24. TROUBLES NEVER END

Martimeos woke to gentle sunshine, and the sound of Flit chirping, wrapped in comfortable warmth.

And with the echoes of laughter in his ears.

He looked around, not recognizing the room he was in, sparse and bare, with simply a bed, a chair and small table to fill it. Sunlight poured through a single window and spilled across wooden floors old and worn but well-swept. His clothes lay folded on the nearby chair. His shoulder throbbed as he moved his neck, but it was a dull, muted pain.

He glanced down at himself. He was wrapped in clean white sheets that seemed to glow in the sunlight. Never had light seemed so soft and sweet as this. And…he blinked. Elyse slept with her arms wrapped around him, the tangle of her long dark hair with its haphazard, clumsy blue ribbons, half-untied, spreading over his chest. He looked at this for a moment, still recovering from the haze of sleep, while something nagged him at the back of his mind. Finally he glanced back at the chair, to see that not only were his clothes there, but the witch’s dress was draped over the back as well, and his eyes widened.

He gave a shout of surprise, but his throat was so dry it came out sounding more like a croak, and his limbs were so weak that he felt that he could barely move them. Still, in his struggles, the witch fell out of the bed with a yelp. She sat up on the floor, naked and uncaring, and glared up at him. “Well,” she muttered, “Good morning to you too.”

Memories of golden hair wove through Martimeos’ mind, and anger rose in him for a moment. But he felt too feeble and weak for it to catch hold of him truly. “Why…why were you in my bed, undressed?” His voice was a dry whisper. He licked his lips, but there seemed to be no moisture in him. “Where are we?”

The witch stood, rubbing her backside, and made no attempt to cover herself. His eyes drifted down to her long, pale legs before he planted them firmly on her face. “We are in Minerva’s apothecary; this is her sickroom. And there was only the one bed here. I did not want to sleep in a dirty, wet dress,” she answered him idly, as if this was totally sufficient explanation for why she might have climbed into a bed naked with him, but there was an odd gleam in her eyes. “Besides, you needed the warmth. And you made a good pillow.” Suddenly, her face was filling his vision, her deep blue eyes intent on his. Her hands, so warm, were on either side of his face, and a tingle ran through him as she worked the Art. “You are doing much better,” she said softly, almost to herself. The witch pulled back from his face to examine his shoulder, running her fingers along the edges of the bandage. “Not fully healed, not yet,” she murmured. “ But you will live. You came very, very near to death last night, Martim.” She drew back from him, still staring at him, biting her lip. “It took very nearly everything Minerva could do for you, and all of my healing as well, and still I thought you might die.”

Memories started to drift back to him, slowly, in broken patches. He remembered the witch dragging him out of the manor, dragging him to the boat, as he grew cold and numb; he remembered thinking that certainly he must be doomed, and perhaps she would be as well. He felt a bit ashamed at that. The witch, it seemed, had more fire and resourcefulness in her than he might have thought. “Thank you,” he murmured quietly, between cracked lips. “It seems I owe you my life.”

The witch smiled, pleased for a moment, before it vanished and she looked away from him. “You…you owe me nothing, wizard,” she said, pulling at her hair. “I…you’ve saved my life before, yourself. It is nothing.” A pitcher and a crude clay mug stood on the bedside table, and she filled the mug with water and pushed it brusquely into his hands.

Martimeos sipped greedily at it, and the cool water was as refreshing as rain in a drought. He wondered if he really had been so close to dying. Except he knew that he had. The visions he had seen filled his mind. Yes. Yes, he really had been there, in the Lands of Death. No longer could he deny it, no longer would he dismiss it as simple dreams. It would be an insult to what he had spoken there, and his soul was already too craven to pile on more sin in that regard.

He really had spoken to David.

Made him a promise.

“The demon that was with the glimmerling - ‘tis a demon, called a Mirrit,” the witch went on, sitting on the edge of the bed, combing the tangles of her hair with her hands. “They are drawn to those who die long, lingering deaths, trapped at the threshold of passing on. Their poison is meant to draw out a death, as well. Make it long.” She shuddered. “If…if such a creature was drawn to the glimmerling, then I fear that the children it took did not die easy deaths. Perhaps best not to let the villagers know of that, though.” She glanced back at him. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Martimeos replied, putting the vision out of his mind for now. He put the mug aside and tried to sit up. It was a struggle, and once he had managed it, a tingling fog filled his skull and he felt nearly on the verge of passing out. His stomach growled fiercely, once it had passed. “I could use some water. And I suppose I am a bit hungry.”

“Yes, you would be. Healing stokes the appetite. Let’s see whether Minerva has anything to eat.” She rose and, without bothering to dress, went out into the shop. The sounds of her rummaging about came to him as he sat in the bed for a moment, the sight of her slender back lingering in his mind, before he muttered to himself and, with some struggle, managed to push himself out of bed. His legs felt like jelly as he staggered uneasily to the window to open the curtains. Flit fluttered in, immediately, to rest on the windowsill and proclaim in song, in his odd way, that he was glad to see Martimeos lived. He said this as if death might not have been so bad either. Cardinals had a proud sense of honor, and to have died in battle, or from wounds taken in battle, would have been a good death. Flit wore his own wound proudly, his crooked wing, though Martimeos had no small fear that if it healed incorrectly that his familiar would not be able to fly again.

“Let it rest,” he told the little cardinal, plucking him up before he could flutter away again. “I’m afraid you’re earthbound for now, my friend.” Flit muttered to himself in a twittering chirp, but finally acquiesced to the advice; he himself did not want to abandon the sky, even if it meant not even trying to flutter any distance at all for now.

Martimeos placed Flit on the bed, where the cardinal hopped around and pecked at the sheets impatiently. He slowly started to dress, taking time to let the fog in his head clear after he pulled on his pants. He sighed ruefully at his blood-soaked undershirt and leathers, torn through with holes at his shoulder, but he could bathe and get them mended later. He could barely concentrate on his dressing, though. So much occupied his thoughts. The vision of David, and the tattered memories of other lives that remained still in his skull, weak and barely-there, like broken spiderwebs, detritus left behind from the relic of the Art and the visions it had given him. Everything seemed strangely unreal, as if he was not really the one moving his limbs, and he was so weak that it was a struggle to dress himself besides. It was as he draped his cloak about his shoulders that he heard a door open, and then Minerva’s muffled cry from the front room.

“What are you doing, girl?!”

“I’m looking for food. Don’t you have any here?”

“No, you little savage, I mean why are you running about my shop naked?! Don’t you know the curtains are open?”

“Of course I do. I opened them. I wanted some sunlight. Don’t you treat the sick and wounded, woman? You cannot be so peevish about the sight of someone’s body.”

“It’s not just me, anyone could see!”

“I don’t care. Where is your food?”

