The Art of Escape - A Recruits Story

[Author's note: This is a recruits story, so they're going to be operating at a different level of competence and confidence than our Captain-level Shepherds do... but they're also a bit more mature than you've seen them in the early days of their training. They've been hardened by their experiences in the field, even if MC may have a different perspective on things!

Also, Nirvei Squad was the name of a main squad in the Shepherd novels, so I gave it to MC's team in this story, but you can headcanon your own squad name for yourselves: I imagine picking your own will be an option in one of their later training sessions in the game at some point, but for now, Nirvei Squad is the placeholder!]

Chapter I: The Vanishing Act

The thing about being a Shepherd, Justyn thought wryly, was that it was nothing as glamorous as the songs had made it out to be.

He’d made decent coin not too long ago, strumming his tsirai in dingy taverns and sticky, crowded-warm inns, singing ditties and spinning exaggerated tales about the new force of demon-fighters that the Autarch had established in Haven. It was always the rural folk who were most riveted by the topic: excitable country yokels who topped up his flagon and tossed a hard-won coin into his hat, all just to wheedle a few more scraps of information about the heroic Shepherds and their demon-slaying feats out of him—though city workers and occasionally even noble clientele displayed an interest, too. He couldn’t blame them for being swept up in the romance of it. In Justyn’s stories—which he’d admittedly borrowed from other bards in other taverns—the Shepherds were always larger-than-life figures, glittering with adamantine raiment and wielding legendary swords, roaming the Continent like some moving army regiment of knights and faerie warriors with moon-gleaming eyes and luminous, otherworldly features. Their valor, a beacon in shadows’ sway, guiding lost souls through night and through day…!

The songs never fucking mentioned lying in a freezing ditch for hours while snow spat down on you in fat, miserable flakes. Or talked about the special miseries of trying to sleep with your pant seat and socks wet with mud, or having to disassemble and clean your weapon so many times the very smell of gun oil made you sick…

Beside him, Ysa wasn’t having any better of a time of it than Justyn was: she was visibly sweating with the effort of maintaining the ice storm that was currently assailing them. Although Haven’s climate was now shifting into the sunny, balmy tranquility of spring, the Teivel estate lay much farther north, closer to the southernmost border of Thielwood—and that land was still caught in winter’s dying grip. Ysa hadn’t needed much to coax the snow and cold out of the inclement weather, encouraging a ripping blizzard to descend upon the Teivel estate, driving all of its guards indoors and blinding anyone who decided to look out the windows into the darkness of the surrounding woods. Still, it wasn’t easy to keep the effect going; Justyn could feel the headachy power radiating from her as if she were a furnace, and her face was pale with strain. On her other side, Cybele said in a harsh whisper, “Gods, Ysa, no need to go overboard with the whole ice magic thing, hey? You remember Elves die in the cold, don’t you?”

Ysa shook her pale head. Justyn always thought it was ironic, how she seemed to be the living embodiment of winter herself: fair and chilly skin, white-blonde hair, lilac eyes that looked like the first blush of snowy dawn. There was a poetical irony in there somewhere, but his teammates had all forbidden him from writing poems about them, so he could never quite expound on it and thereby nail it down.

“Can’t let up,” the Elementalist answered through gritted teeth. “I only just learned how to do this. I can’t—do only a little of it. That requires a degree of control I don’t have. It’s either all or nothing.”

Cybele shook her head and muttered something indistinct, huddling further into her special fur-lined coat, which was specifically bespelled to counteract the cold’s effects on her body. Supposedly. Justyn said encouragingly, “I’m sure it won’t be much longer. Daren will be back soon.”

Their Ket teammate was taking advantage of the cover Ysa’s weather provided to scout out the perimeters of the Teivel estate and reconnoiter the family’s security more closely. But he wouldn’t have dared to actually enter the house; he was only supposed to be creeping up to the windows, peering in to check which ones were empty and mapping out an overall blueprint of the estate, before he was due to report back to them for the next phase of their plan. Peering through the trees at the dark, silent manor, Justyn couldn’t help but feel the lurching drop in his gut that signaled dread: the place was massive. Four stories high with two different wings, not to mention the hunting lodge and guest house situated a half-mile away in each direction. How were they ever supposed to find the target of their mission, let alone rescue her without alerting anyone else as to their presence. 

