Lila accidentally woke Idris up when she came back from her scouting mission. She told him to go right back to sleep and that there were still things to do, but not to wake Willard if he did decide to get up. Idris peered at the floor of the tent; Willard was curled up like a faithful hound, head on his satchel, snoring softly.

“No boot,” she added as she headed out, and then, “sir.”

Idris shifted himself out of bed, collected his crutches and navigated over Willard on his way out. He washed his face in the stream, glanced at the sky – it looked like rain – and then he took a deep breath and settled himself more firmly in his kneel by the stream.

“Come on, Idris,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “You did this by accident, as a child. Just… gather. Gather and…”

Magus Arundale’s first lesson was how to clear the mind, to focus on the aria. The further away from a place of pure aria power the magician was, the harder it was to accumulate the required energy for any kind of magic. Necromancy worked best in dungeons and graveyards, but death – death was everywhere, in some capacity, like water and shadow. It had been a long time since Idris had tried to pull the aria’s threads in a place like this, but he supposed he had better try.

He felt every ache – his neck, his shoulders, the base of his spine, the blisters on his feet, the chafing – and every indignity. His phantom foot throbbed. The breeze blew through his thin peasant shirt, into the tied-up fabric around his stump. The rocks under his knees were cool. The stream trickled past him. It was… rather peaceful. The first quiet moment he had experienced in days. With his eyes shut and nothing else around, he felt like he could sleep without Willard’s herbs or Lila’s insistences.

The hardest part was yet to come. He already felt the snakes in his stomach from his anxiety, from his failure, from everything in his pitiful life that –

He tutted, opened his eyes and rested his head back.

“You looked happy, there, I did not want to bother you.”

Idris jumped, turned. Sitting at the newly-built fire was Lady Riette. Her helmet was off, and her eyes were fixed intently on him.

“I…” He felt shame all at once, and he pushed his hair out of his face and shook his head. “I was…”

“You do not like me, do you?” she said.

Idris rubbed his wrist. “What… gave you that impression?”

“You have hardly spoken a word to me since we met,” she said, with a wan smile.

He swallowed, licked his lower lip. “It… nothing personal, my lady. I have been preoccupied.”

“I offended you,” she said.

“When?”

“When I mentioned ‘noble birth.’”

“Oh.” Idris pushed himself to his left ankle, used his crutch to push himself up. “It is a… badly salted wound, I am afraid, my lady.” She patted the log she was sitting on. “Thank you. You do not need to get up on account of me, though.”

“Sit down before you fall down, good sir,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Do I still look that miserable?”

“Miserable?” Lady Riette looked confused. Idris gestured to his whole state of being, his leg. “Oh, Sir Idris,” she said, quietly, “I work with soldiers. They always look worse than that.”

“Was that a compliment?” he said. She smiled a small, enchanting smile.

“I have been away from court for a very long time, and I am out of practice.”

“Then… then I accept,” he said, smiling a little, too. Lady Riette tapped the log again, got up.

“This is yours.”

“Thank you.”

“Judge Kurellan and I,” said Lady Riette, settling on the ground, “scouted the road ahead and the surrounding country and I think our rogue necromancer did stay around here, or he is still here.”

“You do?” said Idris, lowering himself carefully onto the log.

“There are the remains of a fire not a mile from here,” she said, pointing south. “The bells went positively wild there when your young attendant brought them.”

“Then where is Kurellan now?”

“In Obsidian Lake, looking for him. Do you mind if I…?” She motioned to her braid. “It is rather tight.”

“Please.”

Lady Riette started to unravel the braid. “He wanted to be in the town, in case the necromancer was already there and to prepare the people. Lila is checking the bells and making notes. You have trained her exceptionally well,” she said, shrugging. “I had no idea there were so many necromancers around –“

“Lila is not adept,” he said. “She… it is an arrangement that benefits us both. She is diligent with my more bureaucratic and personal matters. It keeps me free to…” He sighed. “To be bad at my job, I suppose. No, Lila is perfect. I owe her my very sanity.”

The captain continued to unravel her long, ashen hair, her brow creased.

“Bad at your job… how?” she said at last.

“It does not matter.”

“Last I heard, you saved the kingdom, unless there is another Court Necromancer for House Naga.”

Idris pursed his lips, watched a bird flit down to the stream.

“That is an over-generous description of what I did,” he said, more to himself than to Lady Riette.

“That was you, at Braemar Field,” she said, watching him now. “Who raised half the force to protect the city? By yourself? Without any time to prepare?”

He frowned. “Where did you hear this?”