There was a shout of outrage, and the next thing Martimeos knew Minerva was bustling Elyse back into the sickroom, huffing, her face red. “I know those who work the Art can have strange customs, but I won’t have you prancing about in all your shame where every man in the village might see,” the old apothecary snapped. Then she stopped, and looked in wonder at Martimeos, her mouth agape, absent-mindedly wiping her hands on the front of her woolen dress. “Lad,” she said after a moment, “I was certain you were dead. I…” her eyes flicked over to Elyse. She seemed to struggle for a moment with the fact that the witch was standing in front of a man, disrobed and making no attempt to cover her shame, before she apparently gave up. “You are fortunate to have her by your side,” she said, and her tone made it clear that he might count himself lucky in more ways than one. “She healed you where my herbcraft could do nothing.”

Elyse wore a smug expression at first, but then gave a jolt and blushed furiously. “You do not give yourself enough credit,” she said quickly, glancing at Martimeos as she did. “I think ‘twas your medicine that did most of the work, in fact. My Art merely pushed himself over the edge, and his own strength helped as well. He did come very close to death anyway.” She frowned, and eyed him disapprovingly. “You ought to be in your bed, still. Who told you that you could get up?”

Something dark rushed forth in his blood. “None tell me what I may and may not do,” he laughed at her, before he could stop his tongue. The witch arched an eyebrow and opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her. “Both of you, thank you. I hardly feel as if I were on the verge of death last night. You must have worked a miracle between the both of you.” That was true. He felt weak, pathetically weak, but he could walk. Better than being left abed.

Minerva preened beneath his compliments, and Elyse muttered something about how the poison could have a quick recovery if it was expelled soon enough, and how his own will to live had helped as well. Martimeos blinked at that. His own will to live? He had not felt like he had that, in the Lands of Death. He had felt very ready to leave the living behind. But he supposed his body may have had its own ideas. And the Dark Stranger. He could not help but feel a chill run through him at that memory, though that, of being pulled from the Lands of Death, he could remember the least of all. He could never speak of it to anyone, he realized. There were those who would call him cursed for being touched by the Dark Stranger. Perhaps he was.

Minerva left them, promising to get them a hot breakfast from Ritter, and while they waited Elyse told him of what he had missed, how she had crossed the lake. He berated himself for feeling a pang of disappointment as she pulled her dress over her head while she told the story.

She really had come terribly close to death to save him, and it rankled his heart. If she had not needed to drag him back, she could have waited on the island for the fog to clear, rather than to fall into it, and be lost between worlds. She had insisted on coming with him, but it reminded him all over again how wretched it would have been to see her dead because his own concerns drove him to danger. “I know not whose song it was that guided me back,” she said as she finished, “But I wonder. I would surely have been lost without it. We both would have.” The witch gave him a pointed look. “Do you suppose…”

Finnel’s Lady of Calm Waters. He supposed it might have been. Perhaps the little goddess had done what she could for them. Or, perhaps, it had just been a villager who had sung, and then run into the night once they saw trouble. Martimeos was not a godly man - like many travelers, merchants and wizards alike, the god he acknowledged most was Fortune, and Fortune was a fickle god, not the sort to speak to followers. He was more concerned with the fact that everyone in the village knew of them now; knew that they were a wizard and a witch, knew of what they had done. It made him itch. They must go back to the island and retrieve Ezekiel’s notes, as soon as possible. And then leave, preferably without notice.

But before those thoughts could overrun him, he was brought back to reality by the smell of fresh-baked bread, and soon the apothecary’s shop was full of life. Minerva had returned with Ritter, and he carried with him a large loaf of bread, along with a slab of butter and a jar of honey. Finnel and Ren were there, as well as a couple of other villagers; a pair of large, broad-shouldered men, and a little old hawk-nosed woman who glared suspiciously at everyone, but most of all at Elyse.

For the most part, though, the villagers could not contain their joy. They beamed and laughed, and seemed more alive than anyone they had seen since coming to Silverfish, though Ritter’s smiles seemed somewhat strained, and it seemed almost as if he had aged a few years since last Martimeos had seen him. The old woman - her name was Noss - was there to remind them that they should not get their hopes up, that they still needed definitive proof, but it seemed many of the other villagers were very ready to believe that the curse actually had been broken, and it quickly became clear why, once Martimeos looked outside: For once, no fog shrouded the lake. It was quiet and still, and the pale autumn sun shone clear in the sky, reflecting off its mirror-like surface. “It’s the first time in years we’ve had no fog,” Ritter said, at his side, as he peered out. “I’ve not seen it clear like this in years. And after it had been thicker than it’s ever been, last night.”

Martimeos was not sure what to make of this, and he pondered it as he wolfed down a prodigious breakfast, barely noticing as he devoured nearly half the bread on his own. Flit gorged as well, hopping beneath his wizard and pecking at the crumbs until he was so stuffed that he fell asleep. Such a fog could accompany a thinning between worlds, and this mist certainly had, from Elyse’s account. Perhaps now that the glimmerling was dead, a door between worlds had been shut, and the world was now not so thin. Though there was still the odd relic of the Art that they had found in the caves beneath the manor; certainly something that could give them such visions of other worlds might thin the border between them, as well? Perhaps that was why the mist had been so bad last night, when they had tried to leave. When they had been shown visions of other worlds, perhaps that unknown, ancient Art had thinned the border between this world and those.

He was distracted from these thoughts. Ren congratulated him on a job well done, and had thanks for him keeping Elyse safe. The thief could not stop staring at the witch, and Martimeos thought that he must really have it very bad for her. Though maybe that was all in his head, since he kept darting his eyes to Finnel, as well. He wondered how the lad would react if he ever learned that Elyse thought little of disrobing in front of others. “If anything, it was she who kept me safe,” he said wryly, and Ren’s boyish face flushed red. Indeed, the thief may learn just that. It might be that he would travel with them, if their path took them his way. My brother’s path. Once again he itched to return to the manor, to take what they had left behind.

He did not have to wait for long. Once their breakfast had ended, Noss demanded that they offer up some proof of Ezekiel’s death, and it was settled that they and some of the village folk would row out to the island to see. Noss herself insisted on going, despite her age. “I will make sure that these fools are not glamored by you two into saying whatever you tell them to,” she snapped, when Martimoes questioned whether it might be better for her to stay behind. “You mind me, wizard, for I am not so easily ensorceled! Or perhaps you are lying about having rid the island of Zeke, and you think to hide this from me?” Martimeos did not bother arguing with her. Why would he, himself, be walking back into the teeth of danger if he had not finished with Ezekiel?

Minerva and Ritter would go as well, along with Finnel and Ren, and the two broad-armed fishermen. Their names were Loag and Jayan, and Martimeos was wary of them at first, but he learned that they had actually set guard on the door of the shop last night. And from Elyse’s whispers, he learned of why such a guard had been necessary, and shook his head. That crowd could have easily turned more deadly than any monstrosity Elyse had encountered in the lake. It would definitely be best to leave this village as soon as possible.

Though he did not know how soon he might be able to make it. Breakfast had certainly returned some of his strength to him. But even so, on their way to the boats, he walked slower than everyone else, and eventually he stumbled, his legs giving way beneath him. “I told you that you should have just stayed behind and rested, you stubborn fool,” Elyse muttered beside him, as she helped him to his feet.

