Transcribed by Mouse Writ, Seeker to the Old King

Unclaimed East, Age 3.9 U.C.

Your Majesty,

Do you remember the days when we were quick to spring on opportunities? Now everything takes twice as long, and when it doesn’t, I’m harried. Too many memories to sort through every time a decision needs to be made.

I don’t mean this as an excuse for why it’s taken me nearly a year to leave Inlay after receiving your commands. Until few weeks ago, my hunt for the poisoner was nothing more than correspondence with merchants and trackers in the east (letter writing the only part of investigating I have any knack for)—people who are used to having their boots on the ground. Like Murk Lake, the slime; Moonlighters are used to hunting, and that one seems to have a taste for it. And yet, it’s me—your oldest and most accomplished Seeker—that you’ve chosen to send to Unclaimed East on a manhunt. But as you reminded me in your order, it is not my place to question these things. Sometimes I worry you know me a little too well.

A tome’s worth of correspondence letters sent east until one finally threaded the needle. A salt farmer, originally from Squidrich—once in our youth, she spent a spectacular summer failing to teach me how to swim—lives in an in-ground hovel just east of Capelle’s mountains. She cast herself there many years ago when her sister vanished after a storm at sea; it would seem her luck has only gotten worse, because one day while stretching her legs on the slopes of the foothills, she found what looked like a shallow graveyard, unnatural shrubs growing out of each mound.

I had never been to Unclaimed East, but I knew it would be no seaside walk. Travel over the Barrel to Capelle’s Harbor of Jewels is pleasant enough by ship—fleeting, if nothing else—but only birds travers the dunes east of Capelle, the long slopes of the border mountains, and the last lawless little towns claiming to be kingdom-side and spit out the other end looking noble.

My eyes were too dry and my feet too sore to be bothered by the illegible weather-stripped sign posted outside the small collection of residences drilled into the eastern face of the border mountains. I never did catch the town’s name (if it was that), but I can presume it was Lizardpit, or Doomdesert, or something equally as tragic—they do take Calamity seriously out there, though I can’t begrudge them for it. When the view is nothing but low scrubland feeding the flat ocean beyond, it does feel like the sky may fall at any moment.

That evening I asked my friend from Squidrich what she thought of this, as she hosted me under her dug-out roof with a platter of exotic meats she would not tell me the origins of. She only shrugged, and I wondered over her that night, kept awake by the nerve on my spine that refuses to accept circumstance. Perhaps the east’s obsession with Calamity was not what drove her to dig a hole in the least interesting land on the Sledge, and disappear inside.

Perhaps one day soon I will hear what you think of my musings.

In the meantime, I expect you’ve heard by now that the mission did not go according to my plan, nor yours. So, I promise to tell everything exactly as it happened:

A hard night’s rest in my contact’s burrow, and the sunrise found me standing among the last drag of the foothills, searching for a morbid garden. The team of Select you had sent were already picking their way around the poisoner’s body farm when I arrived—murderous little ravens hunting for scraps in their black coats and glassy-eyed masks.

I try to avoid planting myself in the footpath of poisoners, so when I spotted the sprout of a witch the Select had brought with them, watching warily on a hillside, I saw no harm in leaving the dead behind to introduce myself.

“I didn’t expect to find a witch on the hunt.” Never mind that I’ve never seen Talented swallow well with witches around, not even the Select, but the boy hardly looked old enough to fetch me an inkbottle, let alone hunt a poisoner.

“They need me to see the magic,” he said without feeling. His eyes remained trained on the farm below and Select weaving between the scattered grave mounds, inspecting where holes had been dug and plants had been left to dry. “I’m supposed to be looking for traps,” he grumbled, and shot me a frustrated glance from the corner of his eye. “They call me Jem.”

Jem seemed a quill ready to tear through paper if pressed to hard, so I resigned myself to a morning devoid of pleasantries. I sat and stretched the arches of my feet, breathing in air smelling of warm dirt and salt.

By the time the four Select filed back to us, the steady coastal wind was batting grave dust from their dark flapping coats, and Jem had nearly chewed a blister into the hard line of his lip. I clambered to my feet, preparing for introductions, but I was beneath notice. The shortest of the black-masked party stepped in front of Jem, arms crossed and expectant.

