It was on Saturday night when I’d agreed to meet the members of Rafel’s covert task force, to exchange information about the enemy unit lurking in the Wood. Or, to fight each other to the death, if it came to that. Promises were made to be kept.

  I wasn't looking forward to walking the distance on that chilly night, but the matter being sort of urgent from the perspective of national security, I had to go.

  As dusk fell, I exited the dorms and the campus, and followed the side of the desolate highway downhill and to the darkening town.

  Grimons was the kind of drowsy country settlement you could put in a postcard to promote tourism. Decently large, with all the modern conveniences, but dressed in rural, timeless simplicity. Small houses with white-chalked walls and warm-colored tile roofs jutted up from the surrounding greenery, packed tightly side by side, rising and sinking and stretching peculiarly along the contours of the terrain.

  The webbing of cobbled streets splitting the township was too narrow for autos or larger carriages, sporting tight turns and sudden precarious changes in altitude. Navigating the neighborhood called for unhurried footwork and attention to detail. But the more a thing wasted your time, the more invested you grew in it—humans were bizarrely wired like that.

  By the time I got into the town, traffic in the streets had settled. Farmland dwellers were early to rise and early to sleep.

  The residences were veiled in the velvety shroud of pre-nightfall that choked the colors off their asphyxiated faces. The town had modern lamp posts installed along the main lanes, but either the management had found them too expensive to maintain, or the patrollers were too few and lazy to turn the lights on, but most of them stood dark, less like guides and just stealthy obstacles in the night.

  Rafel couldn’t leave the academy to escort me, but he’d given me a note telling where to go. Or, a clue towards that. On the small patch of paper was spelled only a frustratingly brief riddle.

  Peacock sees a horseshoe

  Wheat sways in the wind

  I get that he couldn’t write down the house number in case the note ended up in the wrong hands, but couldn’t he have been a touch more precise?

  Not that a formal address would’ve helped me much. Many of these cramped old alleys had names known only to the natives and spelled nowhere. All the same, the crypticism reached comical peaks. Nobody kept peacocks in these parts and the crops were harvested weeks ago. Not a cord of wheat was left swaying upon the plains, the winter at our doorstep. It didn't seem my destination was a farm.

  No, Rafel had clearly said they were in Grimons, presumably meaning the town itself, and not the whole damn county. Suppose they wanted to test me a bit. If I couldn't find my way through a plain parish like this, how could I help them locate a platoon of special forces hiding in the largest batch of untamed woodland on the continent. But my motivation for spy games was nearing zero.

  “Like I have nothing better to do than run around like an idiot on Saturday night…”

  It would’ve been nice to have reinforcements. But the authorities had their own way of doing things. If I asked Charlotte or the General for backup, this would've only turned into a manhunt. Catching our collaborators won us nothing, if they didn’t know the enemy’s whereabouts, and scaring them into hiding wasn't going to help one bit more.

  Who else could’ve lent me a hand then? Couren? As if. That guy hated the Tarachians even more than I did. Friendly or not, he would personally kill them all, no questions asked, if he found out where they were hiding.

  Emily? She was getting better with her technique, but she wasn't a specialist yet. A fight against proficient martial artists was such a trial few magic-users were ever ready for. And the more time passed, the more I began to feel that a peaceful life surrounded by laughter and friends was more suited for her.

  She may have started out as an outcast, but it was clearly not her destiny to die as one. I was sure not doing her any favors by dragging her to this side.

  I hiked on through the dark streets and Alice Silla's image popped up in my mind unasked. Why? Her skill was real, but assistance coerced with threats couldn’t be trusted. My demise was in her best interests, because it also disabled the threat of the engram.

  Still, having the willing support of someone as talented—that wasn't an unpleasant daydream. We all had our respective strengths and weaknesses, and having another person make up for where you fell short was always comforting.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  What about a star fencer like Vanille D’Arnos then? If I had my own pocket Sword Saint, I could safely focus on casting and be unbeatable both at melee and range. Now there was a heartwarming thought. It didn’t seem impossible to bring down kingdoms if I had that. If I happened to want to bring down kingdoms, that is.

  These delusions made the loneliness of my tour only that much more pronounced and a distraction, so I shook them off and thought about the hint again.

  Peacock. Horseshoe. Wheat. Wind.

  What did those things have in common?