“You may be right, but I am eager to claim my prize.” And, he thought, two with the Art on that island might be better than one. Who knew what traps they had missed when they had gone there? It would be far better to have both a wizard and a witch around to herd the villagers and ensure they did not stumble into some strange, dangerous craft. “Perhaps I could borrow your walking stick.”

Elyse huffed as she draped his arm over her shoulder, and then from the pockets of her dress she produced a splintered shard of wood. “I lost it on the lake, wizard. This is all that remains of it.”

He laughed at her. “Why would you keep that?” The witch merely gave him an inscrutable look, an odd, sly smile, and then pocketed the splinter once more.

===***===

They took three rowboats out to the island, and tools for digging, as well. “You should bring shovels if you want to take at least some of the corpses back today,” Martimeos had told them. Loag and Jayan had glanced at each other uneasily when he spoke of this, but they got used to the idea of corpses quickly.

There were an awful lot of them, after all.

They followed the same path up to the manor that they had the previous night. There seemed to be more crows today than there were before, and all were hopping among the branches, cawwing excitedly at each other as the group passed them by. They seemed happy. Perhaps they themselves knew that the glimmerling was gone, now, and thought the island was safer for it. Martimeos had spited them on their last trip here, suspected them of spying, but who knew what the glimmerling had done to them while they were here, too.

The first sighting of death - the pyramid of bones that the glimmerling had made from both animal bone and three human skulls, which lay along the path up towards the manor - this elicited less of a reaction than Martimeos had expected, except from Finnel, who moaned and covered his eyes and had to be comforted by Minerva. But once they got to the corpse-garden, the buried skeletons reaching up from the leaf-carpeted earth and carved with symbols, gasps arose from the villagers. Ritter shook his head, and Minerva gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. Old Noss merely spat in disgust. “Well,” she muttered, “Sure looks like Ezekiel did kill those folk who came to confront him after all. Guess Valerie got off easy.” She turned and narrowed her eyes at Loag and Jayan, the two big men staring at a skull, looking queasy. “You two! Put those shovels to work, won’t you? Or do you think it’s going to talk to you if you keep gawking at it?” Only Ren looked at the corpses impassively, his face betraying no emotion at all.

They left Loag and Jayan to dig here and continued on past this, Finnel walking blindly and needing to be guided, for he would not open his eyes until the corpses were well behind him, and they were in the manor’s courtyard, among the dead orchards and the old, stagnant fountain that lay at the center there. Martimeos gave Elyse a worried glance, and the witch returned it - they had told Finnel about his son’s fate of being turned into a tree, and he had only seemed to care that his boy was alive, but who knew how he would react upon seeing the truth with his own eyes?

But when they came upon the peculiar blue-leafed tree, the man cried out and embraced it as if it were flesh and blood. “My boy, my boy,” he repeated, over and over, tears running down his face. “My boy, you’re alive, oh, my sweet, beautiful son!”

“Is this really his child?” Noss asked skeptically, casting a sharp eye at the witch. “A…a tree? How is it that you know?” Ritter and Minerva were silent, but Martimeos saw the doubt in their eyes as well.

“I can speak to them,” Elyse answered in a very no-nonsense tone, and Noss mumbled something beneath her breath. “They have their own tongue, and their own way of speaking, but this one spoke as if with a child’s intent behind it.” When Finnel backed away from the tree at her bidding, smiling and crying still, she placed her hand on it and closed her eyes. “I do not think you missed your guess, wizard,” she said after a few moments. “The tree…it is happy. I think this truly must be Finnel’s child.”

“Is there any way to bring him back?” Noss asked.

“It might be done, with someone who has the right knowledge, but I do not have it, and unless Martimeos knows something he has not told me…” he shook his head, and she went on, turning to Finnel. “I am sorry, but we have no way of turning him back ourselves. Perhaps if another more learned than us comes here…but the longer he stays in this shape, the harder it is to turn back…”

“That’s alright,” Finnel smiled, and Elyse gave a squawk as suddenly the man embraced her tight. “You’ve done more than I could have ever dreamed of, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you. The Lady of Calm Waters told me that you’d bring me back my son, and you have. I knew she was right about you.” Finnel released the witch, and moved as if to embrace Martimeos as well, but a harsh look set him straight, and he settled for a handshake. They continued on without him, then, since the man would not leave his son’s side.

The interior of the manor no longer seemed so dark as it had the day before, though that was perhaps because they had six folk with flaring torches with them now, rather than two. Ritter sighed upon entering, holding his torch to the reliefs carved in the wall. “It’s a shame that the building is in such shambles, now,” he said wistfully. “I always thought that, if my inn had done well, perhaps this place, next…”

Martimeos did not think the man would want anything to do with the building, once he saw what lay beneath.

They grew quiet as they were led down to the wine cellar and into the caves beyond. Martimeos told them to wait at the entrance of the caves, and he went forward with Elyse, to sense if there was anything to sense with the Art. But aside from the relic which had so ensnared them the day before - and which he and the witch did well to never look directly at - there was nothing. Only the darkness, and a corpse. Elyse found the beak of the Mirrit, too, left in the midst of a smear of white ashes, along with its tongue. Martimeos examined these with some interest, as Elyse wrapped the beak around and around again in a bolt of thick cloth. “It will still be poisonous for a very long time,” she said, “And Fortune forbid that anyone should step on it.”

It really seemed as if the creature had been nothing but feathers and a beak - there was barely any burnt flesh around the beak holding it together. How did such a creature even survive? Demons did not at all obey the same rules they did. Martimeos also took the opportunity to stuff Ezekiel’s logbook and his treatise into his own satchel, before calling the village folk forward, warning them away from the relic. He was nervous enough with them just being near it, to tell the truth. Normal folk shouldn’t even be laying their eyes on such a craft.

Soon enough, though, they all stood around the corpse of the glimmerling. His floral robes and ruffled lace now soaked with blackened, dried blood, Ezekiel lay staring at the ceiling, eyes glazed, his mouth wide open, and his expression frozen in terror and pain. Gray hair swept back from his temples, and a long straight nose, slender and regal…

Screaming his last, torn and bound by black thorns…

Martimeos shook his head, and looked over at Ritter, who remained staring down at the corpse, shaking his head. The innkeep looked up, eventually, and his eyes were hard. “Ayup,” he said roughly, his voice hoarse and strained. “Yeah. That’s Zeke. That’s him.” The old man finally lifted his eyes to Martimeos. “I…I really didn’t think you’d be able to do it,” he murmured. “To think, I was planning to keep my mouth shut and let you walk right on out of our village, at first. I never for a moment thought you might be able to help us.”

Noss prodded the corpse with a shoe, and then nodded to herself, satisfied. “He’s dead,” she declared, as if the matter were now finally settled once she had made the announcement.

Martimeos knelt to search the corpse, pausing to let a wave of dizziness and weakness recede from him. He tried not to look too closely at the corpse’s face. It reminded him too much of what he had seen in his vision. But other than a few coins, Ezekiel had not carried too much on him. He wore on one finger a golden ring, inset with a large, glittering emerald. “I remember when I gave that to him,” Ritter said, with a sad, nostalgic smile, when Martimeos held it up. “The poor fool loved his fine dress and his gold, but he was always misplacing his jewelry. He never lost that one, though.”

