Fire & Bone — Chapter XV

By morning, Fishbrook had become a collection of roofs behind them.

The road climbed the long shoulder of Mindoro Point, turning back upon itself twice before reaching the top. From there the four of them could see nearly the whole of the country they had crossed since leaving Greenvale. The fields below lay bright beneath an early autumn sun. Beyond them, Fishbrook rested in the distance, small and orderly, its chimneys drawing pale lines into the blue.

Farther north, a stain remained against the horizon.

It was too distant to see the broken trees or the ruin of the Ti Temple. Only a gray-brown smudge showed where the blast had thrown earth and ash into the sky. Even after several days, the land had not finished settling.

Halen stopped at the crest.

The others stopped with him, though none of them said that was why.

Apple sat on Halen’s shoulders with his tail looped loosely around the emberkin’s neck. The new wooden ring Savala had given him rested near the tail’s tip. He had spent much of the morning turning it with his fingers, checking the grain, then checking it again as if it might have changed while he was not looking.

Wyn stood with one hand on the strap of his pack. Myra’s wand was secured inside it now, returned by Gilano only after they had crossed beyond Greenvale. Wyn’s older wand remained at his belt. The wood of that one was darkened near the tip from his attempt to gather the loose magic at the edge of the temple blast.

Sebastian shaded his eyes.

“You cannot see it from here,” he said.

“I know,” Halen replied.

“I meant the temple.”

“I know what you meant.”

Sebastian let his hand fall. He had become better at recognizing when Halen wanted company and when he wanted silence. The difficulty was that Halen often wanted both.

Apple looked from the distant haze to the road ahead.

“The pie was bad,” he said.

Halen’s mouth moved despite himself. “It was.”

“Very bad.”

“You ate two pieces.”

“I made it. That is different.”

“Different from taste?”

“Yes.”

Apple gave the matter a moment’s consideration.

“But the third piece would still have been bad.”

That earned a quiet laugh from Sebastian. Even Wyn smiled, although he kept his eyes on Greenvale.

The old forest appeared peaceful from a distance. A green wall. A living country. Nothing in its autumn-shadowed canopy revealed the bridges high above the ground, the archers who could vanish against bark, or the divisions passing through the nothrim beneath those leaves.

Wyn turned away first.

“Venom Thicket is west,” he said. “And Malrick will not wait because we are tired.”

Halen nodded.

Then they went down the far side of Mindoro Point, and Fishbrook disappeared behind the hill.

⁂

The day was too beautiful for what waited at the end of their road.

Cicadas buzzed from the hedges in waves, their calls rising until the whole countryside seemed to vibrate, then falling away so suddenly that the creak of a cart could be heard from half a mile off. Dry seed heads nodded along the ditches. Maples had begun to redden at their edges, while the oaks still held the deep green of summer.

They met wagons carrying grain, onions, clay jars, salt fish, and once an entire family crowded around a coop of indignant geese. Travelers moved from village to village with the practiced impatience of people who knew exactly how many hours of light remained. Some raised a hand in greeting. Some stared openly at Apple. One child leaned so far out of a passing cart to watch him that her mother caught her by the back of her dress.

Apple raised a hand solemnly.

The child waved until the cart rounded a bend.

“You enjoy that,” Sebastian said.

“She was polite.”

“She nearly fell under the wheel.”

“That would have been less polite.”

They passed through a village around midday. It consisted of perhaps twenty houses, a cooper’s yard, a shrine with fresh yellow flowers at its base, and a blacksmith working beneath an open shed. Bundles of cut flax leaned against fences to dry. The smell of hot iron followed them beyond the last house.

They did not stop.

The second village barely deserved the word. It had grown around a crossing where a narrow eastern track met the larger road. There was a stable, a wheelwright, six or seven homes, and an inn called the Tankard, named with such confidence that no painted sign was thought necessary. An enormous wooden drinking vessel hung above the door by two chains.

The Tankard offered two rooms, decent stew, coarse brown bread, and beds that did not contain anything visibly alive.

“High luxury,” Sebastian said after inspecting the blankets.

Halen sat on the edge of his bed. The frame groaned beneath him. “You grew up in a house where servants cleaned rabbits for you.”

“I grew up in a house where servants cleaned everything for everyone. That is not the same as wanting lice.”

Apple, already beneath his own blanket, lifted the edge and peered suspiciously into the darkness below.

“Do lice move?”

“Yes,” Wyn said.

Apple sprang from the bed.

Wyn looked at him. “There are no lice.”

“You said they move.”

“They do. These are not present to demonstrate it.”

Apple narrowed his eyes, then climbed back onto the mattress without taking his gaze off Wyn.

The food was better than the rooms. The stew contained beef, turnips, barley, and enough pepper to make Halen’s eyes water. A local cider had been poured too early and gone slightly sharp, but Sebastian drank it without complaint. Wyn listened to the conversations around them and learned nothing useful about Malrick, Greenvale, or Venom Thicket. The people at the Tankard were interested in weather, harvest prices, a broken bridge two villages east, and whether a widow named Mera had truly promised the same winter room to two different shepherds.

For one night, the world contained ordinary problems.

The four of them accepted that gift without naming it.

⁂

They reached Tarehaven late the following afternoon.

They smelled it before they saw it.

