When Ashne thought of Princess Sarabis, it was as little more than a name, a blurred image, a fleeting shadow or impression of what might be.

They had grown up together, and yet they had not. The twins were closer to the princess in age, and the girl had been frail and retiring from birth. Ashne had known from the start that the princess would someday be her mistress and liege, but that day seemed distant, unreal. Even death seemed the closer prospect. They did not speak to each other; they spent little time in each other’s presence, unlike the twins, who clung to her side at all times. Zsaran had remarked scornfully, once, that such a weakling would amount to little in the end, that she would be bartered away as some foreigner’s bride once she came of age rather than take the reeds and ascend the throne in her own right.

Come of age she had, some three years ago. Yet the king had made no move to marry her off, nor to declare her his heir. Queen Marnua had no other children, and the king had taken no concubines, refusing in this matter, at least, to abide by Dragon Court fashion, or fall into the very trap he had once set for his old nemesis, deceased King Pashrai of Khonua. Indeed, he seemed to Ashne frightfully unconcerned for the future of the realm, utterly heedless of that inevitable day when his life would be cut short, in violence or old age, perhaps even accident or disease.

Nor did Ashne know of the queen’s plans for her daughter, if indeed they existed. The queen doted on the girl, which was only natural. And Minister Muntong had hinted, in his plain but roundabout way, that the queen disapproved of these current marriage negotiations with Tai. Or — Ashne recalled the argument she had overheard before the alarm was sounded — at least, of the king’s preferred choice of husband.

For the queen Ashne would do anything.

But as for the princess...

A single memory lay buried within her heart:

A chill winter’s morning, the fires not yet lit. They had been then in the lower reaches of the capital at Mount Kuehgei, the summer palaces on the slopes temporarily abandoned. Ashne had been running through her daily exercises alone in an empty courtyard while Zsaran attended to the queen in her chambers; only a year had passed since they were officially instated as the Lady Consort’s guards and maidservants. (How young they had been then! How much had changed in the nine years since!)

The snap of a twig behind her startled her out of her form. She turned, sword at the ready, only to see none other than the princess herself, mere slip of a child, pale and ghostlike under the vast gray skies.

The girl said nothing but waved at her to continue.

She hesitated, but took one step, then another, and soon flowed back into the practiced motions her master had drilled into her after seasons of harsh training, every form precise, not a single movement wasted: nothing before her but her blade, nothing filling her mind but for the awareness of her own body, the energy running through her limbs like intoxicating wild streams.

When at last she was finished, she felt her entire being ease into a strange, mellow calm. Only then did she recall her audience.

The girl’s expression was cool, distant. Unreadable.

“Is that all?”

Ashne stiffened. Yet there was no disdain in the girl’s voice, no hint of mocking or displeasure, not even the barest hint of curiosity.

A shiver ran down her back.

“Yes,” she said.

Without another word, the girl turned and glided away, back in the direction of what Ashne knew to be her sleeping quarters.

Even now Ashne wondered if it were a true memory, or if it had only been a dream.

* * *

The kammrae carried with it a month’s worth of supplies, including a set of men’s travel clothes, but nothing else, not even Shenkes, the personal blade the queen had gifted her years ago. Ashne rode past the small settlement directly outside the capital, making certain no early risers saw her, and changed into the clothes as soon as she was a safe distance away, careful not to disturb her wound. She buried her stained handmaid’s outfit and bound her hair up with a spare strip of twine. Someone, probably Shranai, had even made sure to provide a fisherman’s domed bamboo hat. Ashne put it on and adjusted the strap beneath her chin. Within the walled confines of the capital her apparent origins did not matter so much, but there was no telling where the trail might lead her. Perhaps to the domains of the Court — Zhae-called-Tai to the north, and Enh further north, or Rha and Sunh to the northwest, or the central territories whose names she did not know; perhaps to the western Kingdom of Krengsra, as the Earth Minister had asked of them, or to the sunset lands of Pra and Dhash beyond.

After all, how could one possibly track a spirit?

Ashne did not dwell on the question for long. If Princess Sarabis was alive, merely kidnapped — and Ashne had to believe that the princess still lived, else she give in to despair (and for that Zsaran would never forgive her) — then surely there was only one place the Tiger could have taken her.

