The group emerged from the bathhouse freshly clothed, finely cleaned, and carrying themselves as though they had not spent the early afternoon being kneaded by the Mademoiselle’s… staff.

  Lyra led with a bounce in her step, platinum hair still damp and smelling faintly of lilac soap. “That was… entirely different,” she remarked, voice breathy with residual delight.

  Behind her, Warren was already flagellating himself in spirit. “May the Lord forgive me for this debauchery. I shall recite the Rosary a hundred times to cleanse my soul.”

  He would do no such thing, of course. It was not the first hedonistic stint Ethan had imposed on the pious hypocrite. It would not be the last.

  Simon and Mary said nothing. They wore the same idiotic, vacant expressions; the sort people had after a good opium pipe or a near-death experience. Ethan had seen it before – staring at his own reflection – after the first time Caroline had gifted him the Jinny and John’s special service. It had left him winded for a full week.

  Today, it was merely the day’s highlight.

  The city had roused in the time they had spent with soap and sin. With the Mass for All Hallows' concluded, High Street thronged with the bodies of the industrious and idle alike – clerks, pilgrims, apprentices, and assorted low-ranking vermin all spilling abroad for food and reprieve. Shouts cut across the clatter of hooves and the grind of wheels. Soot-stained workers queued for eel pies and weak ale. Perfumed ladies on escorted arms ogled baubles in jewellers’ windows. A street preacher battled a fruit vendor for acoustics. A boy ran past carrying an entire rack of copper pans.

  It was, all told, a competent chaos.

  Oaleholder’s atavistic heartbeat, steady as ever.

  Mary walked in silence beside him, which was at least mildly unusual for the garrulous scallop lass.

  It did not last. A twitch in her jaw told him she was preparing to speak.

  “I apologise for not telling you about Abigail,” Ethan said pre-emptively. “It was not deliberate concealment. I did not know whether she would succumb or convalesce, and the day’s events distracted me from it.”

  Mary’s mouth twisted downward. “How bad’s it lookin’, then?”

  “Unclear. Liel concocted enemas to counter the fever, but they will take days to show effect – if they show any at all.”

  The news drained her visibly. Gone was the post-bath haze, replaced with something like hollowed-out gravity.

  “Do you know her well?” Lyra asked, attempting to anchor the mood.

  Mary shook her head. “Me an’ Abby ain’t what you’d call bosom scallops, y’know? But ma an’ da, though? Thick as pilchards, them lot. She used to mind me when I were a wee thumb-sucker. Hope to the deep she pulls through, I do.”

  Lyra laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder. Surprisingly, Mary allowed it to remain.

  Ethan noted the gesture, but did not comment on it.

  It has yet to be a full day, and already she conducts herself as one of us. Either Lyra is naturally affable or dangerously adept at manipulation. Perhaps both – a hazard, one way or another.

  They turned off High Street into Craglen Street, where the crowd thickened into a bottleneck of curiosity. People gathered ahead in a densely packed semicircle around the Central Piazza, their droning murmur like a wasp’s buzz.

  The source of the commotion was obscured by the throng. Whatever it was, it had drawn sufficient attention to clog the thoroughfare and tempt pickpockets.

  Ethan did not ask permission. He advanced through the gathering, parting it with his shoulder, glare, and quiet threats. The rest followed in his wake, somewhat more civilised but equally determined.

  The crowd thinned at the front, revealing the stage: a scaffold. Wood, ropes, trapdoors – newly hammered together, but with components already stained by previous use.

  A gallows, erected for a midday spectacle.

  Simon’s grin spoke for itself. “Ohh, now that’s what I’ve been waitin’ for! Not seen a proper swingin’ in weeks, I haven’t!”

  Warren frowned. Lyra recoiled slightly. Mary said nothing, gaze locked on the wood as though memorising its texture.

  Ethan ignored the moralistic theatre behind him and focused on the crowd. The noise was too broad to extract useful information. Snippets, names, a handful of guesswork. Not worth the effort. Fortunately, the executioners were punctual.

  They always were.

  When the bells rang noon – twelve gongs from Hold Cathedral’s bell – the condemned were marched into the square. The day was overcast already, but their appearance heralded a darker sort of pall across Oaleholder.

  Mister Lynch – always the same the hangman – barked at his redcoats like a coal-mine foreman. The prisoners’ heads were sacked, hands bound, and bodies driven onto the scaffold with military precision. Three nooses prepared, three necks measured.

  The sacks were torn off.

  Two men – malnourished, unshaven, eyes fluttering in sudden light. The third was a woman. Half-elven, dishevelled, but recognisable.

  The one who was robbed on the road yesterday. I suppose that pistol shot was her doing.

  Half-faye and foreigners began filtering out as soon as they spotted her. Subtly, professionally, and with the clear certainty the tension was shifting towards something prosecutorial.

  Ethan glanced at Lyra; both her face and head were hidden deep within the shadow of her hood.

  Good enough.

  Lynch stepped forward, bellowing like a man convinced of his own divinity.

  “Hark, men of Oaleholder! Justice is upon you!”

  That was enough to silence the crowd. Everyone faced forward.

  “Before you stand three criminals!” Lynch continued, eyes wide, spittle flying. “Thieves! Card sharps! Murderers! Ready to beg the Lord for mercy!”

  The crowd roared approval. Some meant it. Most just wanted lunch and a show – Simon among them.

  “Gareth Bresten!” Lynch jabbed a finger at the first man. “Horse thief! Caught red-handed in Eastbank Stables! Guilty as charged!”

  Mild derision met that one. Theft was too common to impress.

  Every man here would have done the same, given a dark alley and a hungry week. They are not jeering the crime – they are jeering the failure.

  “Angus Wetherin!” The finger moved. “Swindler! Caught sharping at cards among gentlemen! Guilty as charged!”

  The mob recoiled more violently at Angus’s name than Gareth’s. Theft was a daily rite in Oaleholder – committed often and prosecuted seldom. But card sharping? That touched the marrow of the city’s brittle sense of honour.

  The hypocrisy was blinding. Ethan had not played a single honest hand since arriving almost four years ago.

  “Annabeth Guileman!” Lynch shrieked, turning to the half-elf. The man’s neck was now so swollen with blood and bombast it resembled beef roast gone off in the sun. “Murderer! Slain Charlie Small by pistol shot! Sharp-eared whore! Guilty as charged!”

