Tarnava — 14 YBB

Yes, I know that you are curious about your Marks. As are we all. Quite the unusual situation. I assure you that there is more we can tell you, but now is neither the time nor the place.

For my own part, I am rather impressed with what knowledge you have managed to glean on your own. It bespeaks a degree of initiative uncommon in young men.

----------------------------------------

Murentam Valley — 15 YBB

Saf sat on one of the low stone benches in the castleyard, taking his midday meal. Jamin had some of the fighters training in pairs, sweat glistening on their bare upper bodies. For perhaps the first time, Saf felt a little less jealous of his exclusion. The day was shaping up to be brutally hot, and he would thank the gods for whatever twists of fate had brought him to be in the shade at that moment.

Then again, the would-be warriors had one point in their favor. They had the rapt attention of the line of washerwomen churning clothes in a trough across the yard from Saf.

Draped on the bench, Saf looked disinterested and nonchalant. At least, he hoped he looked disinterested and nonchalant. He dragged out his meal of stale bread and boiled cabbage as long as he could, drinking his thin ale in tiny sips. He had nearly exhausted his excuse for sitting there when Mina stepped out of the castle by one of the side doors with a basket in hand.

She was off to the village on her mysterious errand, the same one she had been on that day when she caught him trying to get off of work.

After she had left the castle through the gate, Saf dusted the dirt from his trousers and stood up. She would be gone from Murentam for hours. His best chance. Maybe his only one for a while.

Saf walked into the castle, heading for Mina’s private chamber in a wing in the southwest. He had counted on not encountering many others. Few servants came back into the living quarters after the start of the workday.

He got almost the whole way there without seeing anyone, until he turned a corner and nearly collided with Divia.

“Hullo,” she greeted him cheerily. After another second’s thought she narrowed her eyes. Light brown, verging on amber, they looked like a cat’s.

“Where are you going?”

He groped for a plausible excuse but came up empty. Grimacing, he went with an implausible one.

“Um... I’m investigating a hunch I have about the murders.”

He didn’t want to tell her his real intention: searching through Mina’s room with her gone. He didn’t want to tell her how he had developed a burning curiosity about his own past. Not when that story involved the fact that he had developed Marks of Power, not when anyone who knew about the Marks could be taken dead or alive by Imperial Mages for abetting rogue magic.

“Mind if I come with you, then?”

Saf grimaced again. She had called him out. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Fine.” She spoke the word with a rare iciness. Then her voice softened. “Saf, you’ve been acting strange for weeks. Something’s going on. Why can’t you just tell me?”

“I can’t. I just can’t. You have to believe me.”

“Fine. Fine.”

With a last glance at him, she walked on down the hallway. Saf stayed where he was, watching her go, afraid that if he continued he would give away his destination.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Before she had rounded a corner in the corridor out of sight, Divia turned back to look at him too. They made eye contact and she chewed absentmindedly on her lip before vanishing.

The conversation left Saf with a nervous energy that made him cover the rest of the distance to Mina’s room quickly. Through the gap between the door and the castle wall, he checked to make sure the room was empty. He had gotten the information about Mina’s schedule from a kitchen girl who worked under her, but Saf wasn’t sure if some other chambermaid might attend to Mina’s quarters during the day.

To his relief, the coast was clear. He edged inside, trying in vain to prevent the door from squeaking as he pulled it open. Mina’s room didn’t compare with what he had seen of Sir Henerick’s, but it still far outclassed the quarters that housed low-ranking servants like Saf.

Simple furniture, including a writing desk and several chests, lined the wall opposite the door. A wool rug covered the floor in the center of the room. A small window with real glass sat high up on the wall, crisscrossed by little iron bars. The real luxury was a genuine bed atop a wood pallet on the left side. At one point friezes had even decorated the stone walls, but the colors were so faded now that Saf couldn’t tell what they had depicted.

Saf reminded himself to hurry. He would be expected back in the fields, planting summer lettuce. Every useless moment he spent in Mina’s room would aggravate the severity of the reprimand he received.

Quickly, he examined the items Mina kept lined up on top of the desk. There was a little piece of wood carved crudely into the semblance of a woman with a dress on. Saf smiled. Hadn’t he made that as a child? He picked it up and felt the grain of the wood.

