They gathered around the largest of the inn’s tables just after dawn, a reluctant morning light threading itself through the eastern windows like a needle through thick cloth.

  The fare, remarkably, was not only edible but commendable: poached eggs done just shy of runny, crusted bread still warm from the oven, butter that had been churned recently enough to taste the effort, and beverages that resembled tea and coffee closely enough to make no quarrel of it.

  That the cook responsible was none other than the innkeeper himself – William, or ‘Billy’, depending on how many teeth the speaker had – surprised everyone. He had reportedly relegated all matters of arithmetic and domestic governance to his wife, a woman with “a head solid enough to balance a tally book on” as the man himself had so eloquently put it.

  No one spoke much. That was not due to any tension between them, but because they were too occupied with devouring their plates like mongrels who had forgotten what salt tasted like. Ethan noted with some disdain – but no real surprise – that Simon had outpaced them all, and was now leaning back in his chair with the glassy-eyed look of someone preparing to beg for seconds. Warren, to his mild credit, had done the same but with less spectacle.

  Across the room, angled shafts of sunlight began to cast long rectangles across the wooden floor, illuminating scuff marks, shoe polish, and the trail of a rat not quick enough to avoid William’s boot the night prior. The remaining five tables sat empty and over-polished, still awaiting paying travellers.

  “Folk bain’t move much after a war,” Billy explained from behind the bar, polishing a pewter with a rag that had seen better centuries. “Wot few still do’ve got nowt. Not even a ha’penny for a night indoors. Pilgrims an’ paupers, the lot o‘ ‘em! Most jus’ sleep in their gravelly carts or the hay.”

  No one contradicted him. He was not wrong.

  The sunlit walls bore an assortment of watercolour paintings: mostly pastoral and profoundly unremarkable. Four depicted the Nightingale Inn across the seasons, the winter piece in particular displaying a snowfall so egregiously exaggerated Ethan could only assume the artist had never experienced real sleet. Mainland Helvecone, unlike Aury Island, rarely suffered snow. When it did, the precipitation resembled vomit more than frost.

  Still, the Nightingale had proven tolerable. Clean. Dry. No obvious fire hazards, nor rat droppings in the rafters. He had expected Mister Best to lodge them in an opium parlour disguised as a hovel. Or a hovel disguised as an opium parlour. This was, comparatively, luxurious.

  “How far is Clayton, would you say?” Lyra’s voice rang lightly, crisp as a coin spun on marble. She addressed no one in particular and every one of them at once. Despite the early hour, she looked irritatingly composed. Mary, by contrast, looked far more visually tolerable than Ethan knew her – he surmised that some combination of cosmetics and feminine conspiracy had been undertaken to produce that result. Warren had been the collateral, doubtless woken early by their nattering.

  The large priest bore the scars of fatigue in penitent silence.

  Ethan gestured lazily toward a garish map pinned to the wall behind her, its ink bleeding in the corners and its embellishments reminiscent of heraldry drawn by a drunk scribe.

  “One hundred and twenty miles west as the crow flies. But we shall be taking the roads through Boulstran and Crystalrock, so expect a hundred and fifty before we arrive.”

  “And the pace?” she asked, already calculating the duration. She had the air of a woman who disliked ambiguity.

  Arthur replied before Ethan could. “Abou’ ten moiles every hour on the gravel ‘til Crystalrock, m’lady,” he chirped over his coffee. “We’ll make our overnight stop there, then carry on up the rocky nor’ern track to Clay’on.”

  Lyra simpered politely, the sort of expression one wore when they had not understood a word. “You are both helpful and gallant, Mister Arthur,” she offered the deeply exaggerated thanks.

  Arthur placed a gloved hand over his heart as though he had been knighted. “Oi does me bes’, m’lady. Born to serve!”

  Simon snorted into his mug but made no comment. He was already mid-way through his second helping of eggs and had the look of a man trying to recall what restraint tasted like.

  “Yer gut’s a right kraken of a pit, it is,” Mary growled, pushing away her plate. “Try not to upchuck on the seats when we hit the bumpy-like roads, yeah?”

  Simon paused mid-chew, made a face that implied deep thought, and resumed eating.

  The light from the windows dimmed gradually, as the clear sky was overrun by fog. Mary stared out at the shifting grey, and muttered something under her breath that sounded too much like prayer to be mistaken for complaint.

  By the time Simon had conquered his final egg, and Ethan his lukewarm coffee, the fog descended in full. The world beyond the inn now resembled an old chalkboard wiped poorly – shapes discernible, but indistinct.

  Arthur fetched the horses, checking their tack and bridle with admirable care. The beasts snorted discontentedly, but obeyed the whip with no issue.

  As the others boarded the carriage, Lyra spotted Ethan ascending to the roof of the coach rather than entering the compartment.

  “Not riding with us today?” she called lightly.

  “Not when Simon has ingested an entire clutch of eggs,” Ethan murmured, low enough that only she could hear.

  She considered the implications for a moment, then turned on her heel and climbed up beside him without another word.

  Arthur clambered into his coachman’s seat and whipped the reins. The wheels groaned as they spun.

  The journey resumed.

  Fog thickened. Conversation did not. Arthur monologued at them often and at length, telling tales of treacherous cliff roads, bandit ambushes narrowly evaded, and livestock rescued from flood and flame. Lyra played her part agreeably – oohs and aahs in all the right places. Ethan found a small book in his cloak pocket and indulged in reading.

  “What is that that has you so engrossed?” Lyra asked after he had been silent for some time.

  He shifted his hold on the book slightly so the spine was legible: Ser Scott. The Knights of the Plume.

  “An old story, is it not?” she said after reading it aloud. “I have heard of it.”

  “Medyeval gravel, thac be,” Arthur muttered, squinting. “Baron used to talk abou’ it. Real honour an’ chivalry an’ wot have’ee. Wrote by some poncy lord wi’ a quill up his arse.”