At the look on Ritter’s face, Martimeos felt a wave of pity wash over him. “I know I claimed all property here,” he said, “But…should you like to keep it? For a memento?”

The old mercenary looked at the ring for a moment, and then turned away. “No,” he said, “No, wizard, you keep it. I don’t want to remember this.”

Other than that, Ezekiel wore a dagger around his belt. A dagger with a pair of branching antlers etched into the pommel. Martimeos seized this up excitedly, tugging the sheath free, and he hissed in alarm when he slid the dagger free, revealing a dead, black blade.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Minerva asked, and before he could reply, Ritter said “Dolmec iron.”

He and the innkeep looked at each other for a moment, before he nodded. “Have you seen this before? Did you know Ezekiel had this? Did any of you?”

But all the village-folk shook their heads. None of them had. “I didn’t even know he had that dagger, wizard, and I think I would have remembered,” Ritter told him. “I suppose he must have gotten it after we stopped talking to each other. What is it?”

Martimeos ran his thumb over the pommel of the dagger, the antlers like curling thorns inscribed there. “‘Tis my brother’s crest, here,” he said quietly. “This was his, certainly.”

“Your brother has a crest?” Elyse seemed bemused. “Do you have one?”

Martimeos carefully slid the dagger into one of his pockets, sheathe and all. “Plenty of farmers claim crests for their family,” he said carefully. “Claiming they can trace their blood back to some forgotten noble, or simply making one up for their own pride.” This was true enough, and all anyone needed to hear. Martimeos had no idea where his brother might have gotten a blade of Dolmec iron. It was a deadly thing, even for the one who wielded it, and he could not imagine why he might have gifted it to Ezekiel. Or traded it, perhaps. It was just more proof that his brother had been here.

And then the time came for the sad end to their journey here. They led the village-folk to the back of the cave, where carved stairs sank into water, and both he and Elyse lifted their torches to reveal the small bones sunk in their black depths.

Minerva gave an awful cry and sank her face into Ritter’s shoulder, sobbing, and the innkeep himself looked away in disgust. Noss merely peered down at the bones, frowned, and then nodded. “Well,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at Martimeos and Elyse, “Well. Let it never be said that Betsy Noss cannot admit when she is wrong. It seems you two told the truth, and you’ve done us a boon.” She stuck out her hand, and Martimeos stared at this, confused, until finally he took it and she gave him a firm handshake. “Good job,” she told him. She jabbed her hand out violently at Elyse, and glared until she got a handshake from the witch as well. “Not bad.”

And then the little old woman hobbled away, pausing only to snap over her shoulder at Minerva, “Oh, stop blubbering, woman. You had to know they were already dead.”

And then she made her way up the stairs, muttering all the way. She was done with this place. And so were they.

Ritter carried up Ezekiel’s corpse as they made their way up to sunlight, quiet and grim, and once they were above, laid it down gently in the leaves. “I thought of burying him,” he said softly, “but I fear if I leave his corpse somewhere that it can be dug up, it might tempt those who hate him to come defile it.” He looked harshly at Noss, who was currently poking and prodding at Finnel’s son. “Perhaps I should not blame them. He would deserve it.”

Martimeos thought of what he had seen of Ezekiel’s soul, the last words that had fallen from the man’s lips. “I do not think that he knew what he did,” he told the innkeep. “Not at all.”

“Even so. There really can be no forgiveness for this sort of thing.” Ritter’s voice was gruff with scorn, and yet his clear blue eyes simply seemed tired and sad as he looked upon the pale corpse of his friend. “Still. I would not see him disturbed in death, if I could. You can work the Art with the flame, lad. Would you help me burn him?”

Martimeos looked to Ezekiel, himself. A wizard who had gone wrong with the Art, whose missteps had come with the most terrible price. And yet he could not help but feel that there should be some dignity afforded to him, for all that he had done. “Of course.”

And so Ritter had gathered wood for a pyre, with the help of Elyse and Ren. Martimeos rested, sitting on a stump, already feeling lightheaded and sore, watching as Loag and Jayan dug up corpse after corpse from the dirt, the bones falling apart even as they did so, hauling them in sacks down to the rowboats.

“So, could you really burn the entire village down?”

Martimeos nearly jumped, and then turned around with a frown. Noss had crept up from behind him, and the old woman stared at him now, sharp-eyed and frowning. Elyse must have threatened her with that. He wondered if he should keep up the lie, and decided against it. A threat you could not back up, and which was discovered, was often worse than no threat at all. “No. I am sure I could set some nasty ones, though.”

Noss nodded, as if she had known this all along. “But you are a wizard, though. Though I should say, not as wicked as Zeke was.”

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“Zeke was not wicked. He was cursed himself.” He tried to explain to the old woman about glimmerlings - about coming back wrong, about seeing the world wrong - but she merely shook her head.

“It all sounds the same to me. Whether he was wicked from sheer evil or wicked out of his own bumbling ignorance, it is all the same. He was a monster.”

Martimeos had no answer to that. He supposed it was true.

“You ought to give up the Art, boy. The both of you. You’ve got a pretty girl by your side. You ought to settle down, have some children. If the village really is safe for them now, I’m sure you can get a home here for the price of fixing it up. Mercy, you could get two homes and a farm, I’m sure. We’ve enough empty ones.”

He laughed at her, before he remembered that he and Elyse had pretended to be a newlywed couple as part of their backstory when questioning folk in the village. “You mean the witch? She’s not my woman. And as freely as you may give homes, I cannot stay. I would never give up the Art.”

“So that was a lie, too?” Old Noss gave him a shrewd look, and then shrugged. “If you say so, lad. If all Zeke did really was out of pure foolishness, then I hope you’re never as foolish as he was. Or I hope you die before you become so.”

I was a thousand times more foolish than Ezekiel was in my youth, crone, he thought to himself as he watched Noss hobble away. Myself, and my brother.

Eventually, enough wood was gathered for Ezekiel’s pyre, and Ritter enlisted Loag and Jayan to help carry it down to the shore, so they might burn it close to the water and the fire would not spread to the trees and the dry leaves. He placed his onetime friend upon it, drawing his eyes closed, though he could do nothing about Ezekiel’s awful expression.

He stood back on the sands, and looked out over the small crowd that milled about the pyre. All had gathered around, not acknowledging that it was to pay respects; some out of sheer curiosity, or because they had helped with the labor. But it felt wrong to walk away from what might be the death rites of a man, no matter how wicked he might have been. Only old Noss stood alone, away from them all, down the shore and staring out over the lake, her arms crossed.

Ritter opened his mouth for a moment, as if he were about to say something, but then he shook his head. He had no words for them. He threw his torch upon the pyre, and Martimeos fed the flame’s hunger with the Art, and it raged and grew and consumed, and soon Ezekiel’s body was simply a shadow within the flame.

