“Captain Merrin wants to kill the Tree.”

Jashal looked serious. He believed what he was saying, but the idea was preposterous. The Tree was eternal; you might as well try to kill the moon or the wind… And yet, Reg remembered the primary branch-fall that wasn’t. The one that killed his mother, brother, and auntie. The one that Barkle refused to talk about after a visit to the Thornbound. How eternal was it? If a primary could fall, could heartwood die?

But even if the Tree wasn’t eternal and invulnerable, trying to kill it? Who would want to destroy the world? Captain Merrin was sworn to protect it; that was the whole point of the Achivian Guard. Without the Tree, they’d all be consumed by madness in the mist.

“Reg, you believe me right?” Jashal looked even more worried.

Reg realized he’d been standing there shocked for a while. He gathered himself, “What do you mean she wants to kill the Tree? How do you know?”

“So, after dinner, I was dangling outside Captain Merrin’s office waiting for her to leave so I could break in—” Jashal started, before Reg interrupted.

“You were what?”

“Not important right now.” At Reg’s expression, he relented. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell you, but later. So, this elf bloke—no eyebrows, bald, kooky looking, but in nice clothes—he was meeting with the Captain. I took a peek at ‘em after they greeted each other. He said ‘All trees die,’ normal as you please. And she said ‘Nothing is eternal.’ Kinda like a password, right? If you were an evil twist.”

Reg shook his head. “That’s strange for sure, but maybe they were just talking about trees in general. Or something else.” His voice was hesitant.

“Right. Sounded creepy, but coulda been nothing.” Jashal agreed. “But then they kept talking. Captain Merrin was saying things like ‘I can get to the Heart’ and the bloke was saying things like ‘It’s too late to kill it. We need another plan.’ And the Captain would say things like ‘Killing the Tree is still the best plan we have.’ And they just went back and forth like that. The bloke was arguing against killing the Tree, but mostly because he thought it wouldn’t work. And then he’d say things about planting an explosive ward to murder the whole conclave and how to sneak the ward past the Thornbound. Trunk’s truth, it scared me.”

Reg shook his head. “Talking about killing the conclave too? Blight, that seals it. They must both have been turned by the mist.”

Jashal replied, “Right. Bet you Captain Merrin has spent more time than anyone down there. Bark and bramble, she has horns! I bet you she still has her eye too, but it’s turned into something sinister, and she’s just hiding it behind that eye-patch. She must have been twisted.”

“How about the bloke?” Reg wondered aloud. “He’s not a guard, right? How did he expose himself?”

“Dunno. She called him ‘Dr. Keljor,’ but I ain’t never seen him around or nothing. Maybe he used to be a guard? Didn’t have any mist marks, but it’s sometimes hard to tell. Maybe a bad storm?”

Reg paused to think. That name didn’t sound totally unfamiliar. He had heard it before. But where? The description of the elf didn’t sound familiar. “Does that name sound familiar to you too? Maybe someone Instructor Silliuk talked about at some point?”

“Not really.” Jashal answered. “But you know The World Below is where I do my best sleeping. It does sound like a name for one of those boring writers Silliuk is always on about.”

“Right. I suppose that doesn’t matter as much as figuring out what to do.” Reg said. “This is too big for us. We need to tell someone. MIsts, Captain Merrin is the first person I’d want to go to with something like this.”

Jashal grunted in agreement. “She is. And I’m not sure which instructors are safe. She chose them, right? Are they part of it?”

“Maybe. I still don’t want to believe that Captain Merrin wants to kill the Tree. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would she be teaching us so well if guard the Tree if she was trying to get rid of it?” Reg gave a half laugh, “‘The child’s mind believes because it wants to.’ Funny to be quoting her class when we think she’s the threat. But I want to believe that you’re wrong. Why were you lurking outside her office, anyways?”

Jashal looked awkward as he answered. “I’m really not supposed to talk about this. Just don’t tell anyone that I told you this, okay?” When Reg nodded, he continued, “So, I wasn’t originally actually trying to get into the guard. Risking my life to keep upper-branch pointy-ears safe? Nah, not for me. I was here to liberate a few masks for my crew.”

