For Everything There is a Season (Ayla, Blade, Lavinet's Story)

Content warning: brief discussion of virginity, description of bleeding/blood, discussion of nightmares and implied captivity, adult language and cursing.

Part I: The Song Remains the Same

There weren’t a lot of things that Ayla disliked more than silence.

In Jalis, things had never been silent, even when she was in the desert night alone. There had always been the whirring and rustling of things in the dark, the slither and run of creatures with night-glowing eyes, the movement of sand as it released the day’s heat into the air. And her ever-constant friend, the wind.

Silence—true silence, airless, close, dense quiet that made her skin crawl and her eyes itch—unnerved her. It made her feel as if all the air was building up in her lungs, waiting to burst out as a scream, just to have something to hear.

And Blade, her commander—her new employer, leader, and quasi-friend—was nothing if not a man who embodied silence.

Even when he moved, his footsteps never made a sound; he could materialize behind her like a ghost, and she would never know unless he said something. It was funny when it was the greenies, standing around in a gaggle and gossiping, only to be scared out of their skins when their commander stepped into their circle like some dark apparition. But when he’d first emerged from the bushes surrounding their camp, stepping into the firelight without a word—she’d nearly felt her soul evacuate the confines of her body.

Ayla tossed a twig at him, which the Ket caught without looking. He had a little writing mat rolled out in front of him, with a paper resting on top of it; he sat cross-legged, scratching out a message back to HQ in perfect, precise characters. Unmoved, he said, “Is it really necessary to throw things?” Even his voice was quiet, low and even and sometimes so devoid of emotion that she could barely register it, like how old people stopped hearing mosquito noises after a while because they were the wrong frequency. That was how it felt with Blade and her sometimes: they were operating on totally different wavelengths.

Ayla growled at him. “I just think it’s real fucked up that you showed up here without any warning,” she said, picking at a stray thread on her pants. “Me and Lavi’ve gotthis, you know. And how did you even find us, anyway?”

“Fire.”

“What was that?”

“I saw the fire.” Now there was an edge of impatience in his tone.

“What does that even mean?”

He didn’t answer, preoccupied with letting the ink dry on his scroll before rolling it up and sealing it with a tamper-proof device she had never bothered to figure out. He would find a courier in the next town who could ride it back to Haven. At first she thought he was simply too lost in thought to explain his presence to her, to keep track of the conversation—but then she remembered that he could fight Red unarmed while reciting his multiplication tables. The tall bastard. Now he was ignoring her!

Lavinet returned then, placing down the bundle of kindling in her arms as gently as if it were a baby. She cast a cool glance between Blade and Ayla, then sighed and said: “I hoped you’d be getting along better. I’ve been gone half an hour.”

“He hasn’t talked that whole time,” Ayla answered, surly. “He’s ignoring me.”

“I’m hearing everything you say,” Blade said now, putting his scroll in his pack and lifting the lid of the pot hung over the campfire. Aromatic steam filled the tiny glade they’d picked as their resting spot for the night. “I’m just not answering you.”

Ayla glowered. “Ain’t that ignoring?”

“Yes,” Blade said dryly, looking dangerously close to smirking; “I suppose it is.”

Lavinet sighed and arranged her riding skirts around her as she sat down on the log between the Ket and Wind-Mage. Straight-backed, she settled her clasped hands across her knee, as she always did when she was striving to be diplomatic. “Commander, what I think Ayla is saying is: we were rather surprised to find you suddenly popping up in the wilderness like that. We had no idea you’d be in the area, let alone available to join us on our… detour. It’s hardly the kind of task that requires three high-ranking Shepherds, does it?”

They’d been assigned to escort a minor noblewoman, someone by the name of Lady Heloise Somethingorother, a personage of such little significance that even Lavinet had never heard of her. It was standard fare—protecting and ferrying the esteemed Lady Whoever from her remote estate to some other remote place to be married—and typically a job so beneath the Shepherds that it would have gone straight in the rejection pile if not for three things. One, that demons had suddenly begun invading the area around the estate and its surrounding towns, essentially trapping the lady and her family behind their own walls until something could be done about the infestation. Apparently they had already attempted the journey twice and had turned back each time, driven once by highway robbers and then by the newly-appeared demons.

