O Happy Dagger (Red, Chase, Briony's Story)

[Content warning: this story features heavy discussion involving murder, demonic possession, murder investigations, racial discrimination in a fantasy context, with some mentions of pregnancy, birth, and sororicide.] 

[Author's note: I also changed the title of the story! While "The Darkness Within" was thematically fitting, I also kept forgetting it and felt it was a bit generic. I'm not too sure about this new one, though, so we'll just see if it sticks!]

Part I: Amid the Thorns 

Part II: Bad Apple

Red knew before anyone else did that Briony hadn’t really hurt the man.

Yes, she set him on fire, but it was a heatless blaze—the flames that licked up his arms were real enough, but they couldn’t harm him. (The different ways Mages’ minds naturally worked continued to fascinate him. Where he would have used a simple illusion, fooling the man’s mind into seeing something that wasn’t there, Briony had opted to call fire but take away its heat. A third Mage might have called real fire but shifted the man’s skin to something fire-proof, or created a kind of thin protective bubble-layer of air around him, or… wait, this wasn’t the time to be thinking of any of that.)

Regardless, even if he wasn’t going to die, the beliefthat he was being set on fire was traumatizing enough—for both the poor farmer and for his watching family. He writhed on the floor, shrieking so loudly in panic and imagined pain that Wintry came rushing out of the bedroom, taking in the tableau with shocked eyes. But soon enough the flames had sunk back down and snuffed out, and Briony was leaning down, addressing the man in a low, deadly voice. “That was just a taste of what would happen if you were to enter that bedroom,” she said. “Until your daughters leave with that child, you are not to menace them or threaten them in any way. Elsewise I’ll lay such a curse on this household that you’ll wish I’d set it on fire.”

Red tried to suppress a smile, not sure whether he ought to be reprimanding or supportive. This was not going to improve public perception of Mages in this village… but that had seemed like a lost cause to begin with, anyway.

“She’ll do it, too. I’ve seen her disembowel a man with her bare hands,” Chase added helpfully. The farmer let loose a shaky sob, wiping his face with his wrist but saying nothing more as his sons cautiously helped him up from the floor and led him towards the couch where his wife was sitting in shocked silence. Briony watched them go with a blank, unreadable expression.

Red turned then to Wintry, who had a reserved, wary look on her face that reminded him a little of Tallys when she was among company she didn’t fully trust. “How is everything in there?” He was no good at healing, if that was what was needed, and certainly not when it involved childbirth; Briony was a fair hand at it, but she didn’t seem to be in a state of mind suitable for such delicate work at the moment. Wintry glanced back into the darkened, quiet bedroom.

“The baby’s all right,” she said, her voice terse. “It’s out. Healthy. We’re going to move them to one of our houses in the morning.”

Everything after that was a bit of a blur. Wintry’s many relations arrived, including her burly, stone-eyed brother-in-law with his farmer’s rifle, and they took over coordinating the move, maintaining courteous but firm command over the residents of the house. After ensuring that things were well in hand, Red left them and went outside to find Briony and Chase in the shadows of the scrubby, dead orchard outside. Night had fallen without any of them realizing; the moon hung like a thin white fingernail against the cloud-streaked sky. Briony was hunched over on the ground, her face hidden in her knees; Chase was crouched lightly down next to her on the balls of his feet, talking in a soothing voice. He glanced up at Red’s approach and said, his expression atypically sober, “She’s not feeling very well.”

“’M fine,” Briony said in a muffled voice then, lifting her face from her knees to scrub angrily at her eyes. “I’m not ill, only—ashamed. I haven’t—I’ve never lost control like that, not on a mission.”

Red had some theories on this that he had only voiced to Riel, and only in private because it would pain Briony to know they had been discussing her in that way. Briony’s magic was enormously strong, and it was typical in all the stories and biographies of powerful Mages that they were unholy terrors to be around when they were children or adolescents, before they had learned to control their abilities or keep their emotions from running wild. With her amnesia, Briony lacked this training, and with the sheer intensity of her magic, it was no surprise to him that it could suddenly burst out in unpredictable ways, especially if she had not retained an “adult’s” lifelong experiences of reining it in. A raging river, after all, was harder to tame than a steady stream or thin trickle; sailors and boatsmen could learn to navigate even powerful rapids, but only if they built up their knowledge and experience in doing so first.

