought food.” Matt opened the door a little wider to reveal a barrow full of goodies, all in bags stamped with ‘UNITY RATIONS’.

“Before we eat any of that,” said Delie, “tell me who you stole it from.”

“I didn’t steal a bite. It was a gift.”

Delie laughed. “Why would the hospital give you a barrow full of food?”

“Oh, they didn’t,” he said. “Funny thing, there was this girl in the hospital with a broken finger. I got to talking to her—because our injuries were so similar—”

“A broken finger and a bruised ankle,” Macel interrupted. “Yeah, it’s the same thing.”

“Macel gets it,” said Sam, pointing a dramatic finger his way. “Anyway, I got to talking, and it turns out we’ve got loads in common. So after they let me out of the hospital I went to her place for a couple of rounds of rutting.”

Delie winced at Sam’s choice of word. “And she was so bowled over by your... ‘rutting’... that she just gave you a load of food?”

“Pretty much,” Sam nodded. “She’s a clerk at the food stores, so she can basically take whatever she wants and just change the figures in the books to make it like it was never there in the first place. Apparently the reeve who’s supposed to be in charge of it all is too busy on other things to really care what goes on at the stores.”

“What’s this girl’s name?” asked Dana Shroot.

“Hortense,” said Sam, immediately.

Delie blinked. “Fair play, I didn’t expect you to come up with a name like that. Your imagined conquests normally have more common names.”

“I didn’t choose her name,” Sam protested.

“You didn’t? So while you were convalescing in the hospital, you managed to meet a girl who was so blown away by your prowess that she immediately agreed to commit fraud for you?” Delie pretended to swoon. “You’ll have to anoint me with your magic cock.”

“Pick a time,” said Sam, raising an eyebrow. Delie flushed red and sat down.

Macel reached over and grabbed an ear of corn from the top of the pile. He bit into it, sending bits of kernel to the dusty floor. It was delightfully sweet, far better than the rations Lieutenant Bennett had insisted that the cook serve the garrison as breakfast, and it set his mouth watering. “Tell this Hortense that Macel says thank-you,” he said. “She’s a life saver.”

Even Delie had to admit that Sam had brought a boon. She helped herself to a handful of bell peppers, and tried not to let anybody see the loaf of sourdough she’d stuffed beneath her serge for later consumption.

It was surprising how quickly life became routine, made up of habit. There was the uninspiring breakfast, the days spent on whatever inane task Lieutenant Bennett could concoct, the afternoons in the kindling shed. All passed Macel by. They were the same each day, long shorn of anything interesting. Only the evenings held true excitement. The evenings were when he visited Bessily at the stables.

She always stayed with the horses until darkness came; he often brought a bottle of amber cider, or whatever else he happened to have, and the two of them would drink it together by the light of the moons. They always talked, but they never said a thing. Bess was occupied by her horses, it seemed, and not much else. They had names taken from the stories: this chestnut brown stallion was called Bersam, that piebald mare was Fennia. Adelina was shy, and hid at the back of her stabling whenever Macel was around. Claine was too friendly, and Bess always had to restrain him. There were altogether too many of them, with too many names. Macel couldn’t remember half.

Last night had been just like any other. He’d crept from his bedroom when the others had fallen asleep, taking care not to wake them as he crossed through the common room. Delie was sleeping on a chair, right in his path, but she did not stir. His passage was unimpeded.

The night air outside was still; a light rain fell gently on his shoulders, and wispy clouds cast shadows over the faces of the moons. The stables stood at the edge of a slight promontory, and beyond them the drop was steep. Next to them was the farriers’ cottage, where Bess and the others lived. Speke the stablemaster kept a small household. Half a dozen had come with him, farriers and stablehands and a solitary maid. Enlisting the help of some of the garrison, he and a thick-necked teamster had built an imposing cottage out of logs, roofed with sod, while Bess and the other women sheltered in the unused northern wing of Plateau Watch. Macel had enjoyed helping Speke with this; it was something to do, and a damn sight more stimulating than the predictable routine that had followed.