Two: these demons were said to be of a kind “never seen before” by the local folk. Ayla very much doubted any of these bumpkins could tell a demon’s rear end from a horse’s, but apparently the Research division back home was antsy for someone to check things out. Apparently, these new demons were very elusive and hard to pin down.

Three: Lady Whatsit’s father was offering a handsome sum and a small arsenal of magical weapons that his ancestors had confiscated in some skirmish or civil war a long time ago. Weapons that were of much better use to the Order than they were rotting in some basement for some noble children to find, one day.

Add all of this up, and you got a mission that exceeded the standard of involvement set for the Shepherds—even if it was, in its most basic nature, a very common and mundane task. Lavinet and Ayla hadn’t even been deployed to take care of it, originally; they were on their way back from a much more complex mission in Brunen and had gotten the orders halfway into their route home. Since they were the closest to Lady Whoever’s estate, it was decided that they would detour and guide her to her destination, which wasn’t too much out of their way.

Why the Commander had shown up so unexpectedly, then, was the only mystery.

“It’s on my way,” Blade said crisply, and for a moment, it seemed like that was going to be the end of the conversation. But there was always something particularly compelling about Lavinet’s expectant stare—she could get a lot of people to do things just by arching her brow at them—and he relented, continuing: “I had a mission in the North. I received word about the state of affairs back home—who’s out on their missions, the current roster of available officers, that kind of thing. I noticed that you had been given this assignment, and that our routes would join up. So I decided to…” He made a face, a very faint grimace. “Tag along with you. Is that a problem?”

“Well, no,” Lavinet said with a little laugh, just as Ayla was opening her mouth to skewer Blade with remonstrations about how it was a problem, and how they didn’t need him to tag along on such a paltry, chickenshit kind of mission. Did he not trust them? “I’m just surprised, my dear Commander. A man of your considerable talents and abilities… I just can’t see you being interested enough to escort a young lady to her betrothed. Over… what is it, a fortnight, depending on how fast she can ride?” She shook her head. “And if you left us now, you could still outpace us and make it home long before we did. Forgive my curiosity, but what with all of the new responsibilities and tasks awaiting you at home…”

Suddenly she trailed off, and her expression cleared. “Ah.”

Ayla looked from Blade’s face, which remained stoic and impassive, to Lavinet’s. “What?”

Lavinet stirred a little. “I’m sorry?”

“What were you going to say? New responsibilities and tasks…? What about them?”

“Never mind,” Lavinet said, just as Blade said, “You may think this kind of thing beneath me, but I did it quite a lot when I was younger. My brother would give me such jobs in an attempt to strengthen my social skills. If I was trapped with a client on the road for weeks on end, you’d think I’d learn how to hold a conversation.” He glanced at Ayla, looking very dry. “You can see how well that turned out.”

Despite herself, she started to grin, and Lavinet descended into a fit of giggles at the thought of surly teenaged Blade carting around noblewomen and refusing to speak to them. Blade, smiling a little, added quietly, “It reminds me of the old days, this kind of mission. Nothing complex, simple and straightforward. Easy.” He lifted one broad shoulder in a shrug. “Sometimes that’s what one needs. To… reset.” He looked like he wanted to say something more, but didn’t know quite how to articulate it.

“Who was your brother?” Lavinet asked then, soft. He had never discussed his past to either of them, or even in front of them before—Ayla wasn’t sure he’d mentioned it to anyone. There were bets circulating the Order about his kill-count, about his training—even about his possible past sexual conquests.

But looking at him, Ayla wasn’t sure his reticence was really about any of that. The faint smile in Blade’s eyes had vanished behind that usual wall of sober inexpression. He turned away. “It’s not important.”

