13. A FRUITLESS SEARCH

Morning’s greeting was weak light through thick mist that turned everything outside the window into a featureless gray three paces out. Elyse sat in her bed, blarily staring out the window, trying to clear confusion from her mind. She could hear Flit’s song, after a moment, and that helped focus her thoughts and brought a smile to her face. She had heard the singing of Martim’s familiar enough by now to know it was him. The little cardinal must be on the roof of the inn, and he would not let the mist stop his morning salutations.

Her head ached, though, and her mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with wool. That had not been her first time drinking wine, but certainly it had been one of her first. The first time in years. She did not think she had drunk too much. She had liked the feeling, last night. It was as if the wine breathed mischief into her blood. Elyse had read once about a goddess of wine - Ysonne, she had been called - and while she was not about to start praying, she thought she could see why people would have fondness for such a goddess. She rose and dressed, and took a sprig of sage from her scrip tucked away to chew, to take the bad taste from her mouth. She could not tell what time it was for the fog - she had never seen it so thick - but she thought it was probably later than she had been accustomed to waking.

Out the door and into the hallway, she stopped before Martim’s room. The memory of last night hit her, and her heart sank. Half of her wanted to curse him for his secrecy, and the other half…They killed so many. She did not know what exactly he meant by that, but she thought she could start to make a guess. She had wanted to follow him into his room, but what would she have done? Pester him for answers? To bite him, said the part of her that was angry at the wizard. Regardless, he had locked his door behind him. Something had not quite been right with him.

She lingered for a moment, wondering if she ought to knock, before turning away. Anger burned over sympathy for the moment. Whatever else the wizard was, he could be very irritating. For what reason had he hid from her that he searched for his brother, other than a simple love of secrets? She put him out of her mind.

At least, as much as she could until she got downstairs. There, she was confronted with more evidence of what had happened last night. After Ritter had admitted to fighting for the White Queen…

She surveilled the damage. At the table they had sat at, and the two tables next to them, the candles had been burned down to a nub, and their wax spilled over bronze holders to pool on the table, now cooled and hardened. After Ritter had spoken about who he had served, Martim’s had been so black of mood, so obviously wroth…he had closed his eyes, and the candle-flames around them had flared high, eating through wax and wick in mere moments.

She frowned, and fiddled with one of the sleeves of her dress, staring at that melted wax. Normally, to work with the Art required a focus, to visualize what you were doing. When she healed, it took listening to hear the red song, and when she wove glamor, it took concentration to make the shadows dance. It was not something that was done unintentionally. But there were whispers of times when this was not the case. As one worked with the Art more, became more familiar with its forms, it bled into you. It could change you. And when you were intimate with the Art, the more it became a part of you, the more unbidden the working of it might come. It was a dangerous thing that few had written about. There were stories of dark witches, spurned or slighted, bringing curses or pestilence down without even knowing it. Stories of wizards setting buildings ablaze in their wrath without meaning to. She wondered if Ritter had known any of those stories. She thought if he had that the innkeep might have kicked them out, wizard and witch or no. Those stories had certainly been on her mind last night.

So intently had she been staring at that hardened wax that she did not notice that someone else was downstairs as well. A young man with tousled, straw-colored hair, seated at a table ‘cross the room, was staring at her. He chewed slowly on a buttered roll, crumbs falling from his mouth. He wore a gray woolen that she could tell, even at this distance, was threadbare and in dire need of mending, and tight-fitting trousers tucked into boots whose leather had a reddish hue, laced up to the knee. As she watched, he took another large bite from the roll.

This must be Ritter’s other guest. If so, Elyse knew who he was, or thought she did, and yet seeing the roll in his hands set her stomach to growling. She pinned him with a hard stare - his eyes widened, but he did not stop watching her - and went to the counter, where there was a plate of rolls, cheese, and a slab of butter. Grabbing one for herself and giving it a generous pad of butter, she went and sat across from the man, who watched her warily with cautious brown eyes. His face was smooth, she thought. He was young-looking, perhaps a year or two behind Martimeos and herself. “Hello,” she told him. “Are you another one of the guests?”

