Lasgaard led twenty of Freyman's crack troops out a side gate North of Laurentum under cover of night. He held up a faint glow stone and consulted the map again, adjusting their course for a hilltop half a league from the city. He could barely make out a path through the copse of trees, his steps obscured in the shadows, but the moonlit skies were clear enough to guide his way if he followed the stars.

Freyman hadn't given him a name for their contact, but he figured not many mages were wandering around on the top of that particular hill after midnight.

They broke out of the trees and entered a broad, foul-smelling marshland. Soft, sucking squelches sounded at every step. Despite their strict moratorium on making sound, one of the soldiers cursed, fumbling around for a lost boot. Lasgaard couldn’t blame him.

He pinched his nose with his thumb and finger, fighting off the rising wave of frustration. How had he ended up here? He was supposed to be a favored son of the empire, attending soirees and dances with a beautiful heiress on each arm. Instead he was trudging through muck up to his knees in the middle of the night, all in service to a disgraced has-been.

Soft hoots and whistles made his hair stand on end. He knew they were just bird calls, but he still jumped at every sound. The fabled treasures of the Dell'Atti family seemed far away, an absurd dream for a man mired in this mess.

The promised promotion had better be worth it once Freyman seized power. At any rate, Naira LaCosse had all but guaranteed them the key to the Dell'Atti vaults. The elder Dell'Atti was enraptured with her voice and dancing. Even if Freyman's master plan fell through, gold would flow to his friends once more.

And Lasgaard had ensured that he counted among Freyman’s friends.

“Form up. We’re getting close,” he commanded. The troops pulled themselves from the swampy lowlands. They’d show up stinking like wild dogs, but the mage would just have to deal with the insult. The hard part was still to come.

At the end of the path, a row of pine trees ringed the top of the hill like a crown, planted in exact uniformity. The stench of magic leaked from the place. Lasgaard felt his fingers twitch in temptation to ward himself from evil, but he didn’t want to risk further offense in case the mage was watching.

It was always safest to assume mages were watching.

Lasgaard shivered when they passed through the ring. The hilltop invigorated his senses while dulling his mind; he found himself struggling to form coherent thought, like he was trudging through a river of molasses, but he could hear the rustling fabric from each soldier’s uniform and see every blade of grass individually, standing out sharp and clear in the moonlight.

A presence manifested behind him. He turned and bowed, knowing at once it was their mage. Without the boost to his perception, he would never have felt the mage. Fear threatened to claw its way to the surface at the thought, but since he was still alive, Lasgaard reasoned, he was safe for now.

“Your master presumes much.”

The mage’s hard voice shattered his illusion of security. Lasgaard stepped back in alarm, trying to calculate if he had enough fighters to handle the old mage if his displeasure boiled over into violence, but his thoughts slipped away like trying to grasp the wind. Curse the dark arts.

His irritation spoke before his mind could catch up. “Can’t do it, eh?”

A wave of pressure hit him, knocking him to his knees.

“Can you fulfill your end of the deal, or do I need to find a different two-bit con artist?” Lasgaard taunted.

The mage stepped forward, raising his arms. Lasgaard flinched, preparing to die, but the man reached into the sky next to him, his arm disappearing for a heartbeat. A ripping, grinding sound, like bones pulled apart, forced Lasgaard’s hands over his ears.

A tear opened in space. The mage motioned toward the dark rift, and Lasgaard’s troops filed in one by one. He staggered to his feet to follow, but the mage clenched a fist, closing the gaping hole, cutting off Lasgaard from his soldiers.

“Not you. If you want to reach the Bridge, you’ll need to swim.”

Lasgaard cast him a crooked grin. “Who would want to visit the Bridge? I’m going home to put on a kettle of tea.”

=+=

Rhae shivered just remembering the force of the icy gusts that had battered them. The wind tore across the Bridge’s underbelly before they’d had a chance to prepare. One moment she’d been laughing and talking with Errol, clambering across massive cables and girders, and the next she was running for her life, buffeted by cold, spiteful winds as rain pelted like needles, stinging her cheeks and covering her horns with a sheet of ice. She swore the air was malicious; it wouldn’t make sense anywhere else, but here on the Bridge, everything took on a tint of evil.

A group of strangers had swooped down from nowhere to drag them to safety. Rhae had been so excited to meet them! But then they reached a maze-like series of maintenance tunnels and the humans had slapped a pair of chains on her wrists and left her lying in a room so small that she could barely stretch out from one end to the other.

Rhae squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that welled up. She shifted to her other side, trying to stretch her cramped muscles. Why were people so mean?

She flopped around, trying to shift her vantage point to take in the rest of the tiny room, a space not much larger than a broom closet. The quick survey confirmed her deepest fears. All of her instruments were missing. At least they’d lit a little lamp, hanging from the ceiling. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

Humming a comfortsong to keep from crying, Rhae pushed against the rough, pitted wall with her feet, leveraging herself up to a sitting position. She looked around the room again, this time checking for anything she could use to free herself. They’d left only a small bowl with thin gruel, however, and it smelled like seaweed. Who were these strange people, anyway? No one else was supposed to live on the Bridge. Imagine the stories she could tell about running into an entire village of children and warriors.

The shuffle of feet outside her door sent a spike of fear down her spine.

“Food,” a muffled voice called. The faded door creaked open, metal hinges protesting in a cacophony of disuse. A young, smiling girl with brown curls carried a new bowl inside. “Heard you might be hungry. Do you like fish?”

Rhae nodded. She started to respond, but her throat tightened up when she considered who the girl represented. Rhae was still a prisoner. And as nice as the little girl might seem, she was still Rhae’s captor.

The girl wrinkled her nose. “Your horns are funny!”

“That’s not polite,” Rhae said, breaking her silence. “Haven’t you ever met a Qeren?”

“Is that a type of Shrike?”

Rhae shrugged. “I don’t know what a Shrike is, so no. At least, I don’t think so.”

The little girl tilted her head to the side, studying Rhae. “You don’t look like a Shrike.”

“I didn’t think I did!”

“Lucky we found you, then. I’m Loma. Who are you?”

“My name is Rhae.”

Loma put the bowl down in front of Rhae with a bob of her head. Dimples formed on her cheeks when she smiled again. “I’ll come back tonight with another bowl.”

Rhae started to smile back, but her eyes blurred and slumped against the wall. The fetid air and cramped confines sparked a storm of panic. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t . . .