Awkward silence threatened to descend then, and Ayla scrambled forward to grab the suspended dinner pot before the changed atmosphere could really sink its teeth in. She hissed as she burned herself on the handles; only Lavinet’s quick intervention saved the corn cakes from being overturned onto the ground.

The rest of the evening passed with the sounds of Lavinet’s gentle laughter and Ayla’s indignant protests—and then noises of approval over the food, which Ayla had steamed in a kind of light gravy. But much as they tried to coax him, Blade didn’t say anything much for the rest of the long evening. He just sat there, brooding, his dark eyes no more than pinpricks of fire in the night.

#

Rope around her ankles, thrashing, burning—

“Ayla.”

Shadows leering over her, crooked teeth, rancid breath—

“Ayla.”

A sharp stinging in her face. Yellow fingertips, a scream—

“Captain Aescar!”

She sat up, icy with sweat and sucking in great gulps of air as if she’d been drowning. Shit. Her braid sat heavy and damp on her back like swollen rope. Another nightmare.

She glanced around, shivering, and saw that Blade was sitting back against the tree she’d seen him leaning on last, his cloak wrapped around him to stave off the chilly night. He was keeping watch, so if he was still awake, it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so since she’d last gone to sleep—they were taking three-hour shifts. On the other side of the low fire, Lavinet was still in her bedroll, unmoving, though whether she was just conked out from the long day or simply feigning sleep, Ayla couldn’t be sure.

She turned to her commander, wiping her mouth. “Sorry.” Then she touched her smarting cheek. “Did—did you slap me?”

“Of course not,” he deadpanned. “How could I hit you from all the way over here?”

“Maybe you ran back as soon as you did it… because you were scared.”

“In your dreams,” he said with a smirk. Then his expression tightened. “I’m sorry.”

She waved him off, rose, and staggered into the darkness beyond the ring of firelight, feeling for the thin, nearly-frozen stream of water she’d filled the pot with earlier. Blade didn’t follow her. She fell to her knees and plunged her face in, half to drink greedily, and half to simply jolt her back into the world of the living. She stayed there for a while, so long that her lungs burned with the need to breathe—and then she rose, her face numb and tingling and her head aching with the cold. It grounded her, steeled her. She said an emphatic “Fuck,” before ambling back to the campsite and flinging herself down onto her bedroll. A few moments passed without her saying a word.

Blade, when she finally dared to glance at him, had a sullen, miserable expression of remorse on his face. After several more moments, he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

She looked at him. “Do you want to talk about your brother?”

Blade said nothing, so she said nothing. She didn’t go back to sleep. Still, there was a cold comfort in lying there, watching the stars turn in the sky. One companion was dead to the world. The other had nothing to offer her but silence.

But, somehow, she found that this silence didn’t quite bother her. Maybe it was because, without having to say it, Blade was letting her know that he knew how it felt.

She decided to forgive him for being an awkward, wretched bastard. He had his demons, too.

#

In the morning, they packed up their little camp and saddled their mounts: Lavinet was still uncertain on an ahfuri, so she’d brought her warhorse, Avonis, while Ayla had brought Shishka and Blade had ridden in on his big shadow Araxes. They brushed their steeds and broke their fast with some dry biscuits. For someone who’d grown up having grapes peeled for her, Lavinet was bearing up the plain, sometimes unpleasant food of the road quite well. Ayla felt a sudden rush of affection for her as she watched the noblewoman nibble daintily on some hardtack. They hadn’t talked much this morning—if Lavinet knew about her nightmares, she’d never breathed a word—but they didn’t need to. Somewhere along their travels, they had fallen into a simple, unthinking rhythm together. And even though he had just arrived, Blade somehow had, too.

There was a running joke among the officers about “the Hero’s circle,” an inner circle of elite and high-ranking Shepherds who were all good friends with each other—and who had pretty much all been recruited by the epicenter of the circle: the Hero of Haven. Ayla didn’t know if there was any truth to it—that anyone recruited by the Mage-Captain was destined to become a powerful figure in the Order, or if it was just a matter of a keen eye and good instincts for useful warriors—but she did feel that she could connect to other people in the circle, like Lavi, easier than she could outside of it. There was something sort of uncanny about that, but she didn’t pay it too much mind.

