While Corec and Bobo went into the city, Katrin spent the day practicing on her harp and getting to know Shavala. The elf girl talked about her training as a druid, her brother and his wife and their young son, and a friend named Lele who Katrin eventually figured out was a squirrel. For her part, Katrin admitted she’d been a thief, and that the penalty Shavala had overheard them talking about was a way for her to stay out of prison.

Shavala knew what a thief was, but it was clear from her questions that she didn’t really understand why anyone would steal something. It had taken Katrin some time to explain the events in her life that led up to it, and she wasn’t sure the other woman grasped the concept even then.

Still, after talking to her for several hours, Katrin felt less wary of the elf, and thought they might become friends.

With the warm sun, the shade from the trees, and the chance to just sit and talk and play music, she found herself enjoying the day, in a way that she hadn’t since Barz had been arrested. She felt guilty about that, but she was still working toward a solution for him—if Corec was true to his word.

As the night grew dark, though, she became anxious. Corec and Bobo had been gone for nearly ten hours. Shavala didn’t seem concerned, but Katrin wondered what might have delayed them. Had they decided to stay in the city?

Finally, there was the sound of horses leaving the road and coming toward their camp, which was hidden in a copse of trees. Once the riders were close enough that Katrin could see it was their friends, she relaxed. One of Corec’s magical lights was floating above them, lighting their way.

As the men dismounted, she said, “What took you so long?”

“It’s a long trip,” Corec said.

“Did you find what you needed?”

“I’ve got a recommendation for a wizard. I’m not sure how good he is, since he’s working as a shopkeeper, but we can try it. If he can’t help us, we’ll find someone else.”

Bobo said, “And I spoke to the librarians. They’ll let me in, but at a cost of five silver per day.”

“That’s a lot of money just to look at some books,” Corec said as he unsaddled Dot.

“They do seem more strict than I’m accustomed to, but if it finds your answer, it’ll be worth it.”

Corec frowned. “I’ll pay for one day. Will that be enough?”

“I don’t know,” Bobo said. “We’ll have to try it and see.”

“Are we going into the city tomorrow then?” Katrin asked. Shavala glanced at them anxiously, and Katrin felt bad for her. Despite the girl’s bravado about all the places she wanted to see, it had been obvious earlier that she’d been frightened by the sight of the city.

“We’ll leave first thing in the morning. With the morning air and the breeze coming off the ocean, it should be cool enough for you to wear your cloak and hood, if you’re still worried about it.”

She nodded. “Are you hungry? We ate earlier.”

“We stopped at a street vendor on our way out,” Bobo said. “It tasted wonderful, though I didn’t want to ask what sort of meat it was.”

“It was just mutton wrapped in flat bread,” Corec said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Ahh, I didn’t recognize it.”

“It’s the spices and the way they prepare it,” Corec said. “I’ll take the first watch. If someone comes looking for the horses, we should be able to scare them off without much of a problem.”

“The animals will watch, too,” Shavala said. “I asked them to. They’ll warn us if someone’s around.”

Corec stared at her for a moment, then just shook his head and laughed.

While the others were getting ready to bed down, he took Katrin to the side to speak to her privately.

“I stopped at the constabulary building,” he said. “Your penalty fee is seven gold. If I add together everything I’ve got with me, it comes to just about seven, but it won’t leave me any money to pay the wizard or buy supplies. I think it’ll have to wait until we return.”

She sighed. It had been a nice thought, but dealing with the runes was more important. It would mean she’d have to return to Tyrsall before heading to Circle Bay, but she’d have likely done that anyway, rather than cutting across the countryside.

“How will I go into the city if people might recognize me from the poster?”

“Well, for tomorrow morning, wear your hood up. In the afternoons, when it gets hot, you may have to stay at the inn.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly. Being locked up in the inn for a few days was better than being locked up in prison.

“We’ll only be here for two or three days,” he assured her. “I’ve got a courier job in Dalewood, so we’ll need to make good time. Oh, and if I bring you in when you pay your penalty fee, I still get the bounty.”

She tried to glare at him, but ended up laughing instead. “Seriously?”

“What? It’s not much, but it’ll help. We need the money.”

That was true. “Fine, I guess. I’m worried about Shavala. She hasn’t said anything, but I don’t think she wants to go into the city.”

“She seemed distressed earlier. How was she this afternoon?”

“It got better when she couldn’t see it anymore, but any time we talked about it, she looked worried.”