“Word travels about war heroes.”

“All the way to Harran Pass?”

“Yes.”

“It was… less than half. The aria did most of the work.”

Lady Riette shook out her hair, tousled it, smiling still. “You are allowed to take credit for what you did. It saved Braemar. In saving Braemar, you barred the enemy from the road to Veridia. It turned the tide in our favour.”

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“I do not remember it being particularly heroic,” said Idris, “that is all.”

“The act of war itself is not heroic,” said Lady Riette. “It is what people do for the things they love that is heroic.”

“It certainly was not heroic of me to be dragged to Harran Pass behind a pack pony, or to fail to take control of another necromancer’s aria, so I will add those to the tally.”

The lady shuffled uncertainly, unravelled the tresses of her hair. Idris did not want her needless pity. He knew what he had done – or not done. He was not going to be useless again. Maybe his words had been too harsh, though. Speaking to a noblewoman was not in his usual day-to-day agenda, much to Cressida’s chagrin, and he was unsure how to be chivalrous in situations like this one.

“I am not usually this…” He searched for the word. “Dour. If I have upset you, good lady, it was not intentional.”

“Riette is fine,” she said, with another warm smile.

“Idris is also fine.”

“I would be far more miserable if I had endured all you have endured these last few days,” she said, “so no apologies, please. Like I said, it has been a long while since I attended court, and I am also unaccustomed to noble companions.”

Idris flicked open the text he had swiped from the tent and started to examine the diagrams he had marked the night before. The whole time, he felt the captain’s eyes on him.

“What are you studying?” she said.

“Stances. Usually, I work with a supervisor checking the texts and I work more practically. But my normal supervisor is absent right now. It’s fine. The theory is good.”

“Book learning does not seem the correct procedure for this,” said Riette, trailing her hair over her shoulder. “So. Where should we train?”

Idris blinked, glanced up at her. She stood, dusted her hands off and smiled, holding out a hand for the book.

“I cannot impose,” he started, but she simply offered her hand more firmly, and he supposed he did not have much of a say in the matter.

He chose a spot of flat farmland where he could kneel without issue, and Riette followed with Circles and Lines open to the correct page, examining the diagrams carefully.

“There is a lot more mathematics involved in aria magic than I first assumed,” she said.

“Only the application of angles and symmetry. It is not that complex, once you begin.” She raised her eyebrows, and he felt his cheeks warm again. “And besides, mostly it is muscle memory. You know when you are right; you feel it. The aria flows.”

“This is what you attempted at the pass?” Her frown deepened. “It is… intricate.” She knelt in front of him, glanced from the diagram to his position. “The picture, here, has the magician standing.”

“That is a… a technicality that I have to work around. I have been adapting these positions for many years, and it is possible to perform standing stances from a kneel, as long as the lines are correct. It may be why I failed at Harran Pass. I did not have firm connection with the ground.” He settled into the stance, loosening his shoulders. “Arms?”

“Parallel to the ground, pointing the same way as your… knees, I suppose.”

“Check my angle?”

Riette craned her neck, and he fidgeted.

“Lila moves my arms for me,” he said.

“I did not want to touch you without your consent.”

“You have my express consent.”

“Well,” said Riette, moving to his side and nudging his right elbow upwards, “the soldiers tell me I have rough hands, so if I hurt you, inform me. Here, this knee… may I?”

“Please.”

Riette’s hands were strong and calloused but, Idris noted as she pushed his knee inwards, perfectly manicured. She smelled like polished leather and woodsmoke.

“I think your shoulders have to be parallel, too.”

“Oh. Hmm.”

“If your back is very straight, then I am sure that will –“

“Sir Idris,” called Lila, from somewhere close by.

Idris turned, and when he saw her approaching on Applewood he suddenly felt incredibly embarrassed. This woman had her hands all over him and here Lila was, doing real work for the good of the kingdom.

“Good morning, Lila,” said Riette, smiling. “Your master and I were working on stances. How was your scouting mission?”

Lila climbed down from the horse and bowed her head. “Lady Riette. Sir Idris, I have reports, and I would like to hear your theories on what to do next.”

“Certainly, Lila. Um… my thanks, Lady Riette,” he added, picking up his crutch.

“My pleasure,” she said.

It was not until he was settled back at the fire with Lila that he realised that Riette had not once stared at his leg or asked how it had happened, nor had she attempted to unnecessarily assist him. It was the first time he could remember such an event taking place.

*

Once breakfast had been eaten and Lila had laid out the small map she had, Willard and Riette joined them to formulate a plan.