Abruptly, Daren returned, dropping soundlessly into the ditch alongside Cybele, who recoiled and muffled a scream. Daren cast her a contemptuous look before he said, his voice low and even: “I counted ten guards and seven servants, but that was only on the first floor. I’m willing to bet the others are abed in some barracks somewhere, perhaps above the stables. The windows on the other floors are all dark: I doubt there are unrelated guests staying here, not with the hostage situation going on. Once you make it past the first floor, your chances of running into anyone in the halls are low.”

Justyn grimaced: it wasn’t bad news, but it wasn’t all too exciting, either. “Could you tell where Emarynne Reaver is?" 

Daren frowned and shook his head; he had the look of a man who was frustrated not to be able to accomplish a given task. “If I had to guess, she’d be on the third floor,” he said. “The first floor is for the communal living spaces: the kitchen, living rooms, parlors, library. The second floor is most likely for the Teivels and their personal room themselves. They wouldn’t keep her on the same floor they slept on, but the fourth is also too far away to be practical. So I’d check the third floor first.”

Justyn nodded slowly, digesting this. Then he glanced around at the little group: Ysa, silent and furrowed with concentration; Cybele, sick and weak from the cold; Daren, staring at him with intense, expectant eyes like a hunting dog waiting for a cat to start running. He blew out a breath and said, “All right. Shall… shall I go, then? Is now the right time?”

Daren gave him another look of fathomless disdain. “You are team leader,” he intoned.

Justyn sighed heavily, standing and tightening his gun-belt. “I didn’t forget,” he answered. Wish I had, though.

He took a few moments to ready his spell, donning it around himself and smoothing its edges as if it were a giant overcoat. There were, to his knowledge, at least two ways of turning oneself invisible. The first way was the Illusionist’s way, the method of “true” invisibility. That one involved bending light around oneself to become literally transparent, undetectable by visual means, cloaked in a shimmering, mirage-like patch of illusion akin to having an impenetrable phalanx of mirrors built around oneself. Justyn had no idea how that one worked, not yet: he only knew it was labyrinthine old magic, from before the modern-day schools had been formed, and it laid somewhere north of what he thought of as arcane magic and a little west of psionic magic. Supposedly it was a scarlet-robe-level spell and notoriously difficult to maintain, though maybe it hadn’t been for them back then.

The second method, the Enchanter’s way, was more mental: it involved projecting a kind of psionic force-field that deflected outside observation. It made the spell-worker so unassuming, so unremarkable, that no one took any notice of them. Others’ attentions simply slid away from them, unconcerned, unable to catch on to the user’s presence in any significant way before disregarding and forgetting about them entirely. Justyn, in explaining it to the others, had described it as the kind of repellent that made water impossible to cling to a duck’s feathers. Used to the correct degree, the spell allowed him to pass through a crowded room unnoticed, or walk beside a single traveler without being seen.

However, although simpler than the first method, this kind of spell also came with more risks and limitations. He hadn’t yet achieved the degree of mastery required to cloak people other than himself. And the more out-of-ordinary he acted, the harder the spell was to maintain: if he were to cavort like an ape, for example, or physically attack someone, the target would snap out of it and raise the alarm. And it didn’t usually work on animals unless you wanted to layer that in, which was harder and more taxing.

Still. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. They had been tasked with rescuing Emarynne Reaver by any means possible… which meant he’d have to enter the house of her enemies and captors alone. Relying on a hard-to-maintain spell that he’d only recently gotten the hang of. God help him. He made the sign of supplication, just to be sure.

The good news was that the others seemed to have stopped taking any notice of him: Justyn hadn’t bothered to make sure they were immune to the spell’s effects. After a moment, Cybele shifted within her furry cocoon and muttered, “…Is he gone?”

Daren glanced around, his eyes glinting in that night-dark Ket way and skimming right over Justyn, standing there behind them. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t see any footprints, but I assume the spell covers that.”