  Ethan turned the page. He did not respond.

  Arthur took the silence poorly and withdrew into a hush. The next stretch of road was mercifully quiet.

  Several hours passed before the peace was interrupted by shouting from within the coach. First Warren’s pale face emerged from a compartment window, his eyes pleading with heaven for clean air. Then came Mary’s from the opposite end.

  “Simon, ye bleedin’ swamp-bellied, fangtooth sea devil! One more puff o’ that stench and I’ll fuckin’ gut ye like the lamprey y’are!”

  Warren said nothing, too busy gasping.

  Simon but laughed, immune to his own poisons.

  Ethan glanced at Lyra. She met his eyes with a smile both wide and genuine and collapsed with fitful laughter, muffled by her sleeve and Mary’s continued indignation. Ethan allowed himself a half a smile – it had been a simple precaution, but no less satisfying for its success.

  Eventually, the fog began to lift, revealing rolling fields, pastureland, and farmsteads so weathered they looked like they had been carved from the soil itself. Cattle stood motionless under the sunlit cloudbreaks like supplicants to some bovine deity. Their lowing mingled with the clatter of wheels.

  “What is that?” Lyra pointed at a squat, ugly structure in the distance – a cylindrical brick tower capped with iron rods.

  “Optical telegraph,” Ethan replied, barely glancing up. “An imported idea – or stolen, rather – from Falchovarii. It functions via an intricate system of pulleys and arms; positioning them in prearranged manners produces coded messages. One would need the right book to decipher it.”

  “Clever,” she whispered.

  “They are replacing equine messengers. Cheaper to feed. Less prone to rebellion.”

  They passed several more of the things as they continued. Each one posted like a mute sentry between the scattered signs of civilisation.

  The landscape passed in long swathes of sameness – fields, barns, smoke-billowing chimneys. Occasionally, a cluster of trees stubborn enough to have survived His Majesty’s navy-building efforts.

  Arthur’s good humour returned. His storytelling resumed, this time with a new theme: the divine superiority of Clayton.

  “Clay’on mines? Richest iron in th’ world, mark me!”

  “Clay’on cliffs? Nothin’ like ‘em, not in all o’ Omoritsi!”

  “Clay’on folk? Noblest nobility an’ ‘ardest labourers what ever sucked air, Oi swear it on me mam’s grave!”

  Ethan tuned him out again. He had a talent for that. Not unlike tuning out gun reports.

  Yet the coachman invariably lapsed into a semi-mournful stupor for at least half an hour following any reference to the late Lord Stonewater. Ethan occasionally considered feeling guilty about murdering the baron. Thus far, he had resisted the temptation.

  By the time the carriage crested the last bend before Crystalrock, the sun had disappeared beyond the hills, its last light dragged down behind the southwestern horizon. A pall of twilight wrapped the land in soft gloom.

  Crystalrock itself was a fraction the size of Oaleholder – perhaps a tenth by population – but still claimed the ignoble title of second-largest settlement in Helvecone’s Omoritsian territory. Where Oaleholder trafficked chiefly in cottons, yarns, and various products imported, boiled, stamped, and resold, Crystalrock had once taken its pride from heat, hammer, and metal.

  Originally founded atop veins of gold, silver, and copper, the mines had been emptied almost a century prior. A minor diaspora had followed – pioneers radiating outward in search of new veins to appease the city’s forge-bound appetite. One group struck north and found iron and lead. That outpost, buried in soot and damp air, became Clayton.

  Clayton now functioned as a pit of muscle and ore extraction. Crystalrock remained the town of flame and crucible, where smiths and metallurgists turned the raw into the refined. At least, that was the prevailing wisdom in Crystalrock.

  Arthur, of course, objected.

  “Clay’on’s no scrapheap, Oi tell‘ee! Bain’t needin’ no Crys'al puffers to justify our mettle! We break rocks wi’ pride, we dig wi’ soul, we sweat honest, not like they'm south sooks wi’ their dainty tongs an’ bleedin’ brass spectacles. Oi’ll die on that hill afore Oi says o’erwise!”

  His voice shook with vehemence, though Ethan noted with dwindling interest that the veins bulging in his neck lent more to passion than evidence.

  Crystalrock had, until recently, been the backbone of Helveconean armament production. Muskets, shot, gun fixings. All had poured from its bellows until the Coalition War turned the flame against them. Falchovarii’s Blue Horde had besieged the city at the war's outset, breached its curtain wall with concentrated artillery halfway through it, and only managed to successfully storm the breach toward its end. Three years of war spent besieging a single city.

  They had then spent three days sacking it with the fury of an army who had lost too many men getting there.

  Ethan remembered the numbers from the noticeboards more than the sentiment surrounding them. Over four hundred confirmed civilian deaths during the breach. Upwards of five thousand in the sacking. A dozen of His Majesty's regiments reduced to offal throughout the whole struggle. All standard for a siege operation of that scale.

  Their coach passed through the gap where the gate had once stood. No one manned it now. The war had culled the able-bodied – killed or gang pressed. What remained of the city’s population comprised mostly women, children, and the elderly. An ineffective militia at best, and only a moral deterrent to large groups of opportunists.

  Burned-out husks of buildings flanked the roadway as the carriage moved through what had once been the merchant district. Their dark outlines, jagged and skeletal against the dusky sky, carried the static silence of places that had seen flame. Here and there, wooden scaffolds had been erected, and crude derricks dangled beams above unfinished rooftops. The city was not dead, merely in convalescence. Like a broken sabre waiting to be reforged.

  They did not stop.

  Instead, their carriage rattled on through the far side of the city and out a cleaned-out breach in the opposite wall, following a road marred by wartime neglect. Their destination was not Crystalrock itself, but a roadside inn a mile beyond: The Ashton’s Arms.

  It was a disappointment.

