The grandmaster’s office was big enough for a low desk and a meeting table surrounded by cushions. On the wall behind the desk hung a painting of a forest scene—the setting dark with just a hint of a sunbreak in the background and a chliapp lion prowling forward, away from the light and towards the viewer. Tapestries hung on the other walls too—more forest scenes, but nothing as ominous as the lion.

The room’s other big feature was a metal spiral staircase leading up to the second floor. As the others moved towards the cushions to sit around the table, I detoured to peek upward, and saw that the stairs continued up all the way to the third floor and hatch set into the ceiling.

Then, I spotted on the desk what looked like a couple of unideer antlers being used as paperweights, and my hands itched to get a hold of them. Did they have the same Cold Snap spell as Antler-Sensei back home? Or something different?

I must’ve unintentionally wandered closer for a look, because Mumu called, “Eight, over here.”

Oops, everyone else was already sitting, so I scooted towards the meeting table. Mumu had kept a spot open next to her, and I took it.

“Now then,” Silasenei said, looking at each person in turn, “we are all here, so explain.”

“That Borba I talked to you about,” Mumu said, “we believe he’s in the city.”

“And he got in by killing one of my men,” Sondo said.

All it took was a moment before Silasenei said, “Ah, for the soldier’s necklace, to pass through the smoke undetected”

“Yes—” Mumu began, but Sondo interrupted.

He said, “We’ll need compensation for the soldier’s family, and for the Hunter’s Lodge to catch their wayward mule before he kills anyone else.”

Silasenei nodded to each demand. “We will, of course, do what needs to be done.”

Sondo looked directly her as he spoke. “I will also say that Knight Ithia has not been pleased with the Hunter’s Lodge of late. The conflict with the Healer’s Lodge is already complicating life in Albei, and she does not like it when things get complicated.”

Honestly, I didn’t know how he could stay so composed—his eyes didn’t flinch at all when facing the grandmaster. Me, on the other hand, I could barely look at her. Every time I did, I sensed I was being watched, even while her attention was on Sondo. I felt like I was being flayed open for her to examine my insides.

“Borba is one thing, and the healers another,” Silasenei said.

“And the healers will use Borba against you. You know they will. Don’t let them. Better yet, make peace with healers. Resolve both situations, and quickly.”

There was a beat where Silasenei tilted her head, and then she said again, “We will, of course, do what needs to be done.” The faintest upturn at the edges of her lips accompanied her words.

“That’s what I’m damned afraid of,” Sondo said.

Silasenei’s response was as dry as a bone left to bleach in the sun: “Then you should probably have a conversation with the healer’s grandmaster too, yes? About resolving things peacefully.”

“I have and I will again,” Sondo said. He glanced towards Mumu and me, and seemed to decide to continue in spite of our presence. “The soldiers and hunters have long been allies. We’re with you in this, but there are times when you have to give ground to take it later.”

Silasenei’s eyes narrowed, her voice became heated. “And how many of our hunters and soldiers will we lose until then? Too many. Will the healers ever let us have anything that threatens their hold on our wellbeing? Never, and you know it. At some point, Captain, you will need to make a stand, but don’t worry... as always, the hunters will find a way.”

With that, the conversation was essentially over. Sondo and Silasenei talked a bit more, the both of them ignoring Mumu and me, until the captain said his farewells, gave us all a nod, and left.

The grandmaster waited until the door was closed, then a few more moments as she appeared to be listening to something. Then, she turned towards us, her eyes as bright and sharp as her knives. They took in the details of me—the cloak and armor, both damaged by the recent encounter with the cutter hawks; the shock of black hair on my head that wouldn’t be tamed no matter what my family did; and my own curious-wary-anxious eyes that examined her in turn.

Ever since walking into the Albei Hunter’s Lodge, Yuki had hidden themselves away, becoming one with my land, and I folded my spirit around them too.

“Do you need to use the toilet, boy? You look like you’ve got a tree stuck up your ass.”

I sputtered, caught off guard by the grandmaster. My mental preparations for whatever discussion or interrogation was coming next were scattered, which was no doubt her intention.

“That’s better,” she said, her expression softening. “That looks like the face of a boy. You hear me in there, young Eight, in that head and heart of yours? Don’t be in too much of a hurry to be older than you need to be. It’s better to blend with your place in the world.”

Silasenei chuckled at what must’ve been my confused expression. At the same time, a sadness was revealed on her face. Her eyes were still as pointed as ever, but they no longer felt directed at me. It was from this complicated mixture of emotions that she spoke next.

