Long ago, before the Age of Law gave way to the Age of Liberty, much of the world was governed by the authority of crowns and royal blood. The power of crowns was absolute. Their word, above question. This power, and the corruption it bred in those who wielded it, caused unspeakable suffering. When the masses were finally pushed beyond their limit, a group of determined souls banded together under the banner of Leon the Visionary to forever shatter the suffocating chains of kings and tyrants. It was a time of violent upheaval. Countless lives were lost, and countless more forever changed. Nations were erased from the map. And when dawn rose on a new era, many stories and sagas would be born. Tales of the bold deeds of Leon, and those of the extraordinary men and women who struggled by his side.

This is the origin of one such individual. Not a warrior or a famed hero, but a chef born to a family of minor nobles, the Bouliers. The Grand Culinarian. Traverser of the Frontier. The Goldsmith of Chanterelles. Or, to his companions, Charles the Unwavering. Someday he will stand shoulder to shoulder with legends. For today, he is fifteen. Lost, unsure, and doing his best to survive the chaos of the Age of Law’s waning years. His birthplace, the small country of Dreya, has been blindsided by a sneak attack from the Empire of the Merciful Dawn. Dreya’s rulers have barred their gates, leaving those outside to fend alone. Now Charles flees for the safety of the World’s Capital, but his fateful journey has only just begun...

Chapter One: The Winds of Change

A powerful storm was brewing.

Rain pounded the country road. Charles took a step. Then he rested. Every time an old barn or tacked-together shelter with metal plating in the roof passed by, he noted the heavy tin of drops striking sheeted steel. The dark clouds overhead had been a lighter, less-threatening gray not twenty minutes ago, back when he still held some small hope that the droplets would stop pelting his neck and head, and that he might have some small window to wring the water from his soaked clothes and apron. To be dry. To be warm. To feel something like safety and normalcy, if only for a little while. If Charles had that much, just that little respite, surely he would die completely fulfilled. He stepped again, then stopped a moment to lean against a fencepost. His breath came in heavy gasps.

How much longer was it going to be? When would he see the beckoning light of the City of Hope, the Center of Civilization, towering on the horizon? How many more stretches like the one he’d endured these past two weeks lay between him and the end of this awful journey, he wondered. The answer was anyone’s guess. Rolling green hills and dirt roads stretched over a hundred miles behind him. As far as he could tell, only more of the same lay ahead. How was he to tell one bush or tree from another out here in the endless wilderness? There was no sense of scale or progress. Everything bled into everything else.

His break was over. It was time to start again, but Charles was having difficulty convincing himself to move. Each time he brought his left foot forward, the stockpot strapped to his back shifted slightly, and a sharp pang of agony sprang up his thigh. He grimaced in frustration. That was the worst one yet. This type of pain was foreign to him, something he’d never imagined, let alone experienced. It wasn’t satisfied with just the first stab. Oh no. Not at all. At even the tiniest bit of pressure placed on his foot, it had to keep radiating through his leg for several seconds, so by the time he was ready to use the foot again, a fresh wave of hell overlapped with the first. It was insufferable. Since yesterday morning, every inch of ground gained had been a grim test of willpower, with no sign that things were going to get any easier. No...on the contrary it was clear his circumstances grew bleaker by the minute. His last rations were two days gone. He had not been truly free of this rain for almost a week, and that stab just kept getting stronger.

But to allow the pain to slow him down now risked doom, he knew. Nothing waited for him anywhere except his destination. There was no going back. Only forward from here on. That was what he had promised, so that was what he would do. He would reach the world’s capital and start searching for familiar faces, or he would meet his end on a nameless dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

Gathering every ounce of mental fortitude the universe was willing to lend him—from his ancestors, from any gods willing to listen, and from any hidden wells of strength he might possess deep inside without knowing—Charles centered himself and pressed onward...for another four steps before his leg buckled. There was a clatter of pots, pans, ladles and everything else he was able to carry, all stored haphazardly inside the massive stockpot he had crudely fashioned into something resembling a travel pack, as the whole assortment flew from his grasp. He tasted dirt.

Fuck.

