*

After they had hidden Vetch’s horse and Fae away in the barn—and paid the building’s owner decidedly more than any stable would have demanded, to ensure he didn’t go flapping his gums about the strange charge-beast left in his care—they had returned to their inn room. There, they had refreshed themselves and changed their clothes. Lily was pleased to at last be out of the dirtied clothes she had worn throughout their hurried ride across Draffor’s farmlands, but she could not help feeling jittery about what they must do now. It was one thing to say they were going to steal Marigold back from a powerful mage and her bloodthirsty marauders by any means necessary. It was quite another to find themselves at the foot of The Lady’s castle, just the two of them, and feel how absolutely absurd that notion truly was. She felt no more certain now about how she could save her mentor than she had back at Arlette’s breakfast table the morning she had set out to chase down Vetch and his band.

Lily waited in the common room for Vetch to join her. He came down the hallway straightening his cleanest townsman’s shirt, his face washed and his hair brushed. For anyone else, he would have passed muster, but the man still looked unwell to her eye. It troubled her.

They stepped out now as regular townspeople, visitors to Black Crux going to browse the markets. Lily held Vetch’s hand. He was more adept at gauging a city than she, so she went along with where he led them. The streets and byways, the traffic of people and carts, were things that had been his domain back home. It took him no time at all to find his stride in this place. To Lily, one part of Black Crux looked much like another. The town did not appear to have distinctive districts, as Moonfane Forge had.

But it was true enough that in any town, one might simply follow the steadiest flow of people to find its center. Black Crux town’s market was no different. The street it stretched up was the widest they had yet walked, a cobbled way that curved gradually along the shape of the river gully, before straightening into a long thoroughfare. To either side, hawkers and merchants plied their noisy trades. At its end was an unimpeded view of The Lady’s castle on the hill. Afternoon sunlight reflected off the black stone. They headed toward it.

Markets were always lively places, brimming with noise and activity. They were happy places. Or, at least, they had always been so for Lily. So, she was taken aback by how cheerless Black Crux’s market street appeared. Looking about her, she noted how hastily people concluded their business and went on their way. It was very unlike the markets of Moonfane Forge, or even Pasanhal town, where people gathered to socialize and catch up on tidings. There was buying and selling, of course, but those had been social places where folks saw their friends and engaged in long discourses about nothing at all.

This place was different. Few were the people conversing in this market. Time and again, as she and Vetch slowly walked, listening and watching, Lily saw people choose their produce, haggle over prices, and quickly close their bargains without ever making eye contact or uttering a word more than necessary. It created a nagging unease in her, like watching someone pet a cat the wrong way.

“Lily. Lily.” The urgency in Vetch’s harsh whisper caught her attention. She had been so blithely walking and staring about. Now she turned her head to see that Vetch’s eyes were wide and staring, looking not at her, but up the street. Instantly, she was on the alert, but for the life of her, she could not spot anything that would have him so agitated. Even so, when he tugged on her arm and gestured with his head desperately to follow, she did.

He whisked her quickly between two market stalls. A hawker shouted at them when Lily inadvertently bumped a basket off a table, sending some kind of root vegetables spilling all over the cobbles, but Vetch didn’t stop until they had crossed a backing street and were away from the market stalls and carts. There, he paused under the eave of an empty shop front. Lily looked at him. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard from the short dash. His eyes were still intent on the market street. When Lily tried to follow his gaze, but still saw only the normal bustle of a town market.

“What is it?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she touched his elbow. “Vetch.”

He slowly raised his arm and pointed back at the crowded street. Through a gap in the stalls, Lily saw the man he indicated. To say that he stood out from the rest of the common townsfolk would not have been an exaggeration, but not for any flamboyant appearance. Dressed in well-tailored but subdued townsman’s clothes, the only accoutrement that marked him as a soldier was the inornate sword on his belt. But even without that, Lily could have picked him out as unusual. This man moved like a world-weary mountain cat, like someone who had seen a rough life and rougher battles and survived it all. It was written into the weathering of his pocked face and crooked nose, coarseness contrasted by the meticulousness of his sleek black hair, which was worn pulled back into a tail, and his dark moustache, styled into two tendrils that hung down below his chin. Lily watched as he strolled by a baker’s cart, plucked out a steaming pastry, and continued on his way without paying. The baker at her cart didn’t so much raise a word of protest against this.

“Him,” said Vetch. Lily turned to see him still tracking the man with unblinking eyes. “He was the commander in charge of the raiders who attacked Moonfane Forge.”

Lily looked again, but by then, the man had moved beyond their view. How could that be, that a man who strolled easily through the market nibbling a pastry could be the same who had led a horde of murderers against their town? Yet, she knew Vetch could not be mistaken, not by the way he growled low under his breath.

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“And did this,” he added, with a touch to his covered wound. He continued to stare after the man as though he could see through the stalls and buildings, his hand drifting down to where his sword would have been, had he not left it in their room so they might remain inconspicuous. “Damn,” he muttered. He took one deep breath in and let it out, then offered Lily his hand again and said, “Let’s go have a look at the castle.”

The emotional effort it took for him not to follow the swordsman was palpable to Lily. She hoped they would never see that man again.