“Your grandmaster is not a fool, and Inleio was my friend. Of course, I’d share a bit of wisdom with his apprentice, with both his apprentices. Do you hear me, Mumu and Eight? A hunter learns the land, hides in the land, and hunts from the land—their weapons ever at the ready. But sometimes the land keeps secrets, and a hunter knows to keep them too.”

Is she... is she talking about Yuki? The advice was general enough, sure, but if you happened to know about Yuki, then it took on a different meaning.

I glanced at Mumu, and it was as if the grandmaster’s words were stones thrown into her like she was a pool of water, the surface rippling as they sank deep within. There wasn’t any guilt, though, and nothing that indicated she’d told Silasenei about me.

But Inleio might have. He’d been a practical man, and I could see him sharing my secret if he’d thought he’d needed to or it served a purpose important enough. I sighed at the thought, and it just so happened that Mumu did too at the same time, rousing from her own speculations.

“Our Voorhei never fails to be interesting.” The amusement on Silasenei’s face disappeared, and her voice became business-like. "But time is short, and you have a man to hunt. The land knight’s soldiers will likely become involved too, but the responsibility is yours.”

“Inleio will be avenged,” Mumu said, clenching her fists in her lap. “I promise it. My Wild Sense won’t work within the city, and my Tracker is useless among so many people, but—” she gestured towards me— “our Eight has an Uncanny version of the talent. There are also his spirit eyes—”

I shook my head. “There are too many people and ghosts. Any disturbances will be lost among them.”

“Still, an Uncanny talent may be enough,” Silasenei said. “The lodge will also listen for news of attacks on animals or people, and share the information with you.”

“You may want to include disappearances with that,” I said. “Borba knows we’re hunting him, and he’ll hide his kills to keep us from picking up his trail.”

“Any serious illnesses too,” Mumu said. “He may mark people with his Siphon, and leave them alive so that he can drain them slowly over time.”

“For that, we’ll have to talk to the healers,” Silasenei said, “which I’d rather not do—the discussions between us are already... tense. But we will find out what we can using our own means.”

“About the Healer’s Lodge—” I started, but Silasenei cut me off with a gesture.

Then, she brought her hands down towards her lap so that they’d only be visible to us, and signed, “Always assume someone is listening.” Aloud she said, “Leave the negotiations with the healers to us. We will do what we can.”

As she spoke, she signed, “We will do what we must, but be careful—so will the healers.”

###

The rest of the meeting didn’t last long, and was mostly filled with Mumu getting reamed for having left Voorsowen in the state that she had. Technically, it was Borba’s family who was on the hook for making reparations for the damages, but people being people, some of the ranchers had bypassed the reeve and tried to get something from the Hunter’s Lodge too.

As far as I was concerned, it was all noise in comparison to the hunt for Borba, so I tuned out and considered my Uncanny Tracker talent instead. Clearly, Silasenei and Mumu had more faith in it than I did. The talent had been useful, sure, but my early dreams of how it worked had proven themselves unfounded.

At the time, I’d thought that it’d work like in some of the games I’d played: that it’d provide an overlay over my vision highlighting signs of my prey’s passage. My expectation was that, even if there was nothing obvious, I’d see glowing prints, smears of color, or something like that.

Instead, what I got was something much more diffuse—a nebulous feeling that was all too easily missed if I was distracted or stressed. Like, for example, when hunting a deadly mankiller.

In my past life, I’d become pretty good at paying attention to my intuition—usually around people but other things too, like the weather and the logistics around filming. Those times could be stressful too, which meant I wasn’t completely unprepared for my current circumstances, but... I just wasn’t feeling confident about Uncanny Tracker working.

It was weird—I usually had a good sense of my capabilities, and had learned to not be afraid of trying new things. Really, that was one of the biggest benefits of growing older—by the time you were in your sixties, you knew yourself pretty well, assuming you’d been intentional about how you lived your life, which I had.

Maybe it was an aftereffect of being drugged earlier? My stomach was still queasy, and I felt washed out, like I’d stayed up a couple of nights in a row.

Or was it my opponent? Borba knew how the Hunter’s Lodge operated. He’d also seen me use my Uncanny Tracker talent, and my spirit eyes too. The former hunter had a solid grasp of my team’s capabilities, which would make evading us... not simple, but possible. Much too possible for comfort.

He didn’t know about Yuki nor that we’d brought Ikfael with us, but I didn’t expect either of them to provide an immediate advantage in tracking him down in a city full of people. I’d ask them for their advice later, but I wasn’t hopeful. Both Yuki and Ikfael were strangers to cities. My sense was that even when Ikfael had lived as Ikiira, she’d been inexperienced.