Woodsmoke drifted across the road, but it carried sweetness rather than warning. Roasted fruit. Warm spice. Fat sizzling on iron. Then came the sound of pipes and drums, distant at first, followed by the broken roar of many voices rising together.

The harvest festival had filled every open space in town.

Garlands of dried wheat and red leaves hung from upper windows. Lanterns made from pierced gourds swung beneath the eaves, unlit in the afternoon brightness but ready for evening. Stalls crowded the central square and continued down three branching streets. Farmers displayed polished apples, gourds, onions, late berries, and turnips so large they appeared to have been dug from a giant’s garden. Children ran between the stalls with ribbons tied to sticks. A pair of musicians played beside a fountain while dancers stamped in a ring around them.

Halen stopped in the road.

“This may be dangerous,” he said.

Sebastian followed his gaze.

Apple had gone perfectly still.

His nose lifted.

“Pie,” he whispered.

The word held the solemnity of revelation.

They secured a large room at the Staffway, a three-story tavern whose sign showed a walking staff laid across a road. The innkeeper charged them festival rates, apologized without meaning it, and gave them a key attached to a piece of wood heavy enough to serve as a weapon.

Their packs had barely touched the floor before Apple was back at the stairs.

“We should know where he is going,” Sebastian said.

“Toward pie,” Wyn replied.

“Yes, but there are several streets.”

“He will find the correct one.”

They found him in the square beneath a banner painted with a golden crust. Four long tables stood behind it, guarded by women in matching yellow aprons. Each table displayed a different pie, along with a small slate giving its name and the farm or bakery that had entered it.

Apple stood on an overturned crate so he could see.

“A judging contest,” the apron-clad woman nearest him explained. “The judges taste each one, then decide which is best.”

Apple stared at her.

“They are given pie to say which pie they like?”

“That is generally how it works.”

“And this is work?”

“For the judges.”

Apple turned slowly toward his companions.

“I have chosen the wrong profession.”

The woman laughed. “You can buy a tasting strip if you want to try all four.”

Apple placed both hands on the table. “All four?”

Halen sighed and reached for his coin pouch.

The first entry was a spiced cherry beef-tallow tart. Its crust shattered delicately under Apple’s fork, releasing the scent of cinnamon, dark fruit, and savory fat. He chewed with his eyes half closed.

“Good?” Halen asked.

Apple held up one finger, refusing to answer until the bite had been fully considered.

“It is confused,” he decided. “But the confusion works.”

The second was a golden barley and sweet-potato custard pie, dense and smooth, with toasted grain scattered across the top. Apple took two bites before remembering that each plate contained only a judging portion.

“This one understands itself,” he said.

The third was called a Sylvian pine-honey apple delect. Thin apple slices had been layered over a filling scented with pine honey and crushed nuts, then glazed until the top shone.

Wyn raised an eyebrow at the name.

“There is nothing Sylvian about it,” he said after Apple forced him to taste the crust. “They put pine honey on an apple pie.”

“It can still be good while lying,” Apple said.

“That is a dangerous philosophy.”

The pear-and-ginger cobbler pie came last. Its rough top held pockets of browned butter and sugar. Steam rose when Apple broke it open.

He ate without speaking.

Then he looked at the woman in the yellow apron.

“Who do I tell?”

“Tell what?”

“Which one won.”

“Only the appointed judges vote.”

Apple stared at her with the expression of someone discovering corruption at the heart of government.

“Then why did I eat them?”

“Because you wanted to?”

Apple considered this.

“That is acceptable.”

The festival offered more than pie. Halen bought a cup of mulled cider and held it between both hands, breathing in clove and orange peel. Sebastian found flatbreads spread with goat cheese, roasted leeks, and chopped walnuts. Wyn tried a skewer of charred river mushrooms brushed with garlic oil, then another.

Apple moved from stall to stall as though conducting an inspection.

There were crisp onion nests served in folded leaves; small barley cakes filled with smoked trout; slices of roasted squash dusted with red pepper and salt; sausages glazed in plum syrup; hot chickpea fritters crushed beneath spoonfuls of pickled cabbage; and apples bored through the center, filled with raisins and honey, then baked in clay until their skins split.

One vendor sold curls of fried dough sprinkled with powdered sugar. Apple purchased a coil almost as large as his head.

“You have already eaten four pieces of pie,” Sebastian said.

“They were judging pieces. They do not count as food.”

“What do they count as?”

“Evidence.”

By evening, even Apple admitted that he was full.

He made the admission quietly and only to Wyn, perhaps believing it less likely to spread if Halen and Sebastian did not hear it.

They wandered away from the busiest part of the square while Halen and Sebastian watched a competition involving hay bales, a rope, and several men who had badly misunderstood their own strength. The side street held smaller stalls: carved spoons, wool caps, glass beads, herb packets, travel charms, and sweets.

Apple slowed near one of them.

The stall smelled of warm butter and cooked sugar.

Neat brown squares had been stacked into small towers on wooden trays. Some were pale as cream. Others were nearly black. A third kind had chopped nuts pressed into the top.

Apple pointed.

“What is that?”

The stall owner looked down at him. She was a broad woman with flour on one cheek and forearms marked by old burns.

“Fudge.”

Apple repeated the word. “Fudge.”

“Sugar, butter, and cream. You boil it, then beat it while it cools. Do it properly and it turns smooth. Do it badly and it turns to grit, or glue, or a lump that can break a tooth.”