He commanded his body to rise and continue walking. No response. His vision blurred and contorted, and for the first time he seemed to notice the cold wasn’t eating at him quite as badly. His teeth weren’t chattering. His face wasn’t numb, either. His breath came in hot bursts. No...no, not cold at all. There was a deep warmth, strangely enough. There had been warmth growing for some time now. It had crept in so gradually, he had not noticed in the slightest. It was almost inviting. Pleasant, even. Like a familiar hearth. A small voice in his head whispered at him. It told him he did not have to go to the capital if he didn’t want to. He did not have to move from this very spot. He could lie right here under the rain and forget.

Forget the nightmare, for surely that’s what all of this must be. Just a nightmare. Forget the fire. Forget the blood and the silenced screams for help. Forget his promises. Forget everything.

Charles pushed the voice away. The fog lifted, though it did not disappear entirely. With some doing, he managed the immense task of flopping over to his back. All he could do for the moment was stare skyward as the drops zoomed towards him. The storm was surging now. A boom echoed in the blackness. Weather like this was a sure sign of winter finally overtaking fall. The two rivals had clashed violently for many days now, freezing the morning air until Charles’ hands stung, then briefly driving back the chill with fierce rainstorms that battered him in the afternoon and evening. This was the struggle of seasons, the dance of nature’s raw might, he had observed every year since childhood. From indoors. Next to a fire. That was how he knew the coming shower would dwarf anything preceding it. This was what was known in his hometown of Lutz as The Last Gasp of Autumn. On the cusp of defeat, it would throw everything it had left at winter in a futile attempt to halt the grim winds of change, a beast’s suicidal charge toward a group of encircling hunters.

Charles gave up on making any more progress tonight. He would take refuge where he could, try to get his bearings, and pick up the pieces tomorrow.

Who can say? he thought to himself. A rest might do his leg some good.

But no sleep came to him. Hours later, he shivered beneath what was left of a half-collapsed shed, hardly more spacious than a tent, very much aware of how damp, cold, and attached to this almost-useless leg he still was. His apron and socks hung from a pair of hooks jutting from the crooked wall, but he knew it wouldn’t amount to much. Building a fire was out of the question. A dream at best. There was nothing to serve as kindling that wasn’t as soaked through as he was. Even if he did come across some dry twigs or hay, they would do little good. What few supplies he had managed to scrounge together that fateful day had, very regrettably, not included flint. Bored and miserable, Charles began to rifle through what few possessions he had to his name, pulling them free and laying them at his feet. This had become his nightly ritual, and as it was with most things in his daily life, Charles liked to carry out this ritual in an established order. He set the first object down.

A jar of everflies. His only light in the dark of night. This alone had not left home with him. Charles captured the insects in a marsh near the river’s edge and hadn’t managed to find a single new one since. They hummed inside the glass, flaring orange, then fading toward a soft blue.

Everflies glowed in seven colors. Always in perfect harmony. The town elders claimed the colors were reflective of mood...though they also claimed it was sacrilege to practice cooking on holidays. Regardless, after spending so much time with them, Charles was starting to suspect the mood theory might have truth to it. Picking up the jar brought out an irritated red. Left alone, the flys seemed to calm and turned blue or green. Charles frowned. There were fewer of them now. Eleven...no, just ten left of the original twenty-nine. Yesterday there had been sixteen. The grass and flowers he’d left inside weren’t keeping them going as well as he had hoped. Not well enough at all, if they were to last through the nights to come. It was hardly the best of omens when a chef couldn’t even keep a few bugs fed. Normally, watching them dart and scuttle about was a welcome distraction from the days spent slogging through the mire. But not now. Right now it just made him feel worse.

He turned to the one thing that never failed to raise his spirits, the highlight of his evenings. He lay these five items out as though they might explode if so much as a speck of soil contaminated them.

A set of pristine knives. None a twin to any of the others. All in far better condition than their master. Scratchless, wrapped neatly in cloth, and kept sharp enough to slice with virtually no resistance. These were no brute tools. They had a dignity to them that was obvious with a single glance. Their steel flashed even here in the dim light of the everflies, and the handles, a rare black wood, radiated greatness and opulence. Fewer than ten such sets had ever been forged. Chefs the world over were privileged to even lay eyes on these. They were Charles’ prized companions. His pride and happiness.