  Where the Nightingale Inn had at least pretended charm – ivy-trained shutters, oil lamps, well-groomed stables – The Ashton’s Arms had embraced decay like an old companion. A squat, two-storey building of once-cut stone now mottled by mildew and moss. Shutters hung uneven and rotted. Two windows were shattered outright. The stable roof had collapsed inward, leaving the feed trough exposed like a ribcage. The lantern posts out front leaned as if exhausted.

  The sun had gone entirely now, and the moon was only a suggestion behind a veil of dispersing cloud. Even so, the state of the building’s disrepair was evident to every eye. The structure looked long-abandoned. Its presence invoked an instinctive weariness among the group, as if the inn itself were some trap left behind by more competent predators.

  Arthur dismounted and stared at the ruin with his eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “Thac inn were clean an’ lively no’ a moon ago, it were,” he muttered. The coachman stepped toward the stable’s wreckage with visible hesitation. Then, in a curious act of caution, turned about and dropped to one knee, ducking beneath the rear axle of the coach and pulling concealed lever under the frame.

  Ethan squatted, observing the man and the undercarriage in silence.

  The mechanism shifted the backstay and seized the axle. The wheels locked. Without knowledge of the device’s placement, a casual observer would assume the carriage had simply broken down.

  Arthur crawled out, streaked in mud and axle grease, and pointed silently at the inn’s door with his protruding chin.

  The rest disembarked. Ethan motioned them to wait, drew his blade and pistol, and approached the doorway alone.

  The interior, beheld in his darkvision, was no better.

  Chairs splintered. Tables overturned. The hearth had gone cold, and firewood lay scattered like dropped bones. Crusted blood painted three of the floorboards. Others had been torn up. A smell of decay lingered beneath the dust, like something once living had tried to crawl away and failed.

  He signalled the others forward.

  “Hello?” Simon called into the dark. “Anyone in?”

  No answer. Just a whistling draft and the soft shifting of wood on wood as the wind toyed with the wreckage.

  Arthur raised his lantern overhead, bathing the room in sputtering golds and yellows. Ethan took note of escape routes – entrance door, kitchen door, two shattered windows. No light sources. Shadows deepened near the bar counter. Possible hiding place, good for an ambush.

  “What do we do now?” Lyra asked, her voice pitched just low enough not to echo.

  They all looked at Ethan. He allowed the silence to stretch for a moment.

  “Arthur?” he asked, lowering his weapon slightly but keeping his grip tight.

  “Bain’t no clue, me ansum,” the coachman admitted. “Was ‘ere las’ month, Oi were. Bright as a fairground, full o’ life. This…” he shook his head. “This bain’t roight. Somethin’ ‘orrible ‘appened ‘ere, sure as pits.”

  Ethan nodded and crouched by a heap of shattered timber, examining it. Blood. He touched it with his little finger – dry, not old enough to fade, not fresh enough to smell. Whatever happened had occurred in the past week. Less than ten days, at the very least. Some of the wreckage had been gathered into a rough pile – an aborted attempt at cleaning.

  “Monstrosity or highwaymen,” Ethan murmured.

  “Monsters of the woodland are long hunted to extinction,” Warren offered, his voice steadier than expected. “Between the Papal Wars and the Guild of Hunting Monstrosities, they have been rendered into trophy pelts and pub house tales.”

  “My thoughts precisely,” Ethan said. “If it was bandits, they will return. Which means we ought not to be caught in the dark scratching our arses.”

  He gestured. “Arthur, Lyra – you are with me. We check the ground floor. The rest of you, upstairs. Weapons ready, look sharp.”

  A voice like a cracked kettle shrieked from the kitchen.

  “Thee’ll stay where thee’m at, thee bleedin’ gockey grockle-shites!”

  They turned. In the shadowed doorway stood a short, round woman with a blunderbuss in her trembling hands. Matchlock, worn, more antique than weapon.

  But still deadly close range. In a confined space.

  The fuse had already been lit. Their position placed them inside the blast cone. Ten yards, open barrel. Whoever she aimed at first would not survive it. Shrapnel tore flesh as easily as vellum.

  Ethan raised his free hand, slowly.

  “Easy. We are guests. No harm intended.”

  He kept the pistol low. If she moved the barrel, he might shoot her mid-swing. It would not be clean, but it would suffice.

  Then Arthur stepped forward, voice raised.

  “Ich ne reckon!” he cried. “Matilda – be thac thee?!”

  The blunderbuss turned toward him. Ethan resisted the instinct to fire.

  Let it play out.

  “How’d’ee know me name, thief?” the woman spat, voice breaking, caught between a sob and a shout. “Wot in bloody ‘ells thee want? Haven’t taken enough, thee bas'ards?!”

  The weapon trembled. The shaking in her hands grew more pronounced. Tears streamed down her weathered face.

  “We’s bain’t bandits, Tilly,” Arthur said gently. “Oi be me, Arthur – baron’s coachman. Arthy! We stopped ‘ere many times, aye? With Lor’ S’onewa’er. Oi know’ee Jack, Oi do. Good as a pitman. Gave me cider to go wi’ oats. How's the ol’ ansum?”

  Her eyes widened with every sentence spoken, blunderbuss sagging. The shoulders followed, tension draining.

  Finally, the weapon lowered entirely and the woman wailed, hand gripping her hair in a clump.

  “Dead, Archie! They’m came an’ killed ‘im, they did! Jack’s gone!”

  After Matilda composed herself sufficiently to speak – at least, to the level Arthur’s Crowg-born ear could parse – the seven of them gathered about the only table in the main room that remained upright enough to support Arthur’s lantern. Its surface bore deep gouges and a dark, sticky patch of uncertain provenance.

  Not blood. Not this time.

  Ethan knew the tale before she had uttered a word. A tale as old as scripture, worn to the bone: a handful of desperate men, too craven for the firing lines but too savage to be orderlies, banded together and descended like wolves upon the soft edges of civilisation.

