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  “I’m not wrong,” said Irae, brows fiercely furrowed, and the innate strong headedness was fighting for dominance.

  Thorn watched her, a bit nervously. He felt that he knew her quite well, considering it had been just under two weeks, but there were times, like this, when her mood could go either way. It was impossible to tell exactly what she might say.

  “I may have been,” said Braeve frankly. “They tell me I was — not for what I wanted, but for how I tried to go about getting it. They tell me I was wrong — but no one has ever told me that I was weak. You should remember the difference, young one.”

  Irae tried to pull her hand free, but Braeve held onto it a little longer.

  “The road ahead is paved with dangers,” she said.

  “Is that a warning?” said Irae.

  “It is a statement of fact,” said Braeve. “You may expect cobblestones, but don’t be surprised if you step from the head of a serpent to the maw of a crocodile.”

  “Poor road maintenance is one of the things I intend to rectify once I regain my throne,” said Irae, with dignity. It took Thorn so strongly by surprise that he had to turn his head away and attempt to disguise his laughter with a cough. He wasn’t sure how successful he was at this.

  Not very, judging by the look Braeve gave him.

  She heaved a sigh and dropped Irae’s hand at last.

  “Very well,” she said, “if you refuse to be told, then you refuse to be told. Perhaps it will all turn out alright in the end, after all — perhaps you’ll die along the way. That would certainly relieve my feelings.” She turned to Thorn and took his hand without waiting for him to offer it. “You, though,” she said, “you are awkward and uncertain, and that I like. Preserve yourself. Come back to me, when you’re in need of a guiding hand, or a drink of water from my well.” She released him and waved him towards the horse.

  Thorn turned away from her, thoughtfully, and stepped towards the horse and his two companions.

  “Let’s leave this behind,” said Irae somewhat fiercely.

  “Yes,” intoned Karyl from atop the horse, “let’s.”

  He made a movement that was likely intended to urge the horse onwards, but it was awkward, aborted, and the horse ignored him completely until Irae took the bridle and yanked on it. They made their slow and ponderous way towards the outer edge of the clearing, leaving Braeve standing and watching them. The fox had disappeared while they were not looking.

  Before they stepped from the circle of the clearing into the first stand of young trees, Thorn stopped as a thought struck him.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What is it?” said Irae. Karyl said nothing; he was staring straight forward between the horse’s ears.

  Thorn held up a finger, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. He tugged the ends of his hair down over his ears.

  “I must —- I must ask her a question. Will you wait for me?”

  Irae looked up at Karyl, doubtfully.

  “If not,” said Thorn slowly, “then at least don’t move too quickly. I have a feeling you’ll get lost if I’m not there to guide you.”

  “Think much of yourself, do you,” snorted Irae, but she didn’t contradict him. “Very well, then, but be quick about it.”

  “Have no concern on that account.” Thorn didn’t really want to spend any more time in Braeve’s presence than was absolutely necessary, no matter that she claimed to like him. He turned and approached the little hut again, twisting his fingers together.

  Braeve watched him come towards her, and got smaller and smaller as he did, rather than larger as would normally have happened; she made herself small for him, but he did not think it was out of respect or a desire to make him more comfortable. When she looked up at him from Irae’s height, he could have sworn that she was laughing at him.

  “Yes?” she said. “Did you forget to kiss me goodbye?”

  “The fox,” said Thorn.

  “She has gone, it seems.”

  “Yes.” He had no doubt that she would find them again, regardless of how easy it was to get lost in the woods. “That isn’t the question. My question is — you said she would tell stories.”

  Braeve nodded once, deeply.

  “How?” said Thorn. “She cannot speak. How can something that cannot speak tell stories?”

  Braeve held a finger up to correct him.

  “She has not found her voice,” she said. “That isn’t quite the same thing, now, is it? I am not the only one who has the gift of seeing things for what they really are. I see that that fox was once a girl as clearly as I see the guilt you carry for that girl now being a fox.” Thorn lowered his head, but she chuckled again, that deep earth-chuckle that came from something far bigger than Braeve herself. “You may protest, but your blush is as tell-tale as a written confession. Are you more concerned that she will tell about what you’ve done? Or about who ordered you to do so?”

  “I want,” said Thorn, and he had to pause for a moment. To think about what he did want, and to think about how to say it. Braeve seemed to take all his words and twist them around as she liked, doing what she pleased with them until they meant what she wanted them to mean. It made him feel like a liar every time he opened his mouth. “I want to know if she is all right. That’s all.”

  “Or how to change it, if she isn’t,” said Braeve. “How to make it better. How to fix her. Is that what you mean?”

  Seven years will set her straight again, Thorn thought, but he didn’t dare say it. Braeve might have a certain suspicion of who he was, she might begin to believe that he was Forged — but it had not yet been said, and he was not at all inclined to confirm her growing belief.

  All for naught, it seemed.

  “A fascinating field of study, the Forged,” said Braeve casually. “I hear they are doing amazing things with the power in Keler. Just on the other side of the Badlands, and you of course know that everything interesting happens in the Badlands. So, few rules and regulations. Studying how to Forge and un-Forge. The family connection — the bloodline ties. Whether you can give someone the ability to Forge, and if you can take it away. Indeed, if I had such a power — which, I am grateful to say, I do not — I would take myself off there and find out more about it. It must be a terribly lonely life, living with such an ability.”