Riel was of a different mind, and had theories that it was some mixture of Briony’s possible Ket or even Hunter blood that was causing the volatile results. Hunters, after all, lost control of themselves when they experienced their berserker rage, and even the Ket were rumored to experience something like that, though tentative inquiries to Blade on this front had been met with stony silence. Thinking of all this, Red said, not unsympathetically: “I didn’t hear it all, but I’m sure that if you hadn’t lost your temper, I would have. Were they really threatening the baby?”

“And the mother, too,” Chase said. “They really hate Mages here.”

“Yes, but why?” Briony asked, looking up finally; her face was scrubbed raw and pink, and anger still flowed off of her in hot, headachy waves, but at least the fierce spark in her eyes was focused and intent now, not simply full of futile rage. “Is it because they think magic is to blame for the attacks, for the demon? Or is it really as simple as being ignorant? I know they’re isolated, but they’re still within a few hours’ ride of Ambryn. If simply not being around many Mages could inspire such hatred, then much more remote places, like Lockwood or Rivercross, should have been far more hostile.” She turned to Red then. “Have you ever come across a place like this in your travels?”

“Not without reason,” he murmured. He had crisscrossed the breadth of the Continent in that blurry time after the Circle, and if he hadn’t at least heard of a place, his sister Idalia had, and she purposefully sought out much smaller communities than he did, studying their lore and microcultures for her research. Both agreed that the attitude of many places unused to Diminished people or Mages was one of wariness, suspicion, and distrust; though sometimes reactions had also ranged from mere indifference to enthused fascination and curiosity. In Red’s experience, common folk weren’t threatening to kill others on the mere suspicion of possessing magic unless they were under the sway of some kind of organization or authority—a cult or a mad priest, perhaps—or if they had a specific grudge to bear.

What any of this had to do with the recent murders, however, he wasn’t sure.

Chase, too, must have returned his thoughts to the mission, because he glanced up at the thin, rising moon and said, “The light’s going to disappear behind the clouds tonight, and everything is going to be heavy and dark. Seems a perfect time for a demon—or a Thrall—to creep around and kill more animals, if it’s still here.”

Red nodded. “That’s true. I think we should set up a patrol, but none of us should walk it alone: if it is an Endarkened, we don’t want to make ourselves easy targets to snatch while the others are on the far side of town. Once Thralls move from lesser beings to people, they tend to do more and more extreme things in order to satiate themselves.”

He didn’t mention the other reason why he thought they shouldn’t be alone: the villagers of Prum were already hostile enough towards them, save for the Talward family. But after the events of the evening and the encounter with Kaitrin’s family, he wasn’t sure how those feelings might shift. He didn’t fancy the thought of running into pitchfork-carrying farmers on some dark and unfamiliar dirt road, and especially not while alone.

The flicker of a thought flashed through his mind, then—had that same imagined mob cornered Fawn Woodsbury and Ève Typhain when they were alone?—but he realized that didn’t make any sense and shook it off. Chase was saying, “Yeah, I’ll agree with that. Seems like a place to be one for all and all for one.”

Briony nodded, took a shaky breath, and then straightened, swiping angrily at her eyes with her forearm again. When Red asked softly if she was all right, she took another breath and lowered her arm, clear-eyed. “Yes. Let’s just find the damn thing and get out of this place while we can.” She glanced back towards the darkened, silent house. “Something evil’s afoot here, and I’m not sure it’s totally demonic.”

#

They patrolled together for most of that night, returning to the Talward guest house just as dawn’s rosy fingers were creeping across the thin, colorless sky. Red plummeted into sleep with the well-practiced ease of an academic used to pulling all-nighters, and he awoke a few hours later to find Briony and Chase already breakfasting together in the kitchen nook. No one from the main house, not even Wintry, had stopped by to check on them, though Red told himself that she was either sleeping off the night’s events herself or still tending to Kaitrin and the baby.

Briony, seeming more back to her normal self, looked up and said, “Oh, good, you’re awake. We were just talking about whether we should go visit the families of the girls today, see if there’d been anything unusual about them in the time leading up to their murders. Fawn Woodsbury or Ève Typhain first?”

“Fawn, I think,” Red replied, thumping down into the chair and slathering a thick slice of bread with butter and then honey. “She was the more high profile of the two, so if anyone had been targeting them, she seems the place to start.”

Briony nodded. “We’ll go after breakfast and a washup, then.”

“That’s if Liefred here can keep his personal grooming to under an hour,” Chase said pointedly, taking a sip of his tea.

Red absently ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “What, it’s that bad?”

“No, but you always take ages to fuss with it regardless of what it looks like.”