South. South past the Great River, to the old capitals, to water-crossed Kasa upon the shores of Gokho Lake: Kasa the eternally beautiful, Land of Heart’s Content, treasured pearl of Khonua.

Her decision thus made, she rode south, following the coastline, away from the main roads, keeping the sea to her left and the rolling hills to her right, ever conscious that she remained still in former territories of Khonua. She feared drawing undue attention to herself or to her mission. There were countless who would no doubt wish to take advantage of the princess’s abduction, were they to become aware of it.

For she was certain the attack had been orchestrated by disgruntled dissidents of Khonua. The presence of the Tiger, if it were indeed the same Tiger from all those years ago, indicated as much. The attacker’s swords had been of southern make, but the men of Awat were fiercely loyal to Khosian, which left only the hillfolk with whom they had long established treaties, the peace-loving grovedwellers, and Khonua again.

It could only be Khonua. Though it was true the northerners grew ever wary, and the alliance with Krengsra was ever uneasy, who else could have borne such a grudge against their kingdom? Those of the Court were surely too proud to don a southern disguise, and Krengsra’s attentions were turned on the north.

Yet it required no little skill to command a spirit such as the Tiger. Perhaps the ministers’ fears were correct; perhaps a fearsome foreign sorcerer had allied with the last remnants of Khonua loyalists. And yet perhaps they were wrong. Such a powerful being as the Ghost Tiger might well have acted on its own — as it had twenty-six years ago, when it proclaimed its silent loyalty to the deceased Prince of Light.

What it came down to in the end was this: Ashne had killed the young prince of Khonua, and now both men and spirits sought retribution.

One girl’s death would never be enough to recompense the annihilation of an entire kingdom. The princess must be alive. The tiger could have killed her, killed any of them, at any time it wished. That it had spared them instead meant the creature and its allies harbored other purposes.

What those purposes could be, she could not say. Their people were scattered, the royal family dead. There was little more they could accomplish.

But their goals and motives mattered little to her, so long as she retrieved the princess from their clutches. And the sooner she did so, the sooner Zsaran’s name could be cleared, and the queen’s troubles eased.

So she rode on, picking her way across precarious paths. Lonely cypresses peppered the sheer cliffs. Far below them, white waves crashed against the rocky shore. But the kammrae’s step was ever steady, despite the rain that poured from the skies during the first few days, as if making up for the weeks of drought, washing away all signs of their progress, easing the last irrational remnants of fear that the king had sent men after her in pursuit as well despite the queen’s reassurances.

The tiger, of course, had left no tracks to erase. And after the third day, the sun returned, bright and relentless as ever.

Ashne pushed on, equally relentless, barely stopping to rest. She knew she must avoid straining both herself and her mount; kammrae, though swift and surefooted both on land and in water, were not known for their stamina. Yet even in stillness she found no relief: not when she thought of Zsaran, languishing away in prison, or of the queen, wild with grief. Instead, in those moments, she took up the nameless iron blade Zsaran had given her and flowed through her forms, relieved to find that her long confinement had not dulled her movement entirely.

The first village they stumbled upon, nestled in a hidden cove, was a small summer settlement of tanned, weather-beaten wayfarers from the eastern isles. Despite their seclusion, they welcomed her and her mount, and those who knew her language proved to be eager conversationalists. The waves were restless, they told her. There were no swordsmiths among their people, who relied only on spear and knife. They owned no buffalo to be lost, and none of their children were foolish enough to wander.

In the second village, the farmers warned her of increased bandit activity in the area. Only one young wife had spotted a large creature in the vicinity of the fields, but when pressed for further description, she could give no satisfactory answer.

In a third, they spoke of a forest of ghosts.

By the end of the first week, sand and brush began to thicken into clumps of forests across the hills. For the first time since she had set out, Ashne hesitated, remembering the villagers’ ghost stories. If she branched away from the coastline now and headed west, she would soon come upon the fortified city of Tham, on the Krengsra border. It was possible she would find news there.

Yet no matter how desperate she was for progress, a few days’ detour could be costly, and she had doubts that any faction of Khonua would risk operating so close to the border. Perhaps it would be better to keep pushing south as she had intended, and risk her luck with ghosts.