“He didn’t leave any magic behind,” Jem reported to the woman, face to her feet. She seemed to be studying him, and he eventually brought his wrist up to rub the crusty dryness of his eyes.

“Good to see I didn’t need to peel your eyes for you,” the woman said, her voice hollow behind the smooth plain of her mask. She snapped her fingers and Jem flinched. Over her shoulder and the other three in her party straightened their spines. “Sniff the permitter for tracks, Wolf, before this wind blasts them away.” One of the Select left to stalk the permitter of the farm.

“We’ve missed him by no more than a day,” I interjected, contemplating how Wolf could spot tracks from behind his bulbous, opaque lenses “My contact spotted a man marching with a shovel over his shoulder headed this direction just yesterday.”

The woman’s masked face slid to me, and I saw only myself reflected in the shininess of her covered eyes. This was no reason to withhold politeness, so I held out my hand.

“Mouse Writ, Seeker to the King. Although today, I suppose I’m more of a bounty hunter.”

Really, My King; even to you, that must sound ridiculous.

The Select gripped my hand in her own briefly before snatching it back into her coat. “The only bounty you will find here, Seeker, is the good grace of your King. And that will be enough.” She pointed at two Select standing silent behind her, though she must have known I had no hope of telling them apart. “That’s Shrike and Louse. You may call me Fly. We’ll do the catching. The boy’s supposed to do the tracking,” Jem swallowed and pulled his coat closer to him. “And you… remind me what I’m supposed to do with you.”

There’s no reasoning with someone who’s only interested in the good grace of her king, so I flicked my pen from my pocket.

“Cataloguing your heroics.”

She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day. I followed along at the end of the party. The six of us had horses, but we led them by the reins as Wolf walked out front, pausing every now and then to pick out the trail the poisoner had left behind him. Jem was next to him, his head gliding side to side as he scanned the landscape for things only a witch can see.

Night descended and no moon rose to chase away the darkness. We built a hasty fire of dried twigs and scrub brush. The Select warmed their hands for a moment before disappearing to their own corners of the camp to eat from their own packs of food without their faces being seen. Jem and I remained at the fireside, but we too ate dried scraps we’d bundled into our own packs—no communal stews when a poisoner’s about.

“How did you find yourself wrapped up in this?”

Jem narrowed his eyes at the fire and coiled his spine. “They brought me,” he said quietly.

“You don’t sound certain.”

Jem wove his fingers together and clutched them in his lap, sitting tense. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

The way he snapped his mouth shut implied it wasn’t an invitation for suggestion, so I tucked my journal away, and resigned myself to a somber and silent journey with my companions.

Fly was the first to keep watch as we slept. Her footsteps were lost to the hum of insects chirping from hidden corners of the plain, but every now and then I awoke having felt a shadow pass over me as she circled. The next time this happened, I squinted a single eye open and caught her silhouette. Yellow moonlight illuminated her gloved hand, tense on the handle of her belt knife. I had to remind my racing heart it wasn’t us she was hunting out in the dark.

The grunt of someone hitting the dirt jolted me awake. I rubbed grit from my eyes and rolled over to see Jem sitting up from where he’d fallen, rubbing a spot on his cheek that was beginning to bloom red. Fly stood over him, her masked face stoic, but her shoulders expanding with furious breath.

“We brought you to do one thing, and you’ve already failed,” she said, her voice flint. Her head tilted at an angle. “I’m not sure you have a reason to be here any longer.”

“I didn’t—I was asleep,” Jem stuttered, and scooted away when Fly reached forward with straight arms, bringing her palms down like she might cradle Jem’s face between them.

It seemed I was needed, so I ignored the creaking of my sleep-stiffened joints and hustled to Jem’s side, bending to offer the boy a hand. He stared between Fly’s frozen palms and my own outstretched one. He was clearly displeased with either offer, but he accepted mine in the end. Fly dropped her hands to her sides, but her face lingered on Jem.

“Has something happened?” I asked Fly before her silence could wind Jem any tighter.

Fly tucked her hands into her pockets and turned to stare in the direction of the sea. The two other Select were crouched over their fourth, who laid on the ground as though still asleep.