They rode for about a half a day, making only light conversation, as the landscape changed from heavy forest to scrubby plain and then finally, to dusty, misty canyons and ravines. They were skirting the northern border of the Bleakmoor Marshes, and from what Ayla knew, after fetching the lady from her estate, they’d forge deeper into swamp territory in order to reach her fiancé, who was stationed in some sort of military outpost halfway up one of the Shield Peaks. Lavinet had commented that an aristocrat posted in such a remote location was unusual and probably indicated some trouble—punishment for a scandal or an unwanted second son, or something like that. But while she had been interested in the potential melodrama, Ayla couldn’t care less about the politics surrounding the whole affair. Some kaq wanted to marry some other kaq, but wasn’t strong enough to fend for herself in the process of doing it. Like Blade had said: it was simple. Easy. She wasn’t interested in making it any more complicated than that.

They rode through the steep canyons at a relaxed, sedate pace. Blade mentioned that this area often saw bandits and highwaymen, as this was the only road in and out of the largest town in the area, Harthwaite, where their client lived. But no robbers jumped down from the canyon ledges high overhead, and nothing stirred in the light mist that had filled the bottom of the ravine they rode in. Ayla smiled to herself. Even if bandits were stupid enough to fuck around with this well-armed convoy, they’d soon be very sorry.

And if there were Endarkened nearby, they made no attempt to make themselves known. Lavinet reasoned that it was because they’d been seen more towards the south, deeper into the marshland rather than the dry, dusty canyons bordering it. Still, Ayla noticed how twitchy Blade got the more the trees turned black and gnarled and twisted by the wind, and how he frowned when she commented how the air was growing slightly damper. He’d been smack dab in the middle of the Bleakmoor not too long ago, on a mission with Red, Trouble, Chase, and their mutual connective tissue, the famed Mage Hero. Ayla didn’t know exactly what had gone on there, but she wondered at Blade’s growing alertness. It must have been bad, because he hadn’t even been in this same area with the others; he’d approached the marshland from the south, not the north, and he’d gone right into the very heart of it instead of wading through its top fringe. What could have been him so jumpy, just to be in a totally dissimilar area in the Marsh’s vicinity?

Well, if anything particular was on his mind, he—of course—didn’t say.

They reached the town of Harthwaite and found it mostly inactive; many people had gone indoors to get out of the growing, howling wind, and the few who remained outside stared as they went by in their silent procession. The land here was hard and full of rock and slate; Ayla wondered how they fed themselves, what they traded. By the houses, she estimated there were a hundred people living here, give or take. A pitiful amount for a fiefdom; no wonder Lavinet had never heard of Lady Whathaveyou. Probably the only thing that made her noble was an ancient pedigree and more gold than anyone else in the area, which wasn’t exactly a high bar.

They reached the tall, black-iron gates of their charge’s estate; the metal gates gaped open like a mouth, one part dangling awkwardly on its hinge so that the whole fence seemed like a slumped, crooked affair. They waited for a servant to notice them, or hostlers and stablehands to approach and take away their mounts—it was a courtesy afforded even by the cheapest inns, so even Ayla craned her neck and tutted when ten minutes passed and no one came.

Blade jerked his head towards another slumped building several yards away. “Those are the stables, over there.”

“How can you tell?” Ayla asked, just as Lavinet said in a scandalized voice, “My dear, that simply isn’t something you do.”

“Hoofprints,” Blade said to Ayla; to Lavinet he said, “Keeping us waiting isn’t normal, either. Something may have happened. We need to go inside and assess the situation.”

Ket paranoia, at its finest. Ayla shrugged and nudged her ahfuri into following him; Lavinet murmured something to Avonis, who whickered uneasily, before trotting after them with an incensed look on her face.