So, where did that leave me? Nowhere certain. I’d just have to do my best, and see what happens. How did Tegen put it that one time? “Imperfect stones line the Path to Perfection.”

I supposed that included imperfect talents too.

###

Eventually, Mumu and I were escorted out by the grandmaster and brought to the lodge’s lobby. Silasenei didn’t have anything else to say in parting, but gave us each a look full of expectations before leaving.

The other hunters from Voorhei were clumped together in a corner of the lobby, many of them tucked into each other asleep. They looked a proper mess, all of them—travel worn and grimy with dried sweat and mud.

Honestly, even as dirty as they were, I wanted to throw myself into the pile, but I held back. The moment I let myself rest, I’d be out like a light. So I endured, and kept myself upright next to Mumu as she debriefed Dura and Susu. The two team leaders had stayed awake to wait for us.

I could see Mumu running on pure willpower too, but she heard them out and gave them their instructions.

Susu’s team was tasked with arranging our lodgings. There were apparently a number of inns that catered to visiting hunters, and the teams from Voorhei had prior relationships with a few. Afterward, they’d hit the markets. We were still good for provisions, but we’d burned through all our first aid supplies.

As for Dura’s team, Mumu asked them to accompany us as we searched the city for Borba. None of us was in proper fighting trim, so we’d have to make up for it with numbers if we somehow managed to find him.

When I asked if two teams hunters walking the streets would stand out, Mumu told me, “Only a little.” Apparently, it wasn’t unusual for visiting groups to stick together. We’d be marked as out-of-towners, but that’d be obvious from our demeanor anyway.

To me, that meant watching out for pickpockets and higher prices from merchants, which, when I mentioned it to the others, they all just tiredly nodded.

Yep, welcome to the big city. Some things you can count on.

Also, we were instructed that no one was to travel alone; every hunter should always stick with their teams. Just because we were hunting Borba, it didn’t mean he couldn’t hunt us in turn.

Finally, Dura handed me my share of the bounty for the cutter hawks—half an antaak in coins—plus the couple of eltaak I’d loaned him earlier. He told me that the others had agreed to give me a quintuple share in recognition for both playing bait and the healing I’d provided afterward.

There was also a small pouch of silvery nuggets. They were tiny little things, but together the silverlight added up.

That, in turn, reminded Mumu of the silverlight she’d been holding onto from the giant owl hunt, which she decided to distribute even though Kesa’s team wasn’t present. “We strengthen ourselves when we can,” she said, giving me a triple share.

From the cutter hawks, I gained:

133 silverlight gathered. 120 absorbed.

And from the giant owl:

210 silverlight gathered. 189 absorbed.

The combined silverlight fluttered through me, and for a moment I felt lifted up, buoyed by the rush. The air in my lungs swirled, crisp and cold, and the chill seeped into the rest of me, icing my meridians. My breath frosted when I breathed out, but just once and then the feeling was gone. In its aftermath, I found myself reaching after the relief it’d brought.

Yuki and I had tempered my meridians so that they could withstand my lightning-aspected qi, yet the channels still tended to run hot, especially during heavy spellcasting. That was fine really—the benefits were more than worth the occasional discomfort, but things had felt awfully good there for a while.

A notification blinked on my phone:

Aeromancy increased from 5 to 6.

I let out another breath, and thought about the last time I’d gained a skill rank from absorbing silverlight. That had been a gain in my Poison Arts from an undead hellmouth, and it’d triggered a long conversation with Ikfael about the nature of silverlight.

The gist was that the silverlight remaining after death was the ‘crusty stuff’ left over from natural processes converting silverlight into useable forms, but because of silverlight’s nature—it was literally one of the fundamental building blocks of creation—it carried within it memory and meaning.

No souls, thank goodness, but the echo of them made manifest, which was heady stuff and eased my concerns about absorbing silverlight from the fallen. Mostly, anyway. A part of me continued to worry and likely always would. Anything having to do with the dead had been a sensitive topic for my first family, and that had stuck with me through the years. I shook off my thoughts, and noticed others doing the same after they’d absorbed their shares of the silverlight.

Outside, the sun was dropping behind the western wall, casting long shadows across the city. There were still people at work across the Butchery, but a cart traveled from spot to spot to deliver braziers and firewood.

The cart’s driver, an old man wrapped in a coat, called out in a singsong voice: “A fire to light your way. A fire to warm your bones. A fire to see the work through.” The translation into English wasn’t anything special, but in Diaksh the phrases were melodic.