“I think she needs to be with us when we talk to the wizard,” Corec said. “And she does want to see the city—she’s just new to it. I was a little overwhelmed the first time I visited Telfort.”

“We’ll have to watch out for her.”

Corec nodded, then stared silently into the night for a moment before speaking. “What do you think these runes are? Why is it happening?”

His voice sounded less confident than usual, which was troubling. One of them had to pretend to know what they were doing, and she’d been depending on him for that.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Do you really think I did it somehow?”

She shrugged. “You’ve got two of them that match ours, and it seems to start when you meet someone new.” She tried not to speculate about why Bobo didn’t have a rune.

He sighed. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” She didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so she changed the subject. “I was worried when it got dark and you still weren’t back.”

“You were in Tyrsall for a few days; you know how long it takes to get around.”

“More than a few days,” she admitted. “I grew up here.”

“I thought you were from Circle Bay.”

“I moved there when I was fifteen. My brother and I had trouble with some people in Tyrsall, so I try not to mention that I’m from here. I doubt they even remember me, but I don’t want word getting back to them, just in case.”

“Why act as bards then? Wouldn’t that make you more visible?”

“It was a risk, but we were playing the expensive inns. The people I’m worried about weren’t likely to show up there.”

He nodded. “Anyway, I should have mentioned how long I’d be gone, but Shavala was here, and she’s good with that bow of hers. I figured she could watch out for you.”

Katrin hoped the darkness hid that she was blushing in embarrassment. Corec thought the elf girl would be able to protect her…because she couldn’t protect herself.

#

Shavala forced herself to take a deep, calming breath as they walked down a street filled with vendors hawking their wares. The press of people was overwhelming, but Corec and Katrin were on either side of her, sheltering her from the crowd.

Their first stop in the city had been to get rooms at an inn. They’d left the horses there, in the stable, and Bobo had headed off to the library. That left the rest of them to find the wizard, in the hopes of getting rid of the binding sigils. Shavala wasn’t sure how she felt about that—she liked the mark on her forehead, and the way it glowed, but they’d wanted her to come with them.

At the inn, she’d had a chance to calm her nerves from the ride in, and when they left again, this time walking, she’d managed well enough to start with. The first few streets weren’t too busy, and she’d found that it helped to think of the taller buildings as trees, with tershaya dwellings built up around them.

But then they’d reached an area called the Market District, which was full of shops and booths. It was also full of people—mostly humans and a few stoneborn—all pushing up against each other. Shavala had felt increasingly uncomfortable as people bumped into her, and had started finding it hard to breathe. Her friends had noticed the problem and had taken positions to either side of her.

Concerned by the number of people staring at her, Shavala had started concealing her sigil. She was better at making it disappear than Katrin—who was simply using the hood of her cloak—but if she forgot about it for too long, it would come back. People stared at her ears, too, even though she’d seen two other elves already. One had been a nilvasta who hadn’t noticed her, and the other had been one of her own people. Their eyes had met, and he’d given her a brief nod, but he hadn’t stopped to talk. He didn’t look familiar, and she wondered if he’d ever lived in the forest.

Finally, Corec led them to the left, down a side street. “The Tailors’ Quarter is this way,” he said. “Deshin’s shop should be there.”

This street was quieter, and Shavala was able to relax. “Tailors make clothes?” she asked. She’d never had occasion to use the word in the trade tongue, and wondered if she was translating it correctly.

“Yes. Tailors, seamstresses, dressmakers.” He pointed to a shop window with displays of trousers and work shirts.

“Women’s clothing is farther in,” Katrin said.

They continued walking, and Shavala found her eyes drawn to a shop that displayed only a single dress. The bodice was tight-fitting and embroidered with glittering sequins. The ruffled, floor-length skirt was somehow held outward in a circle, forming a cone. The entire dress was bright pink.

“Do human women actually wear dresses like that?” she asked.

“I think it’s a gown,” Katrin replied, “but I don’t know anyone who’d wear that. Who wears hoop skirts anymore?”

“We should keep going,” Corec said.

“Shavala only has those brown and tan tunics,” Katrin said. “Maybe she should get something a little more colorful.”

“I have other clothes,” Shavala felt compelled to explain. “I just couldn’t fit them in my pack.”

“Yes, but now you’ve got saddlebags.”

“Let’s talk to the wizard first,” Corec said, “then we can come back.”