Better hurry, you dunce. He put his handiwork down. Next to it, a little silver necklace was displayed on a wooden mount. He squinted at the engraving of a rose attached to the chain. An expensive gift. He noticed a piece of paper at the back of the desk.

Saf unrolled it, holding down the ends with the necklace mount and a smooth egg-shaped stone. The paper listed the various disturbing incidents that had gripped Murentam over the past weeks, including the death of Nota, the bizarre livestock killings, the murder of Kar, the attack of the Thin Witch, and the disappearance of a village girl around the same time, which the scribe suggested could be linked to the same creature.

Very interesting, but not relevant to Saf. He left the desk and opened the chests. Mostly they seemed to contain clothes. He hesitated. Saf didn’t want to leave evidence that he had rifled through her belongings. He might have a chance to return in the future, but it wouldn’t matter if she took extra precautions to hide everything important.

He decided to snake his hand down the side of the chests and feel around at the bottom, guessing that he might find any old or precious things there without messing up the folded clothes.

In the first two trunks he found nothing. From the last one, though, he fished out a small slip of paper that seemed to have been torn from a letter. Saf could barely make out the smudged handwriting

“The Empress smiles upon you, my dear woman. I only hope that I may survive to thank you in person.”

At last, he had found something from Mina’s hazy past.

The sound of rapid footsteps cut short his internal exultation. Saf froze in a panic, but the person passed by the door. He remained undiscovered. Suddenly conscious of the time he had spent in Mina’s room, Saf slipped the letter fragment back into its original hiding place and peeked out into the hallway.

It was empty. He began the long walk back to the fields to report, tardily, for his duties. As he walked he gnawed on the little scrap of information he had gotten for his troubles. The Empress smiles upon you. So Mina had rendered a great service to somebody. Maybe to everybody. I only hope that I may survive.. who was this mysterious interlocutor? The idea of someone else out there connected to his past exhilarated him.

Lost in his thoughts, Saf didn’t notice the shouting until he was already near the front of the castle. He could hear a crowd surging into the hall. Surrendering to his curiosity, he changed course to join them. When he saw the grim faces, his heart sank.

Another attack. Images of the Thin Woman engulfing the heads of the woodcutters leapt back to the front of his mind. He had to stop and steady himself on a banister so as not to vomit into the rushes. He was shaking.

The crowd fell silent. Jamin had taken control of the situation.

“Please! Return to your duties. The girl needs quiet and rest!”

The girl. Saf felt nailed to the ground. The rest of the crowd streamed past him, out into the yard.

The hall had almost emptied. He could see the girl, motionless, laid out on one of the long trestle tables. Red hair spilled out around her in a halo. Saf wanted to cry.

Divia.

“Boy! You know the girl. Come here.” Jamin was talking to him. Saf made his legs move. He approached the remaining gaggle of people, Jamin’s men and some older women. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Divia.

“She isn’t hurt. Not physically, anyway. Was in a state of shock. We gave her some sleeping herbs. Take her back to her room and let me know when she’s recovered. We need to know what she saw.”

In a daze, Saf helped one of the men-at-arms and a medicine woman haul Divia back to their room on a wooden pallet. Watching her serene sleeping face, Saf’s mind tortured him with the possibilities of what she’d seen. It was his fault, after all, his fault that this had happened. She had wanted to come with him. She had wanted to join him in his “investigation”. Instead he had begged her off, and she had gone out to forage or some other solitary task. If she had stayed with him in the castle she would have been safe.

He sat at her side for hours. Gods damn the consequences of missing work.

Ahera and the twins came in to check on her over the afternoon, but only for a few minutes at a time. To them, she looked perfectly fine. They didn’t have Saf’s reason for guilt.

Day bled into evening. The light from the hole in the wall began to slacken and dim. Saf’s legs ached from sitting cross-legged for so long. He felt like a hermit.

Divia yawned and blinked groggily. She rolled her head over and smiled up at him.

“What’s wrong, Saf?”

Then some switch flipped in her brain. Her eyes wrenched open. “Oh Gods.”