Felix and Janus were carted through the fields outside the forest by the blonde-haired woman formerly known as Dame Fortune. Before they left, she had played a song on her oud and her hair wove itself into a braid, a trick that made Janus clap like a delighted child. She had also changed out of the long robe into a simple light-brown dress that allowed her more freedom of movement.

The former Dame held the reins of the mule with an aplomb that was a bit shocking for Felix. His uncle told him when they were among their comrades, singers did not bother with the traditional customs separating men and women, so there was probably nothing strange about this. Still, hearing about it was one thing and seeing it was another.

They were headed toward what she called the Barracks. Janus had been questioning Felix about the fight since it ended but he was too exhausted to do anything but wave him off. The Dame was too busy with the mule to even respond. Eventually, some random distraction caught the boy’s attention and he stopped bothering him. For now.

The first thing the Dame had done after changing out of her robe was to free the boar from the tree its tusk was caught in and tie it to a different tree. Janus didn’t want to just leave the animal tied up in the woods, but the Dame assured him someone would be along to fetch Liste, which was apparently its name. As for the man Felix had knocked out, he was still unconscious and nestled in a pile of pine needles in the back of the cart where the Dame had laid out for him.

Seeing him laid out like that, Felix suddenly felt like he had recovered enough to answer Janus’s questions.

“I found that guy there in the forest, in a sort of daze. He was awake, but he didn't notice me at all even though I was as close to him as we are now. I thought he might have something to do with the boar, so I laid him out with my lute.”

“Why’d you think that?” Janus asked.

“Well, he had these pipes…”

As he told the story, Felix realized it had been a huge leap in logic to assume the man was controlling the boar just from the presence of some pipes at his side. But once you accepted that unnatural things were occurring all around you, it was the sort of leap you had to make. Thank God his guess had been right.

That wasn’t the only thing Felix had to be thankful for. Most lutes wouldn't have survived being used as a bludgeoning weapon, but his uncle’s hand-me-down was still intact. Felix had assumed the old man was making excuses for shoddy craftsmanship when he said the instrument was built so you could use it as a budgeting weapon without it shattering in your hands, but it seemed he had been serious.

Any singer worth his strings will make people want to kill him, Uncle said. But most of them are drunk and a blow about the head will cure them of their ire.

“Why’d you come back?” Janus asked. There was no tone of reproach for him running away. “And why play a song at the pig? Were you trying to lull it to sleep or something?”

“I came back because I didn’t want to fail the test,” Felix answered honestly. “I wish it was something noble, like I didn’t want you getting killed, but it wasn't. I just thought there had to be some way for me to pass. And well, I’m a singer and she’s a singer, so I thought the idea was to copy her. She said it was a song of misfortune, and if it worked on us so maybe it would work on the boar.”

Until then, Felix hadn’t given much thought to the ramifications of what had happened. So, not only was magic real, he had done it himself. Had he made a pact with the devil without realizing it?

“Hey, Mistress Fortune or whatever you’re called, is what I did back there magic?” Felix asked the Dame.

“It’s not magic, it’s Crafting,” the Dame answered curtly.

“What’s the difference?” asked

“The Church won’t have you arrested for Crafting. Usually. Now as I’ve said, Yew will answer your questions later.”

Felix got the impression the Dame was annoyed and decided not to press further.

“What about you?” he asked Janus. “How’d you learn to fight like that? I don’t even know how you were doing it, considering your size.”

Janus shrugged. “I have no idea.” He stared at his own hands like he had never seen them before. “It didn’t even feel like it was me. I mean, it did but...there was something else there too, moving me.”

Felix sighed. There were only so many mysteries a person who had just been beaten bloody by a boar could deal with at once. “I guess we’ll ask this Yew guy about that too.”

In a moment, Felix saw the spire of a tower rise up out of the hill they were climbing. “You can find me in the tower,” the voice within the sparkling dust had told them. But in another moment, a different tower appeared next to the first, then another and another.