Uncertain, she set up camp for the evening, though the sun had not yet set.

It was then that she heard the flute.

The breathy, unfamiliar melody floated on the wind from deeper within the forest. The kammrae’s ears perked in interest. Ashne stood and laid a soothing hand upon its golden neck. Whether person, spirit, or ghost, an encounter here, so far from the main roads, could be no coincidence. After a moment’s consideration, she set out in the direction of the music, into the shadow of the trees.

The salty scent of the sea faded to a faint green stillness. The distant roar of waves was drowned out by the whisper of song through the leaves. Dying light filtered through the dark branches, dappling the earth in patches of color.

The flute halted mid-note. Ashne broke into a run, picking her way through the undergrowth.

Angry voices.

Ashne skidded to a stop as she noticed the trees widening to a sunlit clearing ahead. She concealed herself behind a tree and peered through the brush and tree trunks to see a group of not quite twenty armed individuals gathered around a single man.

A man she recognized instantly by his head of white hair.

The apothecary was holding a dark bamboo flute in his hand instead of the staff she had last seen him with. A quick scan of the area, and Ashne located the staff lying on the ground by his feet.

He was laughing.

“Bastard!” growled the hulking man who seemed to be the leader of the group, in heavily accented Dragon Court tongue. “Don’t think your little act fools any of us!”

The apothecary only continued to laugh. “Behold, the sun lies in the east!” he sang, badly out of tune. “And ah, the fair maiden lies in my chambers!” He trailed off as if puzzled. “Say, you have something on your face.”

Discipline more than common sense was all that kept Ashne from revealing herself that very moment. No coincidence, she reminded herself. But how had he gotten here so fast by himself, and on foot? He couldn’t have had more than a day’s head start on her, if that, and she had the advantage of the kammrae. Once more she recalled the ministers’ talk of sorcery — but unnatural speed in traveling was hardly a sorcerous art.

“He’s barking mad, brother,” drawled the small, sharp woman at the leader’s right. She spoke in what Ashne initially assumed was Awat before recognizing as a dialect of old Khonua. “Let’s just kill him and be done with it!”

Khonua bandits. Ashne gripped her sword.

No coincidence indeed.

“Hmph. What do you think, Rahm?” said the bandit chief, switching to the same dialect.

The question was directed at a quiet, scruffy man Ashne had not previously noticed, with hair the color of dark tea. He was studying the apothecary with an uncanny intensity. Like the others, he was heavily tattooed, but his posture was taut and still against the other men shifting restlessly around him.

After a pause, he shook his head slightly.

This time, it was the chief’s turn to laugh. “You see, sister? No one can put anything past our Rahm!”

“Fine,” said the woman, leaning against the elaborately carved hilt of her axe. High cheekbones and deep-set eyes drew an uncanny resemblance between her and the chief despite their discrepancies in size, frame, and age. “Just don’t blame me when it all turns out to have been a great big waste of our time!”

The apothecary was still grinning like a fool, his evident entertainment a far cry from the sharp, distant amusement he had displayed back in the capital. He probably hadn’t understood a single word of the exchange.

Ashne couldn’t tell if he were indeed faking his madness or if he truly had gone off the deep end in the days since she had last seen him. Whatever the case was, she couldn’t just leave him. Not at the mercy of these bandits. Not when she was at the brink of discovering her first true lead.

“Tell us where you hid it,” said the chief, using Court tongue once more. “You’re a funny fellow. If you speak the truth, perhaps I might find it in me to spare you after all!”

With her wound, there was not much she could do. Even if they were untrained — which was no guarantee — their numbers were too many. And even on his own she suspected this bandit chief could not be underestimated, nor could his sister. Then again, not a single one was armored, but for one or two haphazardly tied on coats of hide. The rest were dressed only in the short, layered tunics of the south.

If Zsaran were here, they could take them together. In her mind’s eye, Ashne could already trace out the path. There, and there, and there —

“Good sir, do you know the way to the magpie bridge?” The apothecary beamed. Then, inexplicably, made a rude gesture at the chief.