  The crowd’s fury peaked, their incoherent clamour becoming a unified wail. Rinds of fruit, clumps of dung, broken crockery – all went airborne. One fool even launched a kitchen knife. A soldier, with reflexes no doubt honed on last year’s riots, batted it aside with the butt of his musket.

  “If that’s your aim, sir, I pity your wife’s longing,” the redcoat called out.

  A few nearby caught the quip and laughed. Others spat on the knife-thrower in reproof.

  “It was self-defence!” Annabeth cried. The words passed cracked lips and bloodied teeth. Her face had suffered extensive blunt trauma – cheekbones puffed near to bursting, one eye swollen shut. “He tried to rob me! He had a knife!”

  The truth died beneath the roaring crowd. Ethan felt the onset of a tension headache, pressure gathering behind the eyes. With it came the bitter taste of contempt. For Lynch. For the mob. For the circumstances that sanctioned this theatre.

  “Silence!” Lynch bellowed, his meaty fists raised skyward.

  Angus dropped his gaze and mumbled prayers in slurred, rattling tones. His bound limbs hung limp, trembling, skeletal beneath coarse linens.

  Gareth remained upright, chin set, eyes locked forward. His contempt for the mob was unmistakable. He would not grovel. He would not plead. A poor man’s pride, but pride nonetheless.

  “As God is my witness,” Lynch growled, hands gripping the lever. “May you find mercy in His kingdom, for you shall find none here!”

  He pulled.

  Three hatches dropped open. Three bodies fell.

  Angus died instantly. The noose caught beneath the jaw and yanked his cervical vertebrae out of alignment with such force that the base of his skull lodged against his spine. His arms gave a single shudder and hung still.

  The others were less fortunate.

  Annabeth and Gareth kicked – wildly, pathetically. Their bare feet struck air. Their bound wrists wrenched against hempen cord, flaying the skin raw. Purple overtook the natural hue of their faces. The nooses crushed their tracheae but did not break their necks. Cartilage folded, capillaries burst. Mucus and blood leaked from nose and mouth alike.

  Annabeth’s jaw opened wide, her tongue distended and blood-slicked, protruding grotesquely from her lips. Gareth made a sound – half gasp, half gurgle – that was quickly stifled by the rope’s relentless pull. Their eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting in red filigree across the whites.

  Still, they danced.

  The Hangman’s Jig: involuntary spasms, nerve-firing desperation.

  It took minutes. Long, unmerciful minutes.

  When it ended, it ended in increments. Gareth slumped first, his spine arching unnaturally, then going limp. Annabeth lingered, her legs twitching with residual signals until at last her head drooped forward, the final convulsion spent.

  The crowd erupted. Hats flew. Laughter rang. A man nearby slapped his son on the back with loud congratulations for watching without flinching. Simon was beside himself, whooping and hollering with the rest of the apes.

  Ethan stared. He felt nothing – then felt the absence of feeling with a low sort of revulsion. He had carved a baron’s brain into paste the night before without blinking, but public executions brought something filthier to the surface. The lie of it. The dramaturgy.

  Warren crossed himself and muttered scripture beneath his breath. Mary turned her back entirely, jaw clenched and face pale, swallowing down the sickness no doubt rising in her throat.

  Lyra did not look away. Her eyes glistened, but she did not blink. Her pale lip trembled. The sight was clearly intolerable to her.

  “Move,” Ethan said. He seized her shoulder and steered her from the scaffold before the crowd’s appetites turned to something else.

  Craglen Street had never looked more welcome. They merged with the foot traffic, bound for the western gate.

  “That were a right fine spread,” Simon chirped. “Proper bespoke gallows, yeah? No two kicks the same. One twitched, one flopped, one went stiff like a week-dead sheep – bleedin’ art, that is.”

  “Yer a right fuckin’ eel, Simon,” Mary muttered, not looking at him.

  Simon only grinned wider. “We all go in the end, right? Might as well make a show of it for what’s still breathin’.”

  “Where to now?” Lyra asked, eager to change topics. Her voice wavered. She rubbed her eyes with a sleeve.

  “Stag’s Head,” Ethan said.

  “Yes!” Simon cheered, fist pumping. “Hope they’ve still got that ox tail stew bubblin’ – or roast! I’d gut a bastard for some roast.”

  “I’m astounded you can maintain an appetite after witnessing three deaths,” Warren muttered.

  Simon shrugged. “Better them than me, yeah?”

  Warren turned to Mary. “If you wish to visit Abigail, the time is now.”

  Ethan frowned. “We have a ward to guard.”

  “One of us can spare the time,” Warren replied without looking. “Three of us are sufficient to safeguard one girl.”

  “I’ll mull on it,” Mary said, voice dull. She wiped her nose on her cloak’s hem and said nothing more.

  Ethan and Warren shared a glance. Neither spoke. Both shrugged.

  The matter was settled.

  The Stag’s Head had just lifted the latch from its door as the group arrived, its hinges groaning open.

  They were early enough that only the truly dependent had beaten them to it. A clutch of weathered drinkers nursed their half-pints in quiet desperation, the stale scent of yesterday’s ale still clinging to them. No coin left for strong liquor; they were suckling farthing-pour like it held the secret to surviving one more day.

  It never did.

  Mary had ultimately decided against visiting Abigail. “Denny’s got too much bait on his hook for me to be pesterin’ him,” she had said. A justification, not a reason.

  She did not know – could not have known – that Abigail would die that same night before the moon reached its zenith. Her childhood nanny’s final hours would pass in soporose fever, and Mary would miss the last opportunity to speak with her.

  Ignorant of the tragedy brewing mere streets away, the group found a table and fell into unguarded conversation. A thin veil of banter settled over them, cheap and serviceable as the ale. Moments later, Emma appeared from the back, practically bouncing with the sort of cheerfulness only adolescents and madwomen could summon in Oaleholder.

  “Scallops, ahoy!” she chirped. “What’re we havin’ today?”

  She wrote their orders on smudged parchment supported by a dirty cutting board, wielding her charcoal stylus like it was a quill. The girl could write – no small feat in a place like Westbank, where most adults struggled with their own names.

  Literacy had its uses, of course. You could not read a ledger to forge it, nor a map to rob the right house, if your letters looked like chicken scratches. And so the new generation had adapted. Children like Emma learned to write not from clerks or clergy, but from thieves and fences.

  “Uh huh, mhm,” Emma muttered as she wrote. “And what ‘bout yer new whiting, then?”

  "Just tea for me, please," Lyra said, smiling too knowingly at Emma’s thinly veiled hostility.