He cracked a grin just as Briony laughed. “That’s patentlyuntrue. I don’t spend any more time on my hair than you do picking out an outfit.”

“Lie. Even those kids in Wallmire commented on it. ‘Why does the tall lanky one spend so long messing with his hair? It’s only going to get ruined in the rain.’”

“I have to keep up appearances,” Red joked. “They already look down on Mages here as it is; it wouldn’t do to come across as a heathen anduntidy.”

Too late, he realized that this might darken the mood, but Briony only ran a hand through her newly-shorn hair and said mildly, “Meanwhile, I refuse to use a brush, so we can balance at each other out. You can be the sharp professional officer, and I’ll be the wild villainess they’ve been expecting. And with the two of us distracting them, we can leave it to Chase ferret out their secrets.”

“Oh, they already suspect me as much as they do the two of you,” the thief said cheerfully. “It’s the city slicker in me; they can smell it. We just might be the absolute worst team for this mission.” He winked at the two of them. “But we’ll get it done, anyway.”

Afterward, they asked Wintry’s mother for directions to the Woodsbury household (near the center of town), then to the Typhaine homestead (on its farthest southwestern outskirts). Mrs. Talward assured them that Wintry was only sleeping after tending to the baby all night, and that she would send her after them once she woke up. They walked through town together after that, cautious of what the mood in Prum would be like after the confrontation with Kaitrin’s family. But the townspeople only eyed them with the same beady dislike they had greeted them with the day before; there was none of the aggression or violence that Red had been half-expecting. Perhaps they had been lucky, and Kaitrin’s father was too ashamed of his cowing—or of his original conduct—to stir his neighbors up against the team. Still, it was with a sense of relief when they arrived at the relative safety of the Woodsbury property; the midpoint between Red’s shoulders ached from feeling the stares of the Prum villagers drilling into his back.

The Woodsburys were polite enough, if uneasy, perhaps because they knew Red and the others were their only hope of finding justice for their lost daughter. They invited the Shepherds to sit at a sturdy wooden picnic table under an apple tree at the back of the house. Looking around, Red could see the disparities between their prosperous, thriving farm and the rather sad, shriveled property they had visited the night before. Here, the orchards were practically bursting with fruit, and the cornstalks in the fields beyond were already tall and rich with color. In fact, something about these crops distracted him, even as he helped the others lead the Woodsburys through the standard questions. Had Fawn been acting differently around the time of her murder?No. Had she been seeing anyone recently, or could she have been in secret?It was hard to believe; she had always been very open with her parents, who never disciplined her enough to make her afraid of telling them anything. Was it typical for she and Ève to go off and wash their laundry together? It had been, except that Ève had been ill for the last several months and had kept close to home for a while, though she had just recently recovered, to Fawn’s delight. Who could have run into them or seen them on their way to the river? Who knew they were going there that day?

The interview went on for nearly an hour, and by the end of it, they left feeling as if they hadn’t learned much. Which was normal, Red remarked—if murder investigations were so straightforward, anyone could solve them, not just the experts.

Briony laughed, a little hollowly. “Is that what we are now? Experts in murder?”

“I mean, I remember how I first threw up at the sight of a dead body,” he said dryly. “Now I’m often just grateful if the killing blow didn’t pierce the guts.”

“The guts are the worst,” Chase agreed sagely. “I don’t know what magic the laundresses at the Order do, but you can’t get the smell out of your clothes unless they’re the ones handling it.”

As they made their way towards the remote Typhaine farm, Red kept an eye not on the Prum townsfolk, as before, but on the different homes they passed. Once he noticed it, the disparities between them were obvious: some farmsteads were practically humming with spring vigor, sporting diverse, lively crops and rolling, healthy fields, while others seemed on the brink of ruin, their properties brown and dead and the few meager plants growing on them appearing weak and desperately sick. At one point he stopped to examine a corn plant drooping over a fence and into the country road they were now walking down. The limp leaves of the plant were spotted in gray and brown lesions, and some were even covered in a furry white powder that resembled the spores of a fungus.

“Blight,” he remarked to Briony and Chase, who were watching curiously. He wiped his fingers on his pants and sent a cautious probe down towards the roots of the cornfield; he wasn’t the best plant-Mage, but he knew enough that the underground disease flared out at him, as obvious as a sun-spot. He could burn it away, enabling the plants to grow healthy roots again and recover… but when he opened his magical senses further, he realized how far the problem actually extended, touching at least half of the homes in Theydon-Prum. Even an experienced plant-Mage or Elementalist would take days or even weeks to eradicate the disease entirely; and if they didn’t, then whatever fields they cured would just become reinfected again. “But the strange thing about it is—it’s spaced out oddly. Most of the time, if blight affects one field, it’ll race through all the others surrounding it like wildfire. But here, there are gaps, as if only specific farms are affected. I’ve never seen anything like that before. You could have one farm be completely diseased, and then the two farms on either side of it perfectly fine.”