When they approached the stable, a man in his thirties with straw-colored hair popped his head out—and then his eyes went very wide. “Oh!” he spluttered, rushing forward to yank their reins out of their hands. Shishka hissed at him, but he was almost too flustered to notice. “I—I’m sorry! Our handlers suddenly took their leave five months ago, and we haven’t been able to find replacements for them, what with our current… difficulties.” He said it the way some men referred to their wives’ “feminine troubles.” Then he bobbed at them, many times in rapid succession, and said, “I am so sorry, sir, madams. Lord Harthwaite”—of course, that was what it was! Or no, weren’t the current rulers named after their territories while their younger heirs kept their surnames? Shit—“would not have wanted you to see such a… such a hiccup in our reputed service! Please accept my deepest apologies. Um…”

He looked helplessly to and fro at the empty stables, then at the two ahfuri, who looked liable to eat any livestock that crept near them (though they were trained not to). He had an expression like he hadn’t even meant to be in this building in the first place—Ayla got the feeling that he was more like a butler—so she slid off Shishka’s back and took the reins out of his hands. Lavinet and Blade followed suit, and soon enough they were leaving the grateful butler behind and climbing up the long, foggy slope that led up to the manor itself.

A servant actually answered the door, thankfully, but Ayla was too busy looking around to take much notice of the goings-on and introductions. It was a dark, gloomy place, Harthwaite Manor, with faded red carpet and austere, glaring busts of dead people lining the walls. Nothing like the glittering opulence of Lavinet’s home, or even the understated and laconic luxury of Riel’s. It felt like a place for sad people, like a home you’d lock an unwanted grandparent in to get them out of the way of something. The kind of house where all you could do was stare out the foggy windows and waste away in a slow, quiet decay.

She shook off the thoughts like cobwebs just as the servants led them into a morbid-looking study that was covered all over with peeling dark wallpaper and the chopped-off heads of bears and deer and foxes. Seated behind the imposing desk was Lord Harthwaite, a short, heavy-jowled man with five pitiful hairs scraped across his balding head. Ayla instantly decided she didn’t like him, from the way he glared at them from his desk and lit a cigar of charch with his stubby, many-ringed fingers.

Way in the far corner of the room, a pale young woman around twenty-five stared at them from her reading bench by the window. She had fiery orange hair wrapped in a tight coil on the top of her head and very large, sea-green eyes with dark thumbprints underneath them. She was dressed in a very unfashionable, formless and billowing gown. Lavinet was going to have to say a lot about that, unless she was being all kind and diplomatic again. Sometimes she went back and forth.

Lavinet stepped forward, looking the picture of imperial and rakish beauty in her gloves and riding boots, and she gave a deep, perfect curtsy, as smooth and natural as always. Blade gave a brief nod, his eyes roving all over the room, while Ayla folded her arms and returned the glare of the corpulent lord behind the desk. She hadn’t hauled her ass all the way from Brunen just to be glowered at by some bigwig.

“Lord Harthwaite,” Lavinet said in a very charming tone, ignoring the tension in the air and the rudeness of their host, who didn’t stand. “What a pleasure it is to meet you.”

Lord Harthwaite didn’t return the pleasantry. He only fixed his stare on Lavinet—some expression moved across his face—before he said, his voice scratchy and high-pitched: “I know you. Can it be… you’re not Lord Naveen’s eldest daughter, are you?”

A catlike smile curled across Lavinet’s face, and Ayla rolled her eyes; she could tell that the other woman wanted to preen. News had spread far and wide of the powerful Naveen family’s scion absconding to join the Shepherds; there had even been some nobles who had been inspired by her example to do the same thing. But, she supposed, news was probably slow to reach a dim and tucked-away place like Harthwaite.

“My name is Lavinet, my lord,” Lavinet said, sweeping another curtsy. “I am at your service. I was sent to personally ensure your daughter received the utmost care and consideration during her journey to Blackridge.” A patent lie, but, of course, this was what politicians did. Ayla rolled her eyes again.

“And you?” Harthwaite said to Blade. “How do I know my only heir is safe around you?”

