The strange man nods at the girl over the tangle of his fingers. He looks to her like he's praying or making one of those imaginary houses she and the neighborhood children used to make out of their hands, their fingers bending to make windows, their thumbs moving back and forth to swing open the front doors, pinkies curling in to represent the people inside. But he doesn't knit and unfurl them, doesn't twist them into caricatures from a scene, and she thinks he's probably too old to know how to do any of that anyway, even if he knew how to fix Polly's straw arm.

"That was very brave of him," the young man says, but there's still a frown on his face and she just knows that he doesn't mean it, that he doesn't really understand.

"I'm not done yet," she insists. "That was only the first time Granpapi saw the Bloody Man. He saw him six times after that. He told me about the second time and the third time and the–"

She counts on her fingers, brow furrowing.

"Fifth but he wouldn't tell me much about the fourth or the sixth because Momma says it's not stuff that really should be told around the dinner table and Granpapi says she makes the rules so..."

She fiddles with Polly in her lap.

"And what about the seventh time?" the man asks. "The last time he saw the Bloody Man?"

The girl's eyes dart around the room.

"Momma said it wasn't dinner talk either," she admits, "but Granpapi told me after."

Polly twists in her lap again, and then:

"You can't start a story and not finish it," she insists.

The man smiles.

"I agree," he answers, and his hands twist apart and the girl spies a thin bit of red yard stretched taut between them.

"So, how does it end?"

It ends in sundown, amongst dying leaves and grasping frost. It ends at the culmination of a chase, at the catch of a bitter wind and the cold, dead embrace of snow, snow on the ground, snow in the air, snow sitting heavy and wet on the kneeling, bowed statues of Ölüm's Pass.

The pillars stand like soldiers, and maybe they once were, but their stone heads and backs are now bent by squalls and time, bowing over the blunt cliff and out, across the glittering Halften skyline, toward the low stretch of Keesark and, beyond it, the shimmering southern sea.

Ölüm's Pass sits just between the Varsdar and Volkaqar peaks, on the narrow, jagged ledge that interconnects the weaving North Mountain range. It sits up high, where the air grows thin, and flesh fails, where the rasps of lungs never quite take in their fill and the feet that slide, slick on frozen rock and squelching mud, fly out, over the harsh drop and topple bodies over the mountain's unforgiving side, never to be found again.

Perhaps the unrelenting treachery of the pass was what Olcay was relying on when he retreated up here, away from the bloodied carnage and ruin he had left strewn across Keesark and Roften. Perhaps he thought they would not dare to follow, or they would lose some to the mountain along the way.

He was wrong.

Three years. Three years they have been on this chase, encircling, back and forth, back and forth, dodging and lunging, fleeing and pursuing.

It was like a long spar on a practice mat, hitting but never breaking, swinging but never hitting true. As the years stretched on Abe wondered how much of this was coincidence and how much of it was intentional.

But if he voiced this aloud, said the unsaid thing playing in the corner of his mind, he knows what the others would say. Dost and Feuilles would raise their voices, fight it with anger, vehemence, fury.

Ruben would remain quiet.

He catches it sometimes, when each side meets, on those rare moments Olcay catches up with them, or they with him. They are smarter, more prepared than that first time in the forest for what happens when that Nature-caller raises his hand. They know now what he and his acolytes can do.

But still, Abe sometimes catches it, amongst the clash and clamor, the heaves and swings.

Sarah.

Don't.

Please.

There's another way.

Think of Sarah.

All their faces are redder when it's said, and all the swings after that crueler.

Don't do this.

Abe suspects there's some madness to the dark things Olcay can do; madness beyond what it would take to do them in the first place, because there's something wild in his eyes, something wild that works him into a frothing fury before it inevitably breaks.

You're lying, he'll say then, but his eyes are still sad. You're throwing Sarah back in my face, using it to weaken me. I know your tricks, Ruben, I know your deceits. You'll undo me and take it all for yourself, do you think me a fool?

Abe thinks he is a fool, the Blood King who thinks himself a conqueror, who raised a small following of idolizing latcher-ons, who razed some southern parts of Roften in a plague of flames and blood. He had it going well for a while, curating a little following from the darker edge of his school friends and the poor and desperate folks who, unlike Abe, hadn't been declared a valuable commodity.

It only broke when Feuilles' father joined the fray, driven to the edge by his heir's willful and risky rebellion.

And when the wind quickly blew in a new direction the Blood King retreated.

They follow him now in careful, quick strides, stepping inside footprints, dancing oh-so carefully with the sharp, splintered mountainside, toes and feet kissing the long drop, breath misting out into the harsh, empty air.

They follow until the tracks split.

It's Splinter's Crest, a long, gnarled, jagged creature of a peak, all jutting and cutting up and over against the pale blue sky. It hangs over them like a scythe, or some otherworldly claw, its shadow looming where the tracks split in two.