He relaxed a bit, and even gave her a bit of a nervous smile. “Yes. You’re one too? I thought I was likely to be the only one here while I stayed.” He regarded her for an oddly long moment, as if considering something, then finally gave her a bashful smile and said, “My name’s Ren.”

“And I am Elyse.” It was hard not to sound smug. She felt very satisfied. Ren? That was the same name that Chesmed had said the thief had given him. Either he was just using his real name, or he was not clever enough to come up with new fake ones. “These rolls are quite good. Have you seen the innkeep this morning? I must thank him for the food.”

“He can’t be far,” Ren muttered. “He watches me like a hawk.” As well he might. Certainly the inn had enough that might be stolen. With a start, Elyse counted the number of books on the bookshelf to make sure none of those had been taken yet. When she glanced back towards Ren, he was watching her closely, a strange expression on his face. “I really am glad to see others here,” he whispered conspiratorially. “This village is so odd, isn’t it? Where has everyone gone? The innkeep doesn’t want to speak of it.”

“It is exactly because it is so odd that I was wondering why a fellow such as you might be here.”

Nervous, shifting, Ren suddenly seemed like a child who had been caught stealing sweets. His young face only added to the effect. “Well,” he demanded, “Why are you here?”

“I have my reasons,” Elyse replied, doing her best to sound mysterious. “My companion and I are looking for something.” Inwardly, she felt very pleased with herself. How long she had read about witches baffling others with their shadowed words, and now she finally got to play the part. And also there was something inherently entertaining about keeping a secret from someone, even when she knew they wanted to know. Perhaps that was why Martim did it. Wiping a frown from her face that was summoned by the thought, she took another bite from her roll and merely watched Ren, waiting for him to answer.

“W-well,” he stammered beneath her stare, “I…I suppose I’m just resting here for a while, is all. I have been on the road for some time.”

“Headed where?” she asked immediately, barely giving him time to catch his breath. She had to keep herself from laughing as he squirmed.

“Just a journey to Twin Lamps,” he finally offered meekly. “My sister…wants me to find work there, and…”

As diverting as it was to listen to him ramble on and pull lies from the air, Elyse eventually decided it was time to cut the chase short. “While you were passing through Cross-on-Green,” she interrupted him, and he immediately fell silent. “I don’t suppose you came across anyone, did you?”

“No, no,” came the quick reply. “Not at all, no one.”

“That’s a shame. I have two friends that I ran across there, you see. Merchants.” Ren was completely silent. “Traveling Folk, perhaps you have heard of them? Odd, floppy red hats, big blue shawls. Very distinctive.” He was beginning to look a little ill, now. “Now, unfortunately, they found themselves victim to a thief. He took some coin, and a little golden statue of a horse from them. They thought he must be hiding in Cross-on-Green.” She paused for a moment, and Ren flinched when she spoke again. “Though, to me, it seems like they might have tried to flee and find somewhere else to hide for a few days. Somewhere south, perhaps. Though if you ask me, it would be awfully foolish of them to linger very long…”

“Is that it then?” Ren asked miserably. “It was me you came looking for.” His eyes darted across the room rapidly, looking for exits. She realized he was tensing, whether to run, or to do something else, she did not know.

“You should think twice before crossing me,” she said, and she reached out with the Art. The shadows on the wall flickered, dancing, flowing into each other, snakes spiraling round and round, and Ren gaped.

He put his head in his hands and moaned. “A witch. I should have known. A pretty girl like you would never keep her hair in such a mess, except that she were a witch.” What an odd thing to say, Elyse thought, running her hands through her hair. It was awfully knotted, and full of sticks and leaves, but did it make her so obviously a witch? She did not have long to dwell on this though, as Ren placed something on the table with a clatter. When she examined it, she was surprised to find a tiny statue of a horse, rearing on its hind legs, mane streaming behind it. “I did not mean to steal it,” he complained. “All I wanted was some coin to live on. I had nothing. Take it back to them, and we will be even.” He seemed almost relieved.

