“It was all right here,” Arturo said, a manic grin stretching across his face as I walked into his private living quarters. The room was a mess—liquor bottles laying everywhere, crumpled balls of parchment piling up in the corners. The Padre didn’t look any better than his room. There were deep bags under his eyes, his hair was a greasy tangle, his clothes rumpled, and his beard unkempt. He looked like a Marine who just spent a long weekend partying hard on Liberty in Thailand. He tapped a thick finger against the pages of a ledger. “It was staring us in the face, and I couldn’t see it. But there it is. The answer. It’s like Raguel opened my eyes to the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, circling around behind him so I could peer at the record book splayed out on his lonely table.

“The shipping manifest,” he said. “Gustav was able to get Sigge to refine the powder and make it shelf stable for transport, but how do you get it out of the city, eh? Now that’s the question. Gustav couldn’t well hire a dedicated export outfit to deliver the goods without raising suspicion. Every merchant has to declare a bill of goods both bought and sold when entering and exiting a town, so that appropriate provincial taxes can be levied. Which is why he struck a deal with Captain Ervo, the Caravan Guard Commander. C. Ervo”—he pointed at another book, this one tracking payments rendered to various workers.

“C. Ervo. Right there as plain as the nose on your face. They’ve been moving the Selitrium as an undeclared good with the regular provincial caravan, which has a special exporter license. Because they explicitly do not ship goods between provinces, they aren’t subject to normal searches or tariffs. Look at the dates. Each shipment leaves a day or two after an attack. As regular as Incanto clockwork, just like I said. And the route they take?” He fumbled for a crudely drawn map of the region. “The caravan departs from here for Lysahven, then onto Halgem, Belmonk, back around the mountain and to Ironmoor again. Two weeks,” he said with a triumphant grin. “That’s how long the route is. Two weeks.”

A stood and ran a hand through my hair, blowing out my cheeks.

“It fits,” I said in a soft voice. “Like a glove. Your book said that the Hexblight needs to feed once every few days, but what if it’s been covering its tracks by spreading out its kills? Maybe it picks off some beggar in Lysahven, then bides its time until it gets to Belmonk and strikes again. Hell, it could even be preying on travelers moving in the countryside. Commander Arendu had mentioned something about there being bandits in the area when I first got here. What if its not bandits but the Hexblight, disguising its kills.”

“Of course,” Arturo said, nodding along in agreement, “but then the real question becomes, why strike here in such a bold fashion? I would’ve heard about similar attacks in neighboring cities, yet no such rumors have reached my ears. Which means the creature is taking great pains to hide its kills abroad. But not here. No. Here it strikes every time it returns, does so in the open, and it clearly has an agenda.” He motioned to the ledger with the workers listed out. “Every attack has been perpetrated against either a worker or one of their family members.” He paused, his lips turning down into a frown. “Except one. The girl from the bathhouse who was killed. I can’t seem to find any tangible connection.”

That was strange, but obviously there was some piece of the puzzle I was still missing. We now had means and opportunity, but I still couldn’t get a bead on the motive. Why was the Hexblight acting in the way it was? Why was it choosing victims largely connected to the mining operation? I didn’t have an answer to either question, but if anyone would be able to tell me it was Captain Ervo. He knew about the mines, was complicit in the Selitrium exports, and was part of the caravan. Right now, he was my number one suspect.

“What time is the caravan due in?” I asked.

“Later this afternoon,” Arturo replied.

This was it. I was close—circling the drain. “Then you need to get your battle rattle on, Padre. We’re going to pay Captain Ervo a visit.”

***

By the time Arturo had his ritual bag ready to go and his armor in place, it was close to dusk. The caravan had pulled in not long before, the dust from their wheels still floating on the air like a dirty cloud.

Captain Ervo wasn’t hard to find.

He was making camp with the rest of the caravan guards, a little ways from the rest of the merchants. They were just near enough to the town to have easy access to fresh bread and decent booze, but far enough away that their midnight revels wouldn’t bother the decent, law-abiding, sundown-means-sleep folk of Ironmoor. The caravan guards all eyed me and Arturo sideways as we tromped into their camp, but none of them said anything. They just stared daggers at us while they continued to lay out lean-tos and bedrolls with practiced ease while a smattering of children scampered about, laughing and playing.