Up close, the manor that bestowed its name upon Black Crux town was a sight to behold. While a manor in name, it was nothing less than a castle fortress, the kind built in ages of yore, a structure meant to proclaim its power over the surrounding region through sheer physical presence. The gully that divided the town apexed here at the feet of the squat hill that the castle stood upon. Like a crack running up the side of a bowl, water burbled from the dark-stoned fissure. The hill itself was furrowed with additional stony gulches, walled by sharp black cliffs, so that they formed a series of natural dry moats that necessitated the two prominent bridges leading up from the street through the manor’s gates. All these things, Lily and Vetch took in from where they stood down the road. Guards were posted at the beginning of each bridge. On the battlements were more patrolling sentries.

Unlike the man in the market, these swordspeople were unmistakable as accomplices to the ones who had menaced Lily in her very own home, when they had come with The Lady to steal Marigold away. The very sight of them swaggering about up on the battlements made her insides churn with a fear she had not been prepared for. Her thoughts were thrust directly back to that morning, when only her desperate Barrier-Casting had turned back the brutes and prevented them from doing the terrible things they’d undoubtedly had planned for her.

“I don’t see any way in or out except for those bridges,” said Vetch. She was surprised by how casual his tone remained, for the implication of his words was dire.

Lily gazed beyond the looming castle walls, the sharps cliffs, and ready swordsmen. She allowed her vision to lose focus and slowed her breathing and ... there.

“There.” Her voice echoed her thought. A spontaneous smile came over her face. “She’s in there. I feel Marigold. She’s alive.”

“You can tell that?”

Hot tears began coursing down Lily’s face unbidden. She wiped at them with the heels of her hands and nodded. It was the first time she had sensed her teacher’s magic clearly since the day of the attack. Marigold lived. And now she knew for sure where she was.

“Both of them are in there,” she confirmed. “Mari ... and the raven-haired mage. Lady Iris. It could be no others, two such powerful sensations of Barrier magic. She turned her face up to Vetch’s. “What now?”

“If only I knew,” he murmured.

While they watched from down the road, taking care not to draw attention to themselves, various people came and went from the castle. There were those who were dressed lavishly and who arrived in carriages. These people were allowed through the guarded checkpoints and across the two bridges to the main door. Others, those who were dressed as farmers or common craftspeople, were most frequently turned away. The ones least harassed by the sentries appeared to be servants of the castle, the various working folk of the manor, ostensibly known to the guards.

Lily chewed her lip. The elation of knowing that Marigold was alive and near was short-lived. She was near, but how could they get to her? She thought back to one of their earliest ideas and reluctantly discarded it.

“We won’t be able to ransom Mari back, will we?” she asked.

Vetch shook his head. “No. Not with their own gold. What we found in the forest is a pittance compared to what this noblewoman spent to acquire her.”

“What about for Moonfane’s silver? Or our yaks?” She asked. She knew the answer even before Vetch shook his head to this as well.

“The attackers stole as much silver as they could, but still left much behind when they were ordered to leave,” he said. “Our yaks, they could have had during the first attack, when they freed them in the night. This Lady Iris and her army could already have taken all that Moonfane Forge had, if they had wanted to. We’ve nothing to offer them. It was always about getting Marigold,” he concluded. “That, and that alone.”

Lily knew as well as him the truth of it. “What about the guards?” she tried. “Could one of them be bribed to ... I don’t know, let us in, or even to fetch Marigold and bring her out to us?”

This idea was a harder nut to crack, and she saw Vetch giving it consideration. Again, he shook his head, but hedged, “Maybe? Some of her people deserted her, like the two we met in the forest. But those two were different from these sellswords.” He nodded at the guards at the bridge. “Of the blades-for-hire who remain, how would we find one who wouldn’t betray us to her? They’re not just ruffians. They’re paid well. They’ll be loyal.” He sighed. Lily watched him as he appeared to take in the entire location—castle, bridges, hill, cliffs—like a commander surveying the field of battle. “There’s certainly no attacking the place,” he decided. “Or sneaking in. Not unless we could become invisible like your Barriers. Neither sword nor magic will serve us here.”

Lily pressed her fingers to her temples, willing herself not to become frustrated. It was difficult. “Yet, those are what we have. We have to get to her, Vetch. We have to bring her home. She likely doesn’t even know what happened to Moonfane Forge. I must tell her. I’m the one who must be there for her.”

Vetch put his arm around her shoulders and she allowed herself to be drawn in close to him. His breath was warm in her hair as he spoke quietly.

“We will find a way. I promise,” he whispered, and kissed her forehead. For a moment, they stood quietly. Then, “What is happening up there now?” he wondered aloud.

An argument had sparked up at the gatehouse by the street, between the two guards there and a stout man carrying the tools of a carpenter. The guards appeared uninterested in letting him through. As this went on, an old man in an ornate doublet had been stiffly making his way down from the manor. He crossed the bridges unchallenged and arrived at length at the gatehouse. With only a few terse words and an exasperated flip of his hand, he ordered the two guards to let the carpenter pass. He then led the man back up across the bridges to the manor door. Lily shook her head, unable to make anything of it.

Vetch, however, grinned. “I have a way to get in there,” he declared. “One that won’t require any fighting or magic, if all goes as planned.” He turned his toothy grin on her. It was the most he had looked like his normal self in days. That easy, cocksure confidence that bolstered her own. “Let’s get back to the inn,” he said. “I’ll explain as we walk.”