She was tired.

Looking in on Griffin one last time, making sure the ragged blanket protected him from the night’s sly cold, Gwen returned on quiet soles to the table that stood in the room’s corner and sat down heavily in front of the remnants of her last remaining candle. For the briefest moment, she wished she could do just like her brother: simply lie down and fall into a dreamless sleep, whenever, wherever, recovery always within reach.

Sleep, however, had been her enemy for the past month, and it was likely to elude her this night, too. The reason was simple: they were out of money, once again, foolishly, or not so much; if it hadn’t been for Griffin’s mouth, they could have kept what little was theirs and paid rent for another month, time enough for her to pry her way towards new work, to follow the sounds of the forbidden and make ends meet, the way she always did.

Six years on the road, and she had always made sure her brother was clothed, fed, safe, as safe as they could be.

Now the widow Lenë-Köy had offered her a position in her household, provided Gwen managed to show up in a proper servant’s dress for her next interview; her britches and shirt just didn’t do in a place like that, and she remembered with a bitter aftertaste how she had been told, in no uncertain terms, that she could not expect to be considered respectable if she couldn’t afford to dress like it, too.

Gwen would have appreciated the woman’s candour, had it not condemned her so utterly.

And now the money she had saved, only a few tskhra away from the sum for a basic dress, was gone, paid to make up for Griffin's mistake.

Well.

Dresses were silly garments anyhow, and she would have loathed to wear one.

With a quiet sigh, Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

Pride was of no help here, and haughtiness would not put any food in their mouths.

She forced her mind to detach itself from the memory of the town palace, the promise of two warm meals a day, the lure of a steady income, and focussed instead on the city sounds that reached her from just beyond the wall: shod hooves clip-clopped down cobbled lanes, market vendors cried out the very last of their wares, two cats meowed in an attic.

The sun had beaten down mercilessly all day and there were voices aplenty moving through the streets still, populating them with sorrow.

Gwen’s worries were not just her own: the city was moving closer to a famine with every passing day, and word on the street was bad. Samoth-Suli, the annual sowing festival, had come and gone, but instead of the promised rains, the spring drought had doubled down, and now news of a dust storm had reached the market stalls, set to further the woes of those that were already going hungry. Gwen’s own stomach gave a sullen twist as she remembered the levity of the feast, that one night’s freedom from worry, and, of course, the warm, cinnamon-crusted apple tarts that had been handed out for free well past nightfall.

She opened her eyes, letting them stray to the sleeping form of her brother.

If only Griffin hadn’t come to fisticuffs with the miller’s daughter, they might have been able to borrow a little more flour on credit, just to tide them over. Master Perrin was not the kind of man to hand out charity, but he was willing to do honest trade with honest people, a category Gwen had belonged to up until Griff’s misstep.

She shook her head slightly, helpless in the consideration of her younger brother’s... pride.

She could not fault him for it, not when her own mind struggled to accept the injustices that rained down on them every day, but it had cost them, dearly, over and over again, and a part of her wished he would just finally grow up and learn to hold his tongue.

Another prayed he never would lose the edges of his character.

She had, or at least she felt like it, occasionally struggling to recognise the reflection that looked back at her from her own looking glass, cheeks pale, eyes blunt.

Every day, she felt like she was donning yet another Gwen, but none of them felt real, and none of them felt right. Her brother was right to question whether she was still being a true daughter of Woodë, but he wasn’t the one carrying her burden, nor was he saddled with the same memories of what used to be their home.

Gwen curled her left hand into a fist, held the tension for a moment, then released it again.

It was pointless to burrow herself any deeper into these thoughts.

No matter how much time or worry she would spend on Griff’s mistake, it wouldn’t change the fact that the miller’s daughter had teased him about his accent, that he had tried to salvage his pride by proclaiming where it was from, and that she had called him a name in response Gwen didn’t want to repeat, not even in her thoughts.

Nor was thinking going to repair the window that had been broken as a result of the ensuing fight, or return the money she had had to part with in order to pay for a new pane of glass.

The moment she had wrung the truth out of her restless brother, Gwen had dragged Griffin back to the mill, but it was his tongue, not his fist, that had done the real damage: once the debt had been paid, the miller had shown them the door with a word on his lips that still made Gwen's blood run cold.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Heretics.

Griffin was too young to remember the power that lay within these three syllables, but she was not, and it frightened her, through and through.