"A trap," Feuilles says archly, his cold green eyes flickering this way and that, as if the prints will reveal their secrets to him.

"A gamble," Dost returns, hoisting her sack further on her fur-lined shoulder. "He's hoping for half the opponents or none at all."

"If he's still here," Ruben interjects, stepping carefully in the tracks and peering around the right hand side. "You and Rast take that side. Abe and I will go this way."

"I do not think—" the Solveig prince begins, but Ruben has that look on his face, the one Abe has begun to know well, and when he glances back the other man stops.

They split like two halves of an apple, clean and even. They step in the tracks left for them carefully, slowly, minding the crumbling, all-too close side.

The Solveig nobleman is fiddling with something on his neck; a stone Abe has spied him wearing, though he has not yet caught what is carved upon it. The man is twisting it in his gloved fingers as they carry on and Abe watches over his shoulder, wondering.

He must know in that intuitive way of his, because the Nature-caller looks back, smiling slightly.

"A trinket from an old... friend," he halts, his smile wavering, but he shows Abe the pendant all the same, a dark rock with an eye or something on it. "She claimed she was descended from an errant gothi, way back when."

"Was?"

His smile breaks in a familiar way and Abe doesn't need any further explanation. He knows now who once owned this necklace.

Sarah.

"Abe," Ruben says after they walk on for a time. "When this is done, what will you do?"

Bold of you to think this will ever be done, Abe thinks sourly as the wind picks up, slicing through his parka like a blade.

"Don't know; see if the prince or Chieftainess will take me on, I suppose."

The nobleman is quiet for a moment, halting briefly before stepping to the side. When he moves Abe can see why: a disruption in the tracks, a large indent in the snow, streaked long and riveted, out over the cliff side.

The tracks on the other side are slightly smaller and, after a moment of looking out at the land beyond this ledge but not down, never down below, Ruben continues.

"What if you had another choice?" he asks after a moment. "A different choice?"

"What choice?" Abe returns, brow crinkling, watching as Ruben walks in these new footprints.

"What if you didn't have to work for chieftainesses or kings, what if you could choose to work toward something. Peace and balance—for everyone, not just people like me."

He stops, turning back to look at Abe.

"Would you do it?"

Abe stares at that slightly gaunt but still round face and the gentle, sea-blue eyes set in it.

"What does it pay?"

Ruben's face breaks into a smile, and he turns, shaking his head, back to their path.

They carry on, moving slow amidst the buffet of snow and wind, stepping precisely in each footprint, mindful not to go the same way as one of the two before them.

They are shuffling around one sharp bend, hands to rock, heels pressed against mountainside, when they round the corner and Ruben stops abruptly.

And then they see him.

He's up high, this ill-fated Blood King, having heaved himself up on the side of Splinter's Crest, over a tangle of rocks so that the sword, hanging low between his two hands, is level with their faces. Alone and friendless, he's been waiting for them.

"Put the sword down," Ruben calls. "There's nowhere left to go. Olcay, put it down."

He doesn't, not that Abe is even close to surprised.

"He'll die like a mad dog," Feuilles had said sharply in firelight before they had trekked up this mountain. "Shrieking and frothing on his own blood."

Fitting, in its own way, Abe decides, and he pulls his knife out too.

The Nature-caller spies this; he has kept a particular eye on Abe since their first meeting. In spite of how half-hearted the Blood King's swings have been for his former friends, he's had no qualms about aiming to kill Abe.

"Olcay, stop," Ruben calls, pulling for his attention. "It doesn't have to go this way."

But the Nature-caller only glances over before looking back at Abe, their eyes meeting.

Of course it does.

Abe lets him make the first move, lets him lunge from up high. He's at an advantage on the higher ground and he presses it down on them, swinging with speed, assuredness. Abe is less surprised by the metal weapon at this point; it's nothing either he or Ruben can Skill and it never gets in the way of Olcay's particular Skilling talent.

He only needs his right hand for that.

Ruben is shouting something else, a stone sword held in hand, but Abe is too busy dodging a silver slash to hear it.

"Olcay, stop!"

The Blood King switches tracks, kicking Abe back before turning, bringing the metal down on Ruben's stone sword. It crunches with the shiver of metal as the two strain around it.

"Don't you ever get tired of saying that?" he barks, knocking Ruben's parry away, bringing the blade up again.

"Yes," Ruben admits. "But I'm hoping one day you'll heed it. Stop this insanity, old friend."

That naming seems to spur him; a hand parts from the hilt, flinging out, but Abe is on him, calling the hereto unseen hawk from the sky, driving it to the outstretched hand, but the Nature-caller turns, pulling back, swinging with his left hand the sword at the creature.

It's not a clean slice, and Abe feels the interrupted swipe in his bones, as if he is the one it is buried in, not the bird, and he breaks the connection with a heaving gasp.