Ervo stood out like a torch in the dark. He wore command and authority like a cloak.

He was grizzled and grim in the way that old warriors are—cross-hatched about the face and neck with a wicked red scar that ran from the edge of his greying temple, down across his cheek, ending beside his mouth. He turned icy, pale blue eyes on us and I knew this was a guy who meant business and wasn’t afraid of anything. He had a limp and a grimace, but that didn’t stop him from striding away from his covered wagon and shooing the children from the entrance to their camp.

“You’d be wanting to know the way back to the village, right-quick-smartish.” He had an accent I hadn’t heard before. No, not just an accent. His idioms were different. Good thing the old noggin translator was working full blast or I’d have taken him for a midday drunk.

You’re not needed here, the words meant.

“You can’t talk to the Vigil like that…” Arturo was puffed up and ready to throw down before the fight had even begun. If what I suspected was true, then Arturo’s anger was warranted, but this interview required finesse, not fists. At least not yet.

“Just wanted a moment of your time, nothing more.” I didn’t bother trying for a smile. A man like Ervo craved respect, not friendship. Questions was, how far was he willing to go in order to garner that respect? Would he kill? Would he willingly make himself host for a monster? “We have questions about the creature that’s been murdering folks around these parts.”

Ervo flushed red, his hand instinctually moving to the saber at his side. The ornate pommel said it was decorative or ceremonial, but those scars on his face and hands were real enough. My guess was the man knew how to use the blade at his hip. He slid his fingers down and wrapped them around the grip. “Is the beast abroad, then? In daylight? It’s grown bolder ’n bolder, if that be the case.”

“You tell me,” I said, very deliberately not summoning any of my weapons. I wanted to keep his guard down for a long as possible. “You travel these roads and byways. Where did you last hear tell of the creature? When? Who did it kill?”

Ervo’s hand relaxed, but his eyes narrowed.

“Word around these parts is that it’s an Elder Changeling. As for the killings, there’s been too many to track over these past four or five months,” he growled. “It’s feasted on many a man and woman. Is this not known? Does not the God of Five Faces bring the Vigil to vanquish it?” The smirk he wore said in no uncertain terms that he thought I was full of shit.

He was trying to bait me, and I wasn’t going to bite. Let this dickwad bump his gums all he wanted. I had a job to do, and he wasn’t going to rattle me that easily. “Look pal, just tell me what I want to know, and I’ll be on my way. Nice. Simple. Easy.”

“Could be, there are some as says you should’ve finished the task by now.” He hooked his thumbs into his jerkin, like it was his job to lecture me about my calling. “Not as I would join them…” Liar. “But the creature has already jousted with the Vigil and bested him. So they say. Not I, you understand, but them as trade in gossip when they’re about their cups.”

This guy was tap dancing on my last nerve and wasn’t offering me a straight answer to save his life, which made me even more suspicious. Even with Master Mentalist, this guy was a tough read. I was sorely regretting that I didn’t have Honeyed Words at my beck and call. I sure would’ve liked to drop a goddamned truth bomb on this asshole.

“Look, goat humper,” I said, dropping all pretense of civility. Fuck it, I didn’t need magic to get to the bottom of this situation. I’d beat an answer out of him if that’s what it took. “Let’s stop beating around the bush here.” I reached into my bag and pulled out Gustav’s ledger, the one with C. Ervo written on it in Gustav’s flowing script. I dropped my voice, “I know for a fact that you’re a dirty piece of shit and that you’re on Gustav’s payroll. I know you’re breaking a bunch of Kingdom laws to illegally export Selitrium.”

His face drained of color with every word—the cockiness in his demeanor vanished, replaced by fear.

“I also have a hunch that you’re the monster I’m hunting.” I reached out and summoned my Soul Bound axe. It appeared in hand with a flash, the wicked half-moon blades glimmering with otherworldly orange and yellow light—pent up fire Essence from the Arcanum Token. “If you aren’t guilty,” I said after a beat, “then now would be a real good time to speak up for yourself, because if you don’t, I’m gonna pass judgement on your smarmy ass right here and now. Do we understand each other?”

He was trembling now, terrified to his core. Good. He should be.

