❧ Sharalyn
The first two villages did not look at me, yet neither did they look away. Their eyes slid past, as if I were smoke. I asked for water—they pointed me to the river. Bread earned only an offer of work. Coin drew a warning—show it again and I would be robbed.
A boy pointed at my boots and laughed. His mother slapped his hand down without lifting her eyes from the laundry.
“You do not point at trouble,” she said—and I was not sure which of us she meant.
At a crossroads, I tried to trade one of our silver leaves for local coin. The smith squinted, turned it with his blackened thumb, and shook his head.
“Pretty,” he said. “Not money.”
“It is silver,” I said.
“It is a story,” he replied. “Stories do not buy oats.”
I tucked the leaf away and sold the needlework from my cloak’s hem instead. He was not wrong. Stories do not buy oats. They buy only the right kind of silence.
On the third road, a cart passed in haste, piled with blankets, chickens, and a woman whose hair had not been braided before she fled. Her husband snapped the reins and did not slow.
“Where do you go?” I called.
“Anywhere,” he called back. Away. He did not say from what, and he did not need to.
That night I slept under a hedge and dreamed of the crown, lopsided, howling.
The next evening, I reached Hathroon. It had two streets that mattered and four that pretended they did. The storm had already arrived—rain slit the gray sky, and the boardwalk had become a slick device for breaking ankles. I kept my hood low and watched mouths shape the names of things. They said sheriff like a threat, priests like a dare, and Syndicate like a prayer they hoped no god was listening to. I knew the first two words. Not the third.
I came upon the market at the wrong hour—the good bread gone, only the hunched and hungry still haggling over onions.
“Looking for what?” a voice slid behind me, oil-slick pleasant.
It belonged to a man who had learned somewhere to smile with only his teeth. Venn Tolis. He offered me a dried apple ring with a flourish, as though it were a jewel. His fingernails were clean. That told me more than his words.
“Work,” I said. Aid would have sounded like a sermon.
“Ah,” he said. “And what kind?”
“The kind that points me toward Tharok.”
The apple paused a hair from his own mouth. His toothy smile widened and stayed all teeth.
“You have heard the name,” I said.
“Only shouted at dice,” he lied, then slipped into the tone of a man selling hats to those already drenched. “But there is a fellow who hears names whispered as often as shouted. Daskin. A man with a map no one else can fold.”
“What does he ask for to unfold it?”
Venn pinched the apple in half and offered me the smaller piece. “He is a patriot and has led many like you who wish to join the fight against the elves. He asks only for what is right.”
“How much is right?”
“Two silvers for the introduction,” he said. “And then—what you owe him for the truth.”
I could have walked away. Perhaps I should have. But the Conclave had offered no road, and I had left the grove without a map. I paid him. He bowed, the apple rind bright against his tongue.
He told me which tavern, at what hour, and how not to knock. “He has a temper for fools,” Venn said.
“What does he know of Tharok?” I asked.
Venn’s eyes slid, amused. “What we all know. A bastard ogre with an orc for a bitch, a mage of monsters, a destroyer of elves—and for that, thank him when you join his army.”
His voice was pleasant; his words, poison.
He left me beneath the eaves of the shoppe and vanished into the rain like a fish slipping into dark water.
I pressed a copper into a carter’s palm. “Low Downe?” I asked.
He grunted and jerked his chin. “End of the lane. You will smell it.”
The rain had teeth. It bit my cloak, my hands, my face, until I wondered if even the storm sought to drive me back. The road had been empty for days—my only company the trees, my only welcome the wary eyes of farmers who would not meet mine.
Now light beckoned ahead. I smelled it and heard it before I saw it. Heat. Noise. A man who might know something of Tharok was inside.
On the way there, I passed a wagon shrouded in tarps. Two men huddled beneath them while dice clicked in a bowl. Between their boots slumped a third—wrists bound, lip split, head hanging.