Apple looked delighted.

“How long does the oven take?”

“No oven.”

His delight sharpened into attention.

“No oven?”

“Only a pan and heat.”

Apple turned to Wyn. “This is road pie.”

“It is not pie.”

“It is sweet and can be made on the road.”

“Those are not the only requirements for pie.”

Apple ignored him and began questioning the fudgemaker.

How much sugar? How much cream? What kind of butter? How hot? How could anyone tell how hot when heat could not be seen? Why did it need beating? What happened if it was not beaten? Could fruit be added? Honey? Nuts? Spices? Could meat be added?

At the last question, the woman paused.

“You could,” she said carefully. “But there are freedoms a decent person refuses to exercise.”

Apple nodded as though this were a rule of craft he understood.

The woman gave him a small piece of the dark fudge. It yielded beneath his teeth, smooth and dense, dissolving into sweetness with a faint bitter edge.

Apple closed his eyes.

“I need to make this.”

“You need patience to make it,” the woman said. “And a better sense for sugar than most cooks ever develop.”

Apple opened his eyes.

“I am a sugar expert.”

Wyn made a sound that might have been a cough.

Earlier, Apple had proposed making travel tarts by having Halen heat a covered pan in his hands. Halen had refused with unusual firmness.

“The Shaper did not grant me sacred fire so you could bake pastry on my chest,” he had said.

Apple had argued that no one knew why the Shaper granted sacred fire until they tried all reasonable uses. Halen had answered that this was not a reasonable use.

Fudge required only a small fire.

That changed everything.

Apple bought the fudgemaker’s remaining sugar: fifty hard cubes wrapped in paper and tied with string. He bought a skin of cream, a travel crock of butter sealed with waxed cloth, and a small iron pan from a nearby cookware seller. The pan had a pouring lip and a handle short enough for Apple to manage with both hands.

The fudgemaker wrote the recipe for him on a scrap of heavy paper.

Apple looked at the writing.

Then he looked at Wyn.

“Read it.”

Wyn read the instructions aloud while Apple repeated them, committing the measures and stages to memory.

“You should record what happens when you change it,” Wyn said. “If you are going to experiment, write down what you did. Then you will know why one batch worked and another failed.”

Apple frowned. “Writing is education.”

“Yes.”

“Fudge is entertainment.”

“They may coexist.”

“That seems improper.”

“So did meat in the fudge.”

Apple looked back at the trays.

“I said could. I did not say should.”

Wyn bought him a small stitched booklet anyway. The paper was rough, and the cover had been made from two thin pieces of wood bound in leather.

Apple accepted it with poor grace.

“You will thank me later,” Wyn said.

“I might not.”

“Then record that as your first result.”

Apple tucked the booklet into his pack beside the recipe.

“Education makes everything worse.”

⁂

They left Tarehaven beneath strings of lanterns still smoking from the night before.

For most of the morning the road carried them through cultivated country. Men and women worked the fields with sleeves rolled high, cutting grain, binding sheaves, and loading carts. Children followed behind gathering what had fallen. The air smelled of dust, straw, and turned earth.

Near midday, Wyn led them from the road.

There was no marker where they left it. Only a gap in a hedgerow and a faint track pressed through the grass by hunters, shepherds, or people who preferred not to be noticed.

The land beyond opened into wild plains.

The going was easier than Greenvale. Almost anything would have been. Yet the grass grew waist-high on Sebastian and above Apple’s head. Hidden stones rolled underfoot. Dry creek beds cut across their path without warning, and thorny shrubs gathered wherever the ground dipped low enough to hold water.

The forest remained distant to the north, a dark band beneath the sky.

Venom Thicket lay somewhere within it.

Wyn spoke less as the trees grew nearer.

By late afternoon they found a place to camp beside a shallow stream bordered by alder and wild spinach. Wyn gathered the spinach while Halen built a small fire. Sebastian filled their water skins and tested the streambed with his boot before trusting it not to swallow him in mud.

Apple inspected the grass.

“Rabbits,” he said.

Sebastian looked around. “You see them?”

“I see where they move.”

Narrow runs passed through the grass, nearly invisible until Apple pressed it aside. He followed one to a patch of droppings, another to clipped stems, and a third to a shallow place beneath a thorn bush.

He set four snares using cord, bent saplings, and loops positioned with the care of a trapmaker handling something more delicate than rope.

Two hours later he returned with three rabbits.

He laid them beside Sebastian.

“Food,” Apple announced.

Sebastian looked at the rabbits, then at Apple. “Clean them.”

“I caught them.”

“Yes. Now clean them.”

“That is a different job.”

“It is the next part of the same job.”

Apple’s ears angled back. “It has blood.”

“Most animals do.”

“Before eating.”

“Also after, if you prepare them badly.”

Apple looked toward Halen for support.

Halen placed another branch on the fire. “Sebastian is right.”

“Wyn?”

“I found spinach,” Wyn said. “I have completed my contribution.”

Sebastian sat on a flat stone and drew a small belt knife. “Come here. You do not have to like it. You do have to know it.”

Apple approached as if Sebastian had asked him to shake hands with a trap-mouth.

“I don’t want blood in my fur.”

“Then use your servant.”

Apple stopped.

The idea had not occurred to him.