Elyse wasn’t sure that she agreed with that logic. There was still the matter of the coin he had taken from them. And how could she ever return it to Chesmed and Halle to begin with? She remembered, though, that odd notion she had gotten that she would see them again, and so she pocketed the statue. “What I really ought to do is hand you over to them.”

The thief looked ready to run again. “Please, you cannot,” he whispered furiously. “Do you know what the Traveling Folk do to thieves? They take their right hand.” All at once, that boyish face looked on the verge of tears. “Please, miss, you don’t know how hard it is to survive on your own here…my village fell to famine, me and my friends left before we starved to death, we didn’t do too bad on our own at first but…they’re all dead now, or worse. Bandits killed Eire, and carried Nance off screaming…I only lived because I ran. I just want to make it to some place with high walls and steady food, that’s all…”

While it had been exciting to have confronted a thief, Elyse realized with a start that she did not know what it was she could do with him. She certainly could not drag him back to Chesmed and Halle as she had threatened - she might never catch up with them, mounted as they were, even if she were to decide to try. And she realized now, only belatedly, that while it may have been pleasing to see Ren squirm, it might not have been best to let him know that she was a witch, trying as they were to hide that from the villagers.

She could report him to Ritter, and the innkeep may have some place to lock him up until justice could be delivered to him. Only she could not help but feel sorry for him. His nerves seem frayed to the point of snapping. What sort of justice might an isolated village deliver to a thief? Had Ritter mentioned anything? She could not remember, but she knew she had heard stories of hangings for a thief, or floggings. And they might be especially unkind to him for being an outsider like she herself was, in addition to a thief. She did not really want to see this young man beaten or hanged, just for trying to survive.

“Very well,” she told him then, motioning for him to keep quiet. It would do very poorly for them both for someone to be listening in on them just this moment. “I will not take you to them. And I will not tell of your crimes to any others, so long as you do me a service.”

“A service?” the thief asked doubtfully. He swallowed hard, not relishing the idea of being witch-bound.

“A trifle. I am as curious as you are about how this village came to be as it is.” Martim, she thought, might not be. He might want to do nothing but look for signs of his brother, and move on if he could not find them. But she thought that in uncovering the reasons behind one, they might find the other as well. He had been led here by a Dolmec, hadn’t he? It would not have lied to him or sent him astray. “I am wondering whether the people here might be unwilling to talk about it. All I ask is that you search for yourself, as well, and tell me of what you find.”

Ren frowned, nervously tugging at a lock of his hair. “That’s all you wish for? Really?” he asked doubtfully. He had to be older - he was as tall as a full-grown man - but in that moment, he really seemed nothing more than a boy.

“Three pairs of eyes looking are better than two, are they not? My companion and I will be looking as well. But perhaps your eyes will see something that ours do not.” Hesitantly, he nodded agreement. Part of her wondered if this was a good idea. He might have been lying to her with his story, though she did not think he was - he seemed too nervous, and intimidated by witches, to lie to her. He might just run away, which would not be too bad. Or he might tell the villagers that she was a witch. But she did not think he would. She thought she could see the innocence and the fear in him. Another man that she had been told would be a monster who was nothing of the sort. “If we discover it without you, you owe us nothing. Though…” she paused. “I cannot say where we might go next, but when we leave, if it is in your direction, we may be willing to travel with you. It is safer in numbers, as you well know. I can promise nothing on that, however.”

The thief still looked doubtful - perhaps simply disbelieving that he was receiving this much mercy - but he nodded again. “Very well, Elyse. I will do what I can. I don’t know that it will be much, but I will do what I can.”

After some further instructions - she told him that he ought to keep quiet about the fact that she was a witch, with a thinly veiled threat that she would reveal him if he did not - he rose, gave an unsteady bow, and walked out the door. She wondered if she would see him again.

