Petyr took in the view of the city over the hill, the moon hanging low in the distance. He couldn’t sleep. He never could, before meetings like this. Tomorrow he would speak with the Prime minister, in this house. The diplomatic mission his father had sent him on would be mostly complete, so long as the meeting went well. He wished he could share this view with someone - trees and twinkling lights of distant lanterns and the haze of mountains beyond.He thought of tousled brown hair and freckles on the verge of fading. He had liked having someone his own age around. Someone he actually got on with. Friendship was one of the few things money couldn’t buy and the young noble was pained to feel as completely bankrupt in this one resource as he was.

“Got a new crush, my lord?” Clif emerged from the chamber door behind, interrupted his musing. He still wore a jerkin and armor, but his cloak was absent; Likely hung beside the door. That was the most relaxed he ever was, at least that Petyr had seen.

“You’ve been staring at the sky for a quarter of an hour. I know that look,” the grizzled honor-guard drawled sarcastically, the light from his lamp casting his face in an impish light.

Petyr blushed. “No. I was just thinking it was nice to have a companion who isn’t one foot in the grave, already.”

The burly soldier laughed heartily and patted him hard on the back. “And it don’t hurt if he’s pretty, eh?”The boy-prince shot him a cold look, his embarrassment vanished like a puddle in the desert. Clif eyed him warily, knowing he had gone just a bit too far.

“Just a joke, m’lord. Just a joke.” He leaned against the railing, gazing out on the city that lay just a few leagues away. “Just so you know, the last guest just arrived. From Fellow’s Glen, little village to the south.”

“I didn’t realize we would be sharing our time with local barony.”

“Worse - gentry in elected positions.”

Petyr groaned.

“Well look at it this way, no matter their opinion of Zephyrians, you’ll be downright regal next to a bunch of backwoods gentlefolk. Their blood’s so muddled I doubt they know how to make tea.”

Petyr thought for a moment, then brightened. “And I can find out more about Sephiria. Maybe put their town on my map.”

“Don’t know why you’d want to, but I can imagine they’d be honored. It’ll look good to the chancellor as well, you taking interest.”

The boy thought for a moment, then changed the subject completely. “Do you think he was being serious, about being Fae-touched?”

“Did he say what his malady was?”

Ah yes, Petyr thought to himself. It was always as a curse that the Fae-touched in Zephyrost referred to their gifts. Never a blessing. He wondered if the attitude or the actuality made this true. “Something about sleep. He said he only needs an hour or so. I slept through the night, so I couldn’t determine the veracity of his claim,” he mused. “He seemed to rest well enough though.”

The honor guard rolled his eyes. “He was probably tired from being on the run. Since he’s a wanted criminal.” It was a jab, one that Petyr decided to let go.

“Be that as it may, he was my guest. And he was very pleasant company. A boy like that isn’t a hardened criminal. Whatever those...yokels may think.”

His guard, in a rare moment of tact, changed the subject. ”I encountered them. Once. During the war”.

“Yokels?”

“No, you royal twat. Faerie folk.” He straightened up, hands on the railing.The prince gave him a critical sidelong glance. That petulance in a grown man - it reminded him of his father. When he was a young boy; when the king had been himself. The guard raised his hand, “Honest to Guin’s truth. An Orb opened up over Fort Cloudslaughter. Took out fifteen-hand, as if drawn into a ghostly net by Gibb himself. Then it was gone.I only stayed where I was ‘coz I had been thrown in the brig for drunkenness. Shackles held me anchored to the world.

“Gob-shite.” Petyr had a special love for common vulgarities and this one he applied liberally to Clif’s stories.

“S’Truth. There’s still a hole in the stone of the fortress where the portal opened. When we marched North, into Oria through the Razorfrost pass, we began to find them. The first was our lieutenant. He was cut, but not bloody. Flesh was closed over the wounds. His eyes were burned out without a mark on his face. It was as if he had been boiled and blackened from the inside.

There was a trail of them, all preserved by the snow. One after another, every fifteen steps or so. It was clear they had been dropped weeks before, just after they were taken.

To our horror, we realized that the wounds had healed over. These men had been tortured, dissected like common animals. And then they had been disposed of, mutilated and still living, to die in the snow. And it was done intentionally - breadcrumbs dropped for us to find. It was the most blatant act of disregard the Faerie folk had ever given us.”

“But then, if you were there at a Fae gate, that means that you are Fae-touched as well.”

“Aye.” He looked away, into the distance, “I’ll get to that. See, I was angry then. We all were. And little did we know, but the trail of bodies turned out to be a good thing. We came upon scouts, Oraian traitors who were working for Solaris. They had a camp up on the mountain peak. We spotted it as we found the last body. They tried to slip away from us when we stopped to bury the dead, but the cold wasn’t going anywhere so we stopped digging and gave chase.

They ran nimbly across the crags and razor-thin peaks to evade us - none of our men could keep up. We weren’t from Orai, half of us had never seen mountains until the way. Before nightfall, they would summon the Sultan’s advance guard and my group of forest rangers would not do well on the snow-covered terrain. My superior ordered us to shoot as they ran into the sunset and the men all complied, though they were almost already too far for our short bows to reach. We let loose a volley and our arrows flew, as expected, too short. Except mine.

It zipped through the air like it had wings. Landed squarely in a scout’s back, dropping him from the mountain.

Another volley. All of the arrows fell short, except mine. Again, it lifted and glided squarely into a man’s neck, felling him with a silent scream.

By this time, my superior decided to save arrows. He bade everyone lower their bows, except me. There were three left fleeing, nearly over the crest of the next ridge. They were barely dots in our vision. He bade me fire three arrows in quick succession. All three found their marks.”

“You couldn’t miss.”

“Aye. My gift from the fair folk.” His face took on a grave countenance. “There’s a catch though: I specifically cannot miss when a superior has ordered me to shoot. On my own...well that’s a different story.”

“Not from what I’ve seen.”

The man shrugged. “I’m good on my own, but not perfect.”

“An archer who cannot miss.” Petyr wondered at the notion. “So that’s what got you into my father’s honor guard.”

“And my winning personality got me to the top.” His face broke into a grin.

Petyr laughed. “Fat chance, that.”

“Indeed.” His smile was bright for a moment, but it twisted into a wistful grin. “But that’s the problem, I’nnit. I can’t miss. Ever.” His dark eyes weren’t dancing the way they usually did.

“When would you want to miss?”

“You’ve only been alive for just over a decade, lad. There comes a time in most soldiers' lives when he is told to strike and he hopes beyond all hopes that he will miss. Not every enemy is your enemy, you ken? For kings, I’m told, it’s a much less common occurrence.” He sniffed.

Petyr shifted uncomfortably in the silence that followed. “Well for your sake, I hope your curse runs its course,” he said finally.

“Too late for that, lad.” The guard turned with a look that could have been a grimace or a smile. “Anyway, I leave you to your own devices for the night, your grace. Big day tomorrow.”

“Good night, Clif.”

“Good night, mi’lord.” Clif took the lamp with him, leaving the boy prince to gaze at the thousand stars and wonder at things that older men had already pondered and lost.