Ruben knocks Olcay's blade away and stops, lowering his own sword a little. "You don't want this. You never wanted this."

Rage twists and mottles the other man's face.

"And who is the delusional one here?" he sneers, and he lunges.

Ruben catches his swing and Abe seizes the chance, darting forward, blade in hand, but the Blood King anticipates, breaks the clash and swings his blade out toward Abe as he darts back.

"If you really wanted this you would have killed me, and Rast, and Aren," Ruben says, breath puffing out in front of his face, eyes clear and shining in the bright sunlight. "Put down your sword, Olcay. This is not the only thing left for you to do."

The man's face twists into carefully crafted sneer.

"It's the only thing I want to do."

He swings out at both of them when he jumps back in, his blade moving toward Abe, his other hand catching the slice of snow-packed ice Ruben tries to send his way. He turns, swinging the shard toward Abe and bringing the steel back on Ruben, and Abe dodges, jumping into the mountainside snowdrift to escape the attack.

"You've had so many opportunities. I have given you so many opportunities this year," Ruben is saying when Abe emerges, and the nobleman meets the Blood King's swings at each turn but does not press,  does not attack the way he should. "I see her ghost on your back, Olcay. I hear her words in your ear. I know what she meant to you."

He moves suddenly, knocking aside Olcay's sword and standing, unmoving as the man stumbles back.

"Forgive yourself enough to give this up," Ruben pleads to the white-faced man before him. "Come home, Olcay. Come home and forgive yourself."

It plays like a story on his face, a flicker of feelings that quickly mottles into a purpling rage. Olcay screams and Abe runs forward, barreling into the man before he can bring his hand up, knocking him back and turning, ducking to escape another slice through the mountain air, the spray of following snow smacking him against the head.

Abe staggers back and up, reorienting only a moment before jumping back in as Olcay descends upon the other nature-caller, ice meeting ice, rock meeting rock.

They dance a dance Abe cannot know, Olcay with one hand, Ruben with two. He's waiting, watching, looking for a moment, a tell, that finite instantaneous thing you can feel in the marrow of your teeth, that split second of opportunity, and Abe thinks he feels it humming, blowing across his face, when Ruben lunges, carrying alongside his fist a blast of hardening snow.

The Blood King's right hand is lifting up toward Ruben and Abe slides around the side, knife in hand, ducking low, sliding up, angling—

And then he feels the cold punch of a blade.

He chokes on it, this new sensation pulsing in his abdomen, the motion forgotten, the plan abandoned, and between the sudden ringing, the breath-catching confusion, he hears Ruben shout.

That evil hand is still up, still up and pointing, pointing out and he has to move, do something but the pain in his stomach is burning, shivering, sliding further in still, his free hand scrabbling at it, pawing—

"What is this, Olcay?" Ruben asks through gritted teeth, and his hand is clutching at that charm on his neck, showing the intricately carved stone eye to the wild-eyed man in front of him. "What are you going to do? Kill me, like you killed Sarah?"

And there's the moment again, the switch, the breath of hesitation, of switching from madness, and Abe, mind suddenly clear, seizes it, pushing into the sword, through the pain, and swinging out, bringing his short blade down on the exposed, outstretched wrist.

And Olcay collapses.

His knees give out under him, hitting the frozen ground as his legs slide down, his remaining hand letting go of the sword, his stump hang out, like a strange offering.

There's no anger left in him, no acid violence; he seems to accept that it's over before either of them do.

Abe stares as, with the madness gone, there's nothing left in the Keesark man's face but a small crease, just between his brows, the start of a question, and his voice is hollow, arms limp at his sides, as he says:

"I didn't mean to. I just—"

And Olcay looks up, voice cracking as his eyes latch back onto the necklace.

"I just wanted her to stay."

"Grandpapi said it wasn't him or the princes who defeated the bad man," the little girl explains, because she doesn't think the man quite understands it. "It was his own heart that did it. It broke in two, Grandpapi said." And she holds her hands together, splitting them apart so he can see.

"He was sad at what he'd done, he was– was rooned by his andition." She smiles, proud that she said the words just right, the way Grandpapi always would say them, and the man starts. "And that's why we need to be good—so our hearts don't split too."

"And this bad man..." the one in front of her continues, eyes wide, face unmoving. "What did they do to him?"

"They took him away."

The man continues to stare and the girl, squirming on her seat, adds: "The king of Halften—he banished the bad man far away and he gave Granpapi a big medal." She holds out her hands to show him, because she thinks he might not realize how big it really was.

"And Granpapi didn't ever see the bad man again," she tells him. "Nobody ever saw the bad man again."

"I see," Ben says, and there is a bright, wild joy, a righteous vindication alight in his face. "I understand now."

A/N: Sooo I totally had planned to post this chapter on Wednesday... but instead I started a future chapter and ended up killing someone off. Yay?

Anyway: do we know where Ben is going next? :)

Don't worry, next chapter isn't his....