Too late, thought Ashne, spotting the glint of metal. But then, to her surprise, the chief crossed his arms across his chest and threw his head back, broad shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Who would’ve thought one of those northern dogs could possess so much nerve?” he roared in his native tongue. “I think I like him!”

“Brother.”

“Yes, yes, I know, Inhai. Let your dear brother have some fun, why don’t you?”

“As long as you don’t forget what we’re here for, dear brother.”

Ashne watched on, still wary.

“Why, a man of this caliber surely wouldn’t miss a finger or two! Or perhaps an eye?” This last was phrased in elegant Dragon speech, accented but deceptively friendly.

And yet the apothecary did not even blink. Not when the chief drew a dagger from his belt, waving it casually in the apothecary’s face.

Not when something hissed through the air and one of the bandits crumpled to the ground, arrow sticking through his throat.

The chief whirled around, turning his back on his men. “Shit! Who the —”

Ashne leaped out and slashed the throat of the man closest to her. She ducked, dodging the spray of blood, weaving through the empty spaces.

Another arrow whizzed past, this time striking the eye of a bandit who had crept up behind her.

She stabbed another man, careful this time to mind her own injury. Four down, she thought. Thirteen more.

“Find the archer!” shouted the chief, holding his blade to the apothecary’s throat as he scanned the trees. “Watch for others!” His sister nodded and ran off into the woods with three men in the direction from where the arrows had come. Two men rushed at Ashne, but she spun around and slipped past them, heading towards the apothecary. Behind her, she heard a thud and a gurgled cry, and footsteps fleeing away from the scene.

Five down. Five to the woods. Seven remaining. The way before her was clear.

Another arrow flew through the air, this time from another direction. The chief sliced it out of the air before it could hit and grabbed the apothecary by his collar, using him as a shield as he backed out into the protection of the trees.

Ashne put on an extra burst of speed.

Only for a bandit to suddenly materialize in her path.

The quiet one — Rahm, he had been called — his face guarded, his posture tense in anticipation.

The chief and the apothecary were just steps away. Just beyond her reach.

She had no choice. She rushed forward.

Her slim iron blade met his bronze shortsword. She withdrew, attacked again, testing him, feeling clumsy despite her daily practice: the nameless blade was lighter than she was used to in a true fight, though it held sturdy. This time, the man dodged and struck at the side she had left open. His swing went wide, inviting a counter. Ashne launched forward. At the last moment, she noticed the angle of his feet. Sensed the trap. Whirled away and kicked out at the back of his knee just as he brought back his blade. Before she could make contact, he dropped to the ground and rolled away. He was on his feet again before she could reach him, shaggy locks of his hair flying back from his face. His eyes were sharp, almost aglow in the shadows.

They were of similar builds. He was likely stronger, as most of her opponents were. She had a slight advantage in reach and the metal had rung true, indicating that hers was likely the better weapon. Neither factor would enable her to finish this quickly.

He raised his sword at an odd angle and pressed her with a few more swipes, weaving from side to side, keeping himself between Ashne and his chief, but otherwise made no particular effort to close the distance between them. He did not have to, and he knew it.

Slash, deflect, then slash again. The scrape of metal rang in her ears.

Ashne gritted her teeth. She gathered herself, darted at him with all her power concentrated into a low stab, too fast and too straight to knock aside. He skidded back, matching her speed, but it was not enough. She pierced past his guard. Her stab arced upward, clean and precise. He leaned away. Her blade caught a strand of his hair. Without warning, his legs came flying up, twisting into a spin. She pulled away just in time.

Or so she thought until she registered the jolt of impact running down her arm from her elbow, and was forced to adjust her grip, steadying it, drawing it back into a defensive position.

He landed in a crouch. Wiped a thin trickle of blood from his chin.

In sudden accord they both straightened and backed away.

He understood the workings of internal energy, the ways to manipulate the body to perform movements normal men were too weak and too heavy to accomplish. He must have had advanced training, that much was clear.

Few were the masters who could have guided him to such a level of skill. He seemed not much older than herself — old enough to have fought in the last years of the war, but too young to have received much if any formal instruction, if indeed he had been in the armies of Khonua or Awat. And though his swordplay was lazy and undisciplined, his forms only vaguely familiar, they were mixed, unpredictably, with styles she did not recognize.