  Emma’s nostrils flared, eyes narrowing, lips downturned. Still, she scratched the order down without complaint and pirouetted back to the kitchens as though the encounter had never occurred.

  “She’s precious,” Lyra murmured, watching her go.

  “She’s a child,” Ethan replied.

  “Last I looked, ye fancied ‘em fresh out the net,” Mary chimed in. The jab had teeth, veiled in humour.

  “You flatter yourself. Even a year past, you were a worn matchlock by Westbank standards.”

  Mary feigned a gasp behind her palm. The others laughed. Morbid memory of the gallows had retreated, at least for now, buried beneath low jokes and warm seating.

  “Ya mualem!”

  The thunderclap of Jacob’s voice pre-empted his arrival. The black giant of a man strode to their table, two half-pints in one hand, straight white teeth flashing beneath his wide grin, trailed by his ever present scent of of hops and beef fat.

  “All well, Clobber?” Ethan caught the man’s hand in a warm shake. Jacob’s paw enveloped his own. He might have been a blacksmith if he had less charm and more patience.

  “Ya rayal, your pack grows by the hour, I see!” Jacob boomed, pressing one enormous hand to his chest in greeting. His mere presence lifted the mood with the mechanical certainty of a bellows stoking fire.

  “Clobber, this is Lyra. Our newest stray.”

  Jacob turned, nodded once, and took her measure. He was not a man to waste words when he could weigh you with a glance.

  “Lyra, this is Jacob Abbas – ‘Clobber’ to friends. Proprietor of this fine hovel and owner of that godawful trophy,” Ethan gestured at the massive elk’s head mounted behind the bar counter. A bad taxidermy job if ever there was one; the beast looked as though it had died of embarrassment.

  “It’s a pleasure, Mister Abbas,” Lyra said, with enough charm to disarm a sentry.

  “Any friend of namir–” he slapped Ethan’s shoulder hard enough to jostle his spine “–is a friend of mine, ya sahbety! Call me what you wish, so long as your coin here you spend.”

  She smiled at the warmth in his voice. “How did you acquire a sobriquet like ‘Clobber’?”

  Jacob threw back his head and barked laughter loud enough to wake the fumes of spirits in the rafters.

  “Like a libua, straight for the throat she goes! Careful, ya mualem – sharp fangs this one has.”

  He pulled a chair out with the ease of a man lifting a child and sat heavily, the legs creaking under him.

  “Papa and Mama, slaves they were to the Holy Prince of Terdia – may the bastard choke on his own piss,” Jacob spat onto the floorboards. “Why a child they had, only Alkhaliq knows. In March the heat comes, and in December, I was born. You do the sums.”

  He scratched at the scar framing his left eye absently.

  “Wait, Terdia?” Lyra interjected. “The seat of the – what was it – Holy House?”

  “Slaveholding was reintroduced under the same lunatic Pope…” Warren muttered, eyes downcast.

  “Aye, you know how I and piety walk, Rajul aldiyn – badly. Anyway! Slavin’ – hard work it is. But with hard work, and a mountain of stolen bread, a boy big grows. Like bull, eh? Hngh!” He flexed his arm, muscle tissue bulging grotesquely. One could hide a small blade in the crevice of that bicep and never find it again.

  Chuckles followed. They usually did when Jacob spoke. Even from Warren.

  “One day, we hear it – step foot in Helvecone, free you are. Just like that. His Majesty’s own words. No chains, no whip," Jacob threw his arms wide, smiling broadly. "So, a plan we make. Simple, clean. I clobber the guards, their weapons we take, and together, we clobber the rest. Soon, every slave in Mdnik’s pits holds a moukahla or a saif. Some both!”

  He paused. Something behind his eyes flickered.

  “Many Terdian men we killed. Women too. Children too, some – but those shaytan child-slayin’ bastards we killed too. Pride I take not in that part, but it happened, and precious is the truth. Rage there was plenty... but then came momentum,” Jacob gestured to the twisted flesh scarring his face. “This beauty I earned in the fightin’. Mama and Papa, they didn’t make it. Most didn’t. But we took a slave ship, bent to the oars, and left.”

  He raised his pint in silent toast, then drank.

  “Round all Omoritsi we went. Borte. Graflia. Maiagantia. Even Falchovarii. Different hell on each coast – but free we were. My ustadhi – mentor to me, za’eem to everyone – died between Borte and Maiagantia. Long voyage. No food. No clean water. Plague. Usual saints of death.”

  Lyra’s eyes were wide, mouth hanging open. Jacob smiled again, but only with his lips.

  “But land we did. Lady Caroline took us in. Bathhouses she ran, then. Still does, maybe – half-elves live long. Frightening woman. Good, though. Gave us work. Bad work first, but no complaint from us, the freedmen. More skulls to clobber, that’s all. Helped us learn the tongue, the customs too. Taught me how to speak to folk who never met the whip.”

  He looked at Lyra directly then, grinning. This time with both mouth and eye.

  “So – that’s why Clobber they call me. Clobbering? What I do best, wallah.”

  “My goodness,” Lyra whispered.

  Jacob threw his head back and laughed again, the tension vanishing like mist in sunlight.

  “But now – Jacob Abbas, I am. Publican of Stag’s Head, and king of Westbank beef!”

  He turned to Ethan, face sober once more.

  “Ya mualem, a word I need.”

  He handed Ethan the untouched half-pint. Ethan took it without looking and rose without complaint. The two men retreated toward the pantry, leaving behind the low hum of resumed chatter, and a tableful of companions who were already whispering in earnest.

  Ethan followed Jacob through the narrow kitchen corridor, moving past a scatter of clattering pans and shouted instructions. Emma and the other serving girls weaved between cookfires and cutting boards like shoal fish under threat, the aroma of seared meat and spiced root vegetables rising thick in the air.

  As ever, the pantry offered a modicum of calm – a dry, box-strewn alcove just large enough for Jacob to drop his mass upon a bench, and for Ethan to lean against a crate without catching a sack of barley in the ribs.

  At least the stomped rat was gone.

  "One of the far came back," Jacob began at once, voice pitched low but taut. “More had to say – about your employer.”

  Ethan said nothing, taking a sip from his tin pint. The ale was warm, bitter, slightly flat. Standard fare.

  Jacob produced a folded parchment from his breast pocket and handed it over without further comment. Ethan opened it. Dim lighting proved no impediment – his eyes cut through it with ease, parsing black ink from dull cream parchment with total clarity.