“Your crew?” Reg asked. Thinking about it, he supposed it made sense; he wouldn’t mind giving Barkle, Martha, and everyone else masks when they were herding goats on lower branches in case there was a storm. But Jashal wasn’t a herder. What other kind of crew could need masks?

“My crew. My gang. I was part of a group of thieves.” Jashal laughed at Reg’s expression. “Branch and bone, you’re innocent.” Still laughing, he continued: “I was one of our spiders. Meant my job was getting into hard-to-enter spots. And I had a plan: during guard tryouts, I’d grab a few masks, not enough that they’d do any heavy divination tracking or nothing. And those masks would have let us sneak down below and harvest metal on our own. Good thing I was caught—would have gotten a ton of my folks twisted and killed. Didn’t realize how bad the mist actually was. Thought it was just something that the Conclave and Thornbound were playing up to try and keep in power.

“Anyways, second night of tryouts, I had just climbed up to one of those windows near the back of the Hall of Masks and was planning to break it to get in. And then I heard this voice, ‘if you break that window, it’ll be coming out of your salary.’ So, I sprinted the heck out of there and ran straight into a trap that had me all trussed up as tight as you please. And then this masked guard informed me that I was joining the guard and that I’d be taking her class at night.

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“Obviously, I snuck back to Ithilia first chance I got and headed back to my crew. Made it all the way back to the nest. Thought I was totally safe, you know? And then, she strode in right after me, and said something like, ‘Jashal wanted to come back to let you all know that he’s now part of the guard.’ Scared the mulch right out of me, tell you true. Then she beat the stuffing out of some of our beetle boys who tried to fight her. After that, didn’t take much discussion for the crew to give me up. Someone like her knowing everyone’s faces and where we went to roost? Could have gotten a lot more out of ‘em than me. She still scares me and I’ve spent plenty of time with her.

“I’ve been in her class most nights since then. All about sneaking, spying, and skullduggery. For our checkpoint exam, she wanted us to bring her a secret. Best secret would get a cloak of shadows. And I figured that spying on Captain Merrin would be a way to get a good one.”

“Huh.” was Reg’s first response. Thinking about it, a lot of things started to make sense: how Jashal was able to help them sneak into the armory; why he was always sleeping during Instructor Silliuk’s class; and how he’d gotten into the guard to begin with, despite not doing noticeably well during any of the tryouts. “Are those skills useful down below?”

“Not really.” Jashal replied. “Always seemed weird to me too. But if Captain Merrin is trying to make a private army to kill the Tree…”

That sparked a horrible thought: their minds were regularly attacked during The Self and the Other. If Instructor Mossgate was part of this, he could have been slowly twisting all of them, and they might not even realize it. Especially now that they were regularly taking forgetfulness draughts—they might not even remember what Instructor Mossgate was doing. And Captain Merrin would have her army.

Jashal’s face twisted in horror when Reg explained his theory. “But, we’d know if we were twisted, right?”

Reg shrugged, “Maybe. And the Captain might have a totally different plan. But we need to figure out who we should tell. We can’t go to any of the instructors or guards. We don’t know who’s safe.”

“How about Commander Pompadon?” Jashal asked. “We know Captain Merrin is trying to work against the Thornbound. And we know she didn’t choose him because he’s her boss. And he’s not a guard, so there’s no chance he’s twisted.”

Reg was uncertain. Barkle walking out of the Thornbound offices in Ithilia insisting that the primary branch-fall was under control was still fresh in his mind. But he couldn’t think of anyone else to trust. Sure, they could tell other recruits, or he could send a letter back home to his family, but none of that would do anything. They needed to tell someone, and soon.

After Reg explained his experience with the Thornbound, and Jashal got over his shock at hearing there’d been a primary branch-fall that was that close to Ithilia—”Flaming twists, what do you mean it was a primary?”—they came up with a plan. It was a rough plan (Reg couldn’t stop thinking that Captain Merrin would have torn it apart if they’d submitted it in her class), but it meant that even if Commander Pompadon was twisted too, all hope wasn’t lost.

That next morning, Reg and Val didn’t show up for morning calisthenics. Apparently, one of Instructor Mossgate’s experimental potions hadn’t sat right for either of them. Jashal looked wan and tired himself when he reported, so it was quite believable.