Alone again in the common room, and the mist outside still wreathed everything such that it was impossible to tell how late in the morning it was. She went to the bookshelf, and picked out the book about Véreline. She did hope, at least, that they would be here long enough to give her the time to read this. Or perhaps one of the other books, she thought, as she realized that some of these stories were simply rewordings of ones she already knew, and usually to the effect of making Véreline seem even more fantastic, gracious and powerful.

She was still leafing through the book, looking for a new story, when the wizard made his way downstairs. He looked as if he had not slept a wink, his wild hair all in disarray, and dark circles beneath his eyes, his black cloak drawn closed around him. He stopped to stare at the three tables covered in wax, then looked up at her, his expression blank, before he blushed and looked away.

He wandered over to the counter, picked up a roll, and then came to sit across from her. He looked as if he was going to say something, changed his mind, and then bit into the roll instead. He chewed this for a moment, then set it down, and did not pick it up again. “Good morning,” he said quietly, and it seemed that he spoke to the room, not to her.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Good morning,” she replied. She wondered whether she should tell him about the deal she had brokered with Ren. But Martimeos himself did not seem very forthcoming. He said nothing of what had happened last night, only stared down at the table, before sighing and eventually pocketing the roll he had picked up. He stood, without seeming to realize it. “Off to look for signs of your brother?”

He jerked, looked at her. The ghost of a smile returned to his face. “Aye. I suppose.”

“Let’s get to it then.”

===***===

They spent a week looking for some sign, some trace that the wizard’s brother had been there. The only real thing they learned, at first, was that the village of Silverfish was even stranger than it appeared on first glance.

It could scarcely be called a village, for one. So abandoned was it that they had foregone any semblance of government, and so few were the ones who still lived here that it was barely an issue. They held no position of mayor, nor village council, and law was what the folk thought it ought to be in the moment. Ritter, it seemed, held some authority among them, but it stretched no further than what he might purchase with harsh words and an old soldier’s commanding voice.

The lake was a near-constant source of mist that might only meagerly burn off as the day warmed, such that every morning they departed into white fog, like a fallen cloud, thick enough to deaden the sound of their footsteps on the cobbled streets and blind them more than three paces out. It felt empty and quiet, until they would run into one of the villagers, moving, blurry shadows that suddenly swam up out of the murk, yielding surprised faces that too often soon twisted into sneers and flat, unfriendly stares.

Youth had fled Silverfish, or so it seemed. Almost all that they came across were gray of hair and slow of walk. Elyse began to understand why Ritter was not so worried about housing them, even if people in the village might not be fond of wizards and witches. She could not see these folk rousing themselves to a mob. Even if they did, they both could probably outrun most of them without losing their breath. It was hard to put an age to them for certain, but she thought that the only one they saw younger than fifty years was Finnel. There were no children here. Not a one. This bothered Martim most of all. “It is not right to have a village so totally devoid of children’s laughter,” he muttered. “Even the meanest village has some children.”

But this one didn’t.

And there seemed to be a conspiracy of silence among the villagers as to why. She and the wizard passed themselves off as a newlywed couple looking for a village to settle into as they plied their questions to the folk there. It was difficult enough to talk to them at all. Many which they came across greeted them with a curse, or scurried away. A gray-haired old woman with a hawkish nose scowled at them and slammed her door with a curse, and all they had done was glance in her direction. One old man, which they met as he hauled up nets of quiet, gasping fish from his rowboat onto the pier, seemed friendly at first. As he heard their invented backstory, though, his smile faded, and he became so incensed that he grabbed an oar and raised it as if to strike, and only stopped because Martim actually bared his blade. And it was a good thing the wizard decided to carry it with him, too. The man might have been old, but he had the thick arms and knotted muscle of one who had rowed boats and hauled fish all his life. Perhaps a mob would not be so pathetic as she had initially thought.