  Five days prior, a gang of deserters – half Helveconean, half Falchovarian, by Matilda’s reckoning – had drifted into Crystalrock. Scavengers looking for plunder, stirring chaos, squeezing what coin and scraps they could from a town already half-starved of means and morale.

  The locals, though diminished, still possessed the numbers and resolve to force the filth out. Steel and shot were exchanged; the townsfolk bled, but not before airing some brains and lungs of the marauders.

  The Ashton's Arms, however, lay far enough from the town to stand isolated. That isolation rendered it a ripe target. A score of them came down upon it like crows on carrion. They breached the inn, tore it apart, and found Matilda and her husband waiting inside.

  Jack had fired the old matchlock blunderbuss. The discharge tore through three of them – close range always did the trick. That should have been enough to scatter the rest.

  It was not.

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  Instead, they turned on him with manic fervour. They tortured him to death in front of his wife, then spent three days violating her as compensation for their fallen.

  No one had come to stop them. No help arrived.

  A forlorn family of refugees, whose livelihoods had been lost to storms and fire, had been lodging at the Ashton’s Arms – paying in scraps and favours, Matilda said, on their way to Oaleholder. Most of the blood, inside and out, belonged to them. The deserters had dragged the family away into the night when they left – mother, daughter, and son.

  Matilda had not seen them since.

  Even without the burdens of sympathy, Ethan recognised the signs. Matilda’s eyes tracked every shadow. Her shoulders flinched at every creak of timber. She did not sit; she perched – ready to bolt. She was battling ghosts, over and over again, and clearly losing.

  Arthur placed a heavy, calloused hand over hers in a gesture likely meant to comfort. She neither recoiled nor reacted. The touch, like most things now, passed through her as if through fog.

  “Woe befalls us ‘onest folk!” Matilda wailed suddenly, clenching the edges of her apron with trembling fists. “Oh, praise the Lor’ wee Alice done married thac Clay’on lad afore this ‘appened. Oh, Oi be afear’d o’ what they’m lot would've done to ‘er!”

  During their occupation, the raiders had stripped the larder bare, emptied every barrel, broken every chair, every bedframe, every door that might offer rest or privacy. Whatever they could carry, they had taken. Whatever they could not carry, they had shattered.

  There was no food. No bedding. No drink. No hearth. Just a stone ruin that reeked of sour sweat, mould, and drying blood. Ethan had half a mind to call it a night and suggest they move on to another inn – anywhere marginally less despoiled.

  He was not quick enough.

  “We should find and dispatch the bandits,” Lyra declared, with that infuriating gleam of purpose in her voice. Altruism, undented by exposure.

  Warren nodded gravely. “Justice, once deferred, is seldom delivered. We must act while the trail is warm and the cause righteous.”

  “Aye,” Arthur added, his tone darkening. “Oi bain’t takin’ee nowhere near Clay’on ‘til poor Matilda been seen to. Not while she’s all torn an’ tremblin’.”

  Ethan’s scoff was immediate and pointed. “Have the lot of you gone entirely mad? We are not here to play at provincial saviours. We are en route to Clayton under orders of the Crown. That is our mission. Not gallivanting after reprobates through hill and forest.”

  “We can’t just abandon them,” Lyra countered, eyes narrowing. “If we leave now, they’ll be back. And next time, there might be no one left to resist.”

  “It is our God-given duty to do right,” Warren intoned, eyes glinting with holy fervour. “To seek justice and defend the oppressed. We must–”

  “–Help the fatherless and plead the widow’s case,” Ethan cut him off. “Yes, yes. The Book of Isaiah offers some lovely sentiments – all the more noble when delivered by someone who has never experienced being shot.”

  He shifted his weight, expression flat. “I will not let you sink this operation for some na?ve crusade. If the bandits killed this Jack fellow, I assure you, they can kill you just as easily.”

  The argument might have escalated, had it not been for the sudden, jarring chorus of equine terror.

  Ethan turned, hand darting to his pistol. The animals were neighing – high, broken sounds – and the harnesses clattered violently against the posts.

  He knew that tone. Panic. Predators.

  Matilda turned an awful shade of grey, her face draining of all blood. Arthur’s bravado shattered entirely; he was trembling, and no longer made any attempt to hide it.

  Simon and Mary’s hands hovered by their belts. Ethan was already moving. “Arthur, take Matilda and hide her behind the counter. Do not argue.”

  Arthur required no further prompting. He gathered the trembling Matilda beneath one arm and hastened behind the counter, muttering soft nothings in that western brogue of his. The boards creaked treacherously beneath their feet.

  Ethan reached across the table and seized the discarded blunderbuss. It was crude. Heavy. No time to reload if it came to that.

  Still better than nothing.

  He relit the slowmatch fuse using the lantern and handed the weapon to Simon. “Top of the stairs. Wait until they cluster.”

  Simon, without question, took the weapon and scaled the staircase, each board groaning as loud as a pistol report. The old firearm looked ridiculous in his arms, far too heavy for such wiry shoulders – but it would suffice.

  “You three – remain hidden until the noise ceases. Then secure the exterior.”

  Mary gave him a quick nod and vanished into the shadows, behind a pile of debris. Lyra and Warren followed, the latter clutching his rosary necklace with one hand and a ten inch naval dirk with the other.

  As for himself, Ethan retreated into a crevice of charred timber and upturned furniture, barely more than a foot’s clearance, but with clear sight lines to both the door and the window. He crouched, stiletto unsheathed in one hand, flintlock horse pistol primed in the other. Muscles slack, breath measured.

  Heart rate steady… enough.

  Damn, but my foot itches.

  The bandits, for there could be no doubt of their identity, displayed no particular haste. No war cries. No reckless charge. They advanced with the deliberate arrogance of men who had rarely encountered true resistance and expected it rarer still.

  From the sound of it, they had stopped to inspect the coach – likely weighing how many horses could be eaten and how many sold.

  Footsteps eventually squelched across the threshold, boots mottled by the filth of moor-bound roads.