The old mercenary sat in the sand, and stared at the flames. Eventually, he began to speak, to everyone and to no one at all. He told stories, stories of himself and Ezekiel. Stories of their adventures, of the two boon companions and soldiers of fortune who made their name among the hardened souls of Farson’s Pass. He told the story of the time they had faced Pollux the Stone-Hearted, a chieftain of bandits and madmen who rode in from the far west wearing great feathers in their hair, and who so feared the Art that he sent no less than a dozen assassins after Zeke, who always in his absent-mindedness managed to avoid them out of sheer dumb luck. He told the story of the time they had faced the inhuman witch Oloma, who might have been the death of both of them had Zeke not captured her heart. Dozens of stories he told, and never the same one twice, as they spent the day there, letting Loag and Jayan recover as many of the corpses the glimmerling had left behind as they could.

And at the end of the day, when the fire had died away to ash, when all that was left of Ezekiel was the scraps of blackened bones, Elyse and Martimeos were the only ones who still sat by him. The wizard had come and gone as he pleased, coming by to tend the flames when he saw fit. But Elyse had remained with Ritter the entire day, listening to all the stories he had to tell. For some part of her knew that the old mercenary would never speak these tales again; that some of them had never been spoken, and if no one was there to listen, they’d be gone, forever lost.

Ritter fell silent, finally out of stories to tell. And then he spoke to them alone, or perhaps to no one at all, for he still never looked at them. “Zeke and I were friends from childhood.” His voice was a rough, smoke-choked whisper. He stared with reddened eyes at the charred remains of his friend in the sand. “Never, in all those years that I knew him, did I think it would have ended like this.” And then, even quieter, in a small voice that very much did belong to the old man he had become, “I wish I had apologized to him. Before the end.”

He rose then, and kicked wet sand over the ashes; he plucked up the shards and fragments of bone that remained, and threw them into the lake. “Goodbye, Zeke,” he said to the wind, “If the gods are kind, they will know that you were ignorant of what you did, and forgive you. Demesque and Karilail shelter you, and the Gravetender guide your soul to peace.”

Martimeos thought of bloody, tangled thorns, of a last tormented scream, and said nothing.

===***===

They returned that night to the mainland, all except for Finnel, who would not leave his son; and it was the next day that Ritter invited all the village to come to the common room of the Night Fisher inn, to know what had been done. He got both fireplaces blazing against the chill, and cooked a feast of fish and squash and potato, and for one day they saw a glimpse of what Ritter had always intended for his inn to be; full of life, of feasting, of warmth. Except that the folk that filled the inn were not full of good cheer. They were old, and tired, and they stared at Martimeos and Elyse dully, awaiting their words. Some of them had fearful looks, especially for the witch.

And so they had stood up before these folk and, with Noss nodding along at their side, told them their tale. At least, that of it which the village folk might understand. It was enough for them to know that Ezekiel had truly been responsible for the disappearance of the children; that yes, now he was dead, and the bodies would be returned to them. The response was more muted than might have been expected to the announcement that the children’s corpses had been found, and that it was all over. But then again, many of these folk left behind here were not the ones who had actually lost children to the glimmerling. Many of those who had personally experienced the loss were already dead. Killed by the White Queen, when they fled to Cross-on-Green to try to save their remaining children, or having taken their own lives in their grief, or simply having disappeared over the years. Valerie Tuck had been one of the few who had remained all these years, remained with the precious hate and thirst for vengeance that had consumed her. Her bargain with the dark power in her well had worked out for her, in the end. Vengeance had come for Ezekiel.

Still, these ragged few who had clung on, they were happy. They cheered the news of Ezekiel’s death, and smiles finally joined the feast then - though there were still those, the wizard noted, who looked at them with suspicion, even as Noss attested to the truth of their words. Folk whispered to themselves where they thought he might hear, and he heard some folk talk with resentment of the dark threats the witch had made towards them, and he knew that even among these smiles and good cheer that they were not as welcome as they appeared. He wished to leave, and soon, if he might. Wine and beer flowed, and for that night, Martimeos and Elyse were heaped with praise Perhaps these that were left were those who wished simply to see Silverfish itself live, and thought now that their village might finally recover.

Martimeos himself was not so sure. Surrounded by demon-haunted woods, and all the folk here too old for children now. And it was not merely this land. Far and wide, an entire generation had been cast into the inferno of the Queen’s War. Before, there might have been migrants who would move here, to make a life for themselves. Now, who remained?

And the thorns. The black thorns that still choked the land. The same thorns that he had seen growing in the Lands of the Dead, with David imprisoned in the empty darkness at their heart. They no longer haunted his nightmares at night, now, and he was able to sleep without disturbance. This silence perturbed him as much as the nightmares, though, and still they plagued his thoughts. What were they? He asked Minerva if she had any insight on them, but she knew little herself; she had never discovered any use. They could not be a simple plant, though. Not something that grew both where souls tread and in this world as well. How was it that this was so? What happened within the Lands of the Dead? The thorns had seemed so wrong, so foul, a desecration, a blasphemy. They did not seem like they belonged there. But what could blaspheme death itself, and how was it that the thorns could grow through worlds?

Help me.

Martimeos did not know how he could, right now. He did not know what had happened to David, did not know why his soul was in a place so dark and cold in the Lands of Death. He did not know how he had changed, so. But he would. He would learn more of the Art, and whatever had happened to David’s soul, Martimeos would undo it. He would help his friend. He had to.

===***===

Over the next week, the villagers of Silverfish made multiple trips out to Rook Island, to the manor, to fetch the bones of their dead, that they might give them a proper burial. Martimeos and Elyse would accompany them on every trip, if only to guard the village folk from whatever Art might linger on there. And to warn them away from the room with the relic which had so enthralled them. Elyse could tell that Martimeos dearly wished that they might study this, but he was too afraid to touch it again; and so was she, in truth. They had merely been given visions of other worlds and lives, but there was nothing to say that if they were to go near it again, they might not be drawn into other worlds entirely. And while she could only remember scraps of those other lives, now, they were dark and fearful. She wished to live this life, and not any other. “Once you have what you came here for, you must forbid folk from coming to this island again,” Martimeos told them, “or at the very least, forbid them from the caves beneath.”

Some of the skeletal remains that were brought back could be distinguished. Others, however, could not; the children’s remains, dredged up from the flooded waters in the caves, were a tangle of bones. And in any case, those remains that might be separated out, the villagers had no way of telling who they might have belonged to. In the end, it was decided that all of the bones must be buried in one large grave, and when it might be done Ritter would pay for a stonecutter to carve the names of all who had died into a single large headstone.

During those days, when she was not out on the island, Elyse would visit Coxton Praet, still held in the small gaol in the basement of the Night Fisher Inn. She thought the man might be cheered by news of the curse being undone, but upon hearing it he simply wept. “So I might have killed the one who would undo what his brother did to us,” he said, and would not raise his head to look her in the eye. “I am a fool. A wretched, useless fool, and I always have been.” She tried to prod him to speak more, to tell more stories, but he would not. She worried what might be done with him. Ritter fed him well, and would have liked to release him, but he did not know that he could trust that the man would be safe out of the gaol, and Elyse did not know that she disagreed with him.