He examined one. It was long, narrow with an almost cruel curve that raised higher toward the tip. The boning knife stood apart as the clear candidate for his least favorite, though that was probably because it had taken the end of his left pinky—enough to neatly trim the nail—clean off during an early lesson with Father.

A chef’s knives demand due respect, Charles. They will answer your contempt with their own. Had you given that knife your full attention, you would still have a full finger. You must learn not to let yourself become distracted.

Charles turned to the second knife. This one was even more curved and narrow than the first. Delicate and intricate. Almost fragile. With this in his hand, Charles could strip a trout clean with all the grace of a fencer. But of all five, he worried the most about his fillet knife getting chipped or broken. It had more finesse than the boning knife, to be sure, but one could hardly treat a sabre like an axe and expect it to perform for long. All that jostling around in his stockpot must be murder on any quality steel, but for this? He might have to give it more wrapping, even if it meant one of the others traveled with less. Caution above all, as Grandfather would say.

The third blade was the smallest and by far the least impressive, at least in looks alone. However, in terms of precise, meticulous cuts, the paring knife stood peerless. Charles’ father made him train with this knife by removing the skins from grapes without marring the delicate flesh underneath. Most of the thin, wiry scars on his hands had come from its bite at some point or other. A tiny tool for tiny work.

If the third knife was nearly silent, the fourth screamed. Long and serrated with gnarled ridges, the bread knife made short work of the hardest shells and crusts, yet spared the lighter bits inside from being crushed, as they might be with a mismatched blade. There was a subtlety in its sharpness. It would certainly look intimidating if Charles were to brandish it at a bandit. Privately, he would be praying the bandit didn’t know enough about cooking to call his bluff. Any chef worth his apron could guess how well a knife intended for gently sawing through bread would fare against a man. Especially a man with armor and a true weapon. No...the idea was appalling, but if left with no alternative, Charles would turn to the final knife to defend himself. The young man took his time regarding this one. He turned it in his hands, running a finger along the flat steel, then gripped the neck, as he would to dice cucumbers or a stalk of celery. There was a small part of him that only knew peace in moments like this. No fingertips were missing from his right hand, yet somehow it did not feel entirely whole until it held this in its grasp.

The master chef’s knife. Passed from father to firstborn son of the Boulier family.

“I...I wish you were here, Father,” he said to the howling winds. “You would know what I should do.” The sound of his own voice was a stranger to him. It felt as though he had not heard it in ages.

Lastly, almost absentmindedly, the cleaver knife joined the others. A barbaric, hulking thing. More hatchet than knife. Charles had never liked it. He did not have the aptitude to control it effortlessly, as Father could. Even the boning knife was preferable. In his eyes, it was an unwelcome tagalong to his cooking, needed just often enough to justify its presence, but no true member of the set. With affectionate care, he wrapped the knives once more and set them aside so he could continue taking stock.

Three pans. Braiser, saute and sauce. All different sizes.

Now more than ever, Charles deeply appreciated the way they were cleverly made to slide into each other, and that they could all fit inside the stockpot with ample room to spare. Between the saute and saucepan lay a nondescript object wrapped tightly in an aged skin. Charles did not unwrap it or remove it from its hiding place. He returned all three pans to the stockpot after making sure they were tightly secured.

His frying pan. The smell of bacon clung to it lightly. He put it down when the scent started making him salivate.

Two pairs of extra socks. Both had holes now, and wearing them gave Charles blisters. If torn apart, they might serve as extra wrapping for his fillet knife. He couldn’t expect much else from them. The rest of his clothes had been outside, drying on the line that day. If Charles had made a mad dash to reach them, he’d likely be dead now.

A cruet. His trusty bottle for storing oils, vinegars, and thin sauces. The opening, shaped into the head of a dragon, was small enough that you could pour fluids into a hot pan with precision. Never too much or too little. It was empty.

Twin ladles. Completely useless. Choosing to take up valuable space by bringing these had been shamelessly sentimental. A child’s decision, one that grieved him now. But they had been one of only a few gifts he ever received from Grandfather. At the time, it had seemed important not to leave without them.

A small pouch of silver. Almost equally useless. Charles couldn’t exactly eat the coins and no trader who valued living or common sense would dare visit these plains. The pouch would play its part once he arrived in the City of Hope. There he would have real shelter and real safety, along with anything else he might need.