  "To my dear friend, Richard Best..."

  So that‘s his given name – Richard. Apt enough, if slightly on-the-nose.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The rest was written in that evasive, over-clever tone that bureaucrats believed concealed more than it revealed. It referenced Ailbean artefacts supposedly unearthed in Baron Stonewater’s mine shafts – nothing confirmed, of course, merely possibilities. The baron, apparently, had grown cautious, demanding royal sanction before opening his land to external interference. There followed mention of a “mystical guest” required to assess or even retrieve said artefacts. Ethan did not need a slide-rule to know the identity intended there.

  He kept his face still, folding the letter without remark. His thoughts, however, were already five steps down the next corridor. If Baron Stonewater had indeed stumbled upon something from the Ailbe’s vanished age, that would explain the murder. Not political manoeuvrings. Not sulphur. Only a bauble in the dark.

  "How did–" He cut himself off. "No. Never mind. Better I do not know."

  "Always safer, namir," Jacob gave a nod, one hand resting on a crate’s edge, knuckles pale from unseen strain.

  Ethan held the letter above a wall-mounted oil lamp. The paper caught immediately – charred orange and black curling at once from every edge. Someone had taken care to compose it on burn-stock; the flame consumed it utterly in seconds, leaving only a final ember to flutter ceiling-ward like a dying moth.

  He made a mental note: Richard Best either possessed a strange sense of timing, or the theft of this letter had been anticipated. He did not like the latter’s implication.

  He counted out several shillings and handed them over. "For the mouse. He earned it."

  Jacob’s grin was too wide by half. “Aye, she will be happy.”

  Ethan did not enquire further. The infiltrator had proven competent regardless of their trousers' contents.

  As he made his return to the main room, he recalled his earlier wager with Simon. Neither money nor politics had killed Baron Stonewater – It was merely inconvenient geography atop something older and hungrier than either. Ethan would not confess this aloud. He preferred his winnings unencumbered by truth.

  When he reached the main room, conversation had reached that peculiar, ribald height only achieved when drink, food, and shared suffering collided. He leaned on the kitchen door for a spell, taking it all in.

  Lyra, visibly distressed, sat twisted on her stool as Mary, Warren, and Simon took turns subjecting her to detailed commentary on Oaleholder’s sanitary failings.

  “Ethan’s got a palace for a boghouse,” Simon gasped through laughter, wiping his face with a sleeve. “Compared to the rest o' us, he’s practically shittin’ in marble.”

  “It’s indoors, it is!” Mary bellowed. "Indoors! Don’t need to brave the bleedin’ storm to go shitter. You could do a costume change in there and not a soul’d see – though if yer sharp, he might let ya!”

  Lyra looked mortified enough to faint, which naturally only emboldened them.

  Then Mary launched into her tale. Ethan recognised the opening beats at once.

  “Ma’s weddin’ ring, right – it slips down the boghouse hole once,” she began, voice wheezing from prior laughter. “Caught on a splinter, just danglin’ over the cesspit like it knew it were done for...”

  Warren and Simon quieted, knowing what was coming.

  “She shouts for da – says she can’t reach, won’t stick her hand in that shite, whatever! So what’s he do? Rolls up his sleeve and down he goes – whole arm, elbow-deep in the filth! Finds the ring, too, right as this fat, slick bastard of a rat launches out from the muck and runs right up his bleedin’ shoulder!"

  By the time she mimed her father shrieking and flailing, Warren was already sprawled over the table even as Simon pounded on it – both men breathless with laughter. Lyra looked as though she had swallowed a cough which exploded from both nostrils at once.

  “An’ THEN!” Mary gasped, half-crying. “He gives his arm a few swings to shake it off – down, right, sides and up! Last one sends the rat flyin’ sky-high, twenty feet at least – and no sooner’s it up there than this falcon, I swear on me shillings, falcon snatches it clean out the air!”

  Laughter surged anew, but Mary pressed on.

  “And the rat, right? It panics, shits itself mid-air. And ma’s still under it screamin’ for her ring – an' SPLAT! Right in ‘er lovely brown curls!”

  Lyra has finally succumbed to the mirth. She was helpless by this point – wheezing, snorting, one hand over her eyes. The room had taken up the laughter, neighbouring tables leaning in, giggling, raising drinks in amused solidarity.

  Mary took a ragged breath. “And there’s da, screamin’ at the bird and shakin’ his fist – bless him – goes all quiet, walks over to her, opens his hand... and the ring’s still there. Pops it back on Ma’s finger like it’s their weddin’ day all over again.”

  A moment’s silence passed before the crowd erupted once more – not with laughter, but applause.

  “To love that’ll weather any shite you throw at it!” Simon toasted.

  “Cheers!” the room echoed.

  Ethan pushed off the wall and resumed his seat, slicing into his steak without comment. It was overcooked, but not unpalatable. He chewed methodically, content to observe rather than speak. Their happiness, however vulgar, required no assistance from him.

  It was, thankfully, self-sustaining.

  They lingered in the Stag’s Head until well into the afternoon.

  Outside, the sky had soured; a thunderhead brooded over Westbank, swollen and malevolent, though still withholding its rain. The streets glistened not with storm but with the dull residue of industry and prior footfall. Even so, the party’s mood remained high – elevated by drink, food, and laughter. They departed at a slow, companionable pace.

  All save for Simon, who staggered with each imbalanced step.

  “How many’d you pack in, ye sloshed dogfish?” Mary asked with the weariness of habit.

  “Only five, I did,” he slurred, breath fragrant with hops. “Too few to make it proper fuckin’ merry, truth be told. Should’ve stayed fer more splash.”

  “You indulge in alcohol’s vice far too routinely for a man of your stature,” Warren muttered. “It’s a mystery how you aren’t entirely spherical.”

  “Imma growin’ boy – I’ve space aplenty,” Simon muttered, to general amusement.

  Lyra, however, was neither smiling nor joining the chatter. Her posture had stiffened; her gaze flicked about with calculated unease. Tension radiated off her in waves – disciplined but palpable.

  “Problem?” Ethan’s tone was flat. His headache had surged and ebbed throughout the day, and he was currently deep in the throes of another flare up.

  She scanned the thoroughfare – gaze halting briefly at every alley, passersby, and shaded doorway – then met his eyes. Her voice was quiet, firm.

  “I believe we are being followed.”

  No further comment was needed. Conversation died at once. They formed up at Ethan’s order, a loose diamond formation with a surprised Lyra at its core.