Even those that would talk to them seemed touched, their thoughts crooked, eyes just a touch glassy, staring at things others could not see. The first of these they talked to was Finnel, after their first day spent wandering the village where none would speak with them. The quiet, skinny man of gentle madness had greeted them back in his temple to the Lady of Calm Waters, friendly enough and even with some lucidity. But when asked about where all the folk of the village had gone, his mouth snapped shut like a trap, and the smile had fled from his face. They had pressed him on it until shock had silenced them, as tears began streaming down the narrow channels of the man’s worn cheeks. The breath had come ragged from his throat, and he had thrown himself in the temple’s pool to perform ablutions before his Lady, a hum in his throat which sounded otherworldly, but seemed at least to calm him. They had left him there, in his rituals, and Elyse marveling at this strangeness. The water was very cold. Cold enough that tremors had wracked Finnel as he splashed the water over his shoulders, and he shivered like the last leaf on a tree seized by an autumn wind. What did the goddess whisper to him to drive him to such dedication?

The others who talked were not much better. An odd old man who called himself only Gut, potbellied wrapped in a wool coat so long it dragged along the ground, cackled when they put the question to him, and smiled a gap-toothed grin. “Why, you haven’t puzzled it out yet, youngsters?” he crowed. “We’re in the Hells, don’t you see? We were wicked in our lives, and Old Scratch has put our souls here to punish us for our sins.” He laughed again, and his breath reeked of wine and death, as if some part of him deep within was rotting, pickled in alcohol. “What were your sins? Hmm? Hmmmm?” he peered at them, then snickered. “I know mine. Oh yes, I do. It would burn your ears to hear it. I deserve this. I know I do.” He doffed his hat, revealing a perfectly bald head, and strolled away, cackling, down the gloomy, shadowed streets of twilight’s Silverfish.

Others seemed reduced to the level of nursery tale and nonsense. “The children? They were taken off to the Land O’ Dim,” murmured a rail-thin woman dreamily, gray hair up in a frayed bun. She stood in an empty square in the village in which stood a large wooden pole with long, colorful streamers trailing from it. A reap-pole, she called, while Martim said in his village it had been called a fairy’s fancy. Children would dance around it, so it was said, winding the streamers around in a circle until it the pole was every color of the rainbow, swirled together. But the streamers were all faded now, and most frayed or worn away. The woman watched these, sadly, then turned back to them. Her face looked like skin stretched tight over a skull. She was not old, but her thinness, and her deep set eyes,made her look almost like a corpse. “The Land ‘O Dim,” she repeated. “You know the rhyme?"

“For little ones who disobey,

The Lord of Gul takes you away.

He stuffs you in tooka sack,

And takes you where the sun is black…”

“...Off into the Land O’ Dim, where none will ever find you,” Martim finished for her. He seemed pale, his face drawn and tire, as he said it. “Aye. I know it.” The woman nodded, as if this had given him all the answers he could possibly need, and waved him off.

Elyse knew it as well. It was part of a nursery rhyme, a ditty parents told their children to make them behave. She had asked about it once, when she was too old for the song to scare her anymore, and found that no one knew who the Lord of Gul was, or what a tooka sack was for that matter, or even if the Land of Dim was real. Martim had been told the same. It was simply an old rhyme, so old that if it had ever touched on anything real, the memory of it had long ago faded away.

Martim, of course, did not only inquire about the state of the village. Every villager who would stop to talk to them, he asked after his brother. All he got for his efforts were the blank stares of pure ignorance. “A man who looked much like me, with hair perhaps a bit longer,” the wizard would ask, “who passed through some seven or eight years ago…” It was at this mention that people would dismiss anything else he had to say. No one could remember the face of a stranger from that long ago. If Ritter could not, certainly no one else would.

But it was not just people that he talked to. He pushed his way into the abandoned homes, and stood staring at the eddies of dust, as if he could see something in the empty rooms, some sign, some trace. What he could possibly be looking for there, he could not name. Something, anything. The Dolmec would not have lied to him, would it have? In some of those homes, the black thorns had grown right in through the windows, and they opened the door on a chaos of tangled, brittle thornvines. Martim’s humor darkened especially at the sight of houses like those.

