“Well, she wasn’t wrong,” Doneil said, his elven slipping through the air like water over river rocks. “He is human.”

Catrin kept her features smooth as she sized up the man spread out over the cabin’s communal bed frame.

He looked Gatali to her—brown eyes, black hair, an obvious bronzing to his skin—his eyes had near bugged out of his head when she and Doneil had walked in, gaze sweeping over them, lingering first on her two blades, then her eyes and ears, and giving the prince only a passing glance. It made her think he hadn’t seen an elf before.

Which was odd. Maybe he was used to light elves? But—no. Not with that skin tone. Forest elves?

The woman was right about something else, too—he was definitely foreign. He didn’t speak Janessi, instead replying to Nales’ questioning in a language none of them recognized.

He was also brawny—and definitely a soldier. She’d pegged him for that almost immediately. He had an edge in the way he held himself. Like he was prepared to fight, even in his injured state.

Civilians didn’t have that edge. Not unless they’d been attacked.

Plus, he’d taken down two demons. Two. Single-handedly. And the second with a very broken leg.

She glanced down once again to the end of the bed and resisted the urge to curl her lips back.

The women had done their best to reset it and make a splint, but the break was clearly beyond their help. The entire leg had bent inward at the knee joint, every bone and tendon that had held it in place snapped and strained.

Elrya, just looking at it made her want to leave.

She could only imagine how that last fight must have turned out. The demon must have caught onto him—injured prey, weakest—but he had still taken it down.

And… setting it afterward.

Gods, that must have been horrific. For all involved.

“So,” Doneil began after another minute, in Janessi this time. “Can I heal him, or are we going to stare at him a bit longer?”

She felt the attention of the entire cabin switch to her.

She hesitated. “He’s dangerous.”

“He’s in pain.”

She didn’t need to look over to notice Doneil’s tension. As a healer, he’d be able to sense the man’s pain, the same way her bond with Kodanh allowed her to sense winter frost.

But she had a job to do.

“He can stay in pain until I make a decision about him.”

“Bright tits,” Doneil spat. “You’re a bitch.”

“I’m practical,” she said, then switched to elven. “The man took out two demons, one of them with a broken leg. I’d rather not have to wrestle him back into bed if he decides to go after our princeling.”

There was a brief silence. The three turned their attention back to the man on the bed. He watched them warily.

“Who are you?” the prince asked for the second time. “Where are you from?”

The man glanced at him, then gritted his teeth and moved. Catrin stiffened, but he only reached for the trousers that hung from the head of the bed. Though pain shadowed his face at the effort, he fished a worn leather wallet from a pocket, flipped it open, and pulled out a small, pale green card. With a glance to her, he kept his motion deliberately slow when he passed the card to Nales.

The prince’s eyebrows arched into his forehead.

Catrin craned her neck. “What is it?”

“Identification, I think. There’s a photograph with writing, and a similar emblem to the one in his tattoo.”

“A photograph? Aren’t those done on glass?”

“No, you can put them on specially treated paper.” Nales’ eyebrows drew together. “I’ve never seen one like this, though.”

“It’s using the Veronan alphabet,” Doneil pointed out. “That’s some common ground, at least.”

“Yes. I don’t recognize the language it’s making, but I’m sure someone might know.”

“Lord or Lady Stanek, possibly,” she suggested. “Hells, even Treng might know.”

Growing up where he had, the man had an immense grasp of languages.

The prince tried to speak to him again, switching first to Gatali, then to another language, but the man just shook his head.

She frowned.

A polite cough came from her right.

“He was carrying this, Miss. Some kind of weapon.”

She glanced over. The older woman—Sannya was her name—held out something folded in a handcloth for her perusal. Her two daughters, Rinya and Eleza, stood behind her, expressions uncertain and watchful. They had pale skin and dark hair like their mother, and their faded homespun blended in with the cabin’s painted boards and simple furnishings. The place was larger than she’d expected—three rooms, rather than a single, with a drop-down stair on a pull leading to an attic story. The inside of the house had an airy feel to it. Though the furnishings were simple, mostly of dark-colored wood, they were sturdy and well-cared-for.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She took the item, an eyebrow lifting at its surprising weight. When she opened it, the other eyebrow shot up.

It looked like a dueling pistol. She’d only seen two, but the shape and the trigger were instantly recognizable, and it even had a slight smell of burning. Both the barrel and grip were stockier than she’d expected, though, and made of metal where she’d normally seen wood, with a glass window on its side next to some block-like Veronese letters. And it lacked a hammer. Or a place to put the powder.

Perhaps they were inside?

Except… a quick glance showed her that the barrel itself was closed off. With a strange, glass-like attachment blocking its end.

And dueling pistols were more a weapon the nobility carried—but he certainly wasn’t a noble. Tits, he wasn’t even Gatali, or he didn’t speak it, anyway. Nor did he speak Janessi, elven, Finian, or any of the other half-dozen languages they’d managed to muddle at him in the past several minutes.

She passed the potential handgun onto Doneil for his perusal—noticing, as she did so, that the man’s attention shifted with it.

Hmm.