He set his small pan safely aside, crouched near Sebastian, and whispered the words Lyric had taught him. The air beside him tightened. There was no visible body, only a pressure in the grass and the faint impression of small hands waiting for instruction.

Sebastian noticed and smiled.

“Good. Have it copy me.”

He placed one rabbit on its back.

The unseen servant placed a second beside it. Grass bent around the shape of what could not be seen.

“Pinch the hide over the belly,” Sebastian said. “Only the hide. Pull it away from the flesh.”

Apple watched as Sebastian lifted a fold of skin. The invisible fingers did the same. The rabbit’s fur rose in a small peak.

“Now make a shallow cut across it. Not deep. If you open the belly, you spoil the meat.”

Apple directed the servant. His own talon dagger floated, awkward at first, then steadied under his concentration. The tip made a narrow cut.

“When I was young,” Sebastian said, “my father took me hunting every autumn. He called it a family tradition. In practice it was twelve riders, six beaters, four hounds, two cooks, and my father discussing border rents with whichever lord he needed to impress.”

Halen glanced over. “A quiet family outing.”

“Very intimate. We occasionally saw one another across the retinue.”

Sebastian worked two fingers into the cut and pulled the hide apart.

“There was a man named Old Perrin who looked after the hounds. He had three fingers missing from his left hand and claimed each had been taken by a different animal. I believed him until I was fourteen.”

Apple leaned closer despite himself. The servant followed Sebastian’s motions, peeling the hide down from the rabbit’s body.

“Which animals?”

“A wolf, a boar, and a swan.”

“A swan?”

“That should have been my first clue. Perrin said swans were nature’s punishment for admiring white things.”

Halen laughed from the fire.

Sebastian continued working. “One afternoon my father left with his advisors before the hunt was finished. They had discovered a tax dispute more exciting than rabbits. Perrin found me watching the staff clean the day’s catch. He held up a rabbit and asked whether I intended to eat at my father’s table that night. I said yes. Then he asked why I believed the useful part of the animal began in the kitchen.”

Apple considered that.

“It begins in the snare.”

“Perrin said it began in the field, and anyone willing to kill should know what death required afterward. Then he made me clean six rabbits while the cooks complained I was slowing them down.”

Sebastian rolled the loosened hide down over the hind legs.

“Pull evenly. Do not jerk. Use the knife only where the skin holds.”

The invisible servant copied him. The hide came free.

Apple’s mouth tightened, but he did not look away.

“Did you get blood on you?”

“Everywhere. Perrin told my mother I had fallen into a berry patch.”

“Did she believe him?”

“My mother had met rabbits before.”

Sebastian showed Apple where to open the belly, how to keep the blade turned outward, how to remove the organs without cutting the gut, and how to save the heart and liver. Apple guided the servant through each step. His face held the fierce concentration he usually gave traps, locks, or mechanisms.

When they finished, the second rabbit was not neatly dressed. It was usable.

Sebastian nodded.

“Again.”

Apple looked at the third rabbit.

“The servant is tired.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It has had a difficult education.”

“Again, Apple.”

Apple sighed.

The third went better.

⁂

Halen and Sebastian spitted the rabbits over the fire while Wyn wilted the wild spinach in a pot with salt and a little butter.

Apple began the fudge.

He arranged the ingredients with ceremonial care. Ten sugar cubes went into the small pan, followed by a measured piece of butter and a pour of cream. He placed the pan near the fire, decided the heat was insufficient, and moved it closer.

The sugar began to dissolve.

Apple stirred.

“The recipe says not to stir after it boils,” Wyn said.

“It is not boiling.”

A bubble rose and broke.

“Now it is,” Wyn said.

Apple stopped stirring.

The mixture climbed the sides of the pan. Apple leaned closer. Steam dampened the fur around his face.

“You may want less heat,” Halen said.

“It needs to boil.”

“There are degrees of boiling.”

“Boiling is boiling.”

Sebastian turned one of the rabbit spits. “That is not true of politics, water, or people. I doubt it is true of sugar.”

Apple ignored them.

The sweet smell changed.

At first it deepened pleasantly, cream and butter becoming something darker. Then a thin thread of smoke rose from the pouring lip.

Apple seized the handle.

The pan was hot.

He released it with a yelp.

Halen caught the handle and pulled the pan from the fire. The mixture inside had gone nearly black along the bottom. Smoke curled upward in bitter ribbons.

“Beat it while it cools,” Wyn said.

Apple stared at him.

“That seems unhelpful now.”

“I am reading the instructions.”

Halen tilted the pan. The contents moved as a single tar-like mass.

Sebastian looked into it. “Perhaps it will serve as wagon sealant.”

“Or boot repair,” Wyn suggested.

“It could fill cracks in a wall,” Halen said.

Apple’s face became darker with each suggestion.

That made it worse.

Sebastian began laughing first. Wyn followed. Even Halen, who was trying to be kind, lost the effort when Apple took the spoon and attempted to pull it free. The blackened sugar stretched in a shining rope, refusing to release the spoon.

All three laughed harder.

Apple set the spoon down with great precision.

“I hope the rabbits are raw.”

“They are not,” Sebastian managed.

“I hope the spinach has bugs.”

Wyn wiped his eyes. “It probably does.”

Apple sat with his back against a pack and folded his arms.

The ruined fudge cooled into a black disk.

After the laughter passed, Halen carried the pan to the stream and set it in the shallows.