“Could it be something in the soil?” Briony asked, intrigued. “The groundwater they use for irrigation, maybe?”

Red frowned, thinking on it. “Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “Though it would still be unusual. It’s strange. It’s almost as if the blight obeys property lines.”

He was still worrying away at the problem, turning it over and over again in his mind, by the time they arrived at the Typhaine household. It was a handsome property, rivaling the Talwards’ in apparent wealth and prosperity; there was a long, winding cobblestone path up to the house, surrounded by sprays of colorful flowers, and the home itself looked newly-constructed, gleaming with fresh white paint in the late morning sunlight. Beyond the picturesque front garden, he could see acres and acres of green and gold fields extending behind the house, almost past where the eye could see. The distracted, preoccupied feeling he’d first gained at the Woodsbury house increased.

A young man was returning from the fields with a shovel when he caught sight of them walking up the cobblestone path. He shaded his eyes to stare at them, then leaned the shovel against his porch steps and came down to greet them, moving in a leisurely manner. Red saw as he approached that he was a young man about their age, maybe a few years older, wiry and lean with muscle, with dusky skin, slicked black hair, and heavy-lidded jade-green eyes. His features were rakish and handsome, almost fox-like, and his relaxed, almost sleepy eyes held the same telltale glow that Red and Briony’s did.

Beside him, Briony audibly gasped in realization. He was a Mage.

“Hello,” the young man said, offering them the customary bow common to the region. “My name is Ovozin Typhaine. How can I help you?”

Several things were unraveling through Red’s mind while Briony was exclaiming, with clear delight and relief, “Oh, but you’re a Mage! Are you Ève’s brother?”

Ovozin’s expression faltered, but then he offered a warm, hospitable smile as he replied, “I was, yes. I take it you’re here to investigate her… what happened to her?”

“Yes, and you have our condolences,” Briony said, her expression tightening into one of sympathy. “We came here today to ask you some questions, if now is a good time?”

Ovozin gestured for them to follow him to the back porch. “Of course. Please, take a seat while I bring out some refreshments.”

They sat in polite, decorous silence until he disappeared back into his house, at which point Chase leaned forward and said under his breath, “He’s got to be the only Diminished person around for miles. You’ve got to be a very specific type of person to want to live here and put it up with… all of that.”

“And does that mean his sister was a Mage, too?” Red asked in rapidfire tones. “Because if so, that is a huge detail that was left out of the initial reports. Murder of a Mage in a town that seems to harbor an intense hatred of Mages?”

“So what if it wasn’t Fawn who was targeted at all… but Ève?” Briony muttered. “And what if that means that there’s no Endarkened threat at all?”

Just then, Ovozin returned with a tray of butter sandwiches and iced tea, which they tucked into with perhaps overcompensated enthusiasm. In the beat of silence that came while they all chewed their food, Red was left to admire the orange tree they were positioned under, the fragrant bright fruits swaying gently in the warming breeze as birds piped and fluted and hopped from branch to branch. Were oranges even in season right now?

“Do you have any other family?” Briony asked then, a bit awkwardly; it was clear she wasn’t sure how to approach the topic of the murder, perhaps because she had so many questions already buzzing around her mind.

Ovozin shook his head and replied, “No, our parents passed when I was… sixteen or seventeen, I think, and Ève was only eight. Drowned in a barge accident while out of town.”

“Oh,” Briony said faintly. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head again and said, with perfect airiness, “It’s all right. It was toughest in those first years, because I suddenly had to understand how a farm really worked, and how to do all of the numbers and accounts and things to keep it running. And there was taking care of Ève, of course, which was its own frontier. I think the toughest thing of all was that I was actually set to… ah…” He trailed off, eyeing their uniforms, before continuing, “I was preparing to go to school before everything happened, but I had to give that up to stay and run things here.”

Which meant, of course, that he had intended to go to a Circle—he just wasn’t sure if that was a wise thing to say in front of Shepherds, who were nominally tasked with upholding the laws of the Autarchy; at least in the public conception of things. If only they knew.

