It’s been nearly two weeks since we left Nokon City. My legs and back ache but the weather is mild and we’re making good time so I don’t complain. The nearer we get to a possible rendezvous with the Talavar, the more my hope and anxiety grow in equal measure. We’ve left the barren patch of broken earth and seemingly endless space behind us. Now we’re in what I suppose is a forest, though the trees are sparse and unhealthy.

  I’m getting a feel for my companions and they for me. Amiyah and I gravitate naturally to each other. I like Amiyah’s confidence and Ren’s irreverent enthusiasm.

  Matthew likes to walk with Ren, the only member of our party who can keep up with his desire for animated conversation; at least most of the time. She’s had a few quiet days, during which I catch Amiyah watching her a little more closely. She doesn’t complain but I imagine even its early stages, there must be flareups of Pall symptoms. I find myself worrying over her nearly as much as Amiyah does on these days.

  Lucas tends to keep to himself and is content in contemplative silence. Lucas and I, for our part, have become expert partners in a complicated dance that allows us each to interact with our companions and never with each other.

  Everyone seems to like Khalid and Rissa the best and I’m no exception. Their sincere openness and obvious love for one another brings a warmth to our little company.

  Xan doesn’t talk much. We haven’t run into any trouble but she stays sharp-eyed and coiled for action all the same. And Yanto, stars keep him, turns out to be a wealth of knowledge I suspect he’d never share if not for Ren. She likes to quiz him about the rumors and tales we’ve always heard of the wild lands. He faces the barrage of questions with a cranky reluctance she seems not to notice until her enthusiasm rubs off on him and the stories begin to flow.

  “I’ve never had the bad luck to run into them directly, but I’ve been close enough for the howls of their hunting beasts to raise the hair on the back of my neck,” he says of the Draapire—wild men rumored to roam the unpopulated parts of the world.

  They’re said to live among herds of wolves, not as their masters but colleagues. Yanto describes them in chilling detail from their white eyes to the teeth filed to sharp points. We listen raptly despite his having just admitted to never having seen them and despite the fact that I’m pretty sure he’s making it up as he goes.

  “Have you ever found the disappearing city?” Ren asks when she has wrung all she can from the tales of Draapire.

  Yanto snorts. He looks like he might not have it in him to produce another wild tale on the spot. “Afraid that one is still just a rumor.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I guess I can’t,” he answers truthfully. “I avoid the decomm cities—they creep me out—but I also can’t prove it’s true and haven’t met anyone who can.”

  “Of course you can’t. It disappeared. Isn’t that the whole thing about being a disappearing city?”

  “Then I couldn’t very well have found it, could I? So you knew the answer before you asked.”

  Ren looks thoughtful at this, but only for a few seconds. She opens her mouth to ask something else but Matthew interrupts her.

  “Wait, what is the disappearing city?”

  I glance at him and see that he’s serious.

  “Were you delivered to Salus by mail last week?” I suggest. “Who hasn’t heard about the disappearing city?”

  His expression tightens a little.

  “I’m an artist,” he says defensively. “I get focused on something creative and don’t have time to keep up with all the legends.”

  “Just as well,” says Yanto. “It’s a silly legend that started about, oh, I’d say twenty or thirty years ago. The story goes that one of the train stops was about to be decommissioned. Plans had been made for all the residents to move—housing and jobs secured at new stations, everything was ready—and then when the transports started arriving, they found the city completely empty. Every soul in it vanished without a trace.”

  Yanto may not believe the story, but I can tell he doesn’t mind telling it. This is probably the first chance he’s had in a few years.

  “Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell the difference between a city where all the citizens magically disappeared and one that’s just been decommissioned. They’d both be just as empty.”

  Probably, he doesn’t say, because a regular decommissioning was what started the rumor in the first place.

  Ren looks thoughtful. “I bet it was never scheduled for decomm and they just said that to account for everyone having disappeared.”

  Yanto shrugs. “There are various versions of the rumor. That’s probably one of them.”

