Ylia was true to her word, providing Telos with clothing—a fine leather tunic and britches—and directions to Midnere.

  “A man’s clothes, Ylia?” Telos had said, with a cock of the eyebrow. “How scandalous!”

  She’d grimaced like the joke was old.

  “If you must know, they belong to a dead man.”

  “Delightful.”

  When he asked again about a small sum of coins to help him get along, she had smiled sweetly and told him that Urgal was very hungry this morning. He’d swiftly backed down, settling for a bowl of porridge before he set off.

  It was early, still dawn, and the birds were singing their chorus. Even Telos’s cynicism was not the equal of that sound after days in songless incarceration, with only the squeaking of rats and sobbing of inmates for company. He felt its beauty suffuse him and give life to aching limbs. They talked only a little over breakfast, Ylia giving him a final piece of advice in reaching Aurelia: “Ask for Gryll at the Dragonport,” she told him. “He asks few questions and can get you on a flight to Aurelia.”

  He finished his porridge and went to the door. He felt strangely sad to be leaving. It is not so strange, he thought. She is a gorgeous woman who has shown you kindness. Thoughts of marriage or settling were ever far from Telos’s mind. They seemed absurd. But looking at Ylia, he could almost picture it, could almost taste a homely life, a life centred in one place, with one family. Dreamstuff. He shook himself. Such a life was not for him. Not yet, anyway. And certainly not within range of the prison.

  “You won’t reconsider coming with me, then?” he quipped.

  Ylia smiled.

  “I’d usually say ‘May the gods watch over you’, but it seems you’d probably rather they didn’t look too closely.”

  Telos grinned.

  “I’m truly grateful, Ylia. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for here.”

  Before she could query him on exactly what he meant, he slammed the door in her face and set off at a pace down the forest-road.

  He did enjoy having the last word.

  Only when he rounded a soft bend, and the House disappeared from sight, did he retrieve the bag of coins from where he had secreted it in the crotch of his new britches. He grinned ear to ear. A free man and a rich man. All in a night’s work.

  He had noticed the previous night how Ylia’s eyes had flicked for just a moment to a particularly loose looking floorboard when he mentioned money. When he was certain she slept, he’d crept over to the spot, plied the board soundlessly open, and found a stash worthy of an emperor beneath. Considering how much was in there, he thought 200 Demons was a relatively modest sum to take, all told.

  All he needed to do now was get to Midnere, purchase a horse there, and rid to Gorgosa. Boarding the next dragonflight available, one organised by the understanding Master Gryll, he would be in Aurelia—and beyond the Warden’s reach—within three days.

  Whistling with joy, he was about to count his bounty one more time when he heard voices and footsteps. Years of listening for watchmen had trained Telos’s ears to know a threat before his brain had caught up. He darted from the road into the bushes and lay low and still. He’d often in times past wished he was a taller, broader man, but in moments like this his smallness was a boon.

  Clip clop, clip clop. Not footsteps, he realised. Horses.

  Three mares trotted down the road, coming from the direction of Midnere. Men in armour were mounted on them. They had domed shields strapped to the saddles, long spears resting under their arms, nets with barbed hooks at their rim, and a team of bloodhounds racing ahead of them on long leashes.

  Uh oh.

  Telos recognised one of the men: Grygory. His brow was furrowed and his teeth gritted.

  “I told you that he could not have gotten that far,” one of the other soldiers said. He had an eyepatch and looked older than the other two, vaunting his experience.

  “Better to be sure,” Grygory said. “We already underestimated him once.”

  “What I would give to see the Warden’s face though.” This was the third man, much younger than the other two. Eyepatch and Grygory looked at him sharply.

  “Watch your tongue, lad!” Grygory snapped. “And believe me: you wouldn’t. Never seen the Warden like that. Hope I never do again.” Grygory looked down at the dogs, who were roving left and right over the path, sniffing frantically. Telos was rigid, every muscle tensed to bolt, but strangely, the dogs did not seem to be picking up his scent. They veered, went feral at random patches of grass, then strained at the lead to run in opposite directions.

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  “Something has thrown the dogs off,” Eyepatch observed.

  “Magic?” Young Man proposed, sheepishly.

  Neither of the others shot him down. Grygory sniffed.

  “Could be, I suppose. Anything is possible after what I saw.”

  “Tell us again, Gryg!”

  “Shut it, lad. There’s a time for tales and this is not it. We need to keep focused. The Warden will kill us if we don’t find him.”

  “Why isn’t the Warden out here with us?” Eyepatch asked.

  Grygory swallowed. He knows but he won’t say, Telos thought. That did not bode well. The Warden was cooking up some scheme for his capture. Telos had to be careful, now. He was not out of the woods yet, figuratively or otherwise.