Then he sat beside Apple.

“If it were easy,” Halen said, “everyone would make it.”

Apple continued staring at the fire.

“The woman made many.”

“The woman also had burns on both arms.”

Apple thought about that.

“She did.”

“You lost ten cubes. You have forty left.”

“I lost butter and cream too.”

“Then you learned an expensive lesson. Those are often remembered best.”

Apple’s eyes shifted toward him. “What did I learn?”

Halen looked at the pan in the stream.

“That boiling has degrees.”

From the other side of the fire, Sebastian covered his mouth.

Apple threw a tuft of grass at him.

⁂

The pan did not come clean.

Apple soaked it through the night, scraped it with sand, rubbed it with ash, and finally enlisted the unseen servant to work at the black crust while he slept. By morning the iron was usable again, but the camp smelled faintly of burned sugar.

So did Apple.

He packed the pan anyway.

“You are keeping it?” Sebastian asked.

“It is a pan.”

“It is also a reminder of humility.”

“It is a pan,” Apple repeated.

They broke camp and continued north.

The faint hunter’s track bent toward the main road again, but Wyn left it before the two met. He chose a smaller path running west toward the forest edge. It was little more than twin depressions in the grass, perhaps made by woodcutters before Greenvale’s paths began closing.

The morning warmed quickly. Cicadas called from the scattered trees. Somewhere ahead, crows rose in a sudden black cloud.

Wyn stopped.

The others saw the movement a moment later.

Five figures were near the tree line.

One ran unevenly ahead. Four followed.

The distance hid details at first. Then the fleeing figure stumbled into a patch of open ground and the light caught long pale hair.

“Elf,” Wyn said.

The four behind him were human. Three men and one woman. They spread as they ran, not like travelers trying to help someone, but hunters closing around injured prey.

The elf fell.

One of the men reached him first and kicked him onto his back. Another drew a knife.

Even from a distance, the laughter carried.

Wyn’s expression changed.

“Human bandits do not work this close to Greenvale,” he said.

“Those do,” Halen replied.

He stepped from the grass onto the path.

“Away from him!” Halen shouted.

The words rolled across the open land.

The four humans turned.

For an instant no one moved. Then the woman said something to the others. The man with the knife planted a boot on the elf’s chest. The other three started toward Halen’s Heroes.

Sebastian drew his bow.

Wyn already had an arrow nocked.

Apple climbed onto Halen’s shoulders.

Halen glanced up. “You smell like burned sugar.”

“Fight first. Criticism later.”

The nearest human raised a short sword and broke into a run.

Wyn’s arrow struck him below the collarbone.

The force spun him halfway around. He staggered, dropped to one knee, and reached for the shaft.

The woman lifted both hands.

Pale green light gathered between her fingers, bright as sunlight through young leaves. It crossed the distance in a twisting ribbon and sank into the wounded man’s chest. His back arched. The arrow pushed outward as flesh closed around it, then fell into the grass.

He stood.

“Healers,” Sebastian said.

He released.

His arrow struck a second attacker in the thigh. The man cried out and fell hard enough to roll. Again the woman cast. Again green light crossed the field. The man tore the arrow free and lurched upright, blood already slowing.

“That is irritating,” Sebastian said.

“Take her!” Halen called.

Apple looked past the charging men to the woman.

“Too far.”

“Not for you.”

Halen met the first attacker with his forearm, knocking the sword aside. Apple felt the impact through the emberkin’s shoulders.

Then Halen’s shadow opened beneath him.

Apple dropped backward.

For a fraction of a breath, the world became cool and without distance. Halen’s shadow received him like deep water that did not wet. Darkness folded around his body. He turned inside it, feeling for another patch of shade.

The healer stood with the morning sun behind her.

Her own shadow stretched at her feet.

Apple stepped out of it.

She heard him.

Too late.

She began to turn, one hand lifting as green light gathered again. Apple moved close, exactly where a taller opponent did not expect danger to be. One talon blade drove beneath her ribs. The other entered high in her back.

The light went out.

The woman made a small sound and collapsed forward.

Apple rode her fall just long enough to free both blades, then rolled aside.

Sebastian had already abandoned his bow. He met one of the injured men with his broadsword, caught a desperate overhead cut against the strong of his blade, and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest. When the man stumbled, Sebastian turned the return stroke across him.

The attacker fell and did not rise.

Wyn’s second arrow struck the man nearest Halen through the side. Halen seized the man’s sword wrist, twisted until the weapon dropped, and threw him into the ground.

Near the elf, the fourth human looked from the fallen healer to the approaching heroes.

His face tightened with spite.

He turned toward the elf and raised his knife.

Halen tore his mace free.

He threw it.

The mace crossed the distance end over end.

It struck the attacker at the temple.

The man’s head snapped sideways. He dropped beside the elf, the knife falling from his hand.

The last human tried to run.

Sebastian caught him before he had taken six steps.

The fight ended in the whispering grass.

For several breaths, no one spoke.

Then Wyn ran to the elf.

The elf lay twisted on his side, one arm trapped beneath him. His clothing had once been a green traveling coat and gray shirt. Both had been cut into strips. Blood soaked the cloth, but not in the way Wyn first expected. There was no single wound pouring life into the ground.

There were dozens.