  “How’d ye reckoned that, then?” Simon had straightened slightly, though still swaying a touch.

  “Experience.”

  Subjective, Ethan made no verbal comment, but still allowed his eyes to take over. Every alley, every architectural recess, every line of sight – evaluated and mapped. And sure enough, proof soon presented itself.

  Four men stepped into the street ahead, blocking the path. Well-fed, armed but concealed, and coordinated. Not opportunists. Not loiterers. The kind of men who planned rather than prowled.

  Precise posture, even spacing. Not your standard pickpockets. Hired hands. Mercenary or martial?

  A beat passed. The standoff remained silent until three more cloaked figures emerged behind them – cutting off retreat. Seven in total.

  “Ahoy, scallops,” Mary ventured Oaleholder’s standard greeting.

  The leader pulled down his hood and bandana – a thickset brute with a face like wet leather – and stepped forward. A long scar ran from chin to ear beneath greasy stubble.

  “We want the girl,” he said. Falchovarian accent. Rough dialect, south of the Borveil range. “The rest of you can fuck off.”

  No subtext. No subtlety.

  Ethan’s reply was immediate and unmodulated. “No. We keep the girl, I break your arm, and you crawl back to your piss-swamp of a republic, frog. Or, you can fuck right off, right now.”

  The effect was instantaneous. The thugs drew their weapons – clubs, truncheons, makeshift maces wrapped in metal chain. Not a blade among them.

  Non-lethal, then. Retrieval, not assassination.

  “Warren, with me. Rest of you, hold the back,” Ethan commanded, then charged.

  The lead thug was ready. He swung a length of hardwood at Ethan’s head with the practised snap of someone who had cracked ribs before.

  Ethan dipped low, the arc of the swing slicing air. He did not counter – yet. Instead, he slammed shoulder-first into the man on the left, who had not expected the redirection.

  Instead of following up with a strike, Ethan used his head – literally. He straightened and drove the crown of his skull into the man’s jaw at an upward angle. The result was an audible crunch of teeth with the tongue between them, followed by the snap of mandibular hinge. Blood sprayed from the thug’s mouth as he collapsed, twitching, half-conscious.

  Ethan pivoted back toward the leader, who now adopted a more guarded stance. Calculating, adjusting grip. No longer confident.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Mary, Simon, and Lyra had each engaged one opponent apiece. Warren held the line with two, absorbing strikes on his arms and shoulders, returning each with explosive blows of his own. The cleric lacked Ethan’s finesse, but his size made up for it.

  The Falchovarian and Ethan closed again. The exchange was brutal – swing for swing, counter for counter. Ethan drove an elbow into the man’s ribs, received a baton-strike to the thigh in return. They separated, circled, and clashed again.

  A blur from the edge. One of Warren’s foes broke off and cracked a club into Ethan’s right side.

  Blunt trauma. Rib impact.

  Ethan grunted involuntarily.

  No fracture. Likely a bruise.

  The leader capitalised instantly, elbowing Ethan’s jaw.

  Ethan let the force carry him. He rolled with it, crouched, and swept his right leg wide in a lateral arc as he landed. It caught the Falchovarian’s ankle. The man toppled sideways, arms flailing.

  Before he could recover, Ethan rose and drove the sole of his boot into the thug’s face.

  Heel met nose bridge. Cartilage burst. Skull struck stone.

  The bastard ceased movement.

  Ethan exhaled once. Shallow. Turned around.

  The first thug still lay in the gutter, hands cupping the ruin of his lower face, half of his tongue bleeding on the cobbles beside him.

  Warren had downed one attacker, now facing only a battered second. Both men were bloodied. Warren’s lip split. His eye swelling.

  Simon looked like a painting scraped across cobblestones – new bruises piling atop old pox scabs. But his opponent lay still, and he now harried the rear thugs alongside the women.

  Mary and Lyra moved with surprising cohesion – taking turns to bait and jab, duck and strike. A black eye for one, a split lip for the other. Nothing serious. Their adversaries clearly hesitated to engage fully.

  A mistake.

  It took precisely two seconds to survey the engagement and assess Warren's adversary for what he was – injured, distracted, overcommitted. Ethan closed the distance in three strides and drove a kick into the man's ribcage. Judging by the recoil, at least one rib gave. Possibly two.

  Warren launched a left hook with all the weight of his frame. It struck the side of the man’s head with a blunt, meaty crunch. He dropped and rolled over onto his back, utterly limp.

  They pivoted as one, converging on the final two Falchovarians. Mary was engaged in a push-pull rhythm with one; Simon was staggering his way through a series of broad swings with the other.

  Then Lyra’s voice cut across the melee.

  “Pistol!”

  Her tone lacked panic. If anything, it carried professional precision. Ethan turned.

  The bandit captain – face still bearing an imprint of Ethan’s boot – had risen to his feet, left eye socket closed and bleeding. In his right hand: a flintlock pistol, aimed directly at Ethan.

  The angle was tight.

  Distance: negligible.

  Escape: not viable.

  Then – aether. Ethan felt it shift, coalesce. Next thing, a gust of unnatural force struck the gunman across the left side of his head. His ruined eye detached entirely, landing in his palm like a soft-boiled egg as he reached for his face.

  He howled, bent over.

  Uncertain of the magic’s source but content with the result, Ethan surged forward, caught the pistol-wrist in one hand and, with the other, delivered a vertical palm into the inside of the elbow.

  The joint folded backwards. Ligaments ruptured with an audible tear. The ulna splintered. The man’s shriek, half-choked, was still rising when Ethan shifted his weight and drove a downward kick into the Falchovarian’s knee. The joint snapped laterally and buckled, reducing the bastard to a half-collapsed, mewling pile of wet suffering.

  Two of the other thugs dropped their weapons and fled. Rational men. Possibly the only two in the lot.

  Ethan observed the bandit captain, who remained upright through sheer biological cruelty. His mouth moved, silently. His remaining eye watered from the overload of sensation. He pitched forward slightly–

  –and Ethan raised his steel-toed boot.

  The impact to the groin produced a wet pop. The thug convulsed, mouth agape, spittle and blood dribbling, then folded. He hit the cobbles on his side and twitched in a rapid, irregular pattern, like a cockroach with its head crushed.

  Ethan spat onto the bastard’s face. A mixture of phlegm and blood, slightly pink. He was breathing hard from exertion. The moment had grown too quiet, too private. He reached for his stiletto.

  Just one more cut, A voice whispered in his mind. One last demonstration.