The wizard’s spirits seemed to blacken generally, the more time they spent here. It was not that he gained a foul temper, not exactly. And in the daylight, he seemed better, more like himself, if more tired than he ought to be for someone sleeping on a fine bed. He laughed, and joked with her, and in their idle moments they practiced the Art together. He took to glamor with an adeptness, though he did not seem to think of it the same way she did. To her, glamor was the stuff of shadows, of bending the dark to take the shape you wanted it to. You could make it take many shapes indeed, and there were finer things you could do with it still; you could twist shadows to change a color, like so. But Martim did not think so. He spoke of glamor in terms of trickery, and it did not make sense to her. He said that the more a person expected to see something, the easier it was to make a glamor showing them that very thing, and she could not see why. She knew that to do something more complicated with shadow was more difficult, true, but that only made sense to her - you must cajole more of the shadow to do your bidding. But he said that this was not right, that potentially, one could work a very complicated glamor if that was what other people were expecting to see. What did people’s expectations have to do with it? It did not change the shadows you must weave. But even though they were so at odds on the matter, she could not help but feel that she learned much too, in the course of teaching him.

But as night came on, as the shadows lengthened, his mood would change. At first, she thought he was simply dispirited at not finding anything. He brightened a bit, at the return to the inn, when Flit came down to chirp at him. Their familiars did not follow them around town - it would make things too obvious - but to wait at the inn seemed safe enough. Cecil lounged about in the colonnade formed by the overhang of the inn’s second story, and King, the inn’s black cat, stared daggers at him from the branches of the tree in the center of the inn’s court. But once that was done, once they were inside, he grew ever more quiet. He did not eat very much, and he spent more of his time looking out to the shadows outside.

Things were not helped by the fact that Ritter was certainly not as friendly as he had been on the first night. He and Martim barely spoke to each other, barely looked at each other, for that matter. The silence between the two of them felt like cold poison in the air. Only once, when Martim mentioned that maybe they ought to go investigate the manor out on Rook Island, did Ritter make his feelings known. “Can’t you leave well enough alone, wizard?” the old man practically spat. “You come around here, upsetting all the folk with your questions, don’t you think that you’ve done enough? People are tired around here, they don’t want trouble. You’ll never make it anyway, no ferryman goes out to the manor anymore. None have in years.”

He had started out strong, but wilted as he went on. For Martim had turned to look at him with an expression the witch had never seen from the wizard before. The way that he was staring at the innkeep…if looks could draw blood, Ritter would have been flayed alive.

She feared that Ritter might kick them out. She did not know why he hadn’t yet, in fact. The man had some cause beyond Martim’s clear hatred of him. How the candle-flames had flared when the wizard had been wroth, it could have easily caught the curtains and set the inn to blazing, and who could say that it would not happen again? But when she put it to Martim - not mentioning his loss of control, only worrying that Ritter might tire of them and throw them out - he simply laughed at her. “It is because of you that we are allowed to stay. Or did you not know?”

“I certainly do not,” she said, perturbed. What could she have done to secure their rooms?

The wizard gave her a sardonic grin, and to her surprise, brushed a lock of hair back from her ear. “The ribbons are very nice,” he said, in an off-hand manner, but he was giving her a pointed look. She didn’t know what for. She wore ribbons in her hair, and they had been a gift from Ritter. The old man had pointed out to her that if they were going to walk the streets, it might do well to be more presentable. And Ren had made that comment about her hair. And so she had combed and brushed it, which had taken nearly an entire evening in itself, and the innkeep had given her some nice length of blue ribbon to tie in it. They matched her eyes, or so he had said. She had rarely brushed her hair, and never tied anything in it before - her mother had never cared to keep her presentable - but she had taken a fancy to the ribbon. She knew nothing of braiding, or the tying up of hair, but she had tried to copy the image of Véreline from the cover of her book, and when she looked at herself in the disc of polished bronze that served the innkeep as a mirror, she thought she hadn’t done too bad.

Martim had brushed his hair too, though his seemed unwilling to remain tamed for long, and even brushed seemed somewhat wild, hanging well past his shoulders. He was handsome, cleaned up, despite the dark, tired circles beneath his eyes. Though that was neither here nor there. “What do you mean? Speak clear, wizard. If you are jealous of them, I can give you one. Your hair is long enough for it.”