Another moment of silence. Then Cybele said, suddenly nervous: “Gods, what if he does this all the time, and we just don’t know it? How would we know if he was just, like, sitting in a room and eavesdropping on us talking about him? We wouldn’t…”

Justyn muffled a laugh, though they wouldn’t have heard him, anyway. Daren said in a sardonic way, “Better for you not to say anything you wouldn’t want him to hear, then.”

“Can’t all be stonily silent like you, Mr. Stoic. You can’t even go to a bar and get drunk right. You just sit there nursing a brutal water and glaring judgmentally at people—you don’t have anything for Justyn to spy on.” She gasped suddenly. “He could use a spell like that to get up to really terrible things! He could be a pervert!”

All right, Justyn thought exasperatedly. That’s my cue to exit. Annoyed now, Daren said impatiently, “I’m going to get into position. You ready the horses.” He cast a more thoughtful glance at Ysa, who was sitting in a cross-legged position now, her eyes closed. “But don’t go too far. We don’t want anyone stumbling across Ysa and breaking the storm spell.”

Without another word of farewell, he leapt out of the ditch and disappeared again into the dark. Grumbling at his brusqueness, Cybele also shuffled to a stand, heaved herself up, and went off to check their mounts, clutching her furs to herself all the while.

Justyn levered himself out of the ditch after her. The approach to the Teivel manor was nerve-wracking: between the utter dark, blistering cold, and the flurry of snow and ice driving into his eyes, he was desperately paranoid of bashing directly into some guard or footman, however improbable that was. When he finally reached the enormous iron-wrought door, he had to pause for a moment to rally his nerves, heart hammering in his chest, before he put his palm against the handle and muttered a spell-word to undo the locks.

He eased the door open. There was no one in the foyer—the Teivel estate was isolated enough that there was no need to guard against intruders showing up in the middle of the night (or so they thought)—and the thinking was probably that no one would dare travel in such wretched weather, anyway. So the usual footmen and valets and butlers were in bed, as were their masters. There was a circular staircase winding upward here, as well as two corridors branching left and right. To the right, Justyn caught the faint glow of firelight and the melting murmur of chattering voices. But he fought the pull to go investigate; although he could probably glean some useful information from whatever maids or cooks were still in the kitchen, presumably readying things for tomorrow’s breakfast, it was more important to locate Emarynne Reaver first.

So he set off upstairs, following Daren’s advice. The manor—or what he could see of it—was stark and austere, styled with the kind of granite-like severity favored by nobles in the North as well as by the current Autarch himself. No plush carpets, ornate vases, or settee corners arranged specifically for lounging, sipping wine by the window, and perhaps pillowing in dark corners at opulent parties. This was a military family, same as the Reavers, though their holdings were not nearly as vast nor as important: the Teivels owned a viscountcy in comparison to the Reavers’ march. Here the walls were decorated with portraits of grim, stolid ancestors, their chests decorated with medals; hunting rifles, war trophies, and the taxidermized heads of notable quarry. The shadowed eyes of a bear gazed at him from a corner, its features tense and stiff with vanquished rage.

Justyn was slightly surprised by the continued spareness of the Teivels’ home. His team’s research had indicated that Colen Teivel, the current head of the family, had left military service early due to a leg injury, but he’d poured his frustrated energies into making large investments and bold financial maneuvers that had yielded more wealth for his family than they’d seen in centuries. Where was the evidence of their renewed coffers? But perhaps he hadn’t wanted to deviate from his family’s historical reputation and prestige, which had been built on war, not wealth. Perhaps it would have been a concession that the Reavers made for better war heroes, a kind of loss for the family rather than a mark of pride.

The second floor was still and quiet, as Justyn had expected, but his heart froze in his chest when he reached the third floor. There were two men here, parked in the very middle of the red-carpeted corridor and conversing in quiet voices. Guards employed by the Teivels, by the look of them: one was tall, with dishwater-gray eyes and a thin mustache, and the other more stout and muscular—Cybele would have said he was built “like a brick outhouse.” The mustachioed one was turned in Justyn’s direction; however, he didn’t look up from his conversation with his shorter companion, even as Justyn slowly ascended to the landing in front of him.