Deceptively sloppy.

Dangerous.

The corner of the man’s lips quirked upward.

She had run out of time. She was surrounded.

“Who are you?” demanded one of the other men. “Who sent you?”

No more arrows came. Had the archer been found?

“One of that madman’s friends, are you? Damned Dragon!”

Then someone screamed. And suddenly all sound dampened. All fighting halted. The chief looked around, bewildered, still holding a blade to the unalarmed apothecary. His men raised their weapons, eyes frightened, confused.

Shadows lengthened. Fog seeped into the clearing, filling Ashne’s vision with white.

“To me!” roared the chief, shattering the silence. “To me! Retreat!”

She was running out of time. She rushed forward again, though her wound was beginning to protest, trying to break past the ring of men she could no longer see. Only for a dark shape to hurtle into her vision again. Rahm, she thought. The quiet one. The trained one. She thrust her blade forward, flew blindly into another exchange of strikes. She caught another glimpse of his face through the fog: he was now smiling openly, clearly enjoying himself.

Around her she heard screams ringing out, then cut short. Footsteps — growing closer? Fading? The sound of her own heart drowned out her breathing, and the fog muffled all else, confusing the direction of the wind.

She could not let herself be distracted by fear of the unknown. She put on another burst of speed. Ducked another blow.

That was no blade, she realized, and bit her tongue. The man was humming the same tune he had been playing on his flute earlier.

“Apothecary!” she said, and dodged away, regretting her outburst. Something flashed in the corner of her eye, and she knew that Rahm had caught up with her again.

From somewhere beyond, a howl of rage pierced through the clamor.

And then, the chief’s voice echoing above the fray: “Rahm! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Ashne blocked a downward swing from Rahm’s blade. He leaped back.

With one final reluctant glance, he turned and fled, swallowed by the fog.

Once more, the clatter of footsteps. Then silence, but for her own ragged breath, and the apothecary, still humming.

For a long time she stood, listening. Calming herself. But no monsters emerged from the shadows, from the white shroud around her.

She roused herself and began heading in the general direction of the apothecary’s voice. As she moved, the fog began to part. She stumbled over a body. Bent down and plucked the arrow from the dead man’s eye.

It was not of southern make. And the speed and force at which the arrows had hit indicated either the use of a crossbow or great skill on part of the archer. She looked in the direction the arrows had last flown from, uneasy, but as expected, saw not even a single shadow in the clearing haze. An ally of the apothecary? A passing stranger? Or perhaps a ghost? She had assumed the first, and yet the apothecary seemed utterly unconcerned about the archer’s fate. Or was his apathy a sign of confidence?

Wary as she was, she could believe that the archer was at least no enemy — yet. She had noticed the care he took not to hit her or the apothecary. Nor did she think, from his evident skill, that he could be taken down so easily.

Perhaps he had escaped. Or perhaps he had gone off in pursuit of the rest.

She wiped the blood from her sword and sheathed it, remaining alert for any sudden movements, whether from bandits returning for a counterattack or from their mysterious helper.

First, she had a madman to deal with.

The apothecary was brushing dust off his robes nonchalantly not too far away from where she stood, but stilled at her approach.

“We meet again, Master Apothecary,” said Ashne.

He stared for a moment too long before his lips crept up in a lopsided grin.

He began to sing. “In the wild is a dead doe; there does she lie, covered in white rushes. There is a lady, heart touched with spring...”

Ashne froze, recognizing the song.

“Stop that!” she said, more forcefully than she had intended. She added, “Don’t make me regret saving you.”

He cocked his head to the side, then burst out laughing. Ashne was beginning to seriously consider leaving him there to his own devices when he said, “You have my gratitude, Miss whose name I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing!”

She ignored him. “What did those bandits want from you?”

“What is it that bandits ever want, I wonder? Always waving around those pointy sticks, shouting vague threats, and all but for a handful of coins. Not a pleasant occupation at all, in my reckoning.”

The bandits’ presence in itself was not so strange, it was true.

“If those bandits were after your goods, they would have just killed you from the start.”