Thin cuts crossed the elf’s face, arms, and exposed chest. Some formed hooked lines. Others made tight circles or ran parallel like writing in an unknown hand. None appeared deep enough to kill by itself. They had been placed where the skin was tender and where movement would pull them open again.

Wyn knelt.

The elf’s eyes fluttered. His lips moved, but no sound came.

“Water,” Sebastian said.

“Not yet.” Wyn touched two fingers to the side of the elf’s throat. “He may choke.”

Apple wiped his blades in the grass and approached. The smell of blood reached him before he saw the worst of it. For an instant the open field became a ship’s deck. Rough tables. Orc laughter. The wet sound of a knife being used without hurry.

His hand stopped.

Then Halen moved beside him, blocking the dead healer from view.

The field returned.

“They were torturing him,” Apple said.

Wyn’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

He examined one of the lines on the elf’s forearm. The cut had been made lightly, then made again in the same place. Careful work. Patient work.

“They avoided the vessels,” Wyn said. “Avoided muscle where they could. They wanted pain without ending it.”

Sebastian looked toward the bodies. “Until we arrived.”

The elf’s shirt had been opened by a deeper thrust beneath the ribs. Another wound marked the lower belly. Those had come last. Killing wounds, given in haste.

Halen crouched and held one hand above the elf’s chest. Heat shimmered faintly between his fingers, but the glow faltered. Whatever power he had spent at the Ti Temple had not returned cleanly. The Shaper’s warmth remained in him, yet it answered like an exhausted limb.

“I can slow it,” Halen said. “I cannot close all of this.”

Wyn looked at Sebastian.

They had few healing tonics left. Each bottle had become more valuable as the road carried them farther from towns and nearer Venom Thicket. They would need them if Malrick’s allies waited at the tower.

Sebastian was already opening his pack.

“Use mine,” he said.

No one argued.

He drew out a narrow clay vial sealed with wax. The liquid inside was cloudy red. Wyn supported the elf’s head while Sebastian broke the seal and poured a little between his lips.

The elf did not swallow.

“Again,” Wyn said.

Sebastian tipped a smaller amount into the side of the mouth and Wyn massaged the throat. This time the elf swallowed by reflex.

Color moved through the tonic like smoke. For a heartbeat it glowed behind his lips, then passed down into his body.

The change began at once.

The deeper wounds tightened. Blood slowed. Fine cuts drew together from both edges, turning from open red lines to raised pink seams. Torn skin repaired itself beneath the ruined clothes. The elf drew a sharp breath.

Then he screamed.

His body bowed so violently that Wyn nearly lost hold of him.

“His back!” Sebastian said.

The elf clawed at the ground and tried to roll. His scream broke into words in Elvish, too fast for the others to understand.

Wyn understood.

“Something is inside him. Turn him over. Carefully.”

Halen took the shoulders. Sebastian controlled the hips. Together they rolled the elf onto his belly.

The back of the coat was matted dark. Wyn cut it open with his knife and peeled it away.

Beneath it, the tonic had healed the skin into a field of swollen knots.

Some were no larger than a bean. Others rose sharply, forcing the new skin into four-pointed shapes. Blood welled around one where a black tip had begun to break through.

Apple leaned closer.

“Metal,” he said.

Wyn touched the skin beside one of the swellings. The elf screamed again and nearly threw Halen off.

“Caltrops,” Wyn said. “Small ones. They pushed them into cuts along his back.”

Sebastian’s face emptied of expression. It was the look he wore when anger went too deep to display.

“The tonic closed the skin over them,” he said.

“Yes.”

The elf shuddered. His breath came in short cries. Every movement drove the points against newly healed flesh.

Halen put one hand against the side of the elf’s neck. A low amber light spread beneath his palm.

“I can keep him still,” Halen said. “Not for long.”

Wyn looked at Apple.

“Your hands are steadier than mine. Your blades are sharper.”

Apple took one step back.

“No.”

“We have to remove them.”

“You remove them.”

“My hand shakes when I force fine work now.” Wyn held it out. The tremor was slight, but present, an aftereffect of pouring too much of himself into the Ti Stone and then grasping at the wild magic beyond it. “Sebastian’s knife is too broad. Halen needs to hold him.”

Apple looked at the elf’s back.

“I kill people.”

“I know.”

“This is different.”

“Yes,” Wyn said. “This is harder.”

Apple’s ears flattened.

The elf made another broken sound. He was no longer fully conscious. His fingers tore at the grass.

Wyn lowered his voice.

“You do not cut toward the metal. You cut beside it. I will show you where. One at a time.”

Apple swallowed.

Then he drew one of Alric’s talon blades.

“What do we have?”

Sebastian understood the question. He opened packs and laid their poor collection of tools on a clean cloth: two knives, a sewing needle, thread, a small pair of pliers meant for gear repair, a wooden spoon, strips of bandage, a flask of strong spirits, and a half-used jar of salve.

Wyn poured some of the spirits over Apple’s blade and the pliers.

“That is drinking spirit,” Apple said.

“Not anymore.”

“It was Sebastian’s.”

“I will grieve later,” Sebastian said.

Wyn washed his hands with the remainder, then used water and a folded cloth to wipe blood and dirt from the elf’s back. As the skin cleared, they counted eleven swellings.

“Start with the one breaking through,” Wyn said.

Apple knelt astride the elf’s legs without putting weight on him. Sebastian held the wooden spoon near the elf’s mouth.