In Ithilia, Reg squatted on his heels outside the Thornbound offices, waiting for them to open. There was a bench outside the offices facing the busy market, but Reg avoided it—it was the bench that Barkle had been waiting on all those moons earlier when they’d come to report the fall of the primary. His heart was racing. The beautifully druid-crafted offices cast long shadows in the bright morning light and the wide entrance doors looked foreboding.

Bartholomew chittered at him from where he was hiding in Reg’s sling pouch, shaking Reg out of his thoughts. He dropped another fried goat cheese ball into the pouch for him. Apparently, many moons of sharing Val’s plate meant that the chipmunk had a refined palate, and Bartholomew had decided that if he was going to suffer the indignity of the sling pouch, he had better be well rewarded. Reg carefully didn’t look around for Val; he knew she was close enough to share Bartholomew’s ears, and that was all he wanted to know.

Reg let out a sigh of relief when he saw Commander Pompadon strolling towards the office. Commander Pompadon had an office at the Achivian Guard headquarters as well, but despite overseeing the guard, he was rarely there.

Reg hailed the commander, and Commander Pompadon’s surprise quickly gave way to a broad smile. “Reg, I’m glad to see you, my lad, but aren’t you supposed to be in class? What can I help you with?”

“Commander, do you have somewhere safe to talk? I think someone is going to attack the Tree.”

Once they were sitting in Commander Pompadon’s airy office, Reg explained what Jashal had heard as quickly and clearly as he could. He didn’t mention Jashal, and instead implied that he’d been the one to overhear the conversation. When Reg mentioned Captain Merrin’s greeting, ‘All trees die,’ Commander Pompadon’s brow furrowed and his mouth twisted; he clearly recognized the phrase. Reg was surprised at how readily Commander Pompadon believed him after that.

Once Commander Pompadon was convinced, things started moving quickly. A mage specializing in memory was brought in to trawl through Reg’s memories to corroborate his report. Relaxing his mental defenses enough to share the memory with the mage was one of the harder things Reg had done, and he was glad when the mage finally nodded to Commander Pompadon, “He believes it, Commander.” The offices turned into a hive of activity as Thornbound gardening crews were called in from nearby cities.

As quickly as the Thornbound worked, it was still early evening by the time the gardeners were ready. It took time to contact all of the gardening crews and for them to travel to Ithilia. One group of gardeners, twenty strong, would be accompanying Commander Pompadon and Reg to confront Captain Merrin. Another, smaller group, was headed to capture and interrogate Dr. Keljor. From listening to their conversations, it sounded like he was some sort of merchant.

The Thornbound Gardeners were a hard-looking group of elves, gnomes, and humans. Most bore bludgeons, shields, and a varied collection of scars. A few had long staves and the look of druids. There were two mages. One was the memory mage who had invaded Reg’s mind. The other was a bit younger, and kept nervously summoning and dismissing a knife made of black fire.

Commander Pompadon cleared his throat to get the attention of the group headed to capture Captain Merrin. “Gardeners, my heart swells with pride to be marching with such a bold group to defend this Tree and all of its denizens. This night’s glorious work is one that shall live on in the annals of the Thornbound.

“For too long, we have trusted in the ability of the Achivian Guard to govern itself, and that self-governance away from the firm hand of the Thornbound has borne the insidious fruit of betrayal. We march now, not only to save the Tree from twists, but to take the Achivian Guard more firmly in hand so that we might preserve the safety of our home.

“Be on your guard. Reg here tells me the Captain has been twisted by the mist, and who knows whether other guards have been suborned by her. I have the fullest confidence in this group to successfully carry out this mission.”

Command Pompadon paused, as if waiting for applause. After a few seconds, the gardeners clapped lightly, and the Commander beamed. One of the Sergeants, a tall weather-beaten man, said “You heard the commander. Move out.”

As they started the trek towards the Achivian Campus, Reg jogged up next to Commander Pompadon and asked, “Are you sure this is enough people, sir?” He was worried—Commander Merrin would have been dangerous even if she weren’t twisted. He’d heard stories. And that was assuming that Commander Merrin was their only enemy in the guard.

Commander Pompadon chuckled, “Of course, son. Twenty gardeners to capture a single person? We won’t have any problems at all. Everything is under control.”