They found the bookshop a few doors down and went in. There didn’t appear to be anyone else inside, but there were hundreds of books lining the shelves and tables, more than Shavala had ever seen in one place. Elven books were rare, since they had to be carefully copied by hand, but she’d heard that humans had some method for making many copies of the same book. She opened one that was sitting on a table near the entrance, but it was written in a language she couldn’t read. The letters were strangely blocky—even more so than human letters typically were—and the pages had slight smudges of ink. Each page also had a picture of some exotic animal, done in the same ink as the lettering. She thumbed through the book, looking at the pictures.

“Hello!” a man said as he came through a door at the back of the shop. “Welcome to Deshin’s Rare Books. I am Deshin. How may I help you?” He was young and clean-shaven, with blond hair, and his eyes were immediately drawn to Shavala’s sigil—and Katrin’s, once she’d lowered her hood.

Corec said, “We’ve heard you work as a wizard, and we’ve got a problem we’re hoping you can help us with.”

He and Katrin went on to give much the same story they’d told to Meritia, then added Shavala’s part in it.

“Binding sigils?” Deshin said. “I’ve always heard them called binding runes, but no matter. Just a language difference, I imagine. Let me take a closer look.”

He stood in front of Shavala and whispered words she couldn’t hear. His eyes grew cloudy, the irises appearing almost white rather than the hazel they’d been before. He peered carefully at her sigil, then at Katrin’s.

He turned to Corec. “I’ll need to see yours, too, to see if they’re binding runes.”

Corec hadn’t worn his armor that morning, so he could wear a shirt with sleeves that could be rolled up. He did so, and Deshin examined his sigils.

“They are binding runes,” Deshin said. “I can feel the bond between the matching ones.” His eyes returned to normal as he looked up at them. “But you don’t know who cast the spell?”

“It might have been me,” Corec said. “I wasn’t trying to do it, but I might be some sort of mage.”

“Might be?”

Corec held his hand palm up, and one of his lights floated up to hover around the ceiling.

“I…see,” Deshin said. “That’s a mage light, but you’re no wizard. Who did you train with?”

“Nobody. It just started happening. I don’t even know how I’m doing it.”

“Well, that can happen sometimes, but not with a binding rune. They’re too complicated to just appear by accident. Binding two people can take months of work, depending on the purpose of the bond.”

“Months?” Katrin said. “The itching started right around the time we first met, and the marks showed up nine or ten days later.”

“Eleven days for me,” Shavala said.

“Could you have met before?” Deshin asked. “Or could someone have known that you would meet, and prepared the spell ahead of time?”

“We haven’t met before,” Katrin said. “I’ve been in Circle Bay for the last six years.”

“And I don’t see how someone would have known we’d meet,” Corec said. “I was coming back with a caravan from Four Roads, and Katrin had come to Tyrsall unexpectedly. And we didn’t decide to go to Terril until the first runes showed up. Could someone have just chosen us randomly?”

Deshin shook his head. “No. The binding spell has to be prepared specifically for the people that it’s being applied to.”

“Do the symbols mean anything?” Katrin asked.

“The person who creates them decides what they’ll look like. I don’t recognize yours.”

“You said they can have different purposes?” Corec asked. “Can you tell what these ones are for?”

“No. Have you felt anything peculiar?”

“I don’t think so,” Corec said, and looked to Katrin.

She shook her head. “Me either. Can you remove them?”

The man appeared uncertain. “A banishment spell? Or two, I suppose? I can try, but binding runes are tricky. You might need to ask someone with more experience in this sort of thing.”

“How much would it cost for you to try?” Corec asked.

“Cost? Ahh, well, perhaps you could buy a book?”

“A book?”

“I’ll buy this one,” Shavala said, retrieving the book about animals from its table.

“Karsin’s Guide to Rare Wildlife? Are you sure? I’m not sure how accurate the information is—the original is several hundred years old. One of the printers in town got hold of a copy, and decided to block-print it for whatever reason.”

“I like it,” she replied. She’d never seen any of the animals pictured on the pages she’d viewed, but based on their appearance, she was sure she’d heard of a few. She wanted to look through the rest of the pages to see more.

“Well, then, that’ll be four silver,” he said. “It was a limited printing—only two hundred copies.”

Two hundred? Shavala thought about her people’s scribes slowly copying one book at a time, and wondered what they would say about someone making two hundred copies.

Then, she realized she didn’t have her coin pouch with her. It was still hidden away in her pack.

“I’ll get it,” Corec said. “You can pay me back if you want.” He passed the coins to Deshin.

“The banishment spell is complicated,” Deshin said. “Let’s go in the back room, since I’ll need to sit down for it. You probably should as well. If it works, it might make you dizzy.”