  Who was he to argue with reason?

  Then – a whistle. High, officious, and unmistakable.

  Lawmen? In Westbank?

  A constable’s cry confirmed his suspicion – "Oi, oi, oi! What’s all this then?" – rendered almost farcical by the urgency of the voice.

  They emerged from the alleyways like rats given permission. Five of them – with more doubtless on the way – clad in mismatched blues and carrying truncheons with studded heads. Standard issue. Ethan had felt them before; he recalled, without fondness, the sensation of his ribs being struck five times in a single blow.

  The lead officer, a rotund man whose epaulette had frayed at the seams, scanned the scene with a practised eye. The thugs lay splayed like gutted livestock. Those not unconscious were wishing they were.

  Simon, to his credit, wasted no time playing the village idiot.

  “Defendin’ the dignity o’ our lashes, shir,” he slurred, with all the charm of a drunken beetle. "Them thugs got handsy."

  The constable scratched his cheek, glanced at the bodies, then back to them. "Be that as it may, scallops, I’m obliged to take the lot o’ ye to Aury Yard for statements. Thugs included."

  Mary collapsed into the role of damsel. “But it was us what got waylaid!” she gasped. “They – they could’ve–!”

  Ethan said nothing. Nor did Warren. They understood their physiognomy was not conducive to leniency, so they kept their gazes averted and shoulder slouched.

  Not the first street theatre they had engaged in.

  The constable shook his head with genuine regret. "The law’s the law, miss. I dun’ make it."

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. They had perhaps a minute before weapons would be raised. He still carried an illegal stiletto, a horse pistol obviously not for duelling, not to even mention the dead baron’s golden molar, blood specks and all.

  The odds were unfavourable.

  Then again, a single minute can last a lifetime. Especially in Westbank.

  The officers began to step forward. Their bludgeons were held loosely, not raised – yet – but the message was clear. Submission or escalation.

  The group matched their advance with a corresponding retreat. Cobblestones clicked beneath boots. Breathing sharpened.

  Then – salvation; scented of Katagman tobacco and political convenience.

  “I bid you a pleasant afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Richard Best disembarked from a black coach that had somehow approached without a single horse’s hoof making sound, nor a single axle groaning.

  The constable stiffened. “Mister Best, sir!”

  “At ease, Mister Warden.”

  Simon snorted. Whether at the man’s name or his deference was unclear. He disguised the laugh as a cough.

  Best wasted no time. “See to it that your men apprehend the assailants. I will take charge of these young people.”

  “Yes, sir! At once, sir!”

  The lawmen moved quickly. The bandits – those not in need of immediate medical attention – were dragged up by the arms and hog-tied. The others were examined, pitied, then hoisted between subordinates.

  Best turned to the group.

  “Come.”

  He did not wait to see if they obeyed.

  Ethan exchanged a glance with Warren, then with Mary. No one spoke. There was nothing to be said.

  They followed.

  The stagecoach compartment was uncomfortably warm, saturated with the odour of sweat and grime – either old, dried, or still drying. The interior was upholstered in burgundy velvet, worn down to the weave in spots, the scent of Katagman leaf embedded deep in the fabric. Dust flared in the dim lamplight, casting golden flares across the cabin’s lacquered brass fittings.

  Ethan sat with deliberate ease between Lyra and the Meat Man – the latter now sporting a crude leather patch over the socket where his left eye had once resided – facing Rupert and a man who was presently undergoing the slow, sputtering process of combustion: Mister Richard Best.

  The others had been offloaded into a second coach, one which had arrived as surreptitiously as the first, like a footpad sidling into a parlour.

  “In the Devil’s foul name, what reckless folly possessed you, you insufferable buffoon!” Richard’s voice, hitherto fastidiously modulated, had risen to a pitch of fury bordering on manic. The man's usual veneer of poise had fissured. Veins throbbed visibly in his temple and his cravat had come slightly undone – a detail Ethan took particular note of, having never seen the man in such visible disarray.

  He said nothing, allowing the bastard codger deepen his own rhetorical trench.

  “Evidently, the concept of cogitation eludes you entirely. For had you been engaged in anything resembling rational thought, you would not have brazenly defied civil statute! Your express charge was to shield our dignitary from the Republic’s agents, not to present her to them on a damned silver salver!”

  “My assignment was to act as her warden and protect her from Falchovarii, Mister Best. Not to incarcerate her,” Ethan replied in the flat tone one might reserve for a bureaucratic correction, though the glint in his eyes betrayed he had rather enjoyed watching the man unspool.

  This back-and-forth had begun the moment they climbed into the coach. Ethan had been prodding Best’s – Richard’s – temper like a boy flicking rocks at a wasps’ nest.

  Carefully, experimentally, but with no small relish.

  “Mister Best, no significant harm–”

  “I shall not, will not, do not want to hear any of it, damn you!” Richard barked over Lyra’s attempt at diplomacy, gloved hands clenched into fists around his cane. She sat stiffly beside Ethan, exhaling slowly through her nose, her knuckles blanching with the effort not to interject further.

  “Your excuses do not absolve your incompetence. Were it not for my intervention–”

  “You would now have the corpses of four lawmen and one constable to dump in the docks,” Ethan interrupted, tone inflected with casual observation. “But another Tuesday for your ilk, Mister Best.”

  The tremor in Richard’s hands reached his shoulders now. His face, ruddy as a butcher’s apron, had begun to shine with exertion. Ethan imagined the man’s tailor would find sweat rings in places no honest fabric deserved.

  He idly wondered whether Richard’s day had already been unpleasant before this point. If so, he was pleased to have made it worse.

  “I should see you shackled to a wall in the Citadel’s lowest dungeon,” Richard seethed. “A disgraced mongrel, unfit for human company! A misbegotten abomination!”

  Misbegotten abomination? Ethan filed the barb away, curiosity piqued. A new addition to the lexicon of Richard’s insults, certainly, but he felt this one to be more… nuanced.

  “Careful, Dick,” Ethan returned, slow and deliberate, grinning with yellowed teeth. “Disgraced though I may be, but the weight of my name in Craglen – Lord Daesach’s name, might I remind you – would drag you into the depths right alongside me.”

  He leaned closer, whispering: “Shackled in irons.”

  Meat Man gripped Ethan’s shoulder with one hand the size of a cook’s cleaver and squeezed. Tendons popped. Pain shot down his arm like a struck bell. Ethan did not flinch, though he turned a deliberate, dead-eyed look toward his attacker.