“Shouldn’t of grabbed for it when he took it off,” one said, casual as men noting the weather while they tightened a noose.
“Took what off?” the second asked.
“The crown,” the first said, as if he meant a hat. “Slipped when he wiped his brow.”
“And?” the second asked, bored.
“And he forgot his words,” the first said, smiling like men do when they recall their own cruelty. “Like a priest whose scripture slipped his tongue.”
They laughed. The bound man stirred and groaned. The one with the bowl nudged him with his boot as if he were a sack of grain rather than flesh. “Tell it to the sheriff,” he said, “since you like telling. Or tell it to Daskin, if he lets you talk.”
Daskin again. The name wove itself into the rain. If Venn had lied, at least the weather repeated the lie.
The Low Downe’s door swung on hinges that did not creak, because creaking would have been a kindness. The wind claimed the opening as if it were owed and hurled rain into my face.
I stepped through anyway.
I lingered just inside. My coin pouch was too light, my trail too faint.
The gale followed me in. Candles guttered. Lanterns shook. For a breath, every head turned, and the room seemed to close around me.
I drew my hood tighter and pressed against the wall. If I could have vanished into plaster, I would have. Instead, I moved with care—each step balanced, like walking on river ice. My blade rode hidden under my cloak. Few could have sensed it. Still, I prayed none here would.
A whistle cut through the room. Low, mocking. My skin prickled. Before fear could root, another sound silenced it—sharp, commanding, like a leash jerked tight. I did not look. I kept walking.
Desperation clung to me like a second cloak. I knew it. Worse, so did they.
The tavern engulfed me—heat, the smell of oil and tallow, men who had not bathed because no one had forced them to remember. Dice hung suspended in the air before clattering into a cup. A laugh broke—too soft to be kind. I bowed my head, tightened my hood, and counted my breaths like beads.
Then I felt it—the brush of something unseen, like a whisper curling along my skin. The hair on my arms lifted. I told myself it was only the draft, yet instinct turned my head.
My eyes swept the room. Only one man still seemed to notice me. He sat alone, mug in hand. But his eyes were wrong—milky, unfocused, drifting without purpose. Blind. He slurred mutters at the barkeep. A beggar, I thought. Harmless.
A seat waited near a scraggly, bearded man who smelled of smoke and sour beer. He named himself Daskin. His voice ran smooth as oil poured over gravel. He claimed he had news. For a price.
My hand drifted to my pouch. Silver would buy me nothing if I kept it—and perhaps a chance if I spent it.
“Daskin?” I said, because sometimes doors open when you say the right word, and sometimes they close more gently. I prayed to Solonor that the stories of Tharok would be real this time.
He smiled with only part of his mouth. “If you are buying.”
So I sat.
“Drink, girl. I ain’t gonna speak to nobody who don’t join me in mead.”
I drank the thick mead from a mug I was certain had been washed less often than Daskin himself. Honey could not disguise its bitterness, nor the sourness left behind by whatever had occupied the cup before me.
Daskin watched until I swallowed.
“There now,” he said. “We are acquainted.”
Before he offered anything more, two of his companions arrived. They greeted him with blows to the shoulder hard enough to stagger a lesser man, then called for honey mead as though the tavern existed only because they had entered it. Daskin changed in their presence. His voice grew louder, his laughter broader, his every movement made for an audience.
The barmaid carried one round, then another. She seemed forever arriving or departing, her pitcher tilted above some mug while one of the men complained that she had neglected him.
I waited through stories that began before I understood their purpose and ended without one. Daskin did not appear troubled by my silence. He drank, laughed, and allowed his companions to forget I was there.
By the time he turned to me again, I had begun to wonder whether Venn had sold me an introduction to nothing.
I withdrew a small piece of parchment and slid it across the table. Tharok’s name stood at the top. Beneath it, I had written the amount I could offer for useful information.
Sixteen copper.