  Ren rolls her eyes. “Don’t be boring. Everyone knows about decommissioned stations; if that’s all it was, why would anyone think to make up a story about it disappearing?”

  “I’m with Ren,” Matthew says, earning a grin from the girl in question. “If there’s magic in the world, and we know there is, then there’s no end of possibilities, right?”

  “And yet we have a widespread deadly blood disease and can no longer grow vegetables in the wild. Seems the world could put its possibilities to better use,” says Xan grumpily as she passes us to join Yanto.

  I wake up with a jolt of alarm to find a hand clamped down hard over my mouth. My instinctive reaction to struggle only lasts a second or two—long enough for my sluggish brain to process what I’m seeing.

  The hand belongs to Xan, who is crouched over me, her face so close to mine I can feel her breath around the finger she has pressed to her lips.

  I relax and try to nod, signaling to her that I understand. The hand over my mouth loosens but does not lift.

  “No questions,” she whispers so faintly I might just be reading her lips. “Follow me. Quietly.”

  The hand finally moves and I stand up slowly, aware of every brush of my skin against the fabric of my clothing and bedroll as I do. My heartbeat seems to vibrate my whole body. I follow Xan on tiptoe to the outskirts of our little camp, my mind reaching for some explanation and grasping nothing.

  Did Lucas tell her something for which she plans to confront me? To kill me? I dismiss the thought. Not that I would put it past him but he’d have to come up with something fairly drastic to warrant this. Whatever this is.

  As we approach the tree where Professor Blackhoof is tied, I hear him snorting and stamping his feet. He sounds unusually agitated. That makes two of us.

  Xan leans down to whisper barely audible instructions in my ear.

  “Keep him calm. Keep him quiet. Wait here.”

  I open my mouth to whisper back but she gives me a sharp headshake.

  “Later,” she breathes, and then she’s gone.

  I reach a hand out to stroke the professor’s nose. I can’t imagine why she chose me for this task. I like the beast well enough, but it’s Amiyah and Ren with whom he has really bonded.

  Amiyah is also the first person, aside from Xan herself, that I would have awakened in case of an emergency. She’s tough and quick-thinking. But she’s asleep and I’m here in the dark tasked with calming down the anxious animal. Speaking to him is not an option obviously, so I do the only thing I can think of: I step forward so I’m facing him, with my shoulder just below his jaw, and wrap my arms around his massive neck.

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  He snorts but doesn’t shy away. I rub his neck and put my mouth as close to his ear as Xan’s was to mine.

  “Shhhh boy,” is all I can risk. It seems to steady him though. After a minute or two he stills and lowers his head. My body relaxes just a little too. I was not at all confident I would be able to restore peace to the animal.

  We stand together like this for a long time. At some point I lean my head against his neck and close my eyes. I could almost drift off against the warm, solid mass that is his neck, but I’m straining to listen to the night. I hear no signs of whatever Xan is doing, or indication she might be returning. I hear nothing but the professor’s gentle breathing.

  I must actually start to drift off because I realize I’ve been staring at a shape that is somehow distinct from the rest of the darkness and finding my mind unable to parse it. For a few drowsy seconds I think it’s a person with no face and too many antlers. But then, any amount of antlers is too many, isn’t it?

  I close my eyes and lean into the professor. I open them again. The shape is just a tree. I wonder how long Xan meant for me to stay here like this, encouraging our beast of burden to keep his peace.

  An hour passes, maybe two. When Xan returns, dawn is well on its way. She nods at me and keeps walking back toward the camp. Assuming this means “good job, stand down,” I follow.

  “Questions time?” I keep my voice low just in case.

  “Almost.”

  She wakes Yanto quietly but without her former sense of urgency. She sets a pot of stale coffee on top of the heater to warm up and we sit on the ground around it. We’re far enough from our sleeping companions to be able to talk in low voices without disturbing them.

  “I think someone is following us,” she says without preamble. “I was hoping to find out who, but they eluded me.”

  My eyebrows arch in alarm but Yanto only nods, unsurprised.

  “For how long?”

  “Wait,” I interrupt, “does this happen often?”