  I stopped. A door sprang open further down the lane with a bang, and a drunken old man stumbled out of the long house. He tripped on a cobble sticking slightly up from the street, and plunged down onto the yellow circle cast by the solitary streetlight in front of the tavern.

  Laughter and music rang briefly from the open doorway, the sounds snuffed out as the door fell back shut again under its own mass. The drunkard lay in the way, swearing and writhing, but didn’t seem to have hurt himself too badly. I watched from the dark distance as he slowly crawled up, shaking his head, and took a minute to cuddle with the iron body of the lamp post, then to divorce it and head out drifting alongside the curb.

  I looked at the door of the pub he'd come from. By the entrance hung a signboard on which was painted, above the name of the place, a simplified image of a chicken carrying a stalk of wheat.

  Maybe the note wasn't as mysterious as I thought.

  Weather vanes jutted up on many rooftops, commonly shaped like peacocks or roosters. Alehouses and taverns were marked with pictures of barley. Horseshoes were nailed on the doors of smithies as a sign and a good luck charm.

  So I had to find a spot in the town from which all the named items could be seen?

  Was that the answer?

  Smithies were far rarer than pubs and weathercocks, so finding one was probably the easiest part to start with. Anything to minimize the step count.

  Of the past day, little more but a faint glow behind the blocky waves of houses was left now, and the air grew colder by the minute. Tiny stars had lit overhead. I pulled my coat tighter on, wriggling my fingers into the pockets and walked and as I walked, scanned the vicinity for metal signs.

  Airy rock and brick let the manawaves penetrate to an extent, and they passed quite deep into wood, but rebounded sharply off any iron. Observed through Third Eye, any metal appeared intensely lustrous. As if the township were secretly adorned in diamonds and polished dwarf-silver that only revealed itself at night when no one else was around. But that stellar twinkling looked ice-cold and made me feel colder inside. I recalled the many tales about dungeon-raiding adventurers, and it was always when the treasure was nearest that the danger was also greatest.

  In the southeastern part of the town, I came across a first-floor corner store loaded full of iron and made my way towards it. It shone like they were forging hot suns in there. I deactivated Third Eye and put my glasses back on and found a plain old smithy in front of me. A horseshoe too big for any steed hung off the underside of the eave.

  The business was closed, the forge cooling, the nostalgic smell of warm ash wafting along the breeze. Before the shop lay a small, paved plaza with a round stone well in the middle, equipped with a roped bucket and a worn, wooden pulley. Everywhere I looked, only closed doors and shuttered windows met my gaze. Across the clearing on the right rose a taller, three-floor apartment, and upon the high corner of its roof dangled a crooked, tarred cutout of a peacock.

  Now where was the swaying wheat.

  I kept turning around, but there didn't seem to be an alehouse or anything similar in the vicinity. I had a match for two out of three, but was it the wrong address, after all? How many more corners and junctions would I have to go through?

  Then I peered past the smithy, where a narrow lane started off, ending less than twenty yards in at a low, plastered wall. But close by the wall was one more well-hidden enterprise, with a curious signboard by its door.

  I went to look closer and discovered that the green sign on its chain holders belonged to a humble bakery. Above the name were painted two distinct plant stalks crossed like swords.

  I stared at the image for a time, sighed, and grumbled to no one in particular,

  “That’s rye, not wheat, moron…”

  Then I became aware of it.

  The imposing quietude. The tense stillness of the air. The prickling unease, hair standing on the back of my neck. I'd become the target of someone's conscious attention. Enmity encircled me like smoke, sealing off my escape. Whoever watched me was certainly not friendly. A hawk fixed on its prey.

  I turned to the wall at the end of the alleyway and raised my chin higher.

  On the edge of the weathered, flaking, ten-foot barrier stood now a peculiar sight. A young woman, a girl, shorter than me, her slim, sun-touched figure wrapped in dark rags and a cuirass made of hardened leather bands. Barefoot, only dirty bands wrapped around the bridges of the feet to silence the steps. Short, unkempt hair pointed here and there, dyed in the vivid, dreamy color of the bellflower. Her hands gripped a pair of curved, jagged daggers shaped in the exotic fashion of the desert tribes. Over the ages, the imperial special forces had adopted that specific weapon design as their formal symbol.

  It seemed I’d found the right place.

  My mistake. It was quickly becoming clear there wouldn't be much talking tonight.

  “It really is you!” the girl growled at me, her eyes ablaze with a blend of terror and uncontrollable rage. “This is where you die, Witch of Calidea!”