Ayla bit back a gasp, and her head whipped around to Blade. What exactly was Harthwaite implying? And was he singling Blade out because he was a man—or because he was Ket, a violent brute by most Norm noble standards? She felt the familiar bubble of anger rising in her gut, and her grip tightened on her windstaff so that she could feel the sweat of her palm against the grit of the wood. If it came to it, she would blast this old blowhard right through the window.

Blade, however, didn’t bat an eye at the overt insult. If anything, he had a slightly bored cant to his mouth. His eyes, however, were cold and appraising. “I am a decorated officer,” he said in a flat, unflinching tone. “If you do not trust in our integrity or our services, kindly find some mercenaries who will travel to a broken-down heap in demon territory and hire them. I would love to go home. And, of course, you would be charged a fee for our lost time and energy.”

In the East, Ayla had earned, it was extremely impolite and considered bad luck to say the word ‘demon’ in conversation—especially among the sheltered nobility, who didn’t have to fight them on a day-to-day basis and had the luxury of hiding behind a word like “Endarkened.” She wasn’t sure if Harthwaite went pale at Blade’s word choice—surely chosen to unnerve him—or if it was the threat of lost money that made him look nervous. He held up a hand and said, “Fine, I take your meaning. Please, sit.”

There was a pause before Lavinet sat; Blade took up a standing position by the door, folding his arms and staring at Harthwaite with hooded eyes whenever he happened to glance in his direction. Ayla, sensing that the conversation was about to move on, said, “Uh, and I’m Ayla Aescar. Captain of the Shepherds, Mage of the Four Winds, and professional travel and wilderness guide. You know, the whole other third person who’s on this job, too?”

Lord Harthwaite didn’t look at her. “Welcome.”

Ayla huffed and threw herself down into the rickety chair, noticing with spite that one of its legs gave slightly with the motion. She leaned back on it, putting her feet halfway up the leg of Harthwaite’s desk for extra leverage. She grinned like a maniac when he met her eye, looking dismayed. She was going to have this old chair as a pile of matchsticks by the time this conversation was over.

She was so focused on this petty revenge that she completely tuned out whatever brief conversation Lavinet had with Lord Harthwaite. It seemed like a pretty straightforward reiteration of their assignment: protect Heloise Something—fuck it, she was just going to call her Heloise Harthwaite—from demons and bandits; get her through the Bleakmoor and to her fiancé’s outpost in Blackridge safely. Half the payment now, half the payment after she wrote back to him safe and intact at the journey’s end.

Harthwaite had a few conditions to add, though. The first was that the group had to travel in utmost secrecy. If they stayed at inns, they were to give false names and cover Heloise’s face. Why, Ayla didn’t know, but Lavinet would probably have a guess. Probably something about the arranged marriage and keeping it discreet from political rivals. As if anyone could ever really care that much.

The second condition was that—and Ayla heard Lavinet’s sharp intake of breath at this—Heloise couldn’t ride a horse. She would need to travel in a tiny, two-wheeled carriage, little more than an upright coffin with a seat.

Blade’s expression didn’t change, and Lavinet’s vanished behind the cool, courtly smile—but Ayla turned to Harthwaite and said, “That wasn’t part of the deal.” Ye gods, towing that thing through rocky canyons and then through fuckingswamp did not sound like a good time. The wheels could get stuck, drowned in mud—and it would be so slow. “She’s got to be on a horse, or the deal’s off.”

“The dealwas that you would transport my daughter in any way she sees fit,” Harthwaite snapped. “The method of that transportation was always left to us: you’re simply the protection that goes with it. She can’t ride.”

“What, she doesn’t know how?”

“She is on her way to meet her future husband,” Harthwaite said in frigid tones. “Her maidenhead must remain intact; we cannot risk it on any hard rides. The consequences could mean that the marriage arrangement falls through.”

“Ewww. Everything you just said was so fucking disgusting—maidenhead—”

Lavinet laid a hand on her arm. “Well, Lord Harthwaite,” she said sweetly. “This will delay our journey considerably and add untold inconvenience and risk to our travels. If this is to be a part of our arrangement, our fees must be increased accordingly.”