  “Oi, Matilda!” came the voice, theatrical as though delivered upon a penny gaff stage. Sallefove accent – a man from the Island, Helvecone proper. “Saw yer fancy carriage outside, didn’t we? Don’t fret yerself – we ain’t come for seconds. Unless you want some!”

  The bandits laughed loudly. Matilda whimpered audibly. The laughter deepened into something more base.

  Ethan observed from the corner of his vantage as five entered at once. All were armed – muskets slung, bayonets sheathed, pistols holstered. One of them, broader than the rest and missing several teeth, flanked the window. Another trio made for the only standing table, their bodies casting diffuse shadows in the lanternlight, and conversed in hushed tones like gossiping washerwomen. If Simon had any sense he would open fire in a second.

  The fifth, their apparent mouthpiece, stalked toward Arthur and Matilda’s hiding place with swaying steps.

  “Come now, Matilda,” he cooed, his grin audibly wide. “We was a right joy to ye last time, weren’t we? Gave ye more company than poor Jack ever could, God rot his bones.”

  They laughed – sharp and guttural. Matilda began to sob.

  “But we ain’t here fer that. ‘Less ye really fancy it?” More laughter. One spat phlegm onto the floorboards and smeared it with his boot.

  The leader’s voice dropped a shade, like a blade unsheathing. “We’re ‘ere for the pale one. Elf-lookin’ bitch. We saw the coach. We knows she’s 'ere.”

  What the devil is Simon doing? The trio by the table are as clustered as they’ll get!

  “So, what’s it to be, Matilda?” The brute drew closer, hand to holster. “You tell it to us nice – or do we draw it out of ye, same as before?”

  Matilda let out a strangled cry.

  Ethan stepped out of cover and fired.

  The pistol's report cracked through the quiet room like a cannon shot, powder smoke obscuring his sight and stinging his nostrils. The man by the window jerked once and dropped, chest cavity blooming red-black against the soft lanternlight. He fell with a limp thud, bullet likely lodged in the vertebrae.

  A second shot – thunderous and concussive. The blunderbuss.

  At last.

  Simon had fired into the huddle by the table. The closest screamed and staggered backward, half his face a torn ruin of buckshot, one eye pulped and leaking. The second spun as the blast caught him in the shoulder and neck, flesh blooming in a wet spray, then collapsed twitching against the wall. The third stumbled, shrieking, as splinters and pellets tore across his thigh and ribs – not dead, but ruined.

  The lantern shattered in the chaos, plunging the room into smoke-thick shadow.

  Simon yelped as the recoil flung him backward, landed awkwardly on the stairs, and let out a fresh string of oaths. The noise had frenzied the animals outside, their snorting and bucking audible even over the chaos.

  The last marauder – the one who had been advancing on Matilda – froze in place. For a moment, he appeared to be deciding whether to run or fight. Then he reached for his pistol.

  Ethan did not give him the time. He vaulted the debris, landed hard, and rushed forward before the man had drawn steel. The thug managed to pull free a pistol – a deserter, but a veteran one – but not aim it.

  Ethan flung his spent flintlock at the man’s face. It missed – just – but forced a flinch.

  It was enough.

  Ethan closed the distance drove his boot into the bastard’s leading knee. The patella snapped with an audible crack, folding backward in a direction no joint was meant to go. The man howled. Ethan caught his pistol arm, yanked it upward, and brought his knee into the groin. He felt the testes rupture under the blow.

  Flesh crumpled. Breath fled lungs.

  The man spasmed. His finger convulsed on the trigger. The pistol discharged into the ceiling, dislodging a spray of plaster. Then the marauder sagged under his own weight, mewling, one arm clutched by Ethan while the other was torn between reaching for his knee or nethers.

  Mary reappeared by the door, Warren and Lyra behind her. All three moved quickly to secure the perimeter.

  “Nothin’ outside!” Mary called, eyes narrowed, her dagger wet with nervous sweat instead of blood.

  Ethan kicked the bandit leader square in the chest as he let go of him. The deserter crumpled back into the counter with two dull knocks – spine, then skull.

  Not three feet away, the sole survivor of Simon’s blunderbuss – a bluecoat, no less – was reaching for a pistol at his belt.

  Ethan adjusted his grip on his stiletto and flung it underarm at the bandit. The blade entered the eye socket pointy-end first and lodged there. The man’s head lolled back, thudding once against the floorboards, then went still.

  The entire room went silent. The air stank of sulphur.

  Simon descended gingerly, trying to extract a splinter from his backside with one hand and hold the railing with the other. Arthur emerged next, guiding Matilda as though she were made of blown glass.

  Mary inspected the bandit by the window. “Dead!”

  Warren knelt beside the table. “Three dead!” He called, subdued. Then – a wet squelch, followed by a muttered prayer. Ethan’s stiletto being dislodged.

  The fifth – the one Ethan had maimed – still gasped like a fish, his back to the counter.

  “Very good,” Ethan muttered, nudging the broken man with his boot.

  The bandit looked up – mouth open, nostrils flared, lungs failing to draw a lungful of air. Upon meeting Ethan’s gaze, something behind those filthy features finally gave way.

  Ethan grinned.

  The bastard understood. Not the shape of the man before him, nor the circumstance of his defeat.

  Only this: stepping into The Ashton’s Arms tonight had been a mistake.

  A final one.

  There would be no mercy.

  While Ethan conducted the interrogation in the scullery, the others busied themselves hauling splintered furniture, scattered rubble, and blood-slick corpses out of the inn.

  They had not volunteered to assist Matilda with cleaning duties – on principle, most would have refused – but the disquieting symphony beyond the broken kitchen door made manual labour suddenly desirable.

  It began with blunt impacts: dull thumps, punctuated by breathless grunts and loud expletives. These were tolerable. Familiar. But then the tempo shifted. The dull thuds gave way to slick, suctioning squelches. The cursing became pleading. And soon after, a broken scream so raw it drew tears. Not out of sympathy – though some might claim as much – but simply from the piercing pitch of it.