She turned her own curiosity back onto his body, trying to parse out clues. A mixture of ink tattooed his skin, none of it spellforms that she could see, though some looked to be in old Veronese script. Most of it formed pictures. Flowers, skulls, emblems. One such emblem matched the colors of a flag on the shirt he wore, though it was faded.

“Which flag is that?” she tilted her head. “Yetra?”

“No, Yetra uses orange stripes.” The prince made a gesture. “These are red. Blood representation, perhaps?”

Catrin considered the man again. “He is a soldier.”

“There are too many stars, though, and they look all different. Maybe it’s an alternative version? Older? A representation?”

Perhaps. Both the tattoo and the shirt came with a recognizable eagle, though the one on the shirt was as faded as the flag it bore.

She tilted her head. “How’d they get it on the shirt like that? It’s not woven, or embroidered. Paint?”

Nales considered it. For the first time since they’d left Pemberlin, his expression approached something resembling genuine interest. “It does look like paint.”

“Very accurate paint.” Catrin’s eyes narrowed, studying the designs once again. “His tattoos are very accurate, too.”

“Maybe he afforded the royal tattooist,” Doneil said, distracted.

Suddenly, the man’s entire body stiffened. He tried to hide it, tried to keep the blank neutrality on his face, but it was like watching a spring crank tight.

She followed his gaze to find Doneil looking down the barrel of the pistol with its end pointed at his face.

She reached over and gently pushed it to the side. “Are you an idiot?”

“What? I wanted to see if the powder was already inside.”

So he had known it was a firearm before he’d done that. Her assessment of his idiocy ticked up.

“Do you know how often those things misfire? Temdin, there’s a reason the rnari keep to crossbows.”

“I thought that was because the Raidt hates goblins?”

“Well—that, too.” Actually, it was humans the Raidt hated, specifically humans like the one standing a few paces to their left, wearing his princely insignia on the inside of his lapel, but Catrin appreciated the candor.

Besides, goblins made a close second.

She blew out a breath and once again turned her attention to the man on the bed, sizing him up for what was likely the sixth time.

“Right,” she said. “Doneil, heal him up. We’ll bring him with us.” They’d be more able to provide for an extra mouth and body than the small homestead. “If we don’t figure him out along the way, they can sort him out at Pemberlin. We can use the extra fighter, anyway—and I’ll take that.”

She hastily grabbed the pistol when Doneil made to put it on a nearby table, keeping its thick barrel pointed at places that didn’t have warm bodies. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but she had read a series of reports once on accidental deaths brought about by firearms.

“Thank you, Milady,” Sannya said with a small curtsy. “You do him a great service.”

‘Milady’? Elrya, save her. Between that and Guardsman Ternadon, she was getting all sorts of promotions these days.

She hoped Doneil was too busy healing to notice the title, but doubted she’d be that lucky. The man had keen ears.

“I’m happy to help a fellow soldier,” she heard herself saying.

Sannya curtsied again. This time, her daughters followed suit. Catrin attempted to prevent the blush that threatened her cheeks.

It was a good thing she didn’t have pale skin like they did.

“Besides, I imagine the castle has more resources for an extra mouth—meaning no offense.” She glanced around the small cabin, taking in its white-painted walls, the flower box outside the casement window, the colorful hemming on the blankets and curtains. “You have a lovely home. Did you make these yourselves? Those designs are well-done.”

She gestured to the end of the table bench, where a white-painted triskele of three flowers looped through itself over the dark-stained wood.

Sannya had barely glanced to the furniture, instead watching where Doneil bent over the man’s leg. “My Dan did, before he passed. And we owe this man more than we can say. He saved our lives.”

“You’ve done well by him. We’ll take care of him.”

This time, Sannya did look at her, and Catrin’s heart panged when she saw the caution in the woman’s eyes. Life was hard out here, and they, too, were strangers. Hard to trust. But something in Catrin’s expression, or in her voice, must have swayed her, because she relaxed. Her head swung back to the man.

“His name is Mattie, I think. Or Matteo. Some variant. Hard to say.” She grimaced, obviously uncomfortable with the whole situation. “And if’in you don’t find a place for him at the castle, he’s welcome back here, and not just out of pity. Abier knows we need a strong set of hands around the farm, and I trust him.”

“We’ll tell him that,” Catrin assured her. “I’m sure someone at the castle can manage to speak with him.”

Probably not anyone at Pemberlin Castle, not unless Treng came through on that, but Prince Nales doubtless had contacts.

At that moment, magic shifted in the air, and the man possibly known as Mattie or Matteo made a loud sucking sound on the mattress, going rigid. Doneil grunted, leaning further over the bed to cup his hands around the man’s mangled knee joint. Just underneath his cuff, a glow of white-gold light indicated his active rune.

She studied the man as Doneil worked. His shoulders bunched under the thin material of his shirt, and his hands tensed into tight fists—gods, she could only imagine what it must have been like for the three women to attempt setting the break in the first place. At least this had minimal pain.

Well, maybe not minimal, but definitely far down on the scale compared to what he must have endured last night, even with the willow bark tea at his bedside.

When Doneil had finished, the man had a stunned expression on his face.

Right. Doesn’t know magic either, then?

“Done?” she asked as Doneil backed away. “Good. He can walk with us. It’ll do his muscles good to stretch after that.”

She left, taking the man’s pistol with her.