  “One day, Meat Boy,” he said, voice low and flat. “I will remove your right eye just like I did the left. But if you don’t unhand this instant, I’ll do it right fucking here.”

  The grip tightened. Ethan's fingers closed around the hilt of the blade beneath his cloak. It whispered ever so softly as it slid from its sheath.

  “Enough, Fergus,” Richard sighed, prompted by Rupert’s anxious tug at his sleeve. The brute released Ethan with visible reluctance. He let his hand slip away from the blade, which whispered back inside, as soft as before.

  They sat in brittle silence a moment, the rhythm of the coach’s wheels ticking over the cobbles beneath them.

  “The Falchovarian agents failed to retrieve Lyra,” Ethan said at last. “And received considerable injury in the process. That, Mister Best, was the result of our interference. Wounds and bruises aside, I daresay we have demonstrated both competence and resolve to defend our ward.”

  He turned his head to regard Lyra. She looked like she had been thrown down a staircase – face bloodied, lip split, bruises already darkening to ochre and purple. Beneath her garments, he assumed, she fared no better.

  Still, she straightened her spine and managed a smile – thin, but sincere – and nodded.

  “I believe Mister Harbinger and his companions have proven themselves to be most admirable and gallant, Mister Best,” she said, each syllable precise despite the pained winces. “I feel safe in their care and would prefer to remain under their protection.”

  There was a pause, subtle but definite. Ethan, surprised despite himself, felt his usual blank mask to slip, just for a moment. He looked between her and Best with wide eyes, whose features had frozen in unreadable contemplation.

  Then, astonishingly, the man chuckled.

  “Out of the dozen groups assigned to your well-being – veteran soldiers, royal mercenaries, noble families, men of knighthood – it is this assembly of vagrants and cutthroats that earns your trust. Remarkable.”

  He shifted his grip on his silver-topped cane, the motion precise, unbothered. The cane's head was shaped like a wolf’s, polished to a gleam.

  No doubt hollow, and bladed beneath. Likely serves as a weapon in a pinch.

  Ethan had ascertained as much upon their first meeting.

  “Very well," Richard continued. "At least now I may rest easy, knowing your penchant for nocturnal elopement is, at long last, curtailed.”

  Ethan snorted. Lyra’s ears flushed scarlet. Rupert appeared to retreat into himself like a snail tapped on the shell.

  “I am pleased we have reached an accord,” Ethan said, tone neutral, but too quickly to be entirely conciliatory. “With that settled, perhaps you will now explain why the Republic is so determined to seize an Ailbean archaeologist?”

  Richard let out a slow breath, fingers dragging over his face, through purple eyebags and reddening shaving gashes. The gesture, unguarded and weary, was rare. The man looked like he had aged five years in as many hours.

  “She has evidently taken you into her confidence…” he muttered. “So be it.”

  He sat back, voice returning to its measured cadence. “There exist, Mister Harbinger, artefacts – treasures and secrets, really – fragments of the Ailbe’s legacy stretching back over ten millennia. The only explanation I am at liberty to offer, without violating the terms of Crown confidentiality, is this: His Majesty’s Government has secured an arrangement with Miss Lyra. In exchange for access to these ruins, she shall share with us their hidden truths.”

  Ethan digested the information. If the ruins contained anything that could shift the balance of power, the next war – and there would be a next war – might end before it began.

  Si vis pacem, para bellum – or so the old adage goes.

  Ethan had always found Vegetius too optimistic for his liking.

  The carriage halted. Three knocks on the partition followed.

  “We have arrived,” Richard said. “In the weeks to come, Mister Harbinger, Miss Lyra, a new assignment shall await you both. I implore you to exercise prudence in the interim. Try, if you please, not to expire before our next meeting.”

  With that customary send-off – half disdain, half prayer – the door was opened and the passengers dismissed like a group of unruly urchins.

  Ethan stepped out onto the paving stones and stretched his shoulder, already counting the hours until someone tried to kill him again.

  “The sun is yet to rise from our previous meeting and already you return resembling strays, dragged through barrow and briar alike,” Aelielaya observed through drooping eyelids, her tone more weary than scolding. She stood amidst her parlour, sleeves rolled high, apron already dusted with ground bark and smudges of tincture. “Well then – who shall brave the table first?”

  Ethan assessed the room. Victoria was already bent over Simon, cooing with nauseating maternalism while dabbing his forehead with a cloth. The man was clearly enjoying himself far more than the extent of his injuries justified.

  “Lyra, go,” Ethan said, stepping toward the cabinet with practised certainty. “Liel, may I borrow your poultices for Mary and Warren?”

  “You may,” Aelielaya replied, brushing powdered comfrey root into a dish with a bronze pestle before taking her apron off. “As yet, none under my roof bear the marks of your ineptitude – poisoned nor maimed – so I shall take that as provisional merit.”

  She beckoned Lyra to the clinic with a flick of the wrist. “Come, child. Let us hope this remedy takes firmer root than the last. Or firmer than your judgement, at least.”

  “Sorry, Warren. Chivalry and all,” Ethan muttered, not bothering to look at his friend as he reached for a wide-mouthed jar and a gauze.

  The big man rolled his shoulders, grimacing. “Bollocking like that takes me back to our first skirmish. Also in Westbank, ironically. Fewer elves then. And fewer bruises.”

  He groaned at length as he lowered himself into a green armchair. “I’ll be fine.”

  That was a lie. He was favouring his ribs too conspicuously for comfort. Cracked, most likely. Ethan made a mental note to palpate the intercostals after tending to Mary.

  He approached the scallop lass, noted the blackening of her eye, the drying blood on her temple, and the thin red lines down her nape – grazes from fractured masonry, likely. He returned to the shelf and retrieved linen gauze, a roll of bandage, and a pot of thick salve.

  Mary had already seated herself, having stripped off her shirt and turned to shield her chest with crossed arms. Her back and sides were a tapestry of mottled bruises and shallow abrasions.

  He dipped the swab into the salve, the thick brown mixture clinging like honey. It was a blend he recognised by scent and texture alone: yarrow to stem bleeding, calendula for tissue repair, and crushed meadowsweet to numb the inflammation.

  The entire concoction was, of course, also infused with Aelielaya’s elvish magic – making it more potent than what any human horticulturalist could ever produce. Applied directly to exposed skin, it always stung before the cold dulled it. He knew from experience.

  A fair trade.

  He said nothing as he spread the viscous substance across her shoulders in slow, deliberate lines. Her skin twitched beneath his motions, but she remained silent, knowing protest was both useless and inefficient.