“…You know you’re not supposed to be talking to her,” the tall man was saying with a disapproving frown, glancing back towards a closed door at the very end of the hall. “If the viscount—or, God forbid, his mother—caught you at it, they’d flay your hide off.”

“She was asking me for another candle,” the shorter man returned defensively. “That’s all. I don’t see what’s the harm in showing her a bit of kindness, anyway. She’s a mere slip of a thing, and they keep her shut up in that room all day, all alone with not even a handmaid to wait on her.”

“Since when are you one to worry about rich damsels? Going to wash her hair for her, are you?” The tall man shook his head, full of scorn. “The harm is that the Teivels worry that she could turn any of us to her side, see. She could bribe you with coin, convince you to let her go or help her escape. That’s why they won’t let us talk to her. She’ll say or do anything to get out of here. Remember how she bit Peotr, and stabbed Kav with that letter-opener? You got to watch yourself.”

“I forgot about that,” the short man said in an abashed way. Then he shook his balding head and added, “What’s the viscount even keeping her here for, anyway? Does he want to make her his bride, or…?”

“I don’t think even he knows,” his companion returned in a dark voice.

They continued talking, the tall man moving to sit in a high-backed chair seemingly positioned for the purposes of keeping guard on the floor, while the short man leaned against the wall across from him, evidently keeping his friend company after a shift change. There was nowhere to walk but directly between the two of them; Justyn eased past them, holding his breath and gathering the strength of his spell around him like a bunched skirt. The short man took no notice of him at all; the tall man, the more cunning one, glanced up at him once, briefly, before his gaze and attention slid back to his friend with utter unawareness. Justyn forced himself to walk slowly, deliberately, towards the door they’d indicated at the very end of the hall. His pulse was thrumming unsteadily in his ears, his head light from adrenaline and fear. Hands trembling, he whispered the unlocking spell and fumbled open the door, shutting it quickly behind him. 

The room’s occupant looked up towards the door when it opened, but the spell’s ambient effect took hold immediately, so she merely frowned and turned back to her task once Justyn closed the door. Justyn couldn’t get a good look at her from his position; the young woman was facing away from him, seated at a small secretary desk and scribbling busily away on some papers, but from his brief glimpse, he was willing to bet this was Lady Emarynne Reaver. There was the fluffy cloud of short, strawberry-blonde hair, turned fiery in the light of her single candle-stub: it was softer-looking than the harsh military cut of his imagining, but then again, nobles still had to care about their appearance, even when they were soldiers. And she was undeniably a noble: he could tell even from here. All aristocrats had a pearly sheen of wealth and status about them, no matter how much they tried to hide it. It was in their neat, manicured nails, the healthy glow of their skin; the imperiousness and uprightness of their postures. It was why there’d been no hiding Lady Lavinet Naveen’s nature when she first arrived at the Shepherds. Even if his captain hadn’t introduced her as such, Justyn—along with the Order’s other recruits—would have been able to clock Lady Naveen’s difference from a mile away.

He took a breath and another moment to lay a silencing spell on all corners of the room. Then he dropped his invisibility and cleared his throat softly. 

Lady Emarynne gasped and jumped out of her seat, twisting instantly with her quill clutched in her hand in a reverse-grip that turned it into a makeshift dagger. Justyn held up his hands in a placating gesture, readying his magic to render her docile if he had to, and said quietly, “Peace, my lady: I’m here as your ally. My name is Justyn Hattoc. You are Lady Emarynne Reaver, I take it?”

The young woman didn’t move from her tensed position, poised on the balls of her feet. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, Lady Emarynne, with fine, deceptively dainty features: delicate upturned nose, pixie-ish facial structure, and a small pert mouth. Justyn’s heart kicked briefly in his chest as she glared at him. She was beautiful, as probably all noblewomen were beautiful—it was the mix of unattainability and glamor, to his mind—but she also possessed a peculiar luminousness, the radiance of unchecked emotions, that would have rendered even a homelier woman into an arresting beauty. Passion seemed to radiate from her like heat. He didn’t think he’d ever come across the like.

Schooling his features into neutral professionalism, Justyn reiterated, “I’m not here to harm you.”