“Shrike was on watch this morning. He’s dead.” She turned and her eyes shone my own back at me. “It was the poisoner.”

“How can you be certain?”

Fly’s head rocked to Jem, and he spoke hurriedly under her scrutiny. “I can see the colors of his magic. Now that I’m awake,” he added.

Fly made a wet smacking sound behind her mask and grabbed the fabric of his coat. I followed close to Jem’s side as she pulled him towards Shrike’s body, though I’m not sure what I would have done to intercede had she decided her approach was too gentle handed.

Louse and Wolf rose from their crouches as we approached, revealing their fallen fourth. The black mask still covered his face and not an inch of skin showed to indicate what might have caused his death. Fly thrust Jem forward and the boy stumbled before scanning the corpse.

“It’s right here,” he said and reached a hesitant hand for Shrike’s neck.

One of the two Select—either Louse or Wolf, I’m not sure which—slapped his hand away and knelt to pull back the collar of Shrike’s shirt. Beneath the fabric, the side of Shrike’s throat stretched smooth and bruised over a bulge, just large enough to crick his neck at an angle.

“Check it.”

Before I could comprehend what Fly may mean by this, the kneeling Select pulled a small blade from his belt and slashed straight over the protrusion. I tugged Jem with me behind the Select before anything ghastly could emerge.

. “Be careful,” I warned, but Fly did not look up. The kneeling Select didn’t hesitate to reach into the wound, folding back the flaps of skin to slip his fingers inside to pull forth an object. He held it up for Fly to see and even I couldn’t resist getting closer to discern what it was—a brown speckled egg, too large to have come from a hen.

“A goose?”

The Select placed the egg in Fly’s palm and she stared down at it. A gust of wind threaded the ends of Fly’s coat, and she clutched the egg in her fist.

“How did you not sense this?” She asked, and Jem paled, opening his mouth, then closing it again.

“Poisoners are tricky,” I reminded her. “Their craft isn’t as simple as imbibing potions with magic. Shrike could have walked into a spell concocted to lay dormant until the moon was full, or until after he’d fallen asleep, or until the temperature dropped.”

Fly loosened her grip on the egg before bringing her arm back and tossing it away in an arc. Fly was a Heavy, I realized as the egg disappeared out of sight before touching ground. I released a breath I’d been holding when after a few heartbeats, Fly’s actions triggered no further magic.

“We’ll need to be wary of more than just the magic Jem can see coming,” I insisted.

Fly twitched her fingers and her knuckles popped before she tucked her hand back in her pocket. “I suggest you save your opinions for your letter,” she said. “We’re leaving. Wolf, find the trail.”

The two Select moved to find the trail and kick dirt over the remains of the fire. They paid no more mind to Shrike’s body. Had I not already stood in Fly’s path once that morning, I would have insisted on a burial, but with that frightful mask, I wasn’t sure whether to interpret her silence as fury or simple uncaring. As it was, the next hour saw us following the same trail Wolf had found the day before.

We did not fall into any more traps and Jem saw no more signs of magic for the next two days and nights—not for lack of trying, the poor boy’s eyes were blown bloodshot at the end of each day from studying the landscape so closely.

Sensing that he was the only other reasonable member of our company, I tried to get a better read on him each night after the Select moved off to the shadows, but Jem held his past close and regarded me with more suspicion than I was due. Even the meager conversations I was able to drag out of him ended the moment Fly reappeared. Though she never said anything, it was clear to me she was using something to needlessly threaten the boy (an opinion I thought I’d save for my letter to you).

The third night was approaching, stretching the shadows of the low mountains long onto the plain, and Wolf was stopping every few minutes to find the trail. We were losing our one lead to the wind. But Fly could not be told that. She drove us onwards faster than ever.

Before night could take us completely, a structure appeared dark against the setting sun. The monument grew large—a pyramid stacked of round boulders, either a tribute to Calamity or the remnant of one. At its foot was a steepled house of planks and hide, shadows flickering from the firelight within.

Fly stopped us.

“Wolf, scout ahead, confirm if it’s him,” she pointed at Jem who was chewing his lip, staring at the house on the horizon. “Take the witch with you.”