Bess was sheltering beneath the stable roof when he reached her. Her eyes were rimmed red. She was quite clearly upset, but when he asked her about it she said it was because she’d had a small hole in her boots, and some horse shit had managed to get in. They moved in silence to the grassland outside, to the narrow corridor of space between the stables and the cottage, where a stripped log had been set into the earth to serve as a bench. It was well-positioned; beyond the uneven fence the Easterwood rose tall, and from here they could see it well.

Bess drank most of the cider. She snatched the bottle as soon as Macel produced it, and would have downed the whole thing in one go if he hadn’t asked her to save some for him. And then she talked. “Elly used to like the horses,” she said. “They used to race them in the fields behind our house; she’d beg me to pick her up and set her in the tree so she could watch them going by. After she’d gone, the sight of a horse made me sick inside.”

“How did you end up doing a job like this?”

Bess shrugged. “Have you ever been to Lakestable?”

“I’ve never heard of Lakestable.”

She laughed. “You and everybody else. The name says it all. You grow up in Lakestable, you either work with horses or boats. I liked boats even less. Besides, dad always said I didn’t have the strength to row. Anyway, it wasn’t so bad. A couple of days in the stable and the horses didn’t bother me anymore.”

They watched the stars together for a few minutes. Rather, Bess watched the stars. Macel watched her nostrils, the way they flared every time she breathed. Sometimes, she’d manage to line a breath up perfectly with the harrumphing of one of the horses.

She ran an idle thumb along the top of one of the fence-posts. “Do you ever feel like coming here was a mistake? I hated home, I couldn’t wait to get away. Now I’m on the opposite side of the universe and all I can think about is everything I love about home.”

“If it makes you feel better, you’re not on the opposite side of the universe,” said Macel. “Just the galaxy.”

Bess nodded sarcastically. “That makes all the difference. Thanks. Have you got any more cider?”

“Not tonight.”

“At home there was always more cider. That was the best thing about it. All the fields outside Lakestable were filled with great big orchards—some of them went on for miles, just thousands of apple trees. Every second house had a press. If apples weren’t your thing, it was time to start looking for somewhere else to live. We used to have this festival, the Matilda Feast it was called. I think it was religious once, but nowadays it’s just an excuse to eat a lot and drink even more.” She laughed. “One time, this old lady made an idol of Matilda out of old wood and scraps—really impressive, must have been a year’s worth of work.”

“It sounds amazing,” said Macel.

Bess nodded. “It was. And then someone hooked it up to a keg, so every time a new cup was poured it looked like she was pissing into the glass.”

“You should have a Matilda Feast here, when the time comes. People love eating and drinking. Shit, you can do anything you want to. This is our chance to start again. Keep the bits of home you miss and let the bad bits wither away in your mind.”

“It’s strange.” Her smile burned away. “When I’m alone with the horses, I find myself thinking about all the things I used to do when I was home, all the places I used to visit. I took it all for granted. I was happy there sometimes, truly I was. But I lumped it all in with Mother and Father, and I begged to leave. I begged Speke to take me with him, like the idiot I am. I’ll never go home again.”

He squeezed her hand. It was warm and soft, and it brought a smile back to her eyes. “You’re far too young and beautiful to say ‘never’,” he said. “It’s not like we’re here for life.”

“I am.” That was the last thing she’d said all night, but she sat there in silence for a few hours as the rain grew heavier and then subsided. He sat with her the whole time, so she wouldn’t be alone—and when the wind blew a gale, they dashed across the yard together, giggling all the way, and warmed themselves in front of Master Speke’s crackling hearth. It was the small hours of the morning by the time he got back to his bed. He’d sunk onto the mattress anticipating some good hours, but he wasn’t as lucky as all that.

A knocking on his door woke Macel. Hot, still air had settled in the room, without a hint of a breeze. He shifted to find a cool patch of bed. “I’m sleeping,” he said, without even opening his eyes. If he kept them shut he could hold on to the sleep inside. But the knock came again, and again.

“Ignore me if you want,” came Sam’s voice through the elm door. “But your girlfriend wants you, and if you keep her waiting much longer I’m going to have to make a move on her myself.”

That got him out of bed.