His mouth hung open. This wasn’t a Barracks, it was a fortress. There were four different towers made of light stone with different buildings branching out from them. There was a crenellated wall of varying heights surrounding it, but many of the buildings dwarfed them, as if the people inside knew they wouldn’t need to rely on walls if they were attacked.

“How have I never heard of this place?” asked Felix. “It’s huge!”

“As I said, save your questions for Yew,” the Dame answered as they reached the crest of the hill and began descending toward the fortress of the Song-Catchers.

Felix saw they were headed toward a black iron gate covered in an elaborate engraving. Soon, he could make out the scene depicting a singer with a lyre playing before the throne a of grim, ancient-looking king with a younger but also grim woman seated next to him.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Felix asked Janus, pointing at the gate.

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“That’s Orpheus,” Janus answered without elaborating, as if everyone just knew who this Orpheus was. Felix had no idea who that was, but didn't want to admit it to the younger boy. Thankfully, he added, “The old man is Hades and the woman is Persephone. Orpheus is the singer, of course, trying to get his dead wife back from the underworld with the power of song. Almost worked, too.”

Felix had never heard the story, but it sounded right. There were a lot of seemingly impossible things you could almost do with the power of song. What he had done with the boar was, in fact, the first time Felix had ever gotten past almost.

When they reached the gate, the Dame grabbed Orpheus’s lyre, which turned out to be some kind of knocker, and rapped at the door. Felix heard a stifled yelp like a napping person being rudely woken up and after some sounds of fumbling, Hades’ eyes were pushed aside.

The new eyes, brown and sleepy, moved from the Dame to himself and Janus. Felix tried to sit up straighter and project an air of confidence. Janus, on the other hand, was grinning broadly and generally making no effort to hide his excitement. Felix was shocked at how lively the other boy was, considering the beating the boar had given him.

“Hi!” Janus said brightly, meeting the brown eyes. “Is this the school for singers?”

The eyes squinted, blinked heavily, and turned back to the Dame. “Got some new blood then, la?” a gravelly voice asked in a rough Francian dialect.

“One of them,” she answered. “The other…I have a personal arrangement with. We shall see what comes of it.”

Felix gave Janus a confused look. He hadn’t heard about any arrangement. But the other boy was too engrossed in the sights of the fortress to notice.

“Right then, I’ll 'ave you in right quick.”

Hades eyes slid back into place. Felix heard a man behind the eyes and the voice fumbling with latches and locks. He got the impression this would take a minute.

“He never answered my question,” Janus pouted.

“I’ve heard it called that afore, lad, so you’ve likely found what you were after. Ivo there doesn’t speak a word of Iberian.” It was the voice of the boar-possessing man, who was now sitting up, rubbing the spot beneath his wavy black hair where Felix had hit him. “Most folks here use Francian, if you have any.”

To Felix’s relief, the man smiled at him. No hard feelings from him, it seems, Felix thought, sighing with relief inwardly.

“You really got me good there, lad!” the man said to Felix with a chuckle. “I’ll say…I believe you’re the first to go after me I'm usin’ Liste. Very clever! If I weren't in so much pain right now, I’d congratulate you.”

Felix wanted to interject that it wasn’t cleverness, he had just run away and happened to find him. But before he could, the Dame looked back and said something to the man in a surprisingly gentle voice but using a language Felix didn’t understand. It was something harsh-sounding—probably northern—which just made the soft tone stand out all the more.

“Dear?” said Janus. Apparently he understood whatever that was, and Felix understood why she had switched tongues.

The Dame glared at him. Felix could almost feel the heat of her embarrassment at having whatever it was she said understood.

“Has she not properly introduced us yet? The name is Bruno, and this is Madina, my wi—oof.”

The Dame, or Madina as he should call her, took one of her hands off the reins and pushed Bruno back into the bed of needles with surprising strength.