A year ago, she would have long packed their bags and run.

Now a week had passed and nobody had come knocking at their doors, but she had spent the days forever casting a wary eye over her shoulder, taking pains to avoid any and all run-ins with the gendarmes, seeking work and food only in the parts of the city that were the dirtiest, the foulest, the most hapless resting places of the sullied and the broken.

She was tired of the filth.

Still, her mind fought the idea of running again and she could feel her limbs growing heavy at the thought of leaving. Wherever she would take Griffin to, it would be worse than Keveli: just this morning, the vendors had talked about the drought stretching all the way to the coasts of the Siskhliani seas, and soon the Hollow Plains would be riddled with dust storms, one mightier and blacker than the last. That meant both the West and the North were off the table, doomed to be luckless endeavours.

They had come from the South, a quarterscore of suns ago, and for personal reasons, Gwen was loath to return there.

That left the East, the heartland of the Khanate.

A slight shiver ran down Gwen’s spine as her mind flooded with the legends that circulated about the place: tales that were told in hushed whispers and hurried words only, comprising stories about an underground network of schools, about the skills of old being passed on deep down in the mines, about scores of mages seeking their own kind in the dark. If Old Elmar the peddler was to be believed, it was even still possible to speak about magic without fear of being arrested in the farthest Eastward corners of the realm, beyond the Malachite Reaches and the fabled city of Lonned.

Gwen was hungry to see those places, willing to risk the journey for the sake of the silence of those streets alone, but doing so was sure to seal her brother's fate.

Griffin was still just a boy, barely past ten, and it was a well-known fact that wherever political tension was rife, the khans’ men collected boys right off the street. Most were never seen again, some wrote letters to their families years later sounding like perfect strangers, but Gwen knew she didn’t stand a chance if they laid eyes on Griffin and liked what they saw.

He was scrawny and small for his age, but that was unlikely to stop them.

They had need for young, impressionable minds.

They had need for recruits, too. The mines had to be controlled at all costs and the skirmishes along the Eastern border had never stopped since the end of the war, so no.

Going East was not an option, either.

Gwen’s eyes strayed to the window, noting the position of the moon in the sky.

It made her remember the words she had striven to forget, day in, day out, and which now threatened to lure her out onto the street against her better judgment.

Find me.

She didn’t want to; could feel it in her bones that it would lead to ill luck, trouble in the making.

A coal mage, unaware of his ability, untrained in any skills.

She was sure of it, had easily recalled the rhyme her grandmother had taught her, along with the other tell-tale signs:

Bright of eye but dark of mind,

Beware bad fortune’s favourite;

Fire likes him,

Lightning strikes them,

the Mountain spirits talk.

His mind had been loud enough to leave her speechless, that moment when he had nearly run her into the ground, and she had no doubt he had the gift. Following the noise of his thoughts had been easy even in the clamour of Keveli’s market quarter, although his colour had blended well into the sandy, ochre streets of the city - he was a rusty bronze, a little like his eyes.

He was damn lucky the khans’ men were ignorant of the verses of old, or they would have picked him up years ago.

Gwen shook her head, trying to drown the thoughts that forced themselves into her mind.

Yes, there was money to be made from a secret such as this.

He was already wanted for his crimes; if she threatened to oust him as an enemy of the khans, who knew how much of his spoils was to be hers? It was against her vow as a daughter of Woodë, against her duty, but it wouldn’t be the first time she was forced to resort to blackmail to weather out dire circumstances.

We serve to protect, her grandmother’s voice rang out in her mind, carrying all the dignity of the ageing matriarch that she had been, training Gwen ever since she had first betrayed her talent.

She had been four.

If only it was so easy, Gwen wanted to argue back, desperate for a voice of guidance, someone to take this load off her shoulders.

Who was she supposed to protect first, an unknown thief or her own flesh and blood?

Griffin and she were both going hungry, and in two days' time, they would be left without a roof over their heads.

A moonbeam struck the surface of the looking-glass that lay in front of her, reminding her that she was running out of time. If she wanted to make it to his rendezvous point before the end of even-song, she had to leave now or live with the consequences of her choice.

May the spirits forgive her for any trespasses she caused.

She rose, blew out the candle on the table and pulled her hood deep over her eyes.

Working the door’s hinges as quietly as possible, she slipped out into the night, a nervous pulse drumming through her veins.

It was time to tempt fate.