“You’ve missed breakfast,” Sam muttered, as Macel joined him in the hallway outside the bedchambers. “Shit, you’re going to miss lunch too if you don’t hurry up.”

“Where’s the Lieutenant?” Usually if somebody didn’t turn up for breakfast, Lieutenant Bennett would have them dragged bodily out of bed and forced to eat their rations still in their sweat-soaked nightclothes.

Sam shrugged. “She rode out with the Sergeant at first light. I don’t believe she’s back yet.” It wasn’t the first time she’d done this. A week or so back, she’d requisitioned a horse from Speke’s stables—a grey filly named after the heroine Berengue of the lilacs—and not returned until after dusk. Bess had been furious. She’d had to wait at the stables for the Lieutenant’s return, so she could make sure Berengue the filly was properly stabled for the night.

If Lieutenant Bennett was gone, Macel needed not worry about her wrath today.

The height of summer was the height of discomfort. In the three minutes it took Macel to cross the fort’s rear courtyard, dark patches of sweat had appeared in the pits of his arms.

Issy Cutler was tilling at the soil inside the low stone wall between the fort and Speke’s courtyard. A cotton blouse lay discarded atop the wall, and she had only a brassiere for her modesty. Greg Fentiman was crouched behind the wall, peering over to get a good look at Issy’s bare body. Macel called out to Fentiman: “A fine morning, isn’t it, Greg?”

Fentiman ducked quickly behind the wall... but not quickly enough. Cutler caught sight of him and whipped him with her sweat-drenched blouse. “Is your life so empty that you have to perv on me?” she asked. “Go on, before I fetch Sergeant Malleston.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Fentiman scuttled away, and Cutler put her blouse back on. She smiled at Macel and returned to the soil.

There was a narrow strip between the fort and Speke’s place, where a channel half a metre wide had been dug. Water trickled along it, diverted from a spring up on the southern hill; a single duckboard bridged the gap, balanced on parallel logs dug into the ground. On the other side of the board, the courtyard was floored with stone, from bricks hewn by labourers from the valley a fortnight hence.

Bessily was perched atop the split-rail fence, right on the join between two diagonals, beating a tune on the timber with her fingers. She’d woven two braids into her hair, which met as one at the nape of her neck and hung long down her back, and her face was painted with the gentlest kiss of pink. Gone were the drab brown dishabels she normally wore. In their place, she’d put on a dress of powder blue, the skirt hemmed with white lace that hugged her knees, and her favourite brown boots. A small leather purse hung from a strap around her neck. She grinned at the sight of him.

“You look lovely today,” Macel said.

“Speke gave me the day,” said Bess. “I thought we’d spend it together.”

“And what would you have done if the Lieutenant couldn’t spare me?”

Bess poked her tongue out. “You’ve never done any proper work, you always say so. Why would you start today?”

That wasn’t strictly true. From time to time, there was a decent workload. Work parties had ascended the hills either side of Plateau Watch to fell trees and fetch the lumber. It had been difficult, especially on those days when the sun seemed determined to boil the sweat on their skin. But it was work.

When the fences were done, there’d been no need for any more wood. Every day a handful of people drew search duty. The search for Corporal Bartley, Cailie and Warner consisted of scouring the land in a particular direction, marking it on the maps—or taking notes for the cartographers if it wasn’t on the maps—and being sure to be back by nightfall. Captain Mannam’s men were taking point on the search, but the Lord Constable was fairly laid back when it came to who did what, and he’d never complained about the Plateau Watch garrison mucking in. His Lieutenant, Baxendale, would pop along to the Watch every week or so to receive any updates on the situation.

Those not on search duty were given busywork that was either tedious or pointless, often both. Two days earlier, Macel had spent an hour picking stones out of the dirt. At the end of the hour, he’d found only a dozen stones, the largest no wider than a two-bushel coin. Under Bennett’s instruction, he’d thrown the stones back into the dirt when he was done, so the next person would have something to do.

At least he was still getting paid for it.

Still, he’d also be paid for spending the day with Bessily. And it would be considerably more fun.

He hoisted himself up on the fence beside her. “What did you have in mind?”