They haggled some more, and gradually Ayla felt the anger leak out of her chest, leaving a dull, inert coal behind, as it usually did. For some reason she found herself staring at Heloise, who kept stealing glances at them all and then looking away, as if the conversation had nothing to do with her. One thing that she noticed was that the young woman’s awful dress was stitched with tiny horses across the hem, and she had a slight, almost imperceptible tan line across her nose from something like a sunhat that was often taken off. She couldn’t figure out why Heloise wasn’t saying anything, why she had to ride in a carriage when her father couldn’t see—when it was clear to anyone with eyes that she loved to ride.

#

The next day, after dining alone in a gaping dining room and sleeping on lumpy, mildewy-smelling beds, the convoy set out from the Harthwaite estate, stopping for more supplies in town before trundling back the way they first came, planning to take a fork in the road south.

It had been decided—after a rather disastrous game of Fire, Water, Earth—that Blade would be the one to ride on top of the carriage, steering the two sturdy horses that were pulling it while Ayla flanked the carriage on its left. His ahfuri was tied to hers—a dangerous position if Araxes ever decided to start sprinting in the opposite direction, but their mounts were well-trained and disciplined. And with her skills in wind magic and defense, Ayla was the better one to protect the “cargo” from attack; and Lavinet flanked the right side, because she was even quicker on Avonis and with a lance than Blade was on his ahfuri. So he sat up there, sulking in silence while Lavinet called up and tried to persuade him to wear a wide-brimmed hat because his skin burned easily and it was hotter up on the coach box. Ayla could not stop cackling.

Heloise did not breathe a word to them the entire time they’d been at her estate, not even when she met them in the manor’s foyer for her departure in the morning. To be fair, she also hadn’t said a word to her father, not even an embrace or a bow, and his face had been stony with some emotion that Ayla couldn’t name. Not that she blamed the heiress. If she had a father like that, marrying her off and making her sit in a box so she could stay a virgin for her probably disgraced arranged husband? She’d probably have spit in his face.

Lavinet had also posited, in the privacy of their rooms, that it was very likely that Heloise had never encountered Diminished people of any kind before. She was probably frightened of them, she’d said—and honestly, who wouldn’t be, with Blade’s intimidating “well, everything, darling” and Ayla’s hot temper and foul mouth? And add to that, the prospect of traveling with a magic-user who could choke you with the air itself, or an assassin who openly carried a vicious sword at his side, and whose eyes sometimes glinted in the dark… Of course any young lady would be frozen through with fear!

That theory had gotten that same foul mouth running again, but Blade had only shrugged lightly and said, “You deal with her, then. It’s not like we’d have much to say to each other, anyway.”

Heloise’s silence didn’t waver over the next week they traveled with her. Over time, Ayla began to realize that it wasn’t just because she was afraid of them; it was a combination of her shy, timid nature and what was likely dismay and upset over her circumstances. She clearly was not thrilled at the prospect of marrying this Lord Military Man. And, indeed, the farther they drew away from her home and the closer they crept to Blackridge, the paler and more sickly-looking she became.

Then, eight days into their journey—Heloise finally spoke.

#

They had stopped at a shabby little inn in some town, still not quite in swampy terrain, but no longer in the slate-gray cliffs and gorges surrounding Harthwaite. They were eating together at a round table small enough that Ayla’s elbow bumped against Heloise’s every time she took a drink. Lavinet was indulging in some watery-looking wine while Blade sipped at his tea with unconsciously impeccable manners. Ayla was wolfing down an entire loaf of bread—the cheese and jam would come after—when she heard an unfamiliar, trembling voice somewhere to the right of her.

“Are they all like you?”

Everyone at the table fell still, even Blade, while Heloise stared down at her plate in steadfast silence. For a moment, Ayla thought she hadn’t actually spoken—that it was a mistake—but Lavinet swallowed her food and said brightly, “Who are you referring to, my dear?”