“I enjoyed my years at school myself,” Red said casually, gratified to see a lightening in Ovozin’s apprehensive expression. “But why stay here? Couldn’t you and your sister have both gone?”

The other Mage shrugged lightly. “This farm was my parents’ dream,” he said. “They worked very hard to build it and to earn a foothold in the community. It seemed disrespectful to simply abandon it all; I felt an obligation to uphold their legacy.”

“Very noble,” Chase murmured; Red wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic. Briony said, “Was Ève a Mage, too?”

“No. My mother was a Norm, you see; it was my father who was a Mage. I seem to have inherited his side of things, while my sister was… spared. She was entirely normal, at least in that regard.”

Hm, Red thought. It seemed to puncture a hole in things, but only slightly; Ève could still have been killed as a way to punish Ovozin, even if she herself wasn’t technically Diminished. “It must have been tough,” he said carefully, “living here alone like that. Are you the only Mage here?”

The young man shrugged unconcernedly. “And the only Diminished, as far as I’m aware.”

“And you were only sixteen when you lost your parents? Did any of your neighbors help you?”

“No, not a one,” Ovozin replied with a sharp, ironic grin. “They left us to struggle all on our own. No surprise there.” Then he tipped his head and amended, “Sometimes families like the Woodsburys dropped off food for us; I did always take note of that. It’s how Ève and Fawn became friends. But when it came to the hardest things, we were largely left to fend for ourselves.”

“But it seems you’ve done well for yourself, regardless,” Chase said, gesturing towards the large, brightly-painted house, the vast acres of farmland behind them. “Doesn’t seem like you’re exactly hurting for gold.”

Ovozin laughed. “Yes, I suppose you could say that, but it took years of hard work to get here. And now…” The humor in his face abruptly waned. “Now I have no one to enjoy it with.”

Tense, uncomfortable silence at that. Finally, Briony said gently, “You said that taking care of Ève was a ‘frontier all on its own.’ What did you mean by that?”

Ovozin’s eyes grew distant as he sat back, running his finger thoughtfully along the rim of his sweating glass. “She was always a strange child,” he admitted. “Hard to understand, cryptic, sometimes difficult to control. She’d have these… tantrums, and it could take hours to soothe her from them and calm her down. She was always welded to my mother’s side, hiding behind her skirts. After our parents died, she withdrew into herself. Hardly spoke to anyone, except for me and Fawn. To most of the other townsfolk, she was a mute. And she always insisted on staying at my side, just as she had with my mother, as if she was afraid I would disappear without her. I couldn’t go anywhere without taking her along with me. It used to drive me up the walls. And then, finally, she became so ill that she was bedridden for most of last year.” He looked away, taking a sip of his glass as he said, “She’d only just gotten on her feet again when… it happened.”

“What was she ill with?” Red asked.

Ovozin shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure. She broke her hip falling into a ditch last spring, and I think something sprang from that, an infection or something like it.”

Strange. His sister was his only living kin, and he couldn’t even say what had been wrong with her? Hadn’t he taken her to see a Healer, or even a physicker? Ambryn was only a few hours’ ride away. If one of Red’s sisters had been bedridden for a year, he wouldn’t have rested until he’d found some diagnosis for them—that was the first step towards a cure.

Briony said curiously, “What kind of Mage are you, if you don’t mind my asking? Your specialization, I mean?”

Red had been wondering that, too. But Ovozin only smiled thinly and said, “A non-practicing one. I never went to school, remember? So I never had the chance to find out.”

Red hid his frown behind a sip of his iced tea. Again, that lack of curiosity. He knew there were plenty of Mages who never even daredto reach for their power, let alone experiment with it and learn about it—there were probably some who didn’t even know there were different types of magic, or what the specializations were—but it was still an unfathomable concept to him. To him, it was like being asked what your favorite color was or what kinds of food you enjoyed, only to answer that you didn’t know and had never thought about it. It was an inert, colorless kind of existence that terrified him.

But he didn’t want to judge too harshly: he hadn’t been burdened by the death of his parents and the responsibility of running a farm in an all-Norm community from adolescence. They spent the rest of their time going over the requisite questions with Ovozin. Was there anybody who had wanted to hurt Ève? It was doubtful, since she hardly ever interacted with anybody except for himself and Fawn. Would anyone have hurt her in order to hurt him? Perhaps, but he couldn’t think of any specific enemies; he took care not to draw too much attention to himself or to incite conflict, as any wrong move on his part could turn the entire community against him. Mostly he kept to himself and focused on the farm. Was she buried here on the land? She would be, but he had sent her body to a coroner in Ambryn to be examined in case there was anything to be learned from her condition. (He, at least, had been more pragmatic about this than the other citizens of Prum, judging by Wintry’s shocked reaction when they first asked if they could see the girls’ bodies.) He would be sure to let them know if he heard anything back.