“Perhaps it would be better for Jem to inspect the area from afar, where he can see magic across the plain,” I tried to say on the boy’s behalf, but Wolf was already walking away, and a single nod from Fly had Jem chasing after him, despite the disheartened twist of his mouth.

I squinted to make them out in the dim. Nearly to the camp, the smaller figure trailing behind which I took to be Jem, stopped in his tracks. Wolf realized Jem had stopped two paces too late. A distant shriek split the night. The hard-cut edges of Wolf’s shadowy figure smoothed and sunk.

“Are they—” I didn’t get a chance to finish asking Louse and Fly what they thought had happened, because at that moment, Jem turned towards the mountains, and bolted.

“Calma,” Fly growled, then she was dashing off into the night as well. I stood awkwardly with Louse.

“Are you supposed to go after her?”

Louse shrugged and began casting about for twigs to build a fire. “I’m supposed to follow her orders.”

Night crept in fully and I was unable to sleep. I paced from one end of the camp to the other, torn between squinting to see wanting to see what had befallen Wolf and not wanting to miss movement that might indicate Fly or Jem returning.

The moon was full and my eyes were growing heavy. Louse had already laid down to sleep when I heard footsteps to the west. Two figures appeared in the firelight. In the front was Jem, one of his eyes black and swollen closed, the other damp and angry and trained on the ground in front of him. Behind him, walking close as a shadow was Fly. At the fire, she shoved Jem to the ground next to me and turned to nudge Louse awake with the toe of her boot.

“Why did you run?” I asked Jem. He only shook his head and looked away from me.

“Start gathering stones,” Fly was saying to Louse as he stretched and climbed to his feet. “Meet us at Wolf’s body.” Louse nodded and lumbered off into the dark.

“Stones?”

“Steppingstones,” Fly said evenly, and kicked dirt over the fire, leaving us in darkness for our eyes to adjust. “Jem’s going to show us where to place them. And then, he’s going to be the first to cross them.”

I looked to Jem to see if he could make sense of this, but he reacted only with a bitter, “Yes, ma’am.”

We got to Wolf’s corpse before Louse did. Corpse may be the wrong word—there was no flesh or bone, only a shining dark stain and black cloth.

“Stop,” Jem said when we were within several paces of the stain, his voice empty as air.

We waited and Louse arrived with an armful of stones. Each one I could have hefted alone, but together they were a load only a Heavy could have carried. Louse dropped them at Fly’s feet.

“Pick one,” Fly said to Jem and pointed at to the monument, the light from the house snuffed out for the night, the poisoner inside it asleep. Jem lifted a stone and stepped in the direction of the death stain, his arms trembling despite its manageable size. “Start laying a path. We’ll follow once you’re done.”

“I can’t,” Jem said, looking from Fly to the monument. Sweat running from his brow and ver his swollen eye. “It’s too far and the magic covers all of it; I-I’ll fall.”

“Surely, it would be more practical for someone with a Talent for strength to complete this. And in the light of the morning—”

“Suggest one more thing,” Fly snapped to cut me off. “And it will be you laying the stones.” I stared at her, mouth agape and most undignified while I tried to find my words again. “The King said you were to be protected on this mission, but I think it’s this story he’s after, not you. What should it matter to him if it’s me who writes it, and not his Seeker?”

Jem spent the rest of the evening laying a path through the poisoned section of the plain surrounding the poisoner’s home, picking up one stone at a time and wobbling out to the end of what he’d already built to place it before returning for another. Louse continued to gather stones and Fly watched on, maybe worried that Jem may try to run again. None of us found any sleep that night

Before the chilled blue of early morning could dissipate under the sun, Jem returned a final time, pale and shaken but finished laying the stone path. Under the light, it became clear that the patch of sand it ran through was pinkish in color.

“Lead the way,” said Fly, opening her arm for Jem. Perhaps now numb to the danger, or simply too tired to protest, Jem turned and began his careful walk along the path towards the house. Fly followed close behind, nearly walking on his heels, seemingly unconcerned with falling into whatever magical trap had liquefied the man in her charge.

Louse followed after me, leaving no room for discussion on whether or not the Seeker would be allowed to remain in the safety of the camp. When the path ended and our feet found solid ground, I was sweating despite the chill.