She visited Finnel, as well, at the half-submerged temple to the Lady of Calm Waters. He had refused to leave his son’s side, and so the village folk had carefully replanted him at the entrance to the temple, where now his blue leaves were a bright spot in the village. As a tree, he seemed to be flourishing under his father’s love, and Elyse would come by and speak to him, to tell Finnel what his son was saying. The man was always glad of her visits, and in his broken way he asked her if she might be interested in staying in the village, to serve as interpreter for his son, and was crestfallen when she had to turn him down. She wished she might do more for him, perhaps teach him the speech of the trees. But it would take long to learn, and she knew she would have to leave soon. She did join Finnel when the man offered prayers in thanks to the Lady of Calm Waters, though. Elyse had never prayed to a god before - her mother had certainly kept no faith - but she thought it only fair to give thanks for the favor that the Lady had done her.

Martim rested during that week, recovering from the Mirrit’s poison, when he was not accompanying the villagers in retrieving their dead, or questioning them about the dagger of Dolmec iron that he had taken from Ezekiel, questioning whether any of them knew the man who had carried that black blade. None of them did. The wizard had been so close to death that Elyse thought it might be quite some time indeed before he was completely healthy. He gained some of his strength back quickly, though, and spent his days reading the journal and the treatise on the Art that they had taken from Ezekiel’s home.

This latter Elyse read over with him, and it was full of secrets of the Art for them to untangle; it was not merely other worlds that Ezekiel had spoken about in its pages, not merely the fundamental tetrad of mind, body, soul, spirit, that he wrote of, but other mysteries as well, going on at length about an invisible force that bound all things together. Neither she nor Martimeos could understand his notes easily, and frustratingly, there was the fact that halfway through it switched to that strange, garbled language in the text. There was no explanation for it, but the wizard had one: perhaps, after becoming a glimmerling, Ezekiel had attempted to continue to write, only now with his distorted vision, this was what language looked like to him. It was a terrible shame that half of the work was indecipherable, and it seemed somehow sad to her that even the one thing that Ezekiel had tried to leave behind for the world had been ruined by his misfortune. But still, the secrets that they might glean from it were captivating.

And perhaps they did not want to know what it said, besides. What else might Ezekiel have left behind? Did they really want to read the words of the poor soul, describing what he thought he was doing, when in reality he was the bloodiest, vilest butcher Silverfish had ever seen? It chilled Elyse to the bone to know what the Art had made of him. It was hard to imagine a fate more cruel, more unfair.

The treatise was not all that they had from which to draw new knowledge of the Art. For while they may not be able to recall fully those memories from other lives that they had encountered in the relic-given visions, there were tatters, here and there, of what they had known. And in those other lives, they had known of Art that they did not know in this one. Even as a half-remembered dream, they were able to pull some knowledge from them, and they worked out between themselves how to create a witch-flame; a glamor of true flame that cast light without burning. It had been an odd thing to grasp, for Elyse; to make light, by making it where the shadows were not. She wondered how it had ever come to her; if those other lives she had seen were anything other than simple visions, anyway. But it was a delight in the Art to learn so, and it seemed certain that they might learn more this way.

The wizard, though, seemed to fall into a dark mood despite their progress, even as his strength returned to him. He grew in on himself, quiet and reluctant to talk, until one evening, when she returned to the inn, she found him in the empty common room, sitting before a crackling fire. And when she drew closer to the fireplace, she saw that he was burning the journal they had found in Ezekiel’s home.

“The damned thing is useless,” he told her, before she questioned him at all. He was staring at the fire, his arms crossed, his dark green eyes narrowed in cold anger, and he did not look at her. “I found my brother’s trail, for certain. And no clue as to where it leads next.”

She took a seat at his table, and the inn’s black cat leapt into her lap and began to purr. “I think it was probably a very poor thing to burn it.” When the wizard did not answer her, she went on, “You still need time to heal. Perhaps in that time, it will be found.”

“I doubt it,” he replied sharply, with more vehemence in his voice than she expected. “I got what I asked for from the Dolmec, didn’t I? It told me I would find my brother’s trail here. It never said that the trail would not end here as well.” He sighed, and took out his pipe, and within a few moments he was blowing tobacco smoke upward at the ceiling. “I wish to be done with this place.” He paused, and when next he spoke, the wizard seemed subdued. “When I leave, will you follow me?”

“Certainly,” she told him.

“Why?”

The smoke hung in the air, and silence, except for the crackling of the fire, fell between them.

“Why would I not?” Elyse asked, her voice light. “I set out to see the world, and I’ve certainly seen much of it by your side. Fae, curses, the manor of Véreline Valoir herself…the path you tread is an interesting one. What more reason do I need than that?”

“You’ve certainly seen that the path I walk is dangerous, then. The world is full of secrets and wonder. Do you not think that you may find them elsewhere? Not by my side?”

Elyse was quiet, stroking the cat in her lap, feeling its rumbling purr. “Do you no longer wish to travel with me?” she asked softly. “Have I not been a fine companion?”

Martim turned to face her, and his eyes caught hers. Dark green, like a shadowed forest, they filled her vision, and she felt at once as if the wizard were playing a game with her. He was a fleeting shadow himself, and perhaps that was why he was so full of secrets. It is in him to vanish, to disappear, she thought, and did not know where the thought came from. “Not at all,” his voice reached her, as she sat transfixed. “It has been a great boon to have you by my side. I just find it curious, witch. We crossed paths by coincidence in the woods. From that alone you saw fit to follow me, through danger and darkness? Simply to see what mysteries the world had to offer you?”

Elyse thought of the dragonflies she would hunt as a child, in her swamp. How ready they were always to flit away, beautiful and bejeweled but ever-cautious. Is that what I am doing? Hunting him, ever so carefully? “No, that is not the only reason,” she told him. “I…you have been a fine companion yourself, wizard. I do not think I should have such fortune in choosing another one.”

“Have I been so fine? You have come close to death by my side. I should not like to see you killed for my search, on my account.”

She laughed at him, and reached out and caught his hand. Careful, careful, whispered a voice within her, as his eyes broke from hers to swing down to their joined hands. “I would not have died on your account, should it have happened,” she told him. “How absurd to think so. Any injury that comes to me as I follow you comes from my own curiosity, wizard. I vow this to you.”

His eyes came back to hers, watching, twinkling in the firelight, questioning, questioning, drawing her in, and she had the strangest sensation, if just for a moment, of being laughed at.

And then all at once it was gone, and it was simply Martim that sat before her again. Whatever it had been about his eyes that had so held her was no longer there. The wizard gave her a rueful smile that had the hint of mischief about it. “Well. I suppose I am glad to hear it, then. It has been an easier path, I think, with you by my side.”

Elyse stayed with him for a while, in the common room, watching the wizard blow smoke rings, touching them with her glamor to twist them into new colors. Soon, though, she left him, retiring to her room for the evening, wishing to read. She lingered at the bottom of the steps, though, watching the wizard from the shadows. Wondering about the words she might say to him. She truly did like Martim, after all. It rankled her to lie to him so.