Lady Emarynne’s eyes—an eerie, ghostly green, just like her siblings—flickered towards the shut door behind him. “How did you get in here? The door was locked, but I didn’t hear you turn the key.” Her voice was musical and fluting; if she wasn’t a trained singer, he’d eat his hat.

“I’m a Mage,” Justyn answered, taking a risk. “I used magic to sneak past the guards and unlock the door without their noticing. No one knows I’m here but you.”

Emarynne’s features tightened suspiciously, and she shuffled backwards until the small of her back was touching her desk. To her, he must have seemed like some kind of apparition; certainly he’d felt like a weightless phantom himself, creeping through the halls of the estate without anyone being able to see or hear him. She remained silent, watching him, while Justyn continued, “Your siblings sent me and my team here to rescue you. Savarin, Imogín, and Tacarey. They’re monstrously worried about you, but they didn’t want to take the risk of sending in their own military forces in the case that it sparked a conflict with the Teivels. Instead, they turned to us for help. I’m a Shepherd. So are my other teammates.”

At this, Emarynne’s eyes dropped to his chest: he was wearing plain, nondescript dark clothing, devoid of anything that might affiliate him with the Order—per his captain’s stringent instructions. Neither did he have his sun medallion. “Shepherds?” Emarynne’s face twitched, half with incredulity, almost derision, as if to say, Sure—now pull the other one. “Why on earth would Shepherds—? There aren’t any Endarkened here.” She shook her head, drawing back from him again. “And my siblings would never approach the Shepherds for help in this matter." 

“It’s a lot to explain,” Justyn said hastily. “I know I don’t have proof of it right now, but why would I lie about that? And why would I even be here if your siblings hadn’t sent me in to rescue you? Does anyone else know you’re here?”

At Emarynne’s wary silence, he continued, “Like I said, they were hesitant to send in their own forces, and they didn’t want to hire sellswords or mercenaries in the case that things went wrong and you were imperiled—or the Teivels got wind of the whole thing first. They struck a deal with my superior because—because we needed their help with something. A Sun Court matter. They gave us their backing in taking down one of the Order’s enemies. So now we’re lending our help as a kind of… tit-for-tat. An equivalent exchange, if you take my meaning.” The details had been extremely fuzzy, but he alone had gotten the gist of it, having been around more courts and nobles from his days as a bard than the others. “We’ve been sent in to rescue you and get you back to Haven safely.” 

Emarynne, whose features had relaxed slightly into a more thoughtful expression, said, “You don’t have a note or some token from my siblings you could show me as proof of your employment? It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just…” She trailed off. She wasn’t exactly used to haring off into the night with the first good-looking Mage who asked, he assumed.

Justyn shook his head. “Unfortunately not. My meeting with them was extremely brief and had to be done in total discretion, in case the Teivels or their spies and allies got wind of our connection and plan. And they wouldn’t want to have given me anything, anyway, in case I was caught and it served as proof of their involvement.”

Emarynne absorbed this for a moment, clearly mulling things over, before she finally blew out a breath and sat down sharply in her seat. “All right,” she said in a clear, steady voice. “Then how are you planning on getting me out of here?”

Justyn smiled, then carefully took a few steps forward. Emarynne tensed as he approached her, but he made a clear show of moving to the window and peering down; not much was visible through the wind and snow, but he lit a mage-orb in the windowpane, anyway. Emarynne gasped—she wouldn’t have ever seen evidence of magic before, not like this—and Justyn turned away from the little hovering golden light, hoping it would be enough for Daren to come find them.

“First things first,” he said to Emarynne. “Where are the other members of your party? Your siblings said there should be four others: your lady-in-waiting, and three guards.”

Emarynne twisted her head to the side, scowling. At least she seemed to finally accept that he was there on her family’s behalf. “They sent poor Aline away,” she murmured. “To where, God only knows. She fainted from the pain when her horse threw her and she broke her leg, you see; she was unconscious when we brought her here, and over the next few days, she lapsed into a fever. The broken bone developed an infection. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave me, but she was insensate. The Teivels sent her to some nearby town or village to receive medical treatment. Or so they claim. I have no idea what truly happened to her. Hopefully she’s merely recovering safely somewhere in isolation, and she simply hasn’t healed enough to make her whereabouts known to either her kin or mine...” She shook her head. “As for the guards… they were soldiers from Fort Lagann, assigned to accompany me back to Haven after my training there. I think they resented it, a bit, the idea of having to escort a noble lady when their fellows were sent on more exciting postings. As soon as Colen Teivel gave them permission to return, claiming his guards would take me to Haven once I was ready, they were happy to leave me here and take off without questioning it. They don’t know Sun Court politics, didn’t know they were leaving me with one of my worst enemies. And he did it in the middle of the night, before I could try and order them otherwise.”