  Simon made a few jests at the prisoner’s expense early on. They fell flat. After the scream, even he fell silent.

  By the time Warren reached the end of his third prayer, they had cleared the parlour of visible gore. That was when Ethan reappeared from the kitchen’s shadowed archway, face like slate. He moved with composed, unhurried purpose, and not a speck of blood had touched his clothing, save for a drying flakes on the knuckle of one glove.

  “As expected,” he intoned, voice flat and free of inflexion. “Falchovarian agents employed these men to retrieve Lyra. Their lieutenant has confirmed the location of their camp.”

  His tone did not waver. It was the even cadence of a man discussing the weather.

  “Yes, we shall be killing them after all. No, not out of moral obligation, but because they will pursue us should we fail to eliminate them. Arthur, prepare one of the horses. We shall take the lieutenant with us. I see no reason to believe he lied, but I promised to do to his cock what I did to his forearm, should he have done.”

  Arthur blanched. His mouth worked once, soundless, then he nodded and vanished towards the half-collapsed stables.

  Matilda did not share the other’s unease. When Ethan dragged the broken man into view, she spat squarely in his face. The bandit gave no response.

  The marauder was, in a clinical sense, intact – but only just.

  The nose was absent. Cut away, piece by piece. In its place, two gory sockets wept blood and mucus.

  His left leg dragged behind him bonelessly.

  Both arms had been wrapped tightly in what remained of his own cloak, though one could still see the shine of exposed tendon beneath the makeshift bandages.

  Not a word escaped him. Not a breath of protest, nor a groan.

  His eyes wore the glassy look of a plaice on a fish rack.

  Ethan and Warren unceremoniously lifted him onto the horse. The man flopped over the saddle like a butchered deer.

  “We shall be walking to their campsite,” Ethan said at last, voice no longer sombre but hard-edged and precise. “Thirteen deserters, if the lieutenant spoke truth. We number five. Caution is paramount – we will retrieve Mister Best’s arms from the carriage and prepare ourselves accordingly.”

  Richard Best, true to his promise, had hidden a modest armoury beneath the carriage benches. Two crates of muskets, pistols, sabres, powder, and shot – enough for a half-platoon. Ethan took inventory with brisk authority.

  “Simon. Warren. Two muskets each, two pistols, and a sabre. That is the weight of eight men's lives slung from your backs. Do not miss.”

  They nodded grimly. Simon, for once, offered no quip.

  “I already have my rifle and horse pistol,” Ethan added, reloading with practised economy. “Lyra. Mary. A musket each, bayoneted. Two pistols apiece. Anyone comes toward you, you fire first and question later. If they somehow close the distance despite that, point the bayonet at them and retreat. One step at a time.”

  As the others readied themselves, Ethan conducted a final inspection of the carriage’s underbelly – and there, beneath a false panel, he found a pair of wooden boxes cushioned with straw. Inside, a dozen cast-iron grenades lay dormant.

  He drew one out gently, turned it in his palm.

  Standard grenadier issue. Flint-struck fuse. Black powder charge. Designed for His Majesty’s grenadiers to act as shock troops almost a century ago. Largely fallen out of use now in favour of broader firing lines and volley fire. But outside a battlefield?

  They grenades could cause quite the shock indeed.

  His expression shifted – just slightly. A tight, feral grin. Not joy.

  Anticipation.

  Arthur and Matilda would remain behind. She was in no state to fight; Arthur was too craven to participate.

  Ethan looked skyward. The clouds had cleared. The stars and moon hung bright and high – perhaps two hours to midnight. If all went to plan, they would be back by two after it, with time left for six hours’ sleep.

  He allowed himself that hope, nothing more.

  With a quiet sigh, he reached into his cloak and retrieved his tinderbox. Inside were strips of matchcord, cigar spills, spare flints for his pistol, and a collection of gazette bound papelates his had rolled in advance.

  He took one out and looked around. No flames anywhere – no matter. A larger piece of flint was embedded into the tinderbox’s side, and he sparked it with steel until a cord of slowmatch caught, then used it to light the papelate.

  Leaf’s getting old, He thought with a grimace. As palatable as a dog’s arse.

  Their prisoner was gagged with a strip of his own bloodied shirt. It was a formality. The man had made no sound since the scullery. Ethan doubted he ever would again. According to his information, the camp was less than an hour’s walk west, away from the gravel roads. The path was rocky, worn thin by wind and rain, not carriages. Progress was slow.

  Ethan briefly wondered how the bandits had planned to transport the carriage themselves. He concluded they had not. Planning required thought.

  Simon began complaining fifteen minutes into the march.

  “My feet hurt.”

  “I’m starvin’.”

  “This fuckin’ hill never ends.”

  “Are we there yet?”

  He repeated the last one often enough that Mary threatened to use her bayonet on his tongue.

  An hour passed. They reached a cliff's edge. From their vantage, the camp lay some one hundred and fifty yards away – three infantry tents arranged around a bonfire. Ten to twelve figures moved about the blaze, laughing and bellowing, their voices rising into the night like smoke.

  The deserter lieutenant stirred at the sight – just slightly. A flicker of life in his clouded eyes. He stared at the bonfire.

  “Stone me crows,” Ethan said softly, patting the man’s blood-caked cheek. “You told the truth after all, you Sallefove prick. Much obliged.”

  The prisoner blinked rapidly. Tears rolled down his noseless face.

  Ethan drew his stiletto.

  “Unfortunately,” he continued. “That also makes you a clype. And clypes, by their very nature, deserve no mercy.”

  He drove the blade behind the man’s left ear, into the mastoid area. The point slipped past bone, through cartilage, inside the brain.

  He twisted. Once. Twice.

  The prisoner convulsed. Once. Twice.