As for Martimeos, he turned his eyes back to the fireplace, where the logbook burned, where even now it had crumbled to fine white ash. He grabbed a poker that leaned against the stone fireplace, and stirred this, making sure no scrap of paper remained.

It had not been simple wrath that had made Martimeos throw the journal into the flames. It had been the troubling words that he had found within. He had torn from it all the words that spoke of the Art, of course, though there was much less insight in it than there was in the treatise. He had even kept the gibberish, though he knew not what to make of it. He would not throw away something that might contain knowledge.

It was the other words within that were so troubling. Ezekiel’s daily journal, of sorts. His logbook. Words that told of who, exactly, had taught Ezekiel to use that strange relic of the Art. Words that spoke of who, exactly, had told the man, in the caves, in the dark, how to travel to other worlds. Dangerous words, if those who found them were looking to cast blame; dangerous words, if folk were to ask how it was that Ezekiel had become a glimmerling. Dangerous words that spoke of a dangerous man doing a dangerous thing. Words that no one needed to know. Not even the witch. Oh, he trusted her at his side, certain and true, not to betray him, as much as he might have trusted anyone. But there were some secrets that simply did not need to be spoken. And about this, he did not feel badly at all.

===***===

It would strike Martimeos as funny, later. How he had been so eager to leave, and yet Fortune found a way to force his feet to move before he was ready.

The days passed, and the initial celebratory joy faded from Silverfish. This was still an empty village of the odd and the old, and there was still, always, the everyday work of living to be done.

Still, to Elyse, it felt fine to not hide what she was. She wore again her pointed hat that marked her as a witch, and she tied a blue bow around it. Rare though it was that she would see folk in the streets of this mostly-dead village, those she did see might wave to her, now. There were still some who only glared at her sullenly, though, or sometimes with such fire in their eyes that she began to feel afraid. She would glare back, though. She had helped save their village, she and Martim both, and she would not stand for these folk being impolite. She complained to Ritter of it, and the innkeep had only told her that for some, it was difficult to change their ways. He had also told her, delicately, that the night she had threatened half the village might have fouled some people’s moods towards her.

She had not meant those as true threats, and she had apologized when the whole village had come together in the Night Fisher inn to hear news of the glimmerling’s death. Well, she had apologized to some, anyway. Still it seemed that some folk held suspicion against her. Elyse did not see why her idle words, under duress, should outweigh the undeniable boon she had given these folk. She had apologized to Minerva too, for calling her a backwards apothecary, and the old woman had merely laughed and said she had heard much worse from folk whose loved ones were dying. She had even made to Elyse a gift of a scrip full of carefully cut herbs, and a note detailing their uses. “You are certainly skilled in healing, girl,” she had said, “But you never know when these might come in handy.” If she could accept an apology, why couldn’t the rest of these folk?

This was not the only thing that worried the witch, however. Ren had been acting odd.

The thief had seemed full of relief when they had come back, if much more for her than for Martim. She thought the wizard might be right when he told her that the lad had eyes for her. It had tickled her, and she even thought it somewhat flattering, at first. But then she began to wonder.

The thief took in stride when at first he was told that they were not sure where they may be going next, yet, and that if he planned to travel with them, he may have to wait. As time wore on, though, his behavior became more and more peculiar. At times, it seemed almost as if he were avoiding her - his boyish face would grow anxious when she entered the common room of the inn, and he would leave quickly, almost as if he were fleeing from her. Other times, though, he would confront her about when they might leave, and increasingly when he did this he seemed angrier and angrier, as if it were her fault that they were not moving.

“You are welcome to travel on your own, if you cannot stand to wait,” she told him eventually, when he came upon her to badger her once more one night when she sat reading in the empty common room of the inn. “I never promised you that we would take you, Ren, only that we might do so if our paths lay with each other.”

The thief stared sullenly at her. The innocence of his face was spoilt, now, by the dark circles beneath his eyes, and his straw-colored hair was an unkempt mess. His clothes seemed looser, too, as if he had grown skinnier. “You and I should go,” he said suddenly. “Just us. Forget the wizard. You want adventure, to see the world, do you not? Let us follow the road south, ‘round the lake. It goes into lands dark and wild. I promise, you will see much of the world with me.”

Elyse simply stared at him. Where had he gotten that idea? Those words sounded too close to the ones she had used herself. Had he been spying on her, listening in on her conversation with Martim, when she had told the wizard such? “I thought you wanted to simply find a place to be safe and earn your coin. I will certainly not be going off with you,” she said incredulously.

“Why not?”

That seemed less like a question and more like a demand, and her ire bubbled over. “I don’t need to give a reason,” Elyse snapped at him, “But I work the Art, and I will learn more of it with the wizard than I would with you. Now leave me be, or I tell you right now, you will no longer be welcome to travel with us at all.”

Ren stared at her again, and then he tensed, and all at once Elyse became very aware that she was alone in the common room with him, at a time when most others were abed. For a crazed instant, she felt as if he was about to seize her. But then it seemed at once as if the anger had gone out of the thief all in an instant; instead he stared at her with a look of horror on his face. “I’m sorry,” he told her in a gasp, and he immediately turned away from her and ran up the stairs.

Elyse put a hand to her pounding heart as she watched him go. She felt almost absurd, as she felt its quickened beat. How was it that one she thought so innocent could so suddenly frighten her so? Still, she went to bed that night more fearful than she had before. And she woke up in the small hours of the morning, from a dream in which someone had rattled the lock on her door to her room, staring at the door in the darkness and waiting for the smallest sound, wondering whether it had been dream or real.

She could not get back to sleep that night, except in fits, and so she had been up early that morning, up with the first notes of Flit’s song. Martim’s familiar was still recovering from the injury to its wing, and instead of taking occupancy on the roof of the inn, now nested in the shorter tree that stood in the center of the plaza before it. Elyse nodded to the cardinal as she walked past the tree, and he bobbed his crest back in return.

She thought that she would make a visit to Finnel and his son this morning. But though the day was brisk and clear, with nary a cloud in the sky and not a hint of mist rolling in off the lake, she could not help but feel a foreboding as she walked the empty village streets, one that only grew stronger as she approached the temple of the Lady of Calm Waters, beside the whispering reeds by the lake’s gentle shore. Why was it that dread seized her heart? Why did her legs tremble as she walked? Why was she more and more certain that something awful was waiting for her?

Perhaps she should have turned back, but she did not. She was drawn forward, and it would be a lie to say she did not have some curiosity about what darkness there was to be seen. She came to the temple’s entrance, where Finnel’s son had been planted, so that the tree would be the first thing the man saw every morning. Even in the chill of autumn, Finnel’s son had held onto his blue leaves and even seemed to grow under his father’s love, but now he was silent. And when Elyse placed her hand on his bark, to listen to his speech, he would say nothing to her. He only gave the sensation of dull, aching pain, buried deep beneath his bark, in his core.

And so, with trepidation, Elyse had entered the temple, and immediately she knew why.