  She trailed off, and when he looked up, he realized that she was smiling at him; a different smile than before. A sad smile, pitying, but something that recognized in him a part of herself.

  “It takes a brave man to live such a life,” she said.

  Thorn found his tongue.

  “Or a brave woman,” he said.

  He bowed to her, and she waved him away once more. He went gratefully, and he left her standing in the knee-high grass surrounding her little hut, once more the only heartbeat in her entire domain.

  Irae was waiting for him just outside the circle of the clearing.

  “What did you have to ask her?”

  Thorn took a deep breath.

  “We may have a problem,” he said.

  Irae scowled at him.

  “Oh, hells,” she said. “I hate it when you say that. You’re always right.”

  4

  The Valley of Rogues

  Far above a nameless valley, unseen by anything beyond a passing eagle or two, Serhiy sat and waited and watched.

  It probably wasn’t actually a nameless valley. One thing that he had observed about humans was that they liked to name things. He couldn’t account for it, himself, not having that particular strange urge — not that he was a stranger to his own brand of strange urges — but it definitely seemed to be a fact. So likely the valley had at least one name, and possibly more depending on the language of the person whom you asked about it.

  He hadn’t asked anyone about it. He had no particular desire to know.

  He had, however, found a tree to climb.

  It was a good tree, as far as he deemed it: tall and broad and strong, with branches cl
ose enough to the ground that he was able to get to them but high enough off the ground that he would notice, should anyone else attempt to do the same. He didn’t know what kind it was, though he suspected it had a name as well. But he did know that it smelled wonderful, the kind of smell that made him think of his youth in the deep, dry forests so far away. The smell was that of a wooden box, clean and empty.

  He sat on one of the upper branches, leaning sideways against the trunk with his arm slung casually around it. He sat for long enough that he felt curious ants tickling the back of his neck, and a spider or two cautiously investigating the area between his fingers for web-making possibilities. He took in a deep, open-mouthed breath and let it out in a long sigh. He could sit here forever, high above the world, watching for the next thing; he wouldn’t have minded it at all.

  Things may not have gone as well as he had expected, or hoped, but at least they seemed to be swimming along now.

  He had followed his nose through Balfour, picking up information and bits and pieces as he went — and had also liberated a loaf of good brown bread, which he had eaten in the tree, casting the crumbs to the birds that gathered around him. The missing girl was a good child, loyal to the king, raised right, unlikely to have taken off on her own for any nefarious purposes; although, if Serhiy had been pressed for his opinion, nefarious purposes were much more enjoyable, on the whole, than any other types of purposes. But presumably she was too young for that. No, she must have seen someone she knew, as she had claimed. How she had ended up caught — and where she had ended up caught — was another issue entirely. But there was hardly any information about what might have happened, and he was left to form his own suppositions. Everything that came to mind, from a wanton murder to accidentally having been set on fire, was equally intriguing, but in the absence of direct proof, he was forced to suspend his imagination for a little while and focus on the scent of the trail.

  Once he had left Balfour town proper, things had started to pick up a little.

  She had been on the Deen Road, according to the young man who went with her as a guard. They were on their way to visit the girl’s grandmother. The girl was the type of person who not only had a grandmother, but also traveled for two days in order to visit her, and Serhiy began seriously to view the girl with distaste. But his own opinion did not matter. His own opinion was not the deciding factor in finding the girl and rescuing her from the difficulties she got herself into, regardless of whether she was respectful and thoughtful and other things of that abhorrent nature.

  There had also, he discovered to his secret delight, been talk of highwaymen and rogues in the same region. The activity of the rogues, always a source of conversation, had undoubtedly been picking up of late. There were reports of them having foreign accents as well, which seemed to indicate an influx of strangers to swell the ranks. Serhiy could imagine the tales going around in other countries, in Elgodon, in Henschot — places he had never been, but he had heard stories, and that was almost as good — as the local good-for-nothings were invited to come to the little country of Ainsea, flush with minor nobles ripe for the kidnapping, full of poorly maintained roads, ready for the rogueing.

  This, he thought, was probably a clue.

  And so he was waiting, perched in his tree, waiting for night to fall and for the rogues and highwaymen to show themselves. They traveled by night, of course. He would have done the same.

  The birds flurried around him, fluttered one by one to their perches, picked and pecked at the last few bits of bread that were left. He let them grow more used to him, watching them from the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t begrudge them the tree, not when he himself was getting so much enjoyment out of it.

  He was so far off the ground!

  But the dark was approaching; the sun was going down. He watched it avidly as it sank over the horizon. Another day went; the girl had been missing for a full week now, and though privately he thought the likelihood of her being recovered without any harm was faint and far off — well. His opinion was not what mattered.

  One day, he promised himself, his opinion would be the important thing.

  But this day was not it.