He led them to the back of the shop and through the door he’d entered by, into a small room with two wooden chairs, a table, and several stacks of books and papers. There was a staircase leading up, but they stayed in the room. Deshin took one of the chairs, so Shavala and Corec took seats on the floor, leaving the other to Katrin.

“Which bond should I try to remove first?” Deshin asked.

“Hers,” Shavala said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get rid of her own, and decided to wait to see if it worked.

Deshin nodded and faced Katrin and Corec, then started whispering words that Shavala couldn’t hear no matter how closely she listened. This spell took longer than his last, but finally, he finished and sat back in his chair.

Katrin’s sigil was still on her forehead. She glanced questioningly at Corec, and her face fell when he shook his head. He rolled up his sleeve again to show that his mark was still there, too.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Katrin said.

“No,” Deshin said. “It didn’t work. I’m sorry. Perhaps you should ask Rallus or Yelena. There are other wizards in the city, but I don’t think they’ll do any better than I did. You’ll need someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“I was told that Yelena wouldn’t be willing to speak with us,” Corec said.

“Oh, that might be true. Rallus makes his home in the Garden Quarter, but I should warn you, it won’t be cheap.”

“Do you have any idea how much?”

“For a major banishing? Fifty gold, perhaps. Maybe more. And there’s no guarantee it’ll work—I can sense the bond between the runes, but my banishing spell didn’t even see that it existed.”

“Fifty?” Katrin looked stricken.

“What about Yelena?” Corec asked. “Do you know her? Is there any way you could introduce us?”

“To speak to Yelena, you’d need to speak to Duke Voss.”

“The Duke of Tyrsall? Why?”

“She only works for him, or those he chooses.”

#

They spoke quietly after they left the bookshop, slowly walking past the tailors’ shops and looking at the displays.

“What should we do now?” Katrin asked. She carried her cloak over one arm, the day having warmed up too much to keep wearing it.

“There’s no way I’d be able to get an audience with the duke,” Corec said. “And I don’t have fifty gold. At least Deshin didn’t charge much.”

“Maybe we don’t have to do anything,” Shavala said. “The sigils aren’t hurting anything.”

Katrin sighed. “Maybe I just need to keep practicing how to hide it.” She wasn’t as depressed as she thought she’d be. She was starting to get used to it.

“We can look outside the city,” Corec suggested. “Let’s go to Four Roads like we’d planned, get my money so we can come back here and pay off your penalty, and then go to Circle Bay. There must be wizards there.”

“I’ve heard some names down there, but I don’t know anything about them,” Katrin said. She’d never considered that Corec might accompany her back to Circle Bay. Even after his offer of money to help pay off Barz’s penalty, she’d assumed she’d be traveling home by herself. Having him along would certainly make her feel safer on the trip.

“It can’t hurt to try,” he said. “And maybe Bobo will find something in the library.”

They came upon a row of shops that had set up all their wares outside, along the street. Katrin stopped to browse through riding skirts, since the one Corec had bought her wasn’t going to last long if she had to wear it every day. Shavala got distracted by a selection of silk scarves. There was no men’s clothing nearby, so Corec stood waiting nearby.

Katrin was walking over to a dress shop on the other side of the street when she accidentally bumped into someone. She bounced off him and looked up in surprise. The man was tall and had a weathered face. He wore a leather duster and a wide-brimmed hat, and carried a walking staff in one hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed.

He looked at her, his eyes drawn to the rune on her forehead, and he started laughing.

“What?” she said.

He shook his head, still with a wide grin on his face, and said, “Another one so soon?” He laughed again, and just for an instant, a red rune—a simple triangle—appeared on his forehead. Then it faded, and he did as well, disappearing from sight.

“Wait! Who are you? Where did you go?” She spun around, searching, but couldn’t find him.

Turning to her friends, she found Shavala asking Corec’s opinion about a blue scarf she’d draped around her neck. Neither of them appeared to have noticed the man.

#

Bobo returned his fourth book of the day to the shelves, once again with nothing to show for it. He’d been so certain that what he’d been looking for could be found among the hillfolk that once his search there had failed, he’d been at a loss as to what to do next. The library in Tyrsall seemed as good a choice as any—it was almost as large as the one in Matagor, and much older—but one day simply wouldn’t be enough to find what he needed.

Sighing, he decided to spend the rest of the day trying to find some information about his companions’ problem. If he didn’t make some progress, it was unlikely he’d be able to convince Corec to pay for any more time in the library. He went in search of someone to help him look up binding sigils.