The poisoner’s house was not meant to be permanent—that was clear once we were closer—the walls held together by wooden splints and cowhide shuddering in the early curls of wind. Next to the house were young sprigs of berries and wildflowers growing from neatly ordered mounds of soil. Another body farm—some of the corpses buried in a layer of dirt so thin, it had eroded away in the night’s breeze, exposing dead parts.

Fly herded us to the side of the monument. Now that were in the vicinity of the poisoner, I found myself walking in Jem’s footsteps. He may not have been able to every trap, but he was safer than the rest of us.

“Tell me what you see,” said Fly to Jem when they had reached the shadow of the monument.

Jem chewed his lip and dragged his eyes from one side of the plain to the other. “There’s nothing, just the field surrounding us,” he said, but hesitated and glanced at Fly’s poised form warily. “I can’t see inside.”

It was from Jem’s face more than her’s I figured she was deliberating whether to drag Jem with them into the poisoner’s lair.

“You two will stay here,” she hissed in a whisper. “You will not make a sound.” She and Louse turned back to the poisoner’s home and spread out to either side. I held my breath. Even with two Heavies, there was no guarantee they’d be able to stop a poisoner without the element of surprise.

Jem shifted next to me uneasily.

“They’re clearly professionals. They’ll end this quickly,” I told him.

“It’s not that,” said Jem, his voice high and quiet. His eyes flitted across the plain and he pointed to a spot in in the distance. “The magic was weakest there last night. It’s worn off by now.” He gripped me by the elbow, his fingers cold and bony even through the fabric of my coat. “If we run now, they’ll be too busy dealing with the poisoner to catch us.”

“Why are you trying to run away?” I winced and gestured to his bruised face. “Aside from the discernable.”

Some manic energy that had been shining through Jem’s tired eyes recoiled, and he go of his grip on my arm..

“Who are you to them?” he asked as he backed away. “Aren’t they making you dig?”

At that moment, wood snapped as Fly and Louse ripped the house open from either side. The leather split and unfurled over the small room within, containing stacked notebooks, small white animal bones littering bloodstained dirt, a raised workbench holding a host of vials and silver knives, at its corner, a tangle of shelled insects with beaded, coiled tails scrabbled over each other at the shock of sunlight. In the center of it all a white sheet fought against a doughy figure sitting bolt upright, looking between Louse and Fly closing in from either side.

I remembered that Jem had asked me a questions, but the boy was gone. Footsteps mussed the pinkish dirt across the gap in the poison field. Already he was disappearing over the gentle slope of the hills. He had been right—the Select were too absorbed in handling the poisoner to notice he’d fled. And it was no time to distract them.

Fly and Louse circled the poisoner like they might a field mouse. The poisoner heaved in panting breaths, each one shuddering loudly through his broad chest. He watched them from under a sandy mop of bangs and slowly reached down to untangle his legs from the blankets.

In a single blink, two things happened. The poisoner ripped something from under his thigh and drew it over the meat of his inner arm. Rabid at the movement, Fly whipped her arm forward, a flash of silver flying from her fingers and cutting across the poisoner’s cheek, slicking his face red from a cut just under his eye.

The posioner yelped and tumbled from his cot, landing in a pile of bloodstained sheets clutching his face. The Select pounced as one, the glassy eyes of their masks cool and unblinking. Behind the cot was a dusty tangle of limbs and shouts. One of the poisoner’s socked feet struck the leg of his workbench and the cage of insects cracked against the ground. The scorpions spilled forth, scrabbling for the shadowed crevasses of the monument. I pulled myself onto the nearest boulder to avoid them.

There was a frustrated grunt amidst the tent. The poisoner thrashed and bucked, but the two Heavies held him firm, Louse gripping his legs to keep him from kicking and Fly standing curled over his head, where she’d planted a boot on the back of his neck. His cheek was slicked red from the cut just under his eye, the blood weeping into the wiry tangle of his beard.

Fly tugged the edges of her gloves firmly down her wrists and wiggled her fingers.

“No more tricky things from you, eh?” Fly leaned weight onto the boot at his neck. He hissed into the dirt, the deep lines of his face twisted in fury, but he kept his mouth clenched shut.