“This is where we are,” said Lila, placing a pebble on the south side of the stream on the map. “The necromancer’s camp is… here.”

“Can we find another name for this other dead-talker?” said Willard, pulling a face. “’S’getting right knotty trying to keep up.”

Lila smiled slightly. “I will call him Not-Idris, if that helps.”

“Or we do not give him a name and we just assume when we say ‘necromancer’ we mean ‘the other one,’” said Idris, hunching his shoulders and trying to focus on the map.

“The camp is still a good day’s walk from Obsidian Lake,” Lila continued, “but when I took the bells to the town, there was nothing but background noise. I do not think he has gone through – or, if he has, he did not raise the green glow to pass.”

“Perhaps he is only attacking soldiers,” said Riette, sharpening her sword slowly. “Or important military bases. Harran Pass is a crucial step to accessing the kingdom proper, as are the border barracks.”

“No,” said Idris, frowning. “No, necromancy of that calibre… he will be too tired to perform another spectacle like that again.”

“He is also walking,” Lila said.

“He needs rest,” he said.

“But the campsite was abandoned.”

“The Old Honour is checking Obsidian Lake for him, aye?” said Willard. Lila nodded. “What about the farms around here?”

“I went down a few roads, bells in hand,” said Lila, pointing out her routes. “I think the aria was too weak to register, though.”

“Arias dissipate unless they are deeply ingrained in the landscape,” Idris explained, seeing Willard’s confused frown. “Even a magician’s inherent aptitude for a discipline will not chime a bell unless they are casting right beside one. Which means, our trail is likely cold.”

“We know where he has not been,” said Riette. “He has not yet passed Obsidian Lake. If he is aiming to reach Veridia, that is the most direct route.”

“He knows these lands, then,” said Idris.

“Rather well,” she agreed.

“If we are to catch him, we must lay a trap. May I?” he said to Lila, who nodded, and he slid the map closer to him. “Wherever he approaches from, he must join the road here to get through. He cannot go through the lake, clearly, and the mountains on the other side are difficult terrain that physically, I do not think he would want to tackle.” He sat back, thought. “Besides that… he is somehow killing soldiers. I am still not sure how he is managing this. Thrall attacks are sporadic and reliant on some muscle, but I have not seen a single working thrall and the cuts made in the bodies are incredibly precise. The green faces themselves are not harmful.”

“Distraction?” Lila suggested.

“Go on.”

“Well, in the chaos, with the soldiers confused and frightened, it would be easy to get something else inside.”

“Like what?” said Willard. “We didn’t see no army or group of hidden assassins when we followed him.”

“We were not close, though.”

“My men would have seen attackers enter the gate before the necromancer got in,” said Riette, her face stern. “The gate was shut.”

“Maybe they were inside before the necromancer even reached Harran Pass,” said Idris quietly, a weird stirring sensation chilling his stomach.

Nobody spoke. He thought about all of the strange events of the last few weeks, of the mornings in the dungeons with Kurellan, of the green faces, of the taint in the aria.

“Before Kurellan and I left Veridia,” he said slowly, “we were investigating palace breaches. Young men, coming into the palace grounds to take ‘good steel’. All of them with the same story, of a sick mother. Judge Kurellan was convinced that there were dissidents in the peasantry and I was sceptical, but… but maybe he was not far off. What if the necromancer has groups of locals embedded in these places? Waiting for his signal? With good blades and clear instructions?”

“You wait for the green faces,” said Riette, catching on, “and then you attack. Kill just enough for the necromancer to get through unopposed and then… vanish, back into your hometown?”

“To what end?” said Lila, her eyes troubled.

“The anniversary of the peace treaty is in six weeks,” Idris said. “Another challenge to Queen Cressida’s rule would undo that progress. Plunge the kingdom back into war. So… oh, black bells, she did exactly what they wanted,” he muttered, starting to get up.

“What do you mean?”

“Sending Kurellan and I out of town. If I am out here, running after an errant necromancer, I cannot be in the palace, ready to oppose him. They are wasting my strength on purpose.”

The spy in court had planned on it. Everyone knew that Idris was Cressida’s most trusted friend. Why would she not send him on this errand? That, and with Kurellan gone, the highest arbiter of law and order in the kingdom was indisposed.

“Riette,” said Idris, “the gate at Harran Pass. Weavers have placed wards on it, correct?”

“Correct.”

“The green faces, they could not pass through, not like they passed through the soldiers.” He turned now to Lila. “Go to Kurellan. Tell him to ask for weavers. I have an idea.”