Heloise didn’t answer again for a moment, and the ensuing silence was deafening. It was sundown in this tiny little town, a place that made it clear they weren’t used to travelers. Everything was covered in grime, and when they’d first sat down, Ayla had accidentally wiped a thick coat of dust off her seat. But at least people left them alone, and didn’t stare or start trouble.

Finally Heloise spoke again. Her voice was actually not as breathy as Ayla had imagined it, not like Shery’s; it was clear, a little musical, not strong exactly, but not that gentle, either. She looked quite ill, her small head swaying on her neck, but she met their gazes after a moment. “The other Shepherds,” she clarified. “Are they like you? Do they act like you… talk like you? Are they… like us?”

This she directed to Lavinet, who took this as a cue to launch into her whole campaign about all of the nobles who had joined after her. Ayla wasn’t surprised when Heloise kept glancing at Blade for his input, though he remained silent. Despite his obviously Ket features, Blade still had the fine-boned, dark-lashed, aristocratic face that was so admired among the recruits back home; in another life, he could have been a noble. Maybe Heloise didn’t know what Ket were, had never seen one or a picture of one. If she hadn’t, it would be an easy mistake to assume that Blade and Lavinet were cut from the same cloth… and that all of the other Shepherds could be, too.

Except for her, that is. Not even someone as naïve and sheltered as Heloise could ever mistake her for being “like them”—like Lavinet, like the other nobles who’d joined. No one would ever think that of scrappy, ill-mannered, smudge-faced orphan Ayla.

She suddenly felt the urge to spit, and abruptly shoved her chair back. The motion left deep lines in the dust on the ground, so thick that the chair didn’t even screech. “I’m going to bed,” she announced, cramming the rest of her bread down her gullet. “I’m not so hungry anymore.”

She still snatched up the rest of her platter—only the cheese and fruit, now—and hurried with it up to her dingy, dust-choked bedroom. No one stopped her, either, and for a moment Ayla wondered if she had just imagined the whole thing. The Hero’s circle, the trust. Maybe, like Heloise, she was just alone. An outsider looking in.

#

She drifted into an uneasy sleep, the empty platter still clutched to her chest as she sank into cottony dreams about people with eyeless fox heads.

Then, abruptly, she was awake; at first she thought that she had inhaled some of the dust, because her throat was scratchy, but then she heard it again—someone was pounding on her door. Urgently.

Ayla dropped the platter to the ground with a curse and stumble-hopped over to the door. “What?”

Then she stopped: Lavinet was standing there, looking wild-eyed, her usually immaculate curls in disarray. “Come quick,” she breathed. She grabbed Ayla’s hand and towed her out into the hallway just as Ayla ground her other fist into her eye.

“What’s going on?” the Wind-Mage started to ask—and then she heard it. A thin, reedy wail, a sound of pain and fear that chilled Ayla into full waking. It was coming from behind the walls, towards Lavinet’s end of the corridor. Blade suddenly appeared behind them, soundless as usual, his hair mussed and sticking up in all directions.

Lavinet dragged them over to a door—the room where Heloise was staying—and pushed it open, revealing the sight of their charge lying on her bed, clutching her stomach. The front of her shapeless gown was covered in blood.

“Gods,” Ayla hissed, hurrying forward. She was afraid to touch Heloise, who was arching in teeth-clenched pain; she looked around at the windows, which were closed. Blade had drawn his sword and was checking the closets. “What happened? Did she get stabbed? How did they get in?” Or did she do it to herself? Fuck!

Lavinet grabbed her by the arm and hauled her around with bruising strength, her gaze vicious and slightly panicked. “You fool,” she whispered, pointing at Heloise, who let loose another terrified cry. There were tears gathering in her beautiful sea-green eyes, and she writhed around on her bed, trembling as if a demon had possessed her. “Don’t you see? This wasn’t assassins!” She pointed at the blood on Heloise’s shirtfront. “It’s been right under our noses the entire time! The poor girl is pregnant!”