Fly cocked her head, but when he remained silent, she shrugged and eased off his neck. The poisoner twisted with limited freedom and flailed his arm to try and dislodge Louse from his legs, but the big man caught his fists and pressed them together behind his back.

“Be sure to gag him,” Fly told him, and bent to pull a rope which had been holding the structure together from the wreckage. She flung it to Louse. “I don’t care if we need carry him to the King bound on a platter; things have already gone wrong enough to put up with more poison.”

I cleared my throat and Fly’s head swiveled to where I had slid from my perch on the monument’s boulder, the scorpions now hidden from sight. Her mask drifted to the footprints across the plain to the hills beyond, all signs of Jem gone from the horizon.

“You did nothing to stop him,” she said, her voice deceptively even. I’m certain if I could see her face, she would have been licking her fangs.

“Your orders were to stay quiet, my lady,” I reminded her. Fly’s fingers twitched as they had the moment before she’d thrown her knife at the poisoner. I don’t have the reflexes anymore to be picking fights with Heavies, but my mouth thinks its younger than it is. Fly’s arm jerked and I flinched back, but instead of palming a knife, she brought her hand to her own throat and squeezed.

Air wheezed and gurgled behind Fly, and she whirled back to Louse. The Select remained crouched over the poisoner, who’s hands were half-tied behind his back. He was digging one of his gloved hands into the collar of his shirt, exposing flushed red skin and straining arteries. He choked again and brought his other hand off the poisoner to claw at where his mask was tied behind his head. The poisoner snorted and wriggled from beneath Louse, the ropes shaking lose from his wrists.

He didn’t get far, though. Fly stomped over, kicking Louse out of the way as she went. The big man collapsed into the sand pulling at his mask.

“Don’t,” Fly rasped at him.

Louse seemed not to hear her at first over his panic, but then he clenched his hands into fists and lay flat on the ground, his neck convulsing as he struggled for air.

Fly returned her boot to the poisoner’s back, knocking him flat onto his stomach from where he’d been rising onto his hands and knees. The air escaped from him in a huff of laughter. Fly reached shaking fingers to his face and ran her gloved hands through the blood still coating his cheek. She held it up—a mist was slowly rising from the fluid, distorting the air above it in ripples.

“Could it be shredding your organs?” the poisoner wandered aloud, the smile clear in his voice. “Or maybe it’s strangling you both from the inside out, growing uncontrollably and spreading. Maybe your blood will boil and bubble, blister, and ooze.” He sniggered.

Fly could only wheeze in response, so instead, she raised her fist like she was clutching a hammer and swung it down onto the poisoner’s scrabbling hand. There was the muted crunch of bones beneath flesh and he screamed.

Fly panted, partially collapsed on top of him, her hands fisted in his sleepshirt as though she might try to rip him in half. But the poisoner’s blood was still foaming, releasing toxins around her face. Her chest convulsed and she coughed wetly. Louse lay twitching in the dirt, still apparently watching Fly with what remained of his consciousness.

“I wouldn’t antagonize her just yet,” I said, and the poisoner blinked up at me as though seeing me for the first time. I took no offense—I am used to being overlooking in the presence of more threatening counterparts. “Her blade is quicker than poison.”

With an unexpected flourish of cooperation, a knife appeared in Fly’s hand, though she fumbled it in her grip before pressing it to the back of the poisoner’s neck.

“You’re right, hunter,” he said. “But if I’m dead, who will give them the antidote?” I let my eyes widen, but kept my mouth closed. Sometimes, collecting a story is easy as leaving someone ample opportunity to tell it.

A tremor racked through Fly as she tried to pull in a breath past what sounded like tar in her lungs. The movement pressed the knife’s blade further into the poisoner’s neck, and his smirk vanished with a curse. He pointed a finger on his good hand towards the bottles scattered over his workbench.

“One of those over there… but which one?.” He winked, the action as comforting as a fly’s wing brushing my cheek. “But the others… acids, poisons, nightmares in little bottles.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell us which is which?”

“Not for free, hunter,” he smiled, and Fly, despite seeming to no longer be breathing, pulled her hand from where she’d been messaging her throat to grab the poisoner’s hair and yank, rocking back on her heals with her whole body. He hissed, “Maybe not for a price, either.”