“You didn’t have your own personal guard to come accompany you from Fort Lagann?” That was the usual protocol in those scenarios, he thought; most nobles wouldn’t trust common soldiers with such an important job.

Emarynne shook her head. “That is the standard, and my mother offered, but I refused. I didn’t think it was worth their coming all the way from Kianlever”—that was her family’s march, north across the Torunn mountains—“just to escort me for a few days’ worth of travel. I thought myself perfectly capable of making it to Haven with three armed soldiers.”

Something in her tone told him to drop the subject, at least for now. Justyn nodded slowly and said, “So you are alone here, then.”

Emarynne nodded curtly.

“Then this should be simple.” He moved over to the window and finally opened it, immediately wincing at the blast of frigid, icy air that came howling inside. Leaning out, he peered down at the ground—nothing but a sea of inky darkness—then rummaged through his pack for a length of coiled rope. With Emarynne watching, he tied it to the bedpost of her canopied bed—even hostages received star treatment, it seemed—muttering spell-words over the knot as he worked. One to ensure it wouldn’t unravel while they were using it, another to make it unravel on command. His hand swam with the effort, though: this was more magic than he’d used in a while, and his body warned him he would pay dearly for it in the morning. It was a little like the light-headed, dazed feeling one got halfway through a long sprint or a marathon, when one realized they hadn’t been drinking nearly enough water for such an extended feat. He couldn’t imagine how Ysa must be feeling, what with the strain and effort of keeping this ice storm up.

Turning away to conceal his sudden fatigue from Emarynne, he cast the rope down into the darkness, feeling it strike the ground… and immediately noticed three sharp tugs on the end. Good. So Daren had found them, after all.

He turned to Lady Emarynne. “Do you think you can climb down yourself, or shall my companion come up and fetch you? He’s a Ket: you could cling to his neck while he…”

Emarynne’s eyes lit in sudden green defiance. “I am perfectly capable of climbing down a rope, thank you,” she said sharply. “We do far less during our drills at Fort Lagann.”

Justyn lifted his hands up, unsure if what he was feeling was dismay or amusement. He was here to help, and he’d thought she’d be leaping at the chance of rescue after being held captive for several weeks; and yet this Reaver woman seemed more interested in biting his head off than accepting any of his aid. “I don’t doubt it, my lady,” he murmured. “You seem a perfectly capable sort.”

Emarynne narrowed her eyes at him, but Justyn turned back to fishing out a pair of gloves for her to use during the climb down. He gave her a few moments to gather her things, which were scant: she shoved a few clothes, toiletries, and a pair of riding boots into a small carpetbag, though she said the Teivels had stripped her of her weapons. He noticed that she swept the letters she’d been writing off the desk and stuffed them into her inner coat pocket, which was interesting. Then she moved smartly over to the window, braced herself against the sill for one breathless moment… and then heaved herself silently over the edge.

Justyn leaned over and watched as Emarynne Reaver descended into the night, her shoes braced easily against the wall of the manor as she maneuvered herself three stories down to the ground. When she reached the bottom, Daren gave the rope three sharp tugs again, and then it was Justyn’s turn to descend, though he grunted and sweated with the effort. His hands were raw and burning by the time he made it down, but at least the rope came sailing obediently down with him once he pulled and muttered the spell-word. Daren and Emarynne had already vanished, making for the covered grove where Cybele waited with their horses. 

Justyn glanced around as he tucked the rope away into his pack. Already Ysa’s snowstorm—by design—was rapidly covering any footprints they’d make during their escape. And there’d been no casualties, no suspicious run-ins, no weapons or traces left behind. By the time the Teivels awoke in the morning and discovered their hostage gone, Emarynne and his Nirvei team would be long gone… melting into the air like the ghosts he’d imagined himself as all night.