Then the talk moved on to other topics; it was clear that Briony, at least, found Ovozin’s openness refreshing, and the comfort of being in another Mage’s presence was unexpected but no less relieving. They followed him on a tour of his orchards as Ovozin told them—with no small hint of pride—that he had made such a name for himself that he had been invited to a local politician’s party in Ambryn for the evening, presumably so said politician could solicit him for donations. (This told Red that he was even wealthier than they suspected.)

As he talked to Briony, Chase sidled up to Red and said out of the corner of his mouth: “I don’t know exactly what it is, but this guy is feeding us a line of kak. I can feel it.”

Red raised his eyebrows, stopping to absently thumb a waxy lemon leaf. “You think so? I think I feel it, too. He seems genuine, but something about his story doesn’t quite add up. He hasn’t even asked us if we think it was a demon that killed his sister. And if it could have been a member of the community, why isn’t he jumping to help us at least consider a suspect?”

“Maybe he’s secretly relieved to be rid of her. It’s unkind, I know, but he did make her sound as if she was a handful. Maybe—” He blinked in surprise when Red suddenly jumped. “What?”

Red reached out and gripped the thief’s elbow, hard. His temples were thumping with surprise, but he had it, he had it, that maddening feeling of distraction he’d felt all morning had a purpose after all— “The trees are bespelled,” he hissed, practically shaking the leaf he was holding under Chase’s nonplussed nose. “It’s very faint, almost undetectable, but if I go down and poke at the roots with my magic, I can feel it. They’ve been nourished by magic and protected against blight—that’s why some farms are diseased, and some are thriving. He’s been going around magicking them against infection!”

Chase’s eyes widened, but before he could say anything, Ovozin was calling up towards the house. “Miss Talward? What are you doing here?”

Wintry was approaching them from around the front of the house, her eyes wary and her body language tense as she slowly made her way towards the orchard. When they met up, her gaze traveled carefully from Ovozin to Briony, Chase, and Red, but her voice was steady as she replied, “I was tasked to escort the officers around Prum by the magistrate, Mr. Typhaine. I was just coming to see if they needed my assistance.”

Ovozin laughed a little, as if she had made a joke, but Red said quickly, “In fact, it would be very handy if you could show us the way to the Woodsbury house next. We tried to follow your mother’s instructions, but unfortunately couldn’t find it and were planning on circling back around.”

Wintry dropped a quick curtsy of assent; behind Ovozin’s back, Briony pulled a baffled face, but he thankfully didn’t notice as he said graciously, “I suppose that’s for the best. I have to make my preparations for my trip to Ambryn tonight.”

They exchanged cordial farewells—Ovozin even bent over Briony’s hand, which made Red want to roll his eyes, because there was something arrogant about the motion, as if he knew he had fooled them handily and was gloating a bit over his victory—before taking leave of the other Mage and walking back down the cobblestone path. Once they were sure he was back in his house and well out of earshot, Briony whispered, “What was that all about?”

Red turned to Wintry, whose expression had turned stony. “I suspect Miss Talward can tell us more,” he said. “Has Ovozin been working his magic on the farms around Prum?”

Briony squeaked in disbelief as Wintry grimaced and said, “Yes, some of them. I meant to tell you all this yesterday, before Heddi came running in. It’s true that I’ve never met him in person, but that’s because our land hasn’t been affected by the blight; we’re far enough away from everyone else that we haven’t been infected. But for everyone else, the name Ovozin Typhaine is notorious. He single-handedly controls most of the farms in Prum.”

She outlined the whole sordid tale for them as they continued their walk down the deserted country lane leading back towards town. For the first four years after his parents’ deaths, Ovozin’s farm had struggled immensely, taking on loan after loan. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to grow things—in fact, the crops his land produced were some of the best in town—it was just that few were willing to buy from him. He had to have them carted all the way to Ambryn, taking only a fraction of the profits when all was said and done. Some sympathizers had urged him to sell the farm and start over someplace else, perhaps in the city or in Haven or Stroud, but Ovozin had stubbornly refused each time.