In the back of the temple, where it opened up to form a pool that joined with the lake itself, Finnel lay face-down in the water, moving gently as the lake lapped at the shore. And the shrine that rose from the center of the pool, the simple stone altar, lay empty. The silver icon of the Lady of Calm Waters had been taken from it.

Elyse had splashed out into the pool before she even knew it, seizing the man, but she knew already that it was too late. The waters were a ruddy red, and as she turned the poor soul over - so thin, the man was, so light - she saw that his throat had been cut, and no song sang within his body at all any longer, it had all bled out into the water. He was pale now, and cold. She cursed, and blinked back hot tears. The man had been odd, a strange fellow, but she had spent time with him over the past weeks, and in interpreting for his son she had found him sweet, in his strange way. The boundless love he had for his boy, never mind that he was a tree now. He had been a good man.

She staggered out of the temple, to lay her hands upon Finnel’s son. To see if there might be anything he knew about who had murdered his father. But there was nothing, now, nothing but that sense of hurt, that sense of primal pain. And, she thought dully, there may not be anything ever again. She could not sense that there was a child in this tree any longer. Whatever had been left of the boy in it, he may have simply given up, and accepted becoming a tree, leaving only an echo of his grief. And she could not say she could blame him.

===***===

It had all gone so quickly, once she returned to the Night Fisher inn.

Both Martimeos and Ritter had been in the common room then, the wizard smoking his pipe and the innkeep setting out a meal of bread and honey. The two men, it seemed, could stand each other’s company now. When the two had seen her, they had both immediately risen, knowing from her expression that something was wrong. Ritter had listened with widening eyes as she told them of what she had found, and then had gone sprinting out of the inn with a curse to see for himself. The wizard, however, had merely smoked his pipe, staring intently at her, his expression growing darker. And then, once the innkeep had left, he said, “We must leave, now. With all speed. Whatever you wish to take, grab it.”

She trailed behind him as he rose to his feet and strode quickly towards the stairs, up to his room. “Now? Why now? Why-”

“Because the village-folk will be looking for someone to blame, and the first they cast their eye on will be the outsiders. It does not matter the good we have done them. It did not win us as many friends as you may think, anyway. Even if they eventually found the truth of who did the deed, they would want to hold us here while they discovered it. And I do not trust the judgment of folk here to deliver justice, besides. Do you?” The wizard shook his head and cursed. “Better that we had gone yesterday. A week hence. Damn it!”

And so it was, shocked and numb, that Elyse called Cecil to her. She had always carried very little, and so she went down to the common room, still stunned, and sat at one of the tables, considering the wizard’s words. Would the people of Silverfish really turn on them so easily? When they had done so much for their village? Why not? Not so long ago, some of them were saying that you had already killed two of their number.

Ritter returned, throwing open the door, but he barely looked at her. Instead, he tore through the common room, down into the cellar, and she heard from him then a muffled, astonished shout. Suddenly fear gripped her, and she raced towards the cellar herself, fearing for the man, but he was alright - ascending the steps, shaking his head, looking ashen-faced, but unharmed. “Coxton’s gone,” he said gravely, when he saw her at the top of the stairs.

This news might have shocked her, were she not still numb from seeing Finnel. “What? How?”

“I don’t know.” Ritter reached the top of the stairs, closing the door to the cellar behind him, but then he just stood, swaying slightly, as if uncertain what to do next. “I…I saw Finnel,” he explained, “And my first thought was, who could have done this? Well…I remembered Coxton, of course, he attacked your wizard, nearly cut his throat…and he’s gone, but…there’s blood, down there. All over the floor where we kept him. I don’t know how…”

He stopped, suddenly, raising his eyes. Elyse followed them. Ritter was looking at Martimeos, who stood now in the midst of the common room with his satchel and crossbow slung across his back, and his sword buckled to his waist. The wizard had his blackfur cloak draped about him and his red scarf wound tight about his neck, and his eyes were wild, dangerous.

“Ren’s room is empty,” he called. “Seems the lad has gone, too.”

“I see,” Ritter replied, flatly. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting to go now, as well?”

“I will be going, innkeep.” There was something in his tone that Elyse had not heard before. His eyes seemed full of dark laughter, to almost shout a dare to try and stop him. And for a moment, just for a moment, Elyse wondered whether the wizard was going to kill Ritter, right here, right now. But then he softened. “Do you really think we did this, man? I cannot stay while your folk find the murderer. And are you really certain that they’d find justice for me, anyway? For her?” Martim nodded towards her.

Ritter’s face had been hard stone as the wizard had talked. But at this last, the innkeep looked to Elyse, and his expression crumbled. “No,” he said, tired, “No. I don’t suppose you can trust that they would.” He ran a hand down his face, pulling at his chin, his eyes troubled, and then he gave in. “Very well.”

Still, he made them wait a moment, while Martim danced impatiently, as he wrapped up for them the bread, and after some rummaging in another room returned with a laden burlap sack that he pressed into the wizard’s hands. “Consider it a reward,” he said, “Do not bother to open it now. Which way do you plan on going?”

“South,” the wizard replied to him.

Ritter gave him a shrewd look. “Is that really the way you plan on going?” he asked, his voice hard and clipped. “Because I mean to throw them off your trail if folk get it in their head to go looking for the three outsiders that disappeared this day.”

Martim, pressed by the need for haste, growled and gave the innkeep a deep, evaluating look, then glanced between the man and Elyse. “Fine,” he finally admitted. “We go north.”

They found themselves ushered out the back of the inn, then, and Ritter took them out through streets where abandoned houses lay, where folk were much less likely to see them. “I don’t know if anyone has found Finnel, even now,” he muttered. The temple was out on the outskirts, where folk rarely visited. “I wonder, was it Coxton who did it, or Ren. I’d say it were Ren, since the statue were broken, but I don’t know what to make of Coxton anymore.” The old mercenary shook his head. “If it were Coxton, you’d best be careful. He was no mean hunter, and he knows how to stalk the woods.” Then he frowned, and spat. “But I have to wonder if he’s dead, too. All that blood.”

They came to the edge of town, where the streets and the houses ended; where a long-abandoned field of high, dry grass awaited them, to swallow them up and disappear them. “For what it’s worth,” Ritter told them, “I thank you. For what you’ve done.” Suddenly, his clear blue eyes were rheumy and wet, and he added, “For Zeke, especially. He would not have wanted to live like that. I hope you find your brother, wizard.”

The innkeep shook the wizard’s hand, and Elyse said, “You must take care of Finnel’s son, for him. Please. Even if he is but a tree now, he deserves at least to live a good tree’s life.” The innkeep gave her a warm smile, and she could not help but think that this was a poor goodbye. She had wanted to bid farewell to Minerva, even to Old Noss. It was not much like the stories she knew, to leave this way. “I wish we might have left in better circumstances. It seems wrong, somehow, to leave you in the midst of trouble.”

Ritter gave a dusty chuckle, before he turned to leave. “If you wouldn’t leave until we were free of trouble, you’d never be on your way,” he told her. “Troubles never end.”