  “If memory serves, there is a House nearby. Perhaps he stopped there?” Young Man posed.

  Eyepatch spat.

  “Don’t be coy with us boy, you remember the Lileth-blessed titties of the woman who runs it.”

  Young Man’s face turned an almost dangerous scarlet.

  Lileth was the Goddess of Love and Lust. Statues always depicted her with an obscene bust. Naturally, her temples were the most well-attended of all the pantheon.

  The hounds were frantic.

  “These are no use,” Grygory sighed. “So we might as well search the House.”

  Telos felt the twin scorpion pincers of guilt and foreboding. Grygory was certainly not a monster like some of the other guards, but he and his ilk were hardly pleasant. They would ask Ylia difficult questions. And no matter how much one tried to cover up evidence, something always remained. Telos had learned that no footstep was entirely without impression.

  But you cannot go back, that would put you in needless danger. Besides, Ylia was hardly without defence. Telos reckoned the cat, Urgal, was more than a match for three guards if things turned ugly.

  The guards jerked the reins of their horses and kicked their flanks. The mares accelerated into a canter and then a gallop as they stormed down the road.

  Telos breathed a sigh of relief.

  Rising, he dusted himself off. Now that the search parties were turning back from Midnere, his plan looked even more promising.

  Within a few hours he reached the outskirts of Midnere, although in truth the whole town seemed an outskirt, a pretty series of concentric paths orbited by quaint wood and brick houses, and a single line of dishevelled shopfronts that formed a “high street”. A wagon bearing fruit and grain trundled along the dirt road, drawn by a massive destrier. Merchants yammered from under yellow awnings, mostly selling baked goods and food. One crone sat by a table piled high with clothing she had knitted, alongside more curious trinkets. Beyond her was another House, rather less grandiose than Ylia’s, but with an adjoining stable.

  Telos could not help but be intrigued by the crone’s wares; he was all-too-aware of how his money-bag bulged and was slightly drunk with the power of it.

  He wandered up to her table, attempting nonchalance. She grinned at him, displaying one proud tooth, like the lone peak of Anpa sitting amidst pink valleys. Her two sets of wares seemed entirely at odds. The hand-sewn vestments were pretty to the point of being saccharine, decorated with flower designs and bees and bunny rabbits. But her talismans, on the other hand, had a more baroque look about them. Most were metal-wrought statuettes of the gods, though these were grim, scowling versions of the familiar pantheon. Each god was accompanied by symbols associated with their domain: owls and crows for Nereth, Goddess of Wisdom and Cunning; a clawed gauntlet and hammer for Beltanus, Lord of Creativity and Forge-fire; a sword and wolf for Talon; a sickle and sheaf of corn for Eresh; an hourglass for Koronzon; and a cup of milky waters for Lileth. They were thorny with imperfections, roughshod from iron, and darkly devotional.

  “Did you make these?” Talon asked.

  The crone nodded.

  “You are a blacksmith, then?”

  “Beltanus granted these hands many gifts,” she answered.

  Telos had to agree. They were beautiful in a macabre kind of way. But he had no use for them. A dagger, he might have purchased, but not baubles. Smiling, he departed the stall and proceeded towards the stables.

  “Are you sure, little man?”

  Telos turned.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you sure?” the crone said, eyeing him intensely. “Are you sure you do not wish to take one?”

  Telos swallowed. He was a rational man but not beyond doubt, especially not when he had seen a man walk through flame. He stared at the talismans of the gods. They demanded he relinquish his money in exchange for protection. A waste of coin, he thought. The crone is a swindler, nothing more. Telos had always maintained the temples and priests were greater thieves than he could ever aspire to be.

  “Be well,” he said, and turned away from the crone once more.

  For the second time, his ears forewarned him of a danger his brain had not yet comprehended.

  He darted into the shadows of the stables and crouched low behind a bale of hay.

  Three horses trotted down the central avenue of Midnere. Astride the middle horse, a black stallion that snorted and spat, was Belt. Another search-party. I really have pissed them off. Telos cursed. If he were to be captured, he would rather it was by Grygory. That’s defeatist thinking, Telos. You can outsmart these dolts.

  Except that Belt and the other were steering their horses at a slow walk towards the stables. They were going to visit the House. Telos cursed again. He shrank back through the stables, keeping low, using hay bales and the bodies of the horses as cover. They snorted and stamped as he passed. One whinnied. But Belt did not seem to notice. He and the others were talking to the stablemaster, who had returned from somewhere else. They were haggling.

  Telos did not stop to see what would happen. He vaulted the fence at the back of the stable and paced down into the woods beyond. Midnere was not safe. He would have to find his way through Yestermere on foot, then possibly hitch a ride with a wagon the rest of the way to Gorgosa.