“If he wakes, let him bite this,” Sebastian said.

“If he wakes, I am leaving.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Apple positioned the talon blade beside the first black point.

“Not across the swelling,” Wyn said. “Along it. A short cut. The metal has four arms. We need room for the widest part to come back through.”

Apple pressed the blade into the healed skin.

Blood appeared immediately, bright and thin.

His hand stopped.

“Keep going,” Wyn said. “The skin is already numb from damage and tonic. Short. No deeper than the point.”

Apple extended the cut by the width of a fingernail. The metal point emerged farther as the pressure eased.

“Now the pliers. Grip the center if you can. Not the point.”

Apple set down the blade and took the pliers. He widened the opening with two fingers, ignoring the blood matting the fur of his hands. The caltrop shifted under the skin.

The elf jerked.

Halen held him.

“Steady,” Halen said.

“I am steady. He moved.”

“I was speaking to him.”

Apple found the metal center. He closed the pliers and pulled.

The first arm came free. The second caught on the wound. Apple changed the angle, turning the caltrop rather than forcing it. A third point scraped into view. With a wet release, the whole object came out.

It was smaller than Apple expected. Four black iron spikes joined at a rough center, each no longer than the first joint of his smallest finger. Blood and pale tissue clung to it.

Sebastian held out the cloth.

Apple dropped the caltrop onto it.

The metal made a tiny sound.

Eleven of them, Apple thought.

Someone had carried eleven small pieces of iron for this purpose.

“Next,” Wyn said.

The second lay deeper. No point showed through the skin, so Wyn felt around the swelling with the pads of his fingers and marked the highest ridge with a dab of charcoal.

“Cut here.”

Apple made the opening. This time dark blood filled it and hid the metal. Sebastian poured clean water over the cut while Wyn blotted with folded cloth.

“Use the spoon handle,” Wyn said. “Press beside it. Gently.”

Apple pressed. A point rose beneath the opening.

He caught it with the pliers, then stopped.

“That is a point. You said the center.”

“We cannot reach the center yet. Draw one arm out until the shape turns.”

Apple pulled. The point slid free, but the caltrop rotated beneath the skin and another arm drove sideways.

The elf woke screaming.

His head lifted from the grass. Sebastian pushed the spoon between his teeth before he could bite his tongue. Halen’s amber light flared, holding the shoulders down without crushing them.

Apple released the pliers.

“Do not let go,” Wyn said.

“I did let go.”

“Then take it again.”

The elf’s eyes were open but saw nothing. A moment later they rolled upward, and his body went slack.

“He has fainted,” Halen said.

Apple stared.

“Good,” Wyn said. “It is kinder. Continue.”

Apple took the pliers again.

He learned the shape through resistance. Each caltrop had entered at a different angle. Some could be turned until two spikes followed the path of the cut. Others required a second small incision to free an arm caught beneath unbroken skin. One had lodged close to the spine. Wyn made Apple stop twice while he felt the exact position and chose the safer side.

They had no proper clamps. Sebastian used the sewing needle to lift skin away from a buried point while Apple cut. They had no basin beyond the cooking pot, so Wyn kept clean water in one cup and fouled water in another and warned everyone whenever exhaustion tempted them to confuse the two. Flies found them. Halen drove them away with brief pulses of heat that made the air smell of warm grass.

Apple’s hands became slick.

He wiped the pliers after every removal. He cleaned the blade. He counted the iron shapes on the cloth.

Four.

Five.

At six, the elf faintly stirred but did not wake.

Seven.

The eighth had rust along one point. Wyn made a wider cut so none would scrape away inside.

Nine.

Apple’s shoulders hurt from holding himself rigid. His tail had wrapped around his own ankle without his noticing.

Ten.

The final swelling lay beneath the shoulder blade. Halen shifted the elf’s arm forward to expose it. When Apple cut, he found not one point but two crossing near the surface.

“It may be broken,” he said.

Wyn examined it. “No. The caltrop is turned sideways. Make a second opening here. Small.”

Apple did.

He worked one spike through the first cut and another through the second, then rotated the iron between them until the center appeared. The pliers slipped once. Apple breathed, wiped them, and tried again.

The caltrop came free.

He placed it beside the others.

Eleven black stars lay on the cloth.

For a while the only sounds were the stream, the insects, and all four heroes breathing.

“Are there more?” Apple asked.

Wyn checked every inch of the elf’s back with his fingers. He examined the arms and thighs, then shook his head.

“No more.”

Apple sat back.

Blood covered both hands to the wrists. A stripe marked his cheek where he had scratched without thinking. The sight should have made him recoil.

Instead he looked at the elf.

The man still breathed.

“Now what?”

“Now we clean the wounds,” Wyn said. “Then we bind him.”

Apple reached for the water.

⁂

They carried the elf into the shade of an alder before trying to wake him.

The cuts left by Apple were clean, and most had stopped bleeding under pressure. Wyn spread salve over them and laid folded strips of cloth across the back. Sebastian wrapped a long bandage around the elf’s chest and shoulder, leaving enough room for him to breathe.

Halen retrieved his mace and cleaned it in the grass.

Apple washed his hands in the stream. The water turned pink around his fingers, then clear. He scrubbed beneath his claws longer than necessary.

When he returned, Wyn was holding a damp cloth to the elf’s lips.

“He is waking,” Wyn said.