“You!” she pointed at Janus with an icy glare. “I have repeatedly warned you about unnecessary questions, and I dislike repeating myself. If you do not know the meaning of unnecessary, I would suggest holding your tongue entirely. Am I understood?”

“Yes, yes, we got understand,” Felix answered meekly for both of them. “Right?”

Janus looked up at him in confusion, not knowing what he had done wrong. Clearly, this kid was not so quick on the uptake when it came to social interactions. In a second, Janus realized his mistake, or at least knew he needed to say something to placate Madina.

“Oh, yes! Yes, we’ll shut up,” said Janus. “Sorry!”

All this nonsense was at last broken up by the stony growl of the doors withdrawing into either side of the wall. A bit flashy and impractical, Felix thought, but that was to be expected. The place might look like a castle—it probably was something like that once—but in the end it was full of people like his Uncle, people obsessed with strange stories that normal people had never heard.

When the donkey had trotted all the way into the courtyard, Felix turned toward the man who had let them in, who was now standing beside them with a skeptical look. Ivo, as Bruno had called him. His hair was tousled and dark with a thick beard and a mean face marked with scars and pock-marks. The man’s height was average but his shoulders were broad enough that he could probably lob off an intruder's head without much trouble using the halberd he was now leaning on.

Is he a singer too, or just hired muscle? Felix asked himself a moment before he spotted a pair of pan pipes strapped under the man’s tunic belt. The man from the Guild who had beaten him up hadn’t been entirely wrong when he said the Song-Catchers were the Guild’s high-tier thugs.

Felix was in way over his head, but there was nothing he could do but accept it. The barrel of apples he had stowed away in that had no one had noticed was a one of a kind phenomenon. There was no turning back.

Janus didn’t seem to notice any of this. He was gazing around with his giddy expression like he’d had when Felix agreed to team up with him. Looking around himself, Felix found himself similarly, if not as intensely, impressed. The courtyard had a cobblestone path leading up to an impressive-looking building of polished white stone that stood out from the mostly brick and wooden structures around it. One of these had a lazy-looking gray cat sunning itself on the thatched roof, who Felix noticed Madina giving a look of distaste as if trying to shoo it away with her eyes. Janus, though, was fixated on the door to the white stone building. It was dark oak, even larger than the main gate, and here again was Orpheus, playing his lyre with a mournful expression, oblivious, it seemed, to the spears that a mob of enraged-looking women had thrown at him.

“What a morbid scene to put on a door, Felix muttered, half hoping Janus would hear and explain the story.

The rest of the courtyard was open grass with a few storage sheds, which Felix could see were stocked with halberds and wooden swords, and even practice dummies and bullseyes for practicing archery. He felt his unease get the better of him, and even though talking to her at all made him uncomfortable, Felix asked Madina, “What do singers need with all these weapons?”

“Unnecessary questions,” was the only answer he got, though at least she wasn’t as angry about it as when Janus had unwittingly pried into her personal life.

The cart stopped. “Take your things and go into the library, through that big door. Martin, a big man with a curly beard, should be in there somewhere. He’ll find you some beds. Once you’re settled in, go to Yew’s office and introduce yourselves properly. Martin will tell you where it is.”

“Is Yew the one in charge?” Felix asked.

Madina simply pointed to the door where Orpheus was about to be speared without answering. Felix knew he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her.

He gathered his things, hopped off the cart without another word and entered the polished-stone building with Janus in tow. It turned out to be a rather impressive library with shelves almost three times his height, lined with books and cubbies for scrolls. The stone on the inside was even smoother and brighter than the stone outside, and from the arrangement of the columns and arches, Felix realized the building had been a church at some point.

“Oh, books!” Janus shouted, and immediately ran to grab the first one he could reach.

“Don't!" someone yelled in a language Felix didn’t understand, the meaning of which he could still easily infer from the tone. But the warning came too late for Janus, whose hand burst into flame the second he touched the cover.