  The birds settled down, with a last few chirps as though they were saying goodnight. Serhiy held on to the trunk of the tree with both hands, and swayed himself back and forth a little, just to get a little spurt of vertigo. One of the birds fluttered to a rest quite near him, almost on his knee. He watched it without appearing to watch it, not wanting to startle it unduly.

  It was dark, and the rogues were coming.

  This particular band called themselves Flicek, but that was largely because they were led by Flicek himself, who had a bit of a superiority complex.

  He wasn’t the boss, of course, he wasn’t the leader of all the bands of rogues; that title, undisputedly, belonged to Raff, who led the Damn Rogues themselves in their home territory to the North. But Raff was apparently content to let each band rule themselves, with only the occasional movement to step in and direct if a conflict seemed to be getting out of control. He led more by hints than by clear direction, and that worked well for everyone, especially people like Flicek.

  Flicek didn’t do very well with confrontation.

  It tended to make him upset, and when he got upset, his feelings got hurt and he often gave way to tears. Although he blamed it on everything from dust in his eye to overactive tear ducts. Flicek crying was good for no one, as crying made him angry, and when he got angry, other people’s feelings were usually hurt as well. Their feelings, and their body parts. The end result was often that there were conflicts that got out of control more than they should have, and so Raff would patiently come and set things straight. He seemed to have a vested interest in Flicek and his band. Whether this was, in fact, because the rumors of them being cousins were true or not, had not yet been settled, nor was it likely to be. No one expected Raff to admit to being related to Flicek. It was generally thought that Flicek had started the rumor himself to give himself an extra air of credibility, likely to counteract all the crying, dust or no.

  Tonight, though, something unusual had happened.

  They were winding their way on the road. Some bands liked to take the paths instead, keeping to the shadows, but Flicek thought they were highwaymen, weren’t they, and so nothing but the main road would do for him. They moved towards Bertam’s Port, taking their time as they had nothing in particular to go there for. That was one of the problems with Flicek’s command, the general thought was. He so rarely had an objective, unless Raff gave him one specifically.

  But for the most part, Flicek’s little band was made up of rogues who were both slow and unsteady on their feet, due to nature, inclination, drink, or all three. So, for the most part they were all content for him to set the pace.

  Their progress, such as it was, was abruptly halted by the appearance of a stranger.

  Compared to the rogues, he was neatly, almost impeccably dressed. He wore black trousers and a loose-weave shirt of dirt-brown dye, and apart from his red hair, he would almost have blended into the night. As it was, they did not see him until he presented himself to them. At first it appeared that he was empty-handed, but after a moment they realized that he held the remains of a large black bird, which he would occasionally lift and take a bite from, spitting feathers out indecorously.

  “Good evening!” he said, smiling a smile that was nonetheless pleasant for all the feathers. “Are you all highwaymen?”

  The members of the band exchanged glances with each other.

  This was not a question they often heard; in fact, with the reputation they enjoyed, it was generally assumed. Flicek stepped up, eyes narrowed. He was a large man, broad-shouldered and big-bellied. He wore a thick beard as someone had kindly told him once at a young age that his face shape was perfect for it.

  “Who’s asking?” he said.

  “Oh!” said the stranger, as though he would never have considered this question to be a po
ssibility. “Me, of course. I should have clarified. I suppose it could appear that I’m asking for a friend, but I’m not. I don’t have any.”

  “Who are you?” pushed Flicek.

  “Serhiy,” said the stranger, and gave an elegant bow. “Unacknowledged chief advisor to the December King, and his best executioner. I’m the only one who really knows what they’re doing, you see. I can’t take all the credit. I seem to have a knack.”

  Flicek grunted a little, and exchanged glances with his righthand man, Mesher. Mesher was a little quicker on the uptake than the other rogues in this particular band, and he nodded intently.

  “Chief advisor to the December King, eh?” Flicek said. “Someone important to him, no doubt?”

  The stranger gave a smile that positively gleamed.

  “So kind of you to say so,” he said.

  Flicek made a motion with his chin, and Mesher moved towards Serhiy, arms loosely out at his sides as though he were about to attempt to herd a chicken.

  “We like important people,” said Flicek. “They so often are valuable.”

  “Oh, I’m very valuable,” Serhiy assured him. He was watching Mesher with a kind of distant curiosity.

  “That’s what I hoped,” said Flicek. “You see, we haven’t had such a take in quite a while. So, for someone to walk up and present themselves, well — that’s almost unheard of, really. And we appreciate it. We are rogues, Lord Serhiy, we are highwaymen. We are very bad men.”

  “So pleased,” said Serhiy, with absolute earnestness, and as Mesher finally stepped within reach of him, he casually reached out a hand and tapped him on the chest. The hand turned out to have a knife in it, and the tap was more of a stab, and Mesher collapsed in a heap on the ground, where he made a gurgling noise.

  Serhiy waved the bloody knife at them in a friendly sort of way.

  “I don’t think,” he began, but another of the rogues — Gildan, who was always on the impulsive side and foolishly seemed to think he was completely impervious to harm — ran at him with a shout of rage. Serhiy broke off to throw the knife at him. It lodged in his windpipe, dropping him nearly at Serhiy’s feet, and the young man bent and recovered the knife before he went on.