The elf’s eyes opened slowly.

They were pale gray, clouded first by pain and then by fear. He tried to rise.

The bandages tightened. He gasped and fell back.

Wyn spoke to him in Elvish.

The fear did not vanish, but it changed shape. The elf answered in the same language, his voice broken and dry.

“What is he saying?” Apple asked.

“He wants to know which nothrim sent me.”

Wyn replied. The elf studied his face, then looked at the others.

“He says he is not Greenfield,” Wyn translated. “He says his people made no bargain.”

“Tell him neither did we,” Halen said.

Wyn did.

The elf closed his eyes for a moment.

When he spoke again, he used the human trade tongue.

“My name is Ballto.”

His accent bent the words, but they were clear.

Wyn offered him water. Ballto drank in small swallows.

He was older than Wyn, though an elf’s age rarely showed in the ways humans expected. Fine lines marked the corners of his eyes and mouth. Silver ran through his hair. Wyn judged him to be in the final third of his life, old enough to remember agreements everyone else treated as ancient and young enough to resent being called old.

“Where did they take you?” Sebastian asked.

Ballto looked toward the forest.

“Lyceeum. My village. West of here, beneath the hornbeam ridge.”

Wyn knew the name only faintly. Not a great nothrim. Not a tower community. A small border village that offered shelter to hunters, pilgrims, and travelers who approached Greenvale peacefully.

“How many attacked?” Wyn asked.

“Twelve. Perhaps thirteen. Humans.” Ballto swallowed. “They came in twos across three days. Said they carried medicine and letters toward the tower. We gave them water. Food. A roof.”

His eyes moved to the dead.

“Hospitality,” he said, and the word sounded wounded.

“What happened?” Halen asked.

Ballto’s face tightened.

“When the last group came, the first ones opened the guest house from inside. They had hidden weapons beneath the floor reeds. They killed the watch. Then the adult males they could find. The boys too.”

Apple went still.

“All the boys?”

Ballto looked at him for the first time with full attention.

“Those they found.”

“And the others?” Sebastian asked.

“The elderly live. The women. The girls.” Ballto’s voice roughened. “For now. They tied them in the meeting house and the weaving hall. There were others still alive when I escaped.”

“Why?” Wyn asked. “Why attack Lyceeum?”

Ballto looked at him helplessly. “I do not know. They did not tell us. We gave them shelter. Then they killed us.”

“How did you escape?”

Ballto stared at his bandaged hands.

“They chose some of us. Pain makes truth, one of them said. Pain removes pride.”

Apple glanced at the cloth where the caltrops lay.

“It does not,” he said.

Ballto’s gaze followed his.

“No. It makes people say what they think will stop pain. That is not the same as truth.”

Sebastian glanced at Ballto’s bandaged back. “The cuts?”

Ballto nodded once.

“They did the same to others,” Ballto said. “To me. I do not know what they wanted. Sometimes they asked questions. Sometimes they only hurt us. The iron was put into my back when they saw I had escaped.”

Halen’s hands closed.

The faint cracks of ember-light along his skin brightened.

“How did you get out?” he asked.

“A storm cellar opens beyond the south wall. The root door had not been used in years. They did not see it when they searched. An old woman loosened my ropes with a weaving knife and told me to run. I reached the cellar. Three others tried.”

Ballto looked away.

“Only I came through.”

“You were going to the main road,” Wyn said.

“For help. Humans travel there. Not all humans are these.” Ballto looked at Halen, Sebastian, then Apple. “I had to believe that.”

“You were right,” Halen said.

Ballto’s eyes closed again. Exhaustion pulled at him, but he fought it.

“How far?” Sebastian asked. “To Lyceeum.”

“If I could walk, half a day. Less by the stream path.”

“You cannot walk,” Wyn said.

“Then leave me,” Ballto said. “Go to them.”

Halen looked toward the trees. “Show us the path.”

With one shaking hand, Ballto pointed toward a narrow creek that entered Greenvale northwest of them. “Follow the water until it divides around a stone shaped like a bent knee. Take the left branch. Lyceeum is beyond the low ridge.”

“How many humans remain?” Sebastian asked.

“Eight. Perhaps nine. Unless more have come.” Ballto’s breath caught. “Please. There were others still alive.”

Wyn checked the elf’s bandages once more. The bleeding had stopped. He placed the water skin beside Ballto’s hand and moved him deeper beneath the alder, where the shade would hold as the sun climbed.

“Stay still,” Wyn said. “Drink a little at a time. We will come back for you.”

Ballto caught his wrist.

“Do not come back if it costs them.”

Wyn held the elf’s gaze, then gently freed his arm.

Halen stood. Sebastian already had his bow in hand. There were people alive in Lyceeum, and every moment spent beside the road belonged to their attackers.

Apple climbed onto Halen’s shoulders. His hands were clean, but he could still feel the shape of the pliers in them.

He looked down at Ballto.

“You said you were running for help.”

“Yes.”

“Then it is your lucky day,” Apple said. “You ran into Halen’s Heroes.”

Halen started toward the creek at a run.

Sebastian and Wyn followed, leaving the road, the bodies, and Ballto beneath the alder. The grass whipped at their legs as they rushed toward the dark line of Greenvale and the village hidden beyond it.

They did not yet know why the humans had taken Lyceeum.

They knew only that there were others to save.