Then, when he was twenty, blight had struck Theydon-Prum. It was a disaster. In a matter of months, families had gone from some of the wealthiest farming scions in the settlement to surviving mostly on the jars of pickled fruit they’d stored in their cellars years before. All the crops died; there was nothing to sell or even eat. Some farms were lucky to grow even a single crate of produce in a month.

No one knew how the arrangement first started, but all Wintry knew was that this was when Ovozin began to offer some trusted neighbors his clandestine magical services. (The theory was that the Woodsburys had been the first to receive this gift, as thanks for their daughter’s friendship with Ève, and from there, word had spread like wildfire.) Ovozin could heal your plants in a matter of hours and even protect them from future blight, though his spells had to be refreshed once a year to keep the effects going. Just as quickly as the blight had come, so too was the young Mage’s meteoric ascension. He went from a quietly-ignored misfit outcast to the celebrity-hero of Theydon-Prum overnight.

“The only problem,” Wintry said as they listened to her, rapt, “was that the prices he charged for this service were astronomical. They started high to begin with, but I think once he realized how much people’s livelihoods depended on his help, and how desperate they were, there was no limit to what he could ask for. In time, the cost of hiring him was so high that many families had to take out loans or even sell parcels of their land to him. For some, he essentially became their landlord, and they his indentured servants. For others, he allows them to pay a lower fee upfront, but he demands a portion of their earnings—a tax on their produce—in perpetuity, since they’re technically ‘his.’” She shook her head. “The Nenets—Kaitrin and Heddi’s family—was one of the families that couldn’t pay him to renew his spell the second time. Ovozin refused to help them, and the blight returned, so now they can only get by trapping and selling furs—and they’re still paying off their original debt to him, the one they paid the first time. All that, and their crops are still dead.”

“Is that why everyone hates Mages so much here?” Briony cried, horrified. “If he’s their only experience of them, and—oh, gods, and then I terrorized that poor man—”

“Well, let’s not forget that he was definitely going to harm that baby and his daughter,” Chase said judiciously. Wintry nodded. “If not outright kill them. So I’d excuse you from that one, Peaches. But it’s all making sense now. I thought there had to be a reason why everyone seemed to hate us on sight. It sounds like they’ve suffered, and there’s all this built-up hatred and resentment towards him… of course it’s going to spill over into unfair ideas about us—well, the two of you—too. They probably all think you’re like him. Greedy, selfish, soulless…”

“Yes, thank you, Chase.”

“Does the magistrate know about any of this?” Red asked, his thoughts still whirring.

Wintry shook her head, her contempt and disdain for the idea clear. “Not as far as I know, no. He tries to stay as ignorant as possible about what goes on in Prum.”

“If people dislike Ovozin so much, why don’t they just report him to the magistrate, or even better, the Inquisitors? There’d certainly be a case for punishing him: he’s demonstrably using illegal magic, after all.” Before Wintry could open her mouth to reply, however, he said, “No, that’s obvious. If they reported him, the blight would return and their crops would all die again, or that of their friends and neighbors, and then the whole community would blame them.” He shook his head wonderingly. “That’s actually massively clever. He’s made himself so integral to the health and livelihood of community that he’s basically immune; they can’t afford to get rid of him. That’s why he can be so brazen about what he charges.”

“It seems obvious, then, that someone snapped and killed his sister in retribution, no?” Chase said. “They couldn’t afford to kill Ovozin directly, so they targeted Ève instead. Made him feel some of their suffering, something like that.”

“But why Fawn, too?” Briony asked, kneading her brow with a closed fist—it was a very Trouble-like gesture. “If you’re right and it was someone in the community, they’d have to know how much pain they were causing by killing her as well. Was she simply an unlucky witness, collateral damage? But why all the animals before that, too?”

They all fell into pensive silence at that, ruminating on it as they walked down the dusty lane. The heat of the day was increasing again; it was promising to be another sweltering, humid afternoon. Wintry said thoughtfully, “And there is the question of timing, too. Why now? Ovozin wasn’t making his rounds these last months, because he was busy taking care of Ève while she was sick. Why would someone decide only now to kill her, if their intention was to lash out at him?”

“Well, we heard that Ève had just made a recovery,” Red said. “Seeing Fawn was probably the first time she’d gone out in a long time. Perhaps the killer realized that meant Ovozin was inevitably going to return to the way things were once his sister was back on her feet, so they decided to kill her before that happened?”