  “No. Hardly ever. But you didn’t think I was paying a mercenary because I enjoy spending money did you?”

  It seems obvious when he says it aloud—this is why Xan is here. But all Yanto’s warnings from the outset have somehow faded beneath the banality of the journey thus far.

  “The last two days,” Xan says, answering his initial question. “I sensed them a few nights ago but didn’t see anyone. The night before last I thought I heard movement in the woods a little way off. Last night too.”

  “Animals?” Yanto ventures.

  “Always possible. That’s why I didn’t say anything yet, but there’s a way a human moves when they’re trying to be quiet. When I followed the sound I found no one of course. But there was a footprint.”

  “Human, I assume.”

  Xan gives him an annoyed look, and he nods again. “Right. Sorry.”

  “Why did you wake me up?” I pour a cup of the warmed-over coffee and hand it to her. She looks at me like she’s trying to figure out the punchline.

  “I told you. I needed the Professor calm and quiet so I could hear. And if we were being followed, I didn’t want the culprit to know we could sense them.”

  “Right, I understand that, I just meant, why me? Not Amiyah, or Ren?”

  “Oh,” her eyes clear. “You were sleeping outside your bedroll so you were less likely to make noise trying to get out of it. Also you snore.”

  Any temptation I had to feel pride that I was trusted by our mercenary retreats at once.

  “Yanto also snores,” I retort. It sounds as childishly grumpy as it is.

  “When he’s on his back. He wasn’t.”

  Yanto huffs impatiently. “You found no other clues? Surely they haven’t been following us since Nokon.”

  Xan shakes her head. “Definitely not. Too much open ground for too long. Whoever they are, we picked them up in the forest.”

  Yanto looks faintly disappointed. “I suppose that rules out jilted lovers and creditors.”

  “What does that mean?” Since the revelation about my unique qualifications for bal-ghoro soothing, I’m tempted to withdraw into annoyed silence for the rest of the conversation, but I’m too curious and too invested now.

  He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I would just rather know what I’m dealing with. Obvious problems are the easiest to address.”

  For three days, our shadow companion stays with us. At night I strain to hear any unfamiliar sound from any direction. I never hear so much as a snapped twig, but Xan does. On the second night after our impromptu meeting she catches a glimpse of a person—just a flash as they disappear into the wooded shadows from which they do not emerge. When she reaches the place where she spotted them, no evidence of their presence remains.

  We share our experience with the others so that everyone will be on guard. Khalid, Matthew, Rissa, Amiyah, and Xan take turns keeping watch. Ren, Lucas, and I are tasked with monitoring Professor Blackhoof and calming him should he become agitated during the night. I try not to be insulted by being included in the bal-ghoro babysitting group. The professor remains unbothered, however, and Yanto theorizes that the watchers are keeping farther away.

  “Odds are they mean us no harm,” he reassures us as we walk on the third day. “Were they trying to rob us, they would have done so already. Very likely they are only watching to see if we pose a threat to them.” It’s the kind of thing you have to say if you’re a travel agent with a crowd of jumpy clients. I don’t believe him.

  Xan grunts.

  “You think otherwise?” Matthew asks her.

  She shrugs.

  “True, we have traveled this road a dozen times before and never met a soul,” Yanto says as if answering her unspoken thought. “If these woods have inhabitants now, it’s worth asking where they came from—and why.”

  Just after I drift off to sleep, the watchers come. Matthew, whose turn it is to watch, shouts in alarm. It’s not the signal we’ve discussed, just the instinctive reaction of a man taken by surprise.

  I bolt upright in time to see a shadowed figure swinging something large and dangerous-looking at Matthew’s head. Xan leaps to intercept and tackles Matthew to the ground. The club makes contact, but instead of crushing his skull it connects with his calf. The heavy thud and the pop as his bone cracks will stay with me for a while, I think.

  Before the shadow can swing a second time, Xan is on her feet, knife in hand. She moves too fast for me to understand what’s happened but the figure crumples in a heap at her feet.