  Then movement ceased entirely, body sagging. Blood, frothy and thin, bubbled down and around his ear as Ethan withdrew the stiletto. He wiped it on what was left of the deserter’s shirt.

  “Right,” Ethan said softly, turning to the group. “Let us decide on a plan of action.”

  No one spoke. No one questioned the execution.

  In the stillness beneath the stars, he outlined his strategy – clearly, calmly, with the dispassion of a man preparing a tax ledger rather than a massacre.

  The air smelled of pine. And smoke. And something faintly metallic.

  Blood.

  There would be more of that soon.

  Ethan crouched behind an outcrop of lichen-slick granite, his Elsian silk cloak draped loosely over the stone to prevent slippage.

  He braced his left elbow atop it, steadying the barrel of his riflebore flintlock while he fine-tuned the alignment sights – rear notch and front blade, perfectly married upon the centre mass of his distant prey. Down the rocky slope, barely outlined in orange by the bonfire’s blaze, his companions crept into position like hesitant shadows.

  They had expressed concern regarding their visibility when he had outlined the ambush. He had dismissed them. Men fixated on their own revelry rarely looked beyond the ring of firelight. That, and the human eye fared poorly against flame after dark. In this regard, he held the advantage. Darkness to him was not blindness but clarity.

  His left foot began to itch. Again.

  Cardiac muscle thudded in his chest with unbidden anticipation. His palms had grown clammy despite the cool air. The mind, that traitorous nag, whispered of contingencies, failures, blind spots. A pointless exercise, and he knew it. Anxiety was but the herald of action – so his father had told him, in that gravelled baritone more accustomed to negotiation tables than parlours.

  It would pass. It always did. The moment lead flew and bodies fell, thought would vanish and precision would remain.

  He narrowed his gaze at the camp. Most of the deserters loitered around the fire, telling one another crude anecdotes as men with no future often did. A few had withdrawn to their tents, likely inebriated. One wandered to the camp's periphery, unlacing his breeches with the firelight on his back. Ethan itched to take the shot but restrained himself. Premature fire would cost them the element of surprise, and first contact was paramount in any successful ambuscade.

  So, he waited, still and silent, as the others took position.

  They moved with adequate coordination – slow, concealed, and predictable. The grenades, hidden beneath their cloaks, came to hand. Simon’s flint sparked first. A moment later, the man pivoted and cast the iron canister directly into the bonfire. Warren followed with admirable speed, his grenade vanishing into the largest of the tents. The women struck flint simultaneously, tossing their own ordnance with varied precision – one into the coals, the other into another tent’s shadowed mouth.

  Then came the roar.

  The grenades exploded one after the other with concussive ferocity, fragments of cast iron rending flesh in all directions. Screams cut through the night – short, shrill, some halted mid-breath by rupture or shrapnel. The two grenades that found the bonfire scattered searing embers and splintered firewood across the camp. A flaming log landed squarely atop the leftmost tent, which smouldered for a moment before igniting with shocking rapidity. Fire consumed the dry canvas greedily, casting new shadows upon the chaos.

  Wood smoke fell before the stench of saltpetre.

  Ethan did not hesitate. He inhaled, adjusted for distance, wind, and movement, then squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle barked.

  One hundred and fifty yards across uneven ground, with only the backlight of fire and his own greyscale darkvision to guide him, yet the outcome was inevitable. The round struck the right upper hemisphere of his target’s skull, pink and grey cranial matter fountaining out along with bone fragments. The corpse fell backward, twitching once before becoming inert.

  He lowered the rifle’s butt to rest atop his knee and reached for one of the ten paper cartridges, prearranged on the stone beside him.

  He eased the cock to half-cock and pulled the frizzen back to expose the pan, bit the twisted top off the paper-wrapped cartridge, and poured a priming pinch of black powder into the pan with the leaden ball clenched between his teeth. The pan closed with a metallic snap.

  Then he let the stock drop to the ground, tipping the remainder of the powder down the rifled barrel. Spitting the ball into his palm, he wrapped it with a greased leather patch and seated it over the bore. The ramrod, already loosened, drove the ball down with two quick strokes. He returned it to its channel, aimed, and fired again.

  Barely half a minute from discharge to discharge. Slower than a smoothbore musket, certainly – but a smoothbore could not have unerringly struck the heart of a marauder from this distance. On this night, he would take lethality over haste.

  A second wave of grenades sailed into the camp. Shrapnel burst like iron hail, puncturing lungs, arteries, eyes. The screams now included gurgling. The sulphuric stench of rotten eggs thickened, clotting in his nostrils.

  Ethan resisted the urge to gag.

  From the furthest tent emerged a broad-chested figure – likely their commander – bellowing orders and dragging cohesion from chaos.

  That would not do. Ethan aimed centre mass and fired.

  The shot struck and the man folded backwards into the canvas, only his boots poking out, legs spasming like a fish on a hook. Then stillness.

  Always stillness, in the end.

  From the perimeter came the reports of musket and pistol fire. Some bandits attempted flight, breaking into the dark. They were met with deadly prejudice – Lyra, Mary, Warren, and Simon waiting with loaded barrels and cold steel.

  He saw a deserter rush past the volley and tackle someone to the ground. The arm rose, steel glinted in its grip.

  Ethan squeezed the trigger. The flintlock reported loud and bright. Smoke plumed out the rifled barrel. The deserter’s head snapped to the side in a spray of brain and bone.

  The marauder collapsed, blade falling from his hand.

  Within five minutes of the initial grenade volley, the engagement was concluded. Thirteen bodies lay strewn about the scorched earth – fourteen, should one count the lieutenant Ethan had discarded at the precipice.

  He rose without ceremony, donned his cloak, slung the rifle across his back, and gathered the three unused cartridges from the stone. Then, with silent economy, he mounted Arthur’s horse and spurred it into a light canter down the slope, hooves thudding loudly against rocky soil.

  His companions had gathered at the centre of the camp, prodding the fallen with bayonets to confirm their status. The caution was not misplaced. One of them uttered a yelp when stabbed.