A skin of water. Full to bursting.

Charles cursed himself. There was a strong urge to throw the skin at the wall as hard as possible. The one thing I’ve had handed to me in spades. Enough water dumped on my head to keep a million men from going thirsty. What sort of idiot takes to the open road without the means to start a fire? Or treat a wounded leg? Why couldn’t he have been less panicked when he chose his provisions? If he’d kept his head, if he’d had even one more minute to prepare, things might be drastically different. Less dire. Bearable, even.

Still, he supposed, trying to hold onto some shred of optimism, the shelter of the ruined shed was a step above nothing. A small step. At least the rain wasn’t on him for a change. A steady drip of water fell from his hanging clothes. His leg throbbed. He ignored it. His stomach growled. He tried to ignore that, too, but it growled again, far more aggressively this time. It was a long, low rumble that seemed to chastise him.

“What do you want from me?” he said irritably. “There’s nothing left to eat.”

“Nothing left to eat?” his hunger seemed to mock. “And you call yourself the son of a chef? Heir to the Boulier name? What sort of chef can’t even feed himself? An embarrassment, that’s who.”

“A chef needs a kitchen,” he said irritably.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

True, he had his knives. Some other sparse equipment, too. But what did that really amount to in the middle of who-knows-where? Skilled chefs could alter food: make it last longer, provide greater nutrition, and of course, combine unique properties of flavor into exquisite tastes. They were not magicians who could conjure dishes out of thin air. Especially not an eleve, or apprentice chef, like him. Even a head chef of Father’s caliber, equaled by no more than a handful of names across the known world, was reliant on his staff. His team of masters, each specializing in a particular aspect of food and cooking.

There were the servants, too, of course. The mirettes who performed basic tasks beneath the attention of the masters such as skinning potatoes or sweeping the floors, and the mirennes who served and waited on customers. A chef needed ingredients, the farmers who raised them, and the distributors who saw the livestock, vegetables, grains, cheeses and fruits safely where they were needed. They had a roof to work under. Entire networks of support that were sorely absent here. How could anyone be expected to take this situation and do anything decent with it? Charles had been taught that men are not meant to be islands. They do not achieve anything on their own.

But he was on his own. Wholly and truly. He’d been on his own since the day he ran away from his home, abandoning every person he’d ever known. Not a single new face had entered his life since then. No traveler on the road. No farmer in the fields. The occasional farmer’s house, yes, long abandoned and stripped of anything worthwhile. But no people of any kind, friend or foe. No one to lean on when he needed it most.

Nobody. That was the only help he expected. Nobody was going to save him because nobody was out here.

“I see something!”

Charles’ blood froze. He threw his apron over the everflies and lay in wait, his composure abandoned, trying not to breathe too loud or cry out when his leg throbbed in complaint from the sudden movement. Three words. That was all it had taken to draw all the primal fears he had tried to bury and forget back to the forefront of his mind.

He was shaking. Practically on the verge of tears. Someone had seen him. Soldiers? Some desperate group of cutthroats who preyed on travelers?

Or even worse? Visions of a deep red filled him. Had the monsters who descended on his home, razing and killing indiscriminately, finally caught up to him? No...no, it had been a woman who spoke. He was mostly sure of it. Almost immediately, a second voice shushed the first. This one was definitely male. It sounded old, tired and furious.

“Keep it down!” it hissed, no quieter than the woman had been. “You’ll get us killed!”

Charles peeked. If he strained, he could see the outline of two figures in the curtain of pouring rain, perhaps thirty feet from the mouth of his shelter.

One man. One woman. A husband and wife? Two stray survivors bound together by circumstance?

Or something less innocent? A deception to lower his guard, perhaps. Charles wagered they had noticed the shed from far off and decided it might make for passable shelter, just as he had. Approaching from the side or back, the storm and the wooden walls could have obscured the glow of his everflies until the pair was quite close. Too close. Why suddenly reveal themselves by speaking?

The surprise encounter must have been a surprise for them as well. It made no sense to give warning if they intended to rob or kill him. They were no more prepared to stumble across him than he was to be discovered. That seemed to weigh against soldiers or brigands.

His thoughts tilted back and forth.