Despite his weariness, which was rapidly overtaking his body like a bank of fog, he couldn’t help but allow a triumphant grin to spread as he bounded towards the ditch to retrieve Ysa. It’d all gone off without an issue—his first real high-level mission as a Lunar Corps agent. Now all that remained was to get their charge safely home.

Mission accomplished, Captain.

#

The party was silent as they rode off into the night, leaving Ysa’s snowstorm behind them as they made for the closest major road. Ysa was nearly unconscious at that point and dozed fitfully in her saddle, at times slumping forward across her trusty horse’s neck as they rode. Cybele, too, was withdrawn and sluggish, her teeth chattering occasionally from within her massive furry cloak. Daren alone remained hyper-alert, but he wasn’t one for chitchat, anyway. And Emarynne Reaver merely bent her neck forward and urged her horse down the road as fast as the group could go, as tense and taut as if the very hounds of Hael were after her. 

It was close to two in the morning by the time they made it into a town called Pliny’s Landing, a major tourist destination known for its expertise in glass-blowing. It was a calculated risk to go to the closest settlement any pursuers would think to check first, but camping alongside the road seemed even riskier: if soldiers were to descend upon them somewhere out in the woods, there was very little to prevent them from being dragged back to the Teivel estate by force. At least a major town had its own guard, witnesses to prevent a violent confrontation, and several different inns to lose oneself in. 

Justyn took them to an ale house called The Princess, a mid-level inn that he’d performed at three or four times. The bar room still had a handful of people in it when he ducked inside, leaving the others outside with Emarynne to reduce witnesses remembering them as a large group. Most people were preoccupied with listening to a minstrel (who couldn’t have been more than two months out of bardic college by the sound of her) plucking dolefully away at an aplanea and warbling about star-crossed loves—amateur mistake, at this hour people want the ribald stuff, the songs that get your blood stirring, not send you off to bed with a tear in your eye—but the innkeeper seemed to recognize him as he inquired about rooms.

“We got plenty; you can have your pick. Everyone spent all their coin going to Haven for the Ascendancy Festival, so it’s a slow season right now,” she grunted, squinting at him beadily. “Say, haven’t I seen you before? You look familiar.”

“I’ve been through here once or twice,” Justyn answered mildly. “I’ll take two rooms, please: one with three beds and one with two.”

“Ain’t got rooms with three beds. Two or one in each.”

Justyn chewed on that for a moment. Decorum dictated that Lady Emarynne—the daughter of a margravine—shouldn’t be forced to spend a room with commonfolk, even if they were officers of the law, but at the same time, it seemed foolish to leave her totally unguarded... “Fine. Three rooms total, two beds in two and then the one extra. And care and feed for five horses.”

The innkeeper nodded, ringing up his coin, before she snapped her fingers suddenly and said, “You played here one time. I remember because you ended up two’ing with one of our barmaids. About a year and a half, maybe two, back.”

Justyn glanced around, combing his memory, but none of the faces around him registered. He didn’t remember that happening, but knowing him, it also wasn’t impossible.

At his silence, the innkeeper added, “You came through with a caravan. Some players and actors in there, but some shopkeepers and vendors, too. Isn’t that right? Echoes of the Road or something like that.” She glanced at him, her broad face schooled into an expression of nonchalance. “Haven’t seen or heard of that troupe in a while. Whatever happened to them?”

They were slaughtered by Imps on the road, and I was the only survivor. But he turned away from that thought with an internal grimace and only said lightly, “I work with a different group now.”

The innkeeper cocked a brow at him. “Bards?”

Justyn smiled tiredly. “No. Different line of work entirely.”

After that came the task of bundling his team up into their rooms. Lady Emarynne, predictably, balked at the idea of sharing a room with any one of them; she said, her thin eyebrows snapping down in a frown, “I don’t think it would be very proper to…” She glanced at his teammates as they huddled together in the warm, steaming privacy of the stable.