  “This eel’s still breathin’!” Mary called out.

  “Fucking kill him, then!” Ethan shouted back, still reeling with adrenaline.

  The bandit in question was stunned by concussion trauma and barely alive. Blood streamed freely from his nose and ears, the tympanic membranes likely ruptured, and his balance centres decimated by overpressure. His attempts to raise his arms in self-defence were sluggish and ineffectual.

  Mary hesitated. She held the bayoneted musket aloft, but her arms trembled. The man whimpered beneath her, eyes wide, brown irises misaligned.

  She froze.

  Ethan stepped up behind her, placed a hand atop the musket’s butt, and pushed down. The bayonet slid through the bandit’s orbital socket and inside the skull, rupturing the frontal lobe and burying itself in the interior plate of the skull. Death followed immediately.

  Mary turned to him, her eyes as wide as the marauder’s had been. He said nothing. There was nothing to commend or criticise. If she wept for a murderer, that was her burden to carry.

  Ethan noted the discolouration along her jaw – purple, fresh. A blow. She was the one a deserter had tackled and almost killed. A strange coldness spread through his chest at the thought, but he did not allow himself to dwell on it.

  “Search the tents,” he said plainly. “Take Warren and Lyra with you.”

  She nodded stiffly and fled.

  He crouched, patting down the corpse’s pockets. The usual detritus: a few coins, a silver button, a golden tooth – not his own – all sewn into the lining rather than carried in pockets. Standard fare for a soldier, even a deserter.

  A scream pierced the air. Lyra. Another followed – Mary this time. He rose immediately, pistol drawn, and advanced on the source.

  Lyra was trembling, barely upright, supported by Mary, who appeared to be faring little better. The scallop girl raised a shaking hand and pointed at a tent flap.

  Ethan entered.

  The tent interior still stank of sweat and unwashed leather, now cut by the coppery tang of blood and the decay of ripened flesh. A body lay near the entrance – the marauders’ commander in a threadbare green coat with an ensign’s braid sloppily sewn at the shoulders. Likely looted from his superior after a knife in the back – Ethan could not imagine a commissioned officer would ever stoop to desertion.

  But it was not his corpse that had drawn screams.

  At the far end of the tent, two smaller cadavers lay side by side. A woman and a girl, prepubescent. Both were naked save for the remnants of torn linen. Both bore the physical evidence of recent assault.

  Ethan came closer.

  There were deep contusions across the thighs and hips, matched finger-marks along the wrists, and blood dried in concentric rivulets between the legs. Scratch wounds marred their cheeks, suggesting a struggle. Shrapnel had punched into their abdomens and flanks, yet the wounds showed no haemorrhage – the injuries were dealt post-mortem.

  He knelt beside them and opened the young girl’s eyelid. A light blue iris, not unlike his own, stared back at him sightlessly. The cornea was clouded with a thin film. He took off his glove and touched the neck – cool, no pulse. Trying to move her arm availed nothing. Rigor mortis had set in; the limbs were stiff, but not bloated. Hypostasis visible on the torsos, but no pronounced mottling in extremities.

  Dead eight to twelve hours, he estimated. Insect activity has not yet commenced. They died well before the first grenades fell.

  The woman beside her – presumably her mother – was much the same, give or take a few hours. The missing family from the Ashton’s Arms, or so he guessed. No sign of the son, though.

  Probably carrion by now, lying in some dyke.

  With his conscience creditably clear, he searched their clothing and found something inside the lining. Crudely sewn into a fold of the torn shirt was a child’s ring – silver, engraved with a name.

  Lisa.

  He pocketed the trinket and stood. The dead marauder yielded nothing of significance, save for a key strung around his neck.

  Outside, Lyra stood still. She flinched as he approached, which made Mary flinch right beside her. He delivered his findings with his usual unceremonious tone.

  “They were not killed in the blast, if that is your concern. Time of death predates our arrival in Crystalrock.”

  Lyra exhaled sharply. She did not thank him. She simply nodded and wiped her face with her bloodied cuffs.

  The search yielded little else of note. Most provisions had been destroyed – burnt, ruptured, or trampled. One bottle of wine survived, but only briefly, as Simon drained it before anyone else could object. It was neither the first nor the worst of his offences.

  A charred strongbox, soot-covered but intact, was located in the wreckage of the burnt tent. Ethan contemplated taking out his lockpicking set for sport but the commander’s key fit the lock.

  Inside was the marauding band’s loot: coins, trinkets, heirloom jewellery of golds, silvers, and all else which shone. The gathered spoils of robbery and rape. Nothing sentimental, only what could be sold.

  Ethan locked the box and directed the others to collect any bandit weapons and throw them into the now much diminished bonfire.

  “No sense arming the next pack of bastards.”

  “That’s at least a ha’guinea o’ loot yer burnin’!” Simon objected. “Could sell the lot down by Crystalrock, yeah? Get back some o’ that king’s shilling.”

  “If you are so inclined, you are welcome to carry the entire collection on your back. Alone,” Ethan declared unapologetically. “No? Didn’t think so. Now, burn them.”

  Mary, by virtue of her injury, was given the mount to ride for the return journey – along with the strongbox. She said nothing to either fact. She said nothing at all for the rest of the night.

  Much like the rest of them.

  Their return passed – to Ethan’s ears – in blissful silence. The deserters’ campsite burned behind. No further threats presented themselves ahead.

  It was, by his estimate, an excellent night.

  Arthur was still at the inn when they arrived, coaxing comfort into a weeping Matilda.

  When Ethan delivered news of the bandits’ demise, the woman ceased her crying immediately. She did not smile. She simply stopped. Looked him in the eye and nodded once.

  The group had neither beds nor rations, and it was too late to travel further. They arranged their cloaks and coats on the floor of the ruined inn and lay down amid ash and cinder.

  Cold, hungry, and alert.

  But alive. For now.