Daskin lowered his head and tapped the parchment twice with one finger.
“Girl, you sure that is the name you seek?” His voice held an undisguised warning.
“Yes.”
One of the younger men gave a short laugh.
The other did not.
“Sixteen copper?” the one who had remained silent snapped. “Is that all this is worth to you?”
His voice struck like a whip. I flinched before I could prevent it.
“It is what I can offer for an answer,” I hesitated. “If the information proves useful, I may have more.”
“May?” The first man leaned back, smiling without kindness. “A dangerous word when a woman is asking after dangerous men.”
Daskin chuckled as though his companion had made some harmless jest.
I reached for the small pouch inside my tunic. My glove caught against my sleeve, and my fingers, stiff from the cold, failed to free it. I pulled the glove loose with my teeth and set the pouch beside the parchment.
The leather kissed the table.
One of the men looked not at the coin, but at my wrist.
“Odd tattoo, isn’t it?”
I drew my arm back.
His companion caught it before I could hide it, twisting my wrist toward the lantern.
The leaf showed plainly.
Small. Ordinary—unless one knew the language.
“Well now,” the man holding me said. “What’s this?”
Daskin leaned nearer. “A leaf?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It is only a leaf.”
The man’s grip tightened when I tried to pull free.
“No need to be shy, lass,” the other said, reaching across the table. “I only want to touch it.”
The ward struck before his fingertip settled against my skin.
He yelped and shoved his thumb into his mouth.
“I am sorry,” I said. “Please release me.”
“Slag shocked me!” he shouted.
“Kyle.” Daskin’s voice sharpened. “Enough. Release her.”
Despite the order, the hand around my wrist did not loosen quickly.
Finally, it opened.
I drew my arm beneath my cloak and covered the mark.
The ward was not meant for men who touched without thinking. It was meant for men who touched to claim. Yet Kyle stared at me as though I had attacked him, and for a moment I wondered whether I had misunderstood the man’s intentions.
Daskin pushed Kyle back with one hand.
“She warned you,” he said, although I had not. “No harm done.”
The words restored the shape of civility without restoring its substance. Kyle muttered into his injured thumb. His companion watched me with narrowed eyes.
Daskin drew my small coin pouch toward himself and rested one hand over it.
“There,” he said. “Business. Nothing more.”
Something moved through the room.
Not wind. Not sound.
A faint pressure passed beneath my skin, delicate as a thread drawn across the edge of a blade. For an instant, it seemed to enter every hidden place within me—not searching my clothing or my face, but something deeper.
My head lifted.
I searched the tavern.
Men drank. Dice struck wood. The barmaid struggled past a chair with her pitcher raised above one shoulder.
The blind man sat with his mug near his mouth.
His milky eyes drifted past me without finding anything. He swallowed noisily, then turned his head at an angle that placed his face slightly away from everyone who might have spoken to him.
A drunk. A beggar. Harmless.
The sensation vanished before I could decide whether it had ever been there.
“Something troubling you?” Daskin asked.
“No.”
“Then drink. We have not yet reached the interesting part.”
A fresh mug stood before me.
I did not remember the barmaid taking the first.
Daskin began to speak of people who had heard Tharok’s name. A carter who might have seen armed men. A traveler who claimed to know a road. Someone who had spoken to someone else before disappearing. Each fragment sounded almost useful, but whenever I asked for a name or place, Daskin lifted his cup.
“A dry throat forgets details,” he said.
His companions laughed.
I drank because I had crossed too many empty roads to rise without an answer.
The second mug was easier than the first. The mead no longer seemed as thick, although I knew it had not changed. Its sweetness spread across my tongue and dulled the sourness beneath.
The blind man cursed at something near his face. A barmaid hurried to him, and after an exchange I understood as a call for food, she disappeared toward the kitchen. When she returned to our side of the room, Daskin called for more mead before she had finished serving anyone else.
At some point, a third mug replaced the second.