What if that was just what they wanted him to think? It might still be some kind of trick. His mind was caught in a circle. Experience and reason suggested he probably had nothing to fear. Instinct snaked his hand toward his chef’s knife. The wrapping fell away. He leveled it at the shadows, the familiar feeling of polished wood against his skin making him feel just a little less weak.

Charles had never attacked another person. He’d never even fought with another boy. The mere idea of what he might be about to do nearly made him ill. He swallowed and clenched his jaw. If he saw so much as a trace of red...it would serve as his cue to strike.

There was a flash. A massive burst of lightning lit the countryside and, quite distinctly, both Charles and the two strangers. They were an old couple; he saw that clearly now. Far older than he would have predicted. At least sixty, each of them. And frightened. They were clutching each other as if fate itself threatened to tear them apart at the first opportunity. The man gaped at him, his mouth spotted with several missing teeth, from beneath a black bowler hat. He was dressed in a fine suit, worn but well-made. His stare was cold and grim, like that of someone having known a great deal of hardship and expecting a great deal more on the way.

The wife shivered in what was clearly her husband’s coat—it was far too large on her frame, and he was standing drenched in the worst storm of the season with no coat at all—draped over a fine yellow dress. She had lost a shoe on one foot and a sock on the other, but Charles caught the glint of a gold band woven round her finger. Practically ready for a night on the town. They gave off the impression of having only spent a short time away from the comforts of home. A few days. A week at the most.

These people could not be further from brigands. They were refugees. Victims fleeing the same terrors as him. Worst of all, they looked rich. Lost, disoriented, and far from their element, but still rich enough to afford things like gold rings, suits, and fancy dresses. Proper citizens with class. Exactly the sort of people Charles would have welcomed warmly to his family’s restaurant in the days before the life he’d known came to an end.

In short, customers.

The one-shoed woman gasped in open horror.

Given the context, Charles could hardly blame her. By the grace of every deity in existence, imagine what a sight he must be. Two weeks in the rough without so much as a bar of soap. His hair...a blonde tangle of dirt and rotted leaves. His ten-button uniform—still bearing the embroidery of his proud family name—caked with mud and shredded with day-to-day abuse until it barely resembled clothing at all.

A ragged beast. That was how he must look. Like a drenched, drowning rat that just barely paddled its way to the river’s edge. A starved, wounded, disgusting disaster. They must think he’d been scrounging out here without a shred of dignity his entire life. He could picture so clearly their perspective of the last few minutes, desperately seeking shelter from autumn’s fury, spotting what might be a way out of the wind and cold, only to nearly step over some vagrant looking as though a being of pure filth had eaten him and spat him back up. Charles’ face grew hot. An almost-morbid level of humiliation and self-revulsion flowed through him. He wondered if it was actually possible to die of sheer shame. For other people, for strangers, to see him this way? It was beyond disgrace. In an instant, all of his insecurities, his everyday concerns about appearances and the opinions of others, and the thoughts that told him he would never be good enough to live up to his lineage returned for the first time in two weeks.

He was fifteen again.

And on top of everything else, he was pointing his father’s knife at these frightened people like a lunatic. He lowered it at once. The couple eyed him warily but stayed where they were. Proper etiquette would normally dictate Charles prostrate himself in abject apology, begging humbly for forgiveness before welcoming the new arrivals as guests to share in what little he had to offer. However, since he was already flat on the ground, Charles stood up. This had the opposite effect of causing the couple to take a firm step back.

“Wait!” he said, a little louder than he meant to. He noticed the chef’s knife still in his hand and gingerly set it on his apron. He dusted his front, which did absolutely nothing to make him more presentable, then knelt in the pouring rain. “Please excuse my behavior! I’m not a soldier! My name is Charles Boulier! Lutz!” Charles struggled not to trip over his speech. “I-I mean, I am from Lutz. T-to the west of here...though I don’t know how far. It’s small compared to Frandt or Luthengran, so some don’t know of it. ”

“We’re from Frandt,” the old man said. “And we know Lutz. We were married there. What are you doing so far from home, boy?”

Charles said nothing at first. Then he acknowledged what he had been denying to himself for ages.

“Lutz was destroyed,” he said. “It’s all gone now.”