Cybele, also predictably, was mildly offended by her attitude. “You’re military-trained, aren’t you?” She sniffed, making her disdain clear. “Surely you had to bunk with other soldiers in the barracks; this is no different. Or don’t tell me that nobles still get their own rooms, even in a base? That’d be quite the farce, wouldn’t it?”

Emarynne scowled, then turned to him. “Why are we even stopping here? We should press on to Haven, ride until dawn at least—”

“Haven is at least a week’s ride away,” Justyn told her patiently. “Travel is slower because the roads are deep and muddy after the last fortnight’s rains. And we need rest, and it’s more inconspicuous to lose ourselves in a place like Pliny’s Landing rather than running ourselves ragged and making it very easy for the Teivels to track us and run us down." 

“Fine,” she retorted, quick as a whip. “But if there are three rooms, shouldn’t I get the last? I don’t know any of you, and—”

“Oh, do shut up,” Ysa burst out then, shocking them all. She had her arm slung around Daren’s neck, and Justyn thought she had been drowsing, but she looked up now with red-rimmed eyes and exclaimed, “We’ve just been through hell to come and get you. None of us are going to ogle you or anything, and we can’t let you stay by yourself in case the Teivels come to drag you away in the night. You don’t want to land right back at their estate, do you?" 

Emarynne stared at her as if Ysa had just threatened to set her on fire.

Ysa continued, “You and Cybele will share a room. Justyn and Daren will share the next. I’ll take the last. And if we spend any more time arguing about it, I’ll turn you into an ice block and deal with it in the morning!" 

And with that, she slipped her arm from Daren’s neck and stomped off towards the inn.

Emarynne glanced silently towards Justyn as Daren and Cybele followed, appropriately subdued: Ysa rarely showed any emotion, let alone outright anger. It was possibly the first time any of them had even heard her raise her voice. Justyn explained to her, sheepishly: “Magical exhaustion. Tends to make some people very cranky. She expended nearly all of her energy in calling that ice storm onto the estate.”

Emarynne took in a slight breath. “That was her?” She shook her head wonderingly. “I… I didn’t know. Everyone said it was a freak storm—to think that you did it, and in the aim of rescuing me…” She fell silent for a moment. “I hardly even conceived of something like that as possible.”

“The more you hang around us, my lady, the more you’ll find that near anything is possible,” Justyn said with breezy gallantry. They looked at each other for another moment before dropping their eyes and glancing away. Emarynne said, in a quieter voice, “Well… thank you, Officer Hattoc. And please thank Ysa and the others on my behalf as well." 

Justyn glanced at her sidelong. “You could convey your thanks yourself, my lady. It would probably be better received, coming from you.” 

Emarynne only shook her head and stalked off towards the inn herself.

Later, when all had been settled and he was bathed and rapidly hurtling towards sleep, Justyn wondered just what Emarynne had gone through during her captivity at the Teivel estate. From the look of her well-furnished room, it hadn’t seemed as if they’d outright mistreated her, but appearances could be deceiving… And that wasn’t to speak of what her siblings had gone through. He couldn’t imagine how he’d feel if his half-sister, Rosie—twelve years his senior and his primary caretaker after their mother passed away in his infancy—had been kidnapped. But she had her own family to protect her now, or had since Justyn was seventeen, a husband and three children, and no enemies to speak of, anyway. Muzzily he wondered if Emarynne had a lover, a husband or a betrothed or something, before his foggy mind finally slipped into blank unconsciousness, a fugue filled with strange visions where he dreamed he was a ghost, cold and limbless, phasing through walls and wandering silent blue hallways in search of the strains of the faintest, most otherworldly music…

#

 It could not have been more than a few hours later before Justyn found himself being shaken rudely awake. The deep blue shadows of the room indicated that dawn had not broken yet; Daren’s bed on the other side of the room was empty, the sheets flung aside in haste.

Cybele was kneeling on his bedspread, their noses almost close enough to touch, her usually-green eyes now almost black with dilated panic. “Wake up,” she said again with a nervous moan. “She’s gone!”

Justyn tried to speak around the fuzz coating his tongue. “Ysa?”

Cybele looked like she wanted to slap him. “Not Ysa! Emarynne, you dolt! I woke up and she wasn’t in bed—her things are gone—I think she fucking ran away!”