“Not for any price?” I asked and eased my knees into a crouch so to better meet his eyes. “You need only name it.”

Fly jolted as though snapping to from a dream. The leather of her gloves creaked as she fought to keep the grip on her blade, but her entire frame was swaying in a current with no air. Another minute, and the only thing standing between myself and the poisoner would be dead weight.

“You’re looking to hire a poisoner?” he burst out, dirt flying from the heavy roll of his laughter. “Most of my clients prefer not to meet in person.” His moved his broken hand and choked. “And I usually insist on it.”

“Hire is one word for it,” I said, trying to ignore the droop of Fly’s shoulders. This was taking too long. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and estimate how quickly I could dash through the same gap Jem had taken. “You’ll be coming with us to serve the King. Whether you’ll be working from a cell or an estate of your own is entirely up to you.”

“The King? Of Samwhin?” This time when the poisoner smiled, it was sharp as venom. “Known for his generosity, is he?”

“You won’t be harmed. You’ll be doing the same thing you’ve always done. Just on our side of the border, where we can keep you safe.”

The poisoner grit his teeth and shook his head. “I have no ‘side’, only clients and enemies. And clients turned enemies. Sometimes, enemies turned clients.” He shrugged. “The only safe land is no land at all. I’ll take a knife to the back now over an angry mob, or a king’s noose around my neck.”

Louse had stopped moving. Fly’s head had fallen forward, the angle of her spine balanced over her hips the only thing keeping her from toppling. The knife still rested in a groove of flesh at the poisoner’s neck, but her grip looked slack.

“There must be something you want,” I insisted. “You’ll be well kept, given unlimited time and resources.”

“But kept, nonetheless,” the poisoner said.

At that moment, the hilt of the blade slipped form Fly’s fingers. The poisoner heard the clink of metal against gravel and bucked,. Fly crumpled to her side, one hand flapping weakly at her throat. The other stretched for the fallen blade.

The poisoner ignored Fly and rolled to his knees.

“His mistrustful majesty wants a poisoner,” he said slowly, glancing to the westward mountains. “Had you been from Capelle, I might believe you, but that’s a little too poetic.” He scratched his beard, then began picking the dried blood clumped under his fingernails. “I already have unlimited time and resources.” He spread his arms wide and gestured to the empty sweep of scrubland surrounding us, the contents of his fingernails black and crusted. “Out here, the Sledge is simple, and quiet. There’s nothing else I want that you could give.”

“Then you admit there is something you want.” My whole body was tensed to run, but Fly’s fingers were still twitching. “Something better than all… this.”

The poisoner eyed me, his face serious, his voice flat as he said, “What every poisoner wants; to be left alone, by any means necessary.”

He opened his mouth and sucked in a deep breath. Though I now realize it was ridiculous, I found myself bracing for dragon’s breath, but it didn’t come.

The poisoner’s face paled, and red bubbled from his lips. He twisted, reaching behind his shoulders. A knife stuck straight from his back, directly between his shoulders. Behind him, Fly’s arm dropped limply from where she’d plunged it. A breath squeaked from behind her mask— if it was her last, she’d decided to take her failed mission with her.

The poisoner’s body convulsed, but I caught him firmly by the meat of his shoulders. I cheld him upright at arm’s length, and held my breath, trying to duck below the trail of poisonous gas simmering from the wound in his back.

“That one’s a Healer,” I rasped, and pointed to Louse. Calma only knew if the man was even still alive, but panic makes humans see what they want to see. I gambled it would be no different for a poisoner. “It’s not too late to save yourself. Just tell me which one is the antidote and he’ll heal you.”

His flesh was cold and sticky beneath my palms, a miniscule layer of skin the only thing separating me from his deadly magic. If I let him fall though, the Select would die, and I wanted at least one of them by my side when I had to explain this whole disaster to you.

His face was white as the sun overhead and shining, his lips blooming re, steam rising from his mouth. When he gurgled unable to get air, a spark of panic flew into his eyes. He glanced from Louse to beside the workbench, where a misty green bottle which I had thought might hold wine had fallen.