  “You did well today,” he said aloud, tone measured but carrying. “Richard was incensed, naturally, but Lyra and I managed to persuade him not to dissolve the contract.”

  “Richard?” Simon asked sharply, head snapping up from his reclined position so quickly he almost broke Victoria’s nose.

  “Mister Best’s given name.”

  The parlour murmured with mild chuckles, Simon’s loudest of all.

  “Wait – Richard Best?” Mary asked, shaking her head. “Old Ghost Dick? Richard the turd?” she snorted again. “Cod bollocks! Ya couldn’t write somethin’ that daft if God Hisself told ye to!”

  Warren opened his mouth, but Mary’s laughter turned into a hiss as Ethan pressed gauze against a fresh scrape, cutting him off. “Ohh, me giddy aunt, that smarts like a nettle!” she flinched reflexively, and the priest-in-training abandoned his reprimand.

  The others chuckled again – still lightly, but with enough volume to betray a lifting of the pall. Humour, however puerile, remained an effective tonic.

  “Thought ye were dead set against all this, Ethan,” Mary said, glancing back over her shoulder with a grin. “Yer heart’s ain’t gone soft for the pale whiting, has it?”

  In reply, he pressed the gauze harder against an especially raw cut.

  “Ow! Gerroff – STOP!” she yelped, laughing through clenched teeth. “Ya savage dogfish!”

  “Our choice,” he said curtly. “Is to carry on with the work or end up floating arse-up by the Matresa mudflats. A romantic death, I am sure, but one I would prefer to postpone, if not avoid.”

  He tied the bandage around her torso and moved on to her head. Mary fell silent as he worked, and the rest of the room followed suit.

  One finished, he went to Warren, who had by now sagged so low into the armchair he risked fusing with it.

  “Did Richard say anything further?” Warren asked, holding his bloodied shirt aloft as Ethan gently prodded his ribs. Swelling, warmth, and a hiss of pain with each touch – but no sign of a fracture, at least.

  Or so he hoped. Aelielaya would confirm later.

  “He did,” Ethan replied at last. “New assignment in a fortnight, perhaps longer. Until then, we take shifts watching over Lyra. Two of us minimum, at any time of day. I shall draft the rota once we are home.”

  “Fair play,” Warren muttered, nodding his assent. Mary and Simon followed suit.

  Ethan had just retrieved another swab when Lyra re-emerged from the clinic, her gait still ginger but improved.

  “You’re next, revenant,” she quipped. The shadows beneath her eyes had lightened, and her bruising had dulled to a greenish pallor. Good enough.

  “Try an’ not git abducted while I’m away, ye pallid mare,” he replied, moving past her, Aury lilt slipping into his voice.

  A gasp and a guffaw sounded behind him, but the clinic chamber’s door shut before any repartee came. He undressed as he made his way toward the centre.

  Aelielaya stood beside the operating table, golden arms folded. Its surface was still stained – rusty brown splotches of dried blood, both faye and human. He recognised at least three as his own.

  “I have scoured it thrice – twice with lye, then with ash,” she said plainly, following his gaze. “Still, the marks persist. Perhaps it has become cursed?”

  “Haunted by my past incompetence, no doubt,” he replied, lowering himself into the contraption.

  She perched beside him, fingers already tracing lines in the air. A moment later, her thumb touched his brow, and the world shifted.

  No agony, just that familiar expansion – like wind in the lungs after a long dive. His eyes glowed faintly, a trickle of pale blue light threading from their corners. The press of the table on his ribs eased, becoming but another sensation in a hundred others.

  “Ah,” she breathed, fingers stilling in the air. “Your tether to the Cycle has deepened. There is more aether nestled within than before – threaded through marrow, flowing with blood. Is this, I wonder, related to your new companion?”

  He hesitated. Speculation without sufficient evidence was worse than conjecture. It was soothsaying.

  “She amplifies the aether around her, I think,” Ethan guessed, each word pronounced slowly, mind muddled by his expanded kinaesthesia. “Since the first moment we met, it has been like trying to stand in a gale without moving. It’s the reason you’re attending me in the first place – the sensation is as migraine inducing as it is distracting, hence my poor performance against the thugs. Yet I am growing more used to the pressure by now.”

  A hesitant breath.

  “...I think.”

  “Do make an effort to ensure what you think does not return you to my table with such alarming frequency,” she admonished, her hands now hovering a mere inch above his skin, sweeping methodically. He felt the aether around him respond to each movement, though in what manner still eluded him.

  “I shall endeavour to disappoint you less,” he muttered.

  Another breath. “Can you concur?” Ethan asked. “Your expertise outweighs mine by lifetimes.”

  As you’re prone to reminding me, was left unsaid.

  Aelielaya did not reply at once, trailing her hands over his injuries with a knitted brow.

  “I shall concur only this,” the Augustine elf whispered faintly and at length. “She is perilous, yes – but I sense no malice in her. Until the root of her link to the Cycle is known, I would have you walk gently, as one steps through a moonlit glade littered with bones.”

  Her hands stopped. Ethan glanced up to see her giving him another one of her looks – mouth set, brow tense, head tilted forward. This one was lost on him entirely, both in implication and context.

  Then, a smile.

  “It’s quite touching that you endure such injury merely to seek my counsel. Yet I must – once more – implore you not to make a habit of it.”

  "Yes, doctor," Ethan japed back, rolling his eyes.

  The magic took hold slowly, like heat soaking into ice. Aelielaya’s hands moved once more, stopping above each injury.

  The main procedure had begun.

  He could feel capillaries knitting, torn muscle fibres pulling together, skin rethreading with seamless precision. There was no ecstasy, only absence – of pain, of fatigue, of weight.

  Still, it was not fast. The method had no place in a battlefield or emergency. That was why the surgical knives on the shelf were sharp, and the stains on the table had layers.

  He closed his eyes, feeling his wounds close beneath her hands, the worst of them puckering into pale scars. New additions to an already well-mapped torso.

  At least the room’s scent – camphor, valerian, and creeping thyme – was pleasant.

  My connection to the Cycle has deepened, eh?

  Sometimes, he almost appreciated his affliction. It had its uses.

  Headaches, nausea, vertigo, and a plethora of other symptoms notwithstanding.

  Even on this day, in this very room – healing done within minutes instead of hours. Full recuperation achieved in days instead of weeks.

  And in his line of work, a single minute could last a lifetime.