I remembered lifting it. I did not remember emptying enough of the other to require another.
The room had grown too warm. Heat gathered beneath my cloak and along the hidden points of my ears. Voices that had once belonged to separate tables merged into a single restless current. Laughter reached me before I understood what had caused it.
Daskin continued to speak.
Or perhaps he repeated himself.
He had said there was a road. I was certain of that. A man had used it, or guarded it, or died beside it. Whenever I attempted to arrange the pieces, another detail slipped away.
“Tharok,” I said, drawing the name back between us. “You said you knew where he had gone.”
“I said I know men who know things.”
“That is not the same.”
“No,” Daskin agreed pleasantly. “It costs more.”
His hand settled on my forearm.
I looked down at it.
He removed it slowly, brushing at the fabric as though clearing away crumbs. I saw none.
“You had something there,” he said and winked.
Perhaps I had.
One of his companions shifted closer. His knee touched mine beneath the table. When I moved away, he did not apologize, but the tavern was crowded and the benches narrow.
I reminded myself that no one around us had treated what they had done as openly harmful.
There were witnesses all around us. A barmaid passed our table every few moments. Men argued over dice within arm’s reach. No one would be foolish enough to attack me here.
And Daskin might know where Tharok had gone.
That thought returned whenever another tried to replace it.
The third mug had not been emptied, but I could scarcely feel my tongue. The table seemed to lean when I did not, correcting itself whenever I tried to study it. My belly ached, and the men’s faces had become easier to look at only because their edges would not remain still.
Daskin laughed at something. His companions joined him.
I did not know what had been said.
When Daskin touched my arm again, his fingers remained longer. I drew away, and the movement caught something beneath my cloak.
A pouch slipped free and struck the floor with a muted weight.
All three men looked down.
“I’ll fetch that for you,” one of the younger men said.
He bent before I could stop him. His shoulders blocked my view beneath the table, and he remained there a moment longer than seemed necessary.
Then he rose with the pouch held between two fingers.
“Safe and sound.”
He placed it in my hand.
“Thank you.”
The cord lay differently across my palm.
I turned the pouch once. It seemed lighter, although my fingers no longer judged weight properly. Even my own hand felt distant, as though it belonged to someone sitting beside me.
I tucked the pouch more securely beneath my cloak.
Daskin pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his palms together like a butcher about to carve.
“Follow me,” he said. “We’re gonna talk where it’s quiet.”
The words should have warned me.
Instead, relief came first. At last, I thought, the true information. Something he would not risk saying before so many ears.
Across the room, a chair scraped violently.
“What the holy hell?” a man shouted.
He lurched upright from the dice table, curses following him as a dark stain spread down the front of his trousers. The silence lasted only a moment before laughter crashed over him.
Men called after him as he stumbled toward the door.
Another chair toppled nearby. The blind beggar had risen and appeared unable to decide where the floor ended. The young barmaid caught his hand and guided it to her elbow.
Daskin waited while she led him ahead of us.
I stood.
The floor shifted beneath my boots. One of Daskin’s companions reached for my elbow, but I pulled away before he could take it.
“I do not require assistance.”
“Course not,” he said.
He moved behind me instead.
The other stood too close on my left. Daskin waited in front.
Something was wrong in the way they had placed themselves—too close, too certain, each of them occupying the direction I might have chosen if I wished to leave alone.
I should have stopped.
I should have demanded the answers there, before witnesses, or taken back my coin and walked away.
But grief had already taught me how to walk through doors that might never open again. If Daskin truly knew something of Tharok, leaving now might close the only path I had found.
So I followed.
I did not walk as straight as I intended. The men adjusted around me whenever I faltered, not quite touching, never allowing space to remain for long.
The blind man and the barmaid passed through the doorway ahead of us.
Then Daskin opened it wider and motioned me outside.
The rain struck my face like thrown gravel as I stepped back into the night.