There it was. The naked truth. Nothing but ashes remained of his hometown, one of the six jewels of Dreya and the place of his childhood. The brick schoolhouse. His secret hideaway in Mr. Barr’s orchard. His family’s restaurant, the Oak & Owl, built into the bottom floor of their manor. The meadow where he ran arm in arm with the mirenne, Cecelia, the first girl he’d ever loved. It existed only in memory now.

Husband and wife exchanged worried glances.

“We’re so sorry,” the woman said. “Lutz was a special place for our family. How long has it been?”

“Two weeks past.” If the old woman seemed worried, now she was petrified.

“Imperials were that far inside the border two weeks ago?” Her husband took the news gravely, but did not seem especially surprised. “Then it’s true. The king has abandoned us.” Another bolt of lightning struck a nearby hill. “It’s hard to hear you in the storm, boy. May we come in?” Charles bristled a bit at ‘boy’ but recognized that by asking permission, the man was giving him a chance to redeem himself for earlier.

“Y-Yes! Please come inside,” he said, bowing them through the doorway.

A short time later, the three sat in an uneven triangle, trying to make the best of what little space was available. Autumn continued to rage just past the thin walls; it still had fight in it, yet. Lila, for he had learned that was the old woman's name, offered Charles some herbal tea. He did his best to drink it in such a way that did not reveal how unbelievably hungry he was. The flavor was superb, though it wasn’t exactly filling. Thom, her husband, had parked a cart of supplies (which Charles hoped included dinner) just outside the entrance.

Charles dared not breach the subject of food. For a Boulier to beg from guests was unthinkable, even under the worst conditions. He had already decided: it was preferable to suffer the pangs from his stomach in silence rather than sully his family’s honor twice in the same evening.

Lila was the one to finally speak.

“Charles,” she said. “What happened to your leg?”

The young man lowered his gaze. It was a reasonable question, but not one he enjoyed thinking or talking about. Charles closed his eyes and drifted back to the chaos of that fateful day.

“It was when I escaped Lutz,” he began. The scene played out in his mind anew. “One of them spotted me near the edge of the forest. A raider draped in red.”

He remembered the black horse rearing on its hind legs as the rider brought it round to give chase. How the spear had risen, then centered down on its fleeing prey. “I ran with everything I had but...he had a horse and I was weighed down.”

How many precious fractions of a second had he wasted looking back at his pursuer? It seemed so obviously foolish now, but in the moment he could not help himself. “The head of the spear was coming right at me...then somehow I made it into the thick. At the time, I thought I got away clean. There was no pain, so I didn’t realize he’d grazed me until…”

Until, after over a mile of desperate sprinting through dense trees and brush, harsh enough to prevent the most determined horseman from following, Charles finally noticed the blood. More than he had ever seen in his life.

Thom nodded matter-of-factly.

“That spear must have been very sharp,” he said. “And you must have been very afraid. In moments of peril, men sometimes find the strength to do what they cannot normally. Like run on a wounded leg while carrying a cooking pot. You’re very lucky to have made it this far.” Charles nodded. He doubted he would ever feel that afraid again. But fear had been all that was holding the worst at bay. Once the danger had passed and the rush faded, that’s when the pain had found him.

“And your family?” Lila asked. Her voice was gentle. A bit like his few, faint memories of Grandmother. He could tell she did not want to upset him. “Did no one leave with you? Have you been alone this whole time?”

He nodded again.

“My father told me to run.” And Charles had. Through fire and death. A gauntlet of human suffering he dared not recall, where a single misstep would have been his last.

Father had also told him not to look back. But Charles had.

“There was no warning. No time. I barely managed to gather anything before the fires started. Father...he said he had to stay, to find-,” Charles caught himself nearly saying “momma” and cleared his throat. “To find Mother and my siblings. My little sister, Nina, and my half-brother, Luen.” At the mention of younger siblings, Lila tried not to let her honest feelings show, but Charles caught them. “I...I don’t know what happened to everyone else after that, but I’m sure they made it somewhere safe. I was supposed to go to the capital and wait for them. I haven’t done a very good job so far.”

“You’ve done as well as any could ask. You’re alive. That’s all that matters in the end,” Lila said.