Bess jumped down, smoothing down her dress as she turned to him. “Follow me,” she said, smiling, and she was off. Macel caught up to her as she jumped off the duckboard, running south along the channel and cutting over the edge of the hills.

The woodlands started sparse a dozen feet from Plateau Watch’s outer wall, scrappy trees at first but thickening imperceptibly until the sun had to work to get to them and the guards on the wall could have no hope of seeing them. Bess ran until she was deep in these woods, brushing the stems of high-reaching flowers with her outstretched hands as she went.

At some point she disappeared behind a tree. Macel had glanced away from her for a second, perhaps to make sure he didn’t run at speed into a tree himself, and when he looked back she was gone.

“Bess! Bess, where are you?” His voice rebounded through the trees, echoing back at him. Only a brave mettysnatcher, watching him from a nearby branch, replied—a chitter-chatter as it scampered down the trunk of the tree and into a burrow somewhere. He kept his distance. Small mammals were not to be trusted. He’d embarrassed himself on the Merrowain Heights, the only man in history to lose a fight to a marten. Uncle Lynal had had to finish the bastard off, while Macel had lain on the ground clutching a bloodied arm. He wouldn’t embarrass himself like that again. Not in front of Bess.

He called again. “Bess, if you’re hiding, I give up.”

Nothing, at first. And then he heard a faint voice. “I’m just up here,” she said.

“I can’t see you,” he shouted, walking slowly. The ground was uneven, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt himself. Dead vegetation crunched beneath his shoes, and a fly came to drink of the sweat on his face. He swatted at the fly, which flew away.

Bess giggled. “Why did you hit yourself?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” said Macel. “It was a bug. Look, where are you?”

“Look to your right.”

He did, and there she was. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d missed her. She was sat on a fallen log, thick with moss. The dead bark came away on her dress as she stood. She turned her back to him. “Can you brush all that crap off?”

Macel brushed a load of the big chunks away, but most of it was stuck to her bottom. He hesitated. “Are you sure you want me to?”

“It’s just an arse, Macel, it won’t bite you.”

He tried to be as gentle as he could rubbing all the mess away, but that was easier said than done. The moss had made the bark wet, and some of the smaller bits had stuck fast to Bessily’s clothes. By the end he was picking individual lumps off and dropping them to the ground.

“You can’t run off like that,” said Macel, as Bess strained to examine the state of her dress. “I’d hate to lose you.”

“I’m not a dog,” she said, “and anyway, you found me. Not many would have bothered.”

“A girl like you is worth finding,” he said.

Bess scoffed. “You want to explain that to my parents?”

They walked for most of the morning, Bess leading the way through the trees as though she’d walked it a hundred times before. She didn’t run off again, in fairness, but Macel could see her growing impatient whenever the pace slowed down. In untouched woodland, that was often. Fallen trees remained where they landed, blocking the way without discrimination, and brambles grew thickly in places. All of this seemed to miss Bess, but it was right there a few seconds later when Macel made to follow her.

“Remind me where we’re going,” he said, when his stomach rumbled for the third time. He could feel his legs beginning to cramp. They must have been walking for three hours by now, or more. Did Bessily have infinite stamina? She’d not actually told him where they were going in the first place, nor had she given any hint as they’d traipsed through the woods.

She turned to him with a look of withering impatience, the sort a parent might give to a child three years behind in their development. “We have a job,” she said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“And we had to walk there? I thought you worked with horses.”

“We’re going to the lake, Macel,” she said. “Do you think a horse could handle this terrain? They could fall and break a leg. This is dangerous ground.”

“But it’s fine for us?”

“Well, you’re dispensible,” she said, with a mirthful face.

He laughed at the joke. “It’s nice to know how you really feel about me.”

“Oh, don’t be sensitive,” said Bess. “Come on, we should be speeding up. The sun’s nearly at its height.”

“Surely we could have gone around the woods,” said Macel. “I bet that would have been quicker.”

Bess shook her head. “No. This is the way.