“Please, please don’t,” he stammered, his eyes as wide as they would go. In that instant I knew two things: One, I’d just put the fear of Raguel into this guy and he was going to tell me everything I needed to know. And, two, he wasn’t the Hexblight. The confidence and defiance fled at the mere implication that he was the creature—he was guilty, we both knew it, but every fiber of his being wanted me to know he wasn’t guilty of that.

“I never wanted to partake,” he said, dropping his voice low as he cast a quick look around, searching for anyone who might be able to overhear our conversation. “You must believe me. I never wanted any part of Gustav’s operation, but…” he faltered, glancing down. “But I had no choice in the matter. I have a family in the next town over. My wife’s dead, fifteen years now, but my daughter is there, along with my grandson. He’s sick. An alignment of the blood. The Church won’t help and the tinctures to keep the disease from spreading is more than I’d could ever make on my own.”

“Let me guess,” Arturo said, hands planted on his hips as he stared at the Caravan Guard, “Sigge is making the brew in exchange for services rendered.”

“Aye,” Ervo replied. “I lost me eldest son only a few years after, died from the Bonesnap Epidemic. Me daughter and me grandson, they’re all I have left. I’d do anything to spare me girl from the pain of losing a child. It breaks a piece of you. So I agreed to smuggle their damned Selitrium, even though I knew it was trouble. Everything that comes out of those mines is tainted. Blood cursed. This creature that hunts Ironmoor, you mark my words, it’s justice come to find us for our misdeeds. For what we did to the Iskrati family.”

“The Iskrati family. They’re the Rjuhella immigrants that got blamed for the mines drying up the first time around, right?” I asked.

“Aye, that they were. And all that evil can be laid at the feet of one man—the very same man who now profits from the mines.”

“Gustav Hultgren,” I said.

“One and the same,” Ervo confirmed. “He was the Magistrate back in those days, but he’d been appointed to the office less than a year when our luck turned sour. The people of Ironmoor, they would’ve laid the blame at his feet and he knew it. He conspired with Sigge Wikstrum, had the alchemist cast bones in a public display. Sigge, he was the one what pointed the finger at the Iskrati family. Named the mother as Scion of Isabella the Ghostblood—a dark sorceress sent to ruin our town. But it was Gustav who was pulling Sigge’s strings, just as it has always been.

“It was all lies, of course,” he continued. “The Iskrati family were lovely people. The father was a cobbler. Would have been perfect for a mining town. We wore clogs, you know? With steel toes. He’d have made a killing if he’d moved here at a different time.” Ervo offered a sad smile, his eyes watery with unshed tears. “They had no magic—just the bad fortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with hope in their hearts. The idea that she was a sorceress is laughable. I’ve seen the damage a Scion can do firsthand.” He reached up and ran a finger down the scar on his face. “I’ve witnessed the carnage they can unleash. As though a group of peasants with pitchforks could kill a sorcerer armed with dark magics. Worst of all, they did it in front of the daughter. She was so little. Not higher than my knee. A bloody, senseless tragedy.”

He leaned over and spit into the dirt, a disgusted look plaster across his face.

“What happened to the girl?” I asked. “Did they kill her too?”

“That’s the only silver lining,” he said, “if there is any silver lining in this story. I stole her away myself, while the mob was busy passing judgement on her folks. Took her to the orphanage in Lyshaven myself. Poor sweet child. And what did the murder of her parents accomplish? Not a bloody damned thing. The mines never did reopen. The curse was never lifted, if there was a curse at all. And the people responsible for the death of her parents are the very same people profiting from those mines. Shameful and I’m no better than they are.”

“I knew those asswipes were at the center of this.” I growled shooting a look at Arturo. My gut burned with a hateful need to find Gustav Holtgren and Sigge Wikstrum and make them pay for what they’d done. I’d always been a sucker for balancing the scales—and the scales in Ironmoor definitely needed balancing. This was why I was here, not just to stop the Hexblight, but to right a hellish wrong and make sure that those in power paid for their crimes. I was here because Ironmoor required a Vigil’s Justice, and I was ready to dispense it at the end of a shotgun barrel.

It was time to make things right and although Ervo wasn’t the monster, I knew exactly who was behind the mask. Now all I needed to do was lure them out into the open. And I knew exactly what to use as bait. Or rather, who to use.