At the other side of the plaza, stalls were being taken down and others put up in their place in what appeared to be a transition from day to night market. Music began to play from one corner, a cheerful tune on flute and drums, and I caught sight of a wheelbarrow full of meat being delivered, fresh from being butchered.

Mumu tapped me on the shoulder, and gestured that we should get going. The plan was to head to the city gate where we’d hopefully we’d pick up Borba’s trail once again.

“Is this wise?” I asked as we walked.

“We left wisdom behind a night ago,” Mumu said, “but we do what we have to.”

“Hunting in the dark, I mean. When we’re all just barely hanging on.”

“The more we let Borba get ahead,” Mumu said, “the harder it’ll be, especially here in Albei. We have to stop him before he can steal any more spells, otherwise he’ll become impossible to hunt.” Her voice cracked then, but she kept going. “He needs to die for what he’s done, and we’ll be the ones to do it. He’s our responsibility, our shame.”

I reminded her: “He fed on the soldier Calfet’s qi not long ago. He’ll have more energy than we do.”

“A person cannot survive on qi alone,” Mumu replied. “They must eat, drink, and rest too. Believe me, Eight, Borba is just as tired as we are. But we must strike before he can establish a place, a... camp in the midst of this wilderness of a city.”

All of that sounded reasonable enough, but I wasn’t convinced—not when the hunters were so exhausted. The rest they’d gotten at the lodge had done them good, but it wasn’t the same as a night’s sleep. And Haol and Tegen were in even worse condition; I didn’t know how they were still moving. They looked wiped—just absolutely nothing-in-the-tank, send-me-home done.

Mumu must’ve seen my reluctance, because she said: “I heard you back at the soldier’s barracks, Eight. I heard you. But now you need to hear me... Borba must die, and I swear by the spirits that it will be our lodge who kills him. This is a family affair, and we will keep it in the family.”

“The grandmaster—” I began.

“She did not love Inleio like we loved him. In this, she is a distant aunt at best.”

“Silasenei seemed more than that to me.”

“Yes,” Mumu said, and I could tell that she hadn’t wanted to agree. “No, you’re right, and we will take her help as it comes, but we still need to catch up to Borba as quickly as possible. We cannot wait, not for anyone. If we do, others may die.”

Which was, yeah—that was a real possibility, wasn’t it? Sondo and Silasenei had both gotten involved in the hunt for Borba, or at least they planned to, but it’d take time for their efforts to show. In the meantime, Borba could do whatever he wanted.

Did Mumu care if some stranger in Albei was murdered? Maybe, but she’d care more that it was a resident of Voorhei who did it. That’d be embarrassing and shameful, and require compensation.

Objectively speaking, a life in Albei didn’t weigh much in Mumu's calculations as a lodge master and human being. It did in mine though, and she knew it. Mumu had gotten to know me well, after all, and while I didn’t necessarily believe human life was sacred or anything like that, I did try to do good where I could. That was just how I was raised.

Now, the definition of good was tricky, given my first family’s influence, but hunting down a serial killer? There was precedent for that—the Midnight Man.

There’d been a summer in my previous life when kids had gone missing, and my family got involved. One, my dad had become friends with the father of one of the victims, and two, mi abuelos saw it as their responsibility to hunt the dark things hidden from view.

Which is exactly what this is, isn’t it? Am I wrong?

Yuki picked up on my thought. You’re not, but this decision still might be a mistake.

How so?

Your family was well prepared for their hunt, but right now you’re not. We’ve recovered enough qi and mana, but Mumu was right about people needing more than that. Your body’s systems are doing things... the chemistry is beyond us, but we can tell you’re not in good shape.

So, we stop Mumu, I thought.

We can’t, Yuki said. Look at her eyes.

There was determination in them—Mumu was prepared to continue the hunt for Borba without me, and she’d no doubt drag everyone else along with her.

How do we reach her? I asked.

We don’t know, Yuki said.

I was at a loss, so much so I even tried to feel out the Relationships skill, in case there was a hint there, but all I saw was a memory of Helen during one of our arguments. She’d had that stubborn, dug-in look she sometimes got. Then, the memory faded with no resolution and no hints.

And Yuki was right too—my body was sore, feeling like it’d been beaten up. My mind too, from the drugs and spells used on me earlier. I wasn’t in any condition to do anything other than sleep, but Mumu was my best friend in this world. She was almost family.

“Is there anything I can say to get you to rest for the evening?” I asked her. “To tackle this again when we’re all fresh in the morning?”

Mumu shook her head without hesitation. Her stride never wavered, and she signed, “Needs must push us onward.”