  I want to cheer but it becomes immediately apparent there is no time for that. Behind the defeated attacker more figures emerge from the darkness. They are wearing black shrouds hung over their faces and spiked crowns of long bone, or tree limbs, or antlers. The word antlers twists in my gut as I suddenly understand what I saw as I stood with the Professor a few nights ago.

  I scramble to my feet and look wildly around for something to use as a weapon. The shadowy figures are appearing on multiple sides of the camp now. I can’t tell how many there are—maybe five, maybe 15. They are moving fast and my panic has me rooted to the forest floor, my comprehension several maddening seconds behind my eyes.

  Yanto has pulled a gun and is firing into the darkness. Khalid is struggling with one of the attackers, and I see why the antlers are useful in grappling situations. Maybe if Khalid were a trained fighter he would know how to get underneath them but as it is, he struggles to get close enough to do any harm without an antler taking out his eye.

  I whirl around looking for Ren. I need to get her out of here. When I find her, Amiyah has an arm around her shoulders and is shepherding her away from the chaos. Thank the stars for that at least. Ren looks over her shoulder and when she makes eye contact with me it’s not fear in her eyes, but fury.

  An arm hooks around my waist and pulls me down just as another of the terrible clubs descends into the place that was, seconds ago, occupied by my face. I land with a thud on top of Lucas and roll away as the attacker raises the club again.

  The club looks vicious but it’s heavy and slow. I keep rolling for a yard or two, scramble to my feet as the club thuds into the ground near me. Lucas, who apparently just saved my life, is rolling in the opposite direction. I file it under L for Later I will have to think about this.

  The air is thick with gunshots and the sounds of struggle. People are screaming but all of them seem to be my people. The attackers remain eerily silent.

  The person with the club has turned toward Lucas and is once again raising it with intent to bludgeon. I lunge forward recklessly and drive my shoulder into the back of their knees. It hurts more than I was expecting it to, but it knocks them off-balance and they pitch forward. My momentum carries me with them and I find myself on the ground, tangled up with a pair of unfamiliar legs. Then again all legs that aren’t my own are unfamiliar to me, I think nonsensically. Later I will be fascinated by the things my brain latches onto in this moment.

  For now I try to scramble back up but the attacker is faster than I am. Before I fully understand what’s happened, they are straddling me, shrouded face close to mine as they lean their full weight on the forearm they have pressed to my windpipe.

  Panic surges as I gasp for breath and struggle impotently to free myself. Then someone swings the club again. I watch, mesmerized, as it travels a thousand miles with agonizing slowness. It lands with such incredible force that I hear the bones in my attacker’s face shatter. The antler crown skews almost comically and the assailant falls sideways before rolling onto their back. It looks like they might try to get up again but Amiyah stands over them, their forgotten club clutched in her hands. She screams as she brings it down on their face a second time, then a third.

  I watch, stunned at the violence of it, my throat burning as I gulp air. Across from me, Lucas is wearing a similar expression to mine.

  When Amiyah finally throws the club aside, she claps her hands over her mouth and begins to sob hoarsely.

  I look around frantically for the next attack but the fight appears to be over. Xan stands breathing heavily among the remains of four of the antler-folk, her arms and torso slick with blood. Several more bodies lay near Yanto, presumably victims of the heavy revolver he still grips in one hand. I don’t see any of the others. Wait no, I do… but it takes me several seconds to fully process what I’m seeing.

  One of the antler-folk is slumped over on their knees as if offering prayers to a nearby tree, a long knife protruding from between their shoulder blades. Rissa stands over them staring blankly at the knife. But the intruder isn’t worshipping the tree; they’re folded over another body.

  Khalid’s body.

  The kind, quiet man sits unmoving with his back against the tree as if he’s simply taking a rest. The antler-folk’s face is nearly in his lap and there’s a gaping hole in his throat where the attacker drove the tines of their antler crown through it, pinning him to the trunk.

  My breath catches painfully in my chest and nausea roils my gut as I stare in horror at the scene. When at last I can tear my eyes away I turn my head and vomit.