Charles smiled at the old woman’s words. She smiled back. Then her face started to blur. The walls warped and contorted. Now the ceiling. He lurched in his seated position, reaching out for the rim of his stockpot to steady himself, only to tip it and spill the rest of his belongings over the floor of the shed. He tasted dirt again.

Lila gave a shocked ‘oh’ and, as if by instinct, flew to his side.

Flushing, Charles tried to right himself, but just like earlier his limbs and muscles refused to cooperate. The flushing worsened.

“He’s feverish,” Thom said.

“I can see that,” Lila quipped. “Can’t believe I didn’t notice earlier. A wound like that, with almost a week of rain? We’ll need to have a look at that leg.”

Brushing away the young man’s feeble protests about preserving his modesty, Lila carefully set about getting an open look at his injury. It took some doing to get through the tourniquet—Charles had been crudely bandaging himself with tied strips of cloth torn from whatever he could spare—but eventually, she exposed the wound.

It was ghastly. An inflamed, puss-spewing abomination. Even Thom, who held the air of a man who’d stared down many forms of suffering, grimaced and turned away.

“It’s badly infected,” Lila said plainly. “We’ll need to drain it...and he’ll need mothwood.”

“We don’t have much of that,” Thom said. Lila shared a glance with her husband, and after a moment whatever objections he held seemed to be set aside.

Against his better judgment, Charles made the foolish mistake of watching the drainage as it was being performed, a choice that nearly resulted in him blacking out. Why did I do that? I could have so easily not done that. Once completed, it joined an ever-growing list of things he wished he could blot out from memory forever.

That wish would ultimately be granted, because what followed was enough to make the drainage seem a quaint stroll in the vegetable garden by comparison. Lila returned from the cart with a handful of star-shaped leaves from a plant he did not recognize. And if a Boulier chef didn’t recognize a plant, that plant had no place in the culinary world. This could only be medicinal. Something well outside his school of knowledge.

“This is going to hurt quite a bit,” she said bluntly. “And I can’t promise there won’t be lasting damage.”

But Charles barely heard. He was lost in a fever-induced realm of eternal gratitude. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done. The last two weeks had been up in the air, but truly this chance meeting was where his luck took a turn for the brighter. His thoughts sang a ballad of appreciation for this wonderful woman and her strange, mysterious plants.

Then said woman pressed the mothwood to his skin. Charles screamed. He screamed like his mortal soul was trying to burst free of flesh and blood. A thousand-mile trek on his bad leg, hopping barefoot across plains of shattered glass and salt, would seem a paradise compared to what was currently coursing through him. Only fatigue kept him from writhing wildly.

“Quiet, boy!” Thom covered his mouth and did not let go for what felt like hours, or however long it took for Lila to deem her task finished. Satisfied, the old woman revealed a needle and thread from another of the cart’s many pouches and casually began stitching his skin together like a seamstress mending a torn sleeve. By that point, an exhausted Charles barely registered the pins and pricks. He barely registered anything. Except how desperately tired he was. Keeping aware of his surroundings even an instant longer was beyond him now. He was asleep before Lila finished bandaging him.

. . .

“We can’t,” a hushed voice said. Charles blinked. Where was he? Why did he feel as though a cart had run him over, then backed up for good measure? Another voice responded, but he couldn’t make out any words. The first voice whispered again. They sounded upset.

“He’s practically a child. He’ll never make it the whole way. Not on his own.” Charles tried to protest. It was rude to speak of someone as though they were not present. But when he tried to talk, his voice failed. He could not move or utter a sound. Everything felt faded. Floaty. He wondered if this was a dream, and who these strange, shapeless voices belonged to. Certainly no one he’d ever met.

“He’s practically in his grave.” The second voice was resolute. “Look at him. He can barely move that leg. If the fever doesn't end him, those riders will. They’ll end us, too, if we slow down to help him. It’s a long journey to the capital still, and hardly enough food for two. We’re leaving when the weather lets up. He stays behind.”

“At least put his money back,” the first voice pleaded. “If he does make it, that might be all he and his family has to live on.”

“His family is dead, Lila. You know as well as I. It’s payment. Not theft. The money for the mothwood. Kind for kind.”

“But…”

The first voice faltered. The dream dissolved, and Charles fell back into a deep slumber.