I crawled for the bottle and the poisoner folded, boneless and choking. The bottle was half full judging from the weight and secured tightly with a cork. Figuring it was too late to worry about overdoing it, I lifted the lower half of Louse’s mask and poured half the antidote into his mouth. Curiosity nearly got the better of me when I repeated the process with Fly and two golden fangs flashed beneath her lip, but I’ve been respectful of people’s modest for seventy years. I didn’t intend to change then just to see the rest of Fly’s face.

The poisoner was already dead by the time I set the empty bottle down. There would have been no time to save him even if Louse had been a Healer.

His blood was forming a steaming pool from beneath his back, its toxins rising in the wind, so I set about dragging Fly and Louse away from the corpse. Fly, I dropped at the base of the monument in hopes the shadow would keep her cool. Louse, I could only pull two paces before I laid in the shade myself to realign the angle of my back. Louse seemed a sturdy man, he and was fine in the end.

Fly roused around midday, just in time to snatch the last sip from my water skin. Louse sat up to massage his head just afterwards. It was nightfall though before they were well enough to stand.

The pinkish hue had all but disappeared from the sand surrounding the poisoner’s camp, but we were careful to step carefully in Jem’s fading footsteps as we left. From the swallowing shadows of the sloping mountains, something chittered and laughed amongst the crescendo of insects, ready to descend onto the body we’d left behind.

“In case it doesn’t appear in your letter, I intend to make it clear it was not me who let the witch escape.” Despite the unrelenting pace she had set, Fly’s throat was still swollen, and her voice rasped painfully. We were on the long trek back to the nearest mountain hovel where we would stop for the night before continuing into the kingdoms, and even Louse was flagging.

“You had no more need for him, and I was only doing as you told, as I’ve explained,” I said, and then, because my tongue is quicker than my brain when my feet are sore, I said: “Besides, I was growing tired of seeing you treat him like a beast of burden.”

“Not my beast of burden,” Fly shook her head. “The King’s.”

I am in the shadow to the Steps as I finish writing this, My King, the sun baking their stark stony faces. To the south is the Partways Plain, its towering stalks of sledgegrass verdant this time of year, and beyond that, Reefer’s Edge meeting the uncharted ocean. Before me is a line of sledgetrees I know well—the last barrier before the Samwhin Palace completes my horizon.

I expect you know my intentions to return home by now—the wagon train with my luggage from Inlay will have arrived as effectively as any letter.

I’ve been considering whether it was time to return home to your side some years now, but it was this mission that finally set me.

When you convinced me to let myself be sent away, you said it was for stories. But this land has changed since that day nearly twenty years ago now; from your doing, if what I hear is true.

Mistrustful majesty: since returning to Samwhin, it is not only a poisoner I’ve heard call you that. Two ages ago—even two years ago, when you were still responding to my letters—I would have disregarded this as angry talk sparked by a bad crop season, or the ridiculous dread we can’t help but inherently feel as prophecy counts down.

Now, Songsparrow is gone. You’ve never told me if you discovered what happened to her, though you’re willing to risk a team of Select trying to retrieve a poisoner for your leash. Perhaps you find it more thrilling handling hounds that would rather bite you than obey.

I feel more like a hunter nowadays than a Seeker. An old friend in Capelle works closely with the city watch—he wrote to ask me if I knew of a Seeker who’d been lurking around at the time something was slaughtering people in their homes. He thought they might have found the killer’s body buried in the Exterior, and he had questions for this Seeker with the long dark hair and golden eyes.

I always wondered why you insisted on bothering with a Moonlighter. Now, I worry it’s because you knew even then that you were lying to me about why you were sending us out here. About what you thought might be in Badgerpool, of all places.

The time for stories from afar has ended, My King. It’s time to focus inward, on fixing what it may not be too late to save. Calamity is nearing, and though we may not live to see it, for the sake of your people, we must keep the kingdom strong and mobilized. Ready for defense. It will be your son ruling then, or your children’s children, and it will not be in a horror story of magical lights, or mirrors, or disease that he will find the tools he needs to hold the people together. Let us be sure we are leaving him the right tools.

Should this letter arrive in your hands before I do, I suggest using the time left between us to think on what you really want to say to me. And take the sorry state of my knees and lower back into consideration.

Sincerely Yours,

Mouse Writ

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