However, even to his own ears, he knew the theory sounded weak. They were still missing something, and the awareness of that made him want to gnash his teeth: he hated not knowing all of the pieces to the puzzle. Briony, perhaps sensing his preoccupation, turned to Wintry and said, “We actually were able to visit the Woodsburys, in case you didn’t know. But it might be good for us to visit the site where the girls were murdered. Do you think you could tell us how to get there?”

Wintry, understanding that they wanted to discuss things alone, nodded and gave them detailed instructions on how to reach the riverbank where the girls were last seen, as well as where their bodies had been discovered. Before she turned to depart back to her home, Briony said uncertainly, “Um—I’m sorry about last night. If I scared you. I’d understand if you weren’t comfortable having us stay in your home anymore—but I promise it was never my intention to really hurt anyone.”

Wintry gave her a ghostly kind of smile. “It didscare me, but I suppose that was your intention in the first place: to scare Farmer Nenet off from doing anything… unwise. But in the end, I’m glad you did it. It’s not so different from having my sister’s husband show up with a gun.” She patted Briony’s shoulder. “We’re fine. Just focus on finding this killer. I’ll work on getting the rest of the townspeople to cooperate with you, if I can.”

Briony nodded, and they clasped hands in what seemed to be a farmer gesture of friendship, and the relief on the former gladiator’s face was palpable. Wintry left, and it wasn’t long after they started for the river that Chase remarked, “She’d make a good Shepherd, honestly.”

“Here’s another theory,” Red said then, barely hearing him. He’d been thinking furiously all that time. “What if it was Ovozin who killed his sister, not one of the townsfolk? Think about it. If he viewed her as a burden and wanted to be rid of her… perhaps he only staged the animal deaths beforehand to draw suspicion away from him, make the rest of us thinkthere was a demon. Then he killed Fawn and Ève—again Fawn to throw off the scent—and then hoped that by the time we arrived, we’d chalk it up to an escaped Endarkened and he’d get off scot-free.”

“That theory only works if we really think he has what it takes to kill his own sister,” Briony said as they drew to the edge of the small wood that Wintry had indicated. The dappled shadows of the trees were a thin relief from the strengthening heat of noon. “She’s his only living kin. I know he’s a mutiand a kakhead, but you saw him. After the death of his parents, do you think he really has what it takes to plan out his sister’s cold-blooded murder andfollow through?”

“You can never truly know with people,” Red murmured, though it was true that the thought of killing one of his own sisters made him instantly nauseous. Did Ovozin have the demeanor of such a killer? He’d have to be a psychopath. “Chase, what did you think? You’re good at reading people.”

The thief locked his fingers behind his head, looking thoughtfully up at the forest canopy as he said, “Well, he didn’t exactly have the eyes of a man who’s murdered someone, let me just put it that way. But that isn’t always foolproof. I think that about Riel, and I’m about eighty percent sure he’s at least ordered a hit on someone in the past. And Ovy-boy did talk about wanting to go to the Circle, having to give that up to take care of his sister. He seemed like the ambitious sort, the kind who’d let that sort of resentment build up and turn really poisonous if he had a mind to, especially if she was difficult for him to handle.” He shrugged finally. “Hard to say, Lief. All I know is that the man seemed nervous, and like he was hiding something. Could have been something to do with the murders, could have been that he just didn’t want us to find out about all this illicit magic he’s been using to exploit people.”

“Nervous?” Briony asked incredulously. They had arrived at the river at this point, stopping to relish the cool, fresh air passing over it before they rounded its bend and moved towards the presumed murder site. Water burbled and rushed pleasantly over large, rounded stones; they had to pitch their voices a bit louder to be heard. “He didn’t seem nervous to me at all. He seemed warm, friendly, totally at ease—”

“That’s the problem, Peaches, you’ll be taken in by any handsome face and silver tongue—”

“Stop, I didn’t even think anything about his looks—but if you say he’s handsome, then you must think that yourself! You’re projecting onto me!”

“But I knew not to trust him one inch, so what’s your point?”

“You—oh, stop smiling, that’s horrible! Anyway, Red, if you realized right in his orchard that he was bespelling the trees, why didn’t you ask him about it outright?”

“Well, I knew then that he was lying about a lot of things—not knowing his specialization, for one—so I wanted to find out why and how before I let him know that we were onto him. That’s what Riel always says to do with a suspect: give them enough rope to hang themselves with, and all that. What’s that sound?”

The other two turned their heads and frowned. “What sound?”

“That rushing sound.”

There was hardly any time to react before an explosion of water came barreling around the river bend and slammed into them, plummeting Red into frothing, furious darkness.