The lake was one of those topics which had endured despite nobody in Plateau Watch being especially interested in discussing it. Matt Grogan reckoned he’d been the one to discover it, sitting just feet away from a cliff edge and the Eia Valley below. He’d gone wandering after a night of drinking, so he said, and ended up there by accident. Everyone else agreed that Matt Grogan was full of shit, and it had been Jackson’s cartographers who’d found it.

Bess stopped abruptly.

“Give me some warning next time you’re going to stop,” said Macel, “otherwise I’ll keep bumping into you.”

“We’re going the wrong way.”

“What? How do you know?”

She pointed at a big tree with a bowed trunk, a little way behind them, which was shedding viridian foliage with each gust of wind. The trunk was coated from top to bottom in soft moss. “Moss grows on the south side. We’re meant to be going south, the moss should be behind us.”

He squinted. “How do you know these things?”

“I spent my adolescence wandering,” she said. “I figured I should learn how to find my way back. Speke reckons I should be with the orienteering corps.”

“I didn’t think there was an orienteering corps.”

“That’s what I told him.” Bess jogged past Macel, back almost exactly the way they’d come. “It’s this way, I think.” She veered slightly to the right, rather than retracing their steps exactly, and before long they were moving through a dense blanket of trees. Little brown mettysnatchers with big black eyes skittered across the branches, and birds with the most delightful plumages of azure and ruby and salmon sang their twittering refrains in nests. The distant caterwauling of a grimalkin rang out amidst the trees. That put Macel on edge, but the cries never got louder.

Before long they had a good game going. Whenever Macel spotted another creature he’d never seen before, he’d point it out to Bess, who would come up with a name for it. The snow-white birds who made their nests amidst the lilac leaves of the tall, crooked oaks were bemenels. Those chestnut-furred scamps who poked their heads out from behind the thickets that lined the ground for long enough to snatch a mouthful of fruit weren’t called mettysnatchers at all, according to Bess—they were solliers. Macel wanted to catch her out, to get her to name the same animal twice. Often he’d point out things he’d already shown her. Every time, she named them correctly.

“You aren’t going to trick me,” she said. “So stop trying.”

The forest they walked through had a deceptively steep incline. It looked like nothing more than a gentle slope, the kind that could be breezed through without any noticeable effort. If it was as easy as it looked, Macel wouldn’t have been exhausted before they were even nearly to the edge. “I’m shattered,” he said, leaning against a rugged boulder. “This has beaten me. I don’t think we’re supposed to find the lake.”

“Then how do you explain that?” Bess was pointing through a tiny gap in the trees, through which the sun was shining brightly. There, unmistakeable, was the glint of water, warm and inviting.

“You said we had a job,” said Macel, as they walked through those trees towards the water. “What job?”

Bess stopped walking for long enough to flash him an enigmatic smile. “Treasure hunting.”

“Treasure hunting. Right. Mundane stuff then.” He traipsed after her. “Here was me thinking you wanted to have a picnic.” He groaned inwardly. Treasure was usually gaudy, useless stuff, not worth the effort to dig for. How was that any different to the pebble-searching he’d done for Lieutenant Bennett?

Between the woods and the lake, the grass sat at a gentle incline, fifty metres of the purest green. Flowers grew in every colour—bellflowers and amaranths, starfire and strawflowers. They combined in a heady perfume, strong enough to smell even away from the places they grew thickest.

Just short of the lake shore, Bess found a small boulder of sun-bleached rock upon which to sit. She removed her boots and socks, leaving them behind on the rock, and waded into the water. Macel loitered a while at the boulder, watching her.

“Hurry up,” she said; by now, she was knee-deep in the water, which nipped at the hem of her skirt and darkened the material. “It’ll be sunset soon.”

“Is it cold? The water?”

She shook her head. “It’s toasty.”

That was enough to set his mind at ease. He stepped forward, and at once discovered the lie. Beneath the surface, the water was frigid. “You’re a bloody liar,” he said, gasping.

Bess shrugged. She crouched down and started to dig at the sandy lake floor with a finger. Loosened silt swirled around her. Macel watched in bemusement, until suddenly she grasped at the sand.

“What have you found?”

Bess looked at him. “Nothing. False alarm.”