He just laughed at her again. It was a good thing to hear, even if it was directed at her. The wizard had laughed less and less since coming to the village. “I mean that Ritter has a fondness for you. He dotes on you. He sees in you a granddaughter. A pretty face opens many doors.”

“Is that so?” Elyse crossed her arms, then looked him up and down. “I suppose you would know. How many doors has your pretty face opened?”

The wizard blushed, though Elyse had not meant it as a barb. “Still, I think that if you were not with me, Ritter would have kicked me out long ago.” His smile faded, and a shadow crossed his face. “Perhaps even tried to have me killed.”

“He would not.” But she wondered.

The wizard was right that the innkeep had been kind to her. When she spent her time in the common room, reading the inn’s collection of books, so long as Martim was not with her, Ritter would find a way to strike up conversation with her. He spoke of the kingdom of Hallic Nust, and the people who had lived there. How the Hallics had built trade prosperous on the lake of Nust Drim, and Hallic cogs and barges had plied the waters, and the lake lords had grown rich under the peace afforded to them by their compact with Old Aurelia, and were proud, murderous men, bloody sailors and skilled horsemen, and fiercely loyal to the Aurelic Crown. He spoke of their ruinous end, when the Gully Man (a demon, Ritter was convinced, in human guise) had summoned forth an army of traitors from the heartlands of Mannus Aurum itself, and the lake lords earned his special hatred through their valor, and so met their end through poison, or secret blade in the dark - those of them which the Gully Man had not captured on the battlefield, and had crucified. He mourned that what was left of this once great Kingdom was now scattered and forgotten, that even its people barely remembered what once was, and all they had left to remind them were the buildings the Hallics left behind, just like the Aurelics themselves.

He spoke too, of Farson’s Pass, and the mercenaries there, and he made their lives seem ones of grand adventure - when it was not humbling them through hilarious circumstances. That was common to all the stories about the mercenaries of Farson’s Pass, they were funny. Like the party of mercenaries who had been sent to hunt a fae-touched lion, one that could speak and had grown monstrous in size, and the mercenaries had run screaming in terror and been saved instead by a child who tricked the beast into chasing its own echo off the edge of a cliff. Or the stories about Jinna of the Golden Heart, a hapless enchantress who found herself forever following fools into trouble and misadventure because she too easily fell in love with them.

He told all these stories, and yet…he told nothing of the Queen’s War, though it had ravaged these lands not so long ago. Neither would he talk about what had happened to the village, and she thought the reasons were one and the same. The one time she had prodded him on it, he had left her, and she was afraid if she tried again he would not come back to tell her stories again. He was like Martim, in that way. There was something unspoken, in the way Ritter’s hands shook slightly, like the way pain crossed Martim’s face. Something terrible had happened, and they did not want to talk about it. Much like the villagers did not want to talk about what had happened to them, either. Maybe she should not want to know. The burnt, skeletal remains of Cross-on-Green were still vivid in her mind. Did she really want to know that Ritter, who had been so kind to her, had done things such as that? Had he dragged folk screaming to the pyres? Nailed their doors shut and thrown the torches through the window? The old man who gave her a cup of wine while she was reading, and told her stories? The idea sickened her, but it would be a lie to say it did not also hold some strange fascination. Perhaps the innkeep might be more blackhearted than she thought. Perhaps the wizard was right to worry about a blade in the back.

Ren, who she thought would have fled, actually kept to his word and did his part to look as well, though he had no luck either. Martim learned of him eventually, and did not approve, though for all that he had told the thief to ask around about his brother, as well. To her relief, Ren had not asked the wizard about the possibility of traveling with them. But even fog-shrouded as it was, and unhelpful as the villagers were, there was only so much of it that three young folk could search. They returned to the inn earlier and earlier as the days wore on, and spent more of their time practicing the Art, more time reading. Elyse began to doubt that this village would give up its secrets, or that Martim would find trace of his brother.

Until they visited the farm.