A dark pebble was captive in her fist. “What’s that, then?” Macel said.

“It’s just a stupid stone,” she said. “I thought perhaps it was something different.” She dropped the pebble with a splash. “Look, are you going to help? It’ll take me longer if I’m searching on my own.”

“I just don’t see the point,” said Macel. But he began to rummage around anyway. Once he’d got used to it, the water wasn’t actually that bad. It was clear, with just a hint of blue to it. He did wish he’d thought to take his socks off first, though. They would be uncomfortable on the walk back to Plateau Watch.

He looked over to Bess, who was practically lying in the water. Her reward, for having the foresight to go in with bare feet, was the attention of tiny little fishes, no bigger than a bug. They’d swarmed around her toes. Every now and then she’d shake a foot around. The fish scattered when she did, some of them in Macel’s direction, but they found no reward, so before long they came back to her.

So there were at least some upsides to his idiocy.

He didn’t see anything but sand, and rock beneath it. “Tell me what we’re looking for, at least,” he said. “Otherwise I’ve got no chance.”

“An idol,” said Bess.

“An idol?”

“A carved figure. The Willow Queen.”

“What’s the Willow Queen?”

Bess shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never read anything about a Willow Queen.”

“Then how will we know when we’ve found her?”

“I can’t imagine there are too many idols in the lake.”

Macel laughed. “Why should there be any at all?”

Bess pouted. “I don’t know why, I just know that there are. She told me.”

“Who?”

“The moonlight woman.”

Macel laughed again. “The moonlight woman? Bess, is this some sort of trick? Have you got Sam and Delie hiding behind a tree somewhere, ready to come out and laugh at me as soon as I start to dig around in this?”

She pursed her lips. “It’s not a trick,” she said.

“Then who’s the moonlight woman, and why does she sound like something out of a ghost story for little children?”

Bess paled. “Ella,” she said, after a few seconds’ silence. “You know Ella Trang?”

He did, albeit only vaguely. She’d shared a floor of the tenement with Bess and Delie, and once or twice she was even around when Macel visited. Delie said she was a biologist, or studying, and always busy working. “I know Ella,” he said. “How does she know there’s a carved figure here?”

“You’d have to ask her,” said Bess.

He chuckled. “I’ll take your word for it.” He was still doubtful that there’d be even one idol here. If Bess came to think that there were lots of them, she’d probably want to come and search for more every day until the end of time. That wasn’t his idea of a good time. There was no limit to the other, more fun things they could be doing instead—even just sitting next to the water with a good basket of lunch would be a better use of his day.

They continued their search until dusk, without any joy. Macel was the first to give up, a full hour before Bess did. He’d eaten nothing, and his stomach was punishing him for it. The day had already been wasted, so he figured he might as well enjoy some of it. He sat on the grass beside the water, nursing pruned fingers, with his socks and boots laid out beside him in the hopes that the sun might dry them at least a little bit before he had to put them back on.

Eventually, Bess had had enough. She sighed and trudged out of the lake, dripping water, her purse held tight to her. She was a sight to see. Her clothes were soaked through, to the point of transparency. Macel looked away from her as often as he could; it was too easy otherwise for his gaze to slip and catch a full view of her breasts, not even slightly concealed by three layers of outerwear. She shivered in the still air.

“Did you find anything?” he asked, looking south towards the valley.

“No. But there’s something. I swear it. We’ll have to come back tomorrow. I’ll have a word with Speke, I’m sure he’ll let me have another day—”

“I’m not coming back tomorrow,” said Macel, “and neither are you. There’s nothing here, Bess. You’re wasting your time.”

“There’s an idol—”

“And who put it there? Idols don’t just come into being. Somebody needs to carve them, and we’re the first people here. Whoever the Willow Queen is, Ella Trang is pulling your leg.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But she said.” Her face was set resolute, hardened by disappointment, a rare scowl etched on her brow.

Macel said nothing. Instead he offered her his coat, to give her some semblance of modesty, and started the long walk home. Bess, thankfully, took the lead before he’d got very far. Without her, he’d probably have got completely lost.