She did not add that a lone apothecary was about the least likely target possible for a bandit attack. Nor that there were few villages where he could ply his wares along this route in the first place.

“Hmm,” he said, grin growing wider. “In that case, I’ll tell you — for a price.”

She opened her mouth, suddenly angry. Changed her mind. “I don’t bargain with madmen.”

“Pity! I suppose, then, that this is farewell again.” He turned, humming again.

“Wait!” Ashne took a step towards him, then shook her head. There was no point in pressing him further. She had other priorities, other concerns. She had already wasted enough time here. And yet it was all too strange. His presence. The bandits. She had learned years ago that there were no such things as coincidences. And who was to say the bandits had no connection to the people who had kidnapped the princess? So she continued, “You told me you couldn’t stand people who don’t take care of themselves. What about yourself? Do you not value your own life?”

When he did not respond, she drew her sword. “What do you know of the princess of Awat?”

This time he stopped.

“Oh, hello,” he said, rather loudly.

Ashne looked up with a start. At the edge of the clearing stood a man, hair neatly bound and wrapped under a headcloth, with a bow and quiver slung on his back and a sword at his hip. The man’s approach had been so silent, and she herself so distracted by the apothecary’s mad rambling, that she had not even noticed his arrival.

Her cheeks flamed. Truly, her skills had deteriorated.

The man clasped his hands together in greeting. “I am Phas Tiuknin of Rha. I came across that group of ruffians on my way to Tham. They seemed up to no good, so I followed them. It was quite fortunate that I did, it seems.”

Another northerner, then, as she had thought, though his cool courtesy and the low monotone of his diction disoriented her.

“Well met, Master Phas,” said Ashne, collecting her nerves and falling back on proper Dragon Court etiquette, though in truth she could not tell, from his traveling clothes, the proper way to address him. In the shadows of early evening she could not make out much else of his features, aside that he seemed handsome in a stern, reserved manner, and that his clean-shaven face was indeed unmarked.

His timing was utterly suspicious. But she could sense no ill intent from his bearing. And so, after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “I am Ashne of Awat. Your presence was quite fortunate indeed. You are an excellent shot, and your help just now much appreciated.”

“You flatter me, Miss Ashne. You are not bad with the blade yourself.” He, too, hesitated. “Forgive me my bluntness. But... what just happened?”

She shifted on her feet, the strangeness of the preceding events finally sinking in. Swallowed, mouth dry. “I... I don’t know.”

She thought of ghosts once more. But the ghosts of men had no such power. Or did they? She had seen nothing, heard nothing else.

Or had that been the work not of ghosts, but of spirits?

And yet that had been nothing like the old tales.

After a moment, Phas inclined his head and turned to the apothecary, waiting. Ashne was struck, suddenly, by the realization that he had been avoiding the sight of the other man ever since his arrival. In fact, he seemed clearly just as unsettled by the apothecary’s wild white hair as he must have been by the fog. Though evidently too polite to remark upon it.

Said apothecary blinked. “Oh, me? They call me Braksya the Mad!” He did not remark on the fog.

Phas frowned at his accent. “You are also from the central domains.”

“I am not,” replied the apothecary rather indignantly. “I hail from Enh.”

So he, too, was from that distant frozen north.

And now Phas’s frown faded, replaced with a mix of puzzlement and mild irritation. Ashne quickly said, still feeling rather off-kilter herself, “Ah. My sworn sisters hail from Enh as well, but they fled south as children, and no longer consider themselves of the Court.”

“Are they pretty?”

This time Ashne ignored the apothecary and turned to Phas. “What brings a man of Rha all the way to our kingdom?”

A safer topic than ghosts and supernatural business. These days most Dragon Court men rode no further from “civilization” than the capital at Ranglhia. And yet Phas had not found her skill with a sword strange, as many northerners did, and had pronounced her name well; and he must have been quite familiar with the land to be traveling alone.

Phas considered her for a while, evidently finding it easier to ignore the apothecary as well. “I will be honest with you, lady swordmaster,” he said. “In truth I served in the court of Khonua for some years. But since Pashrai took his own life and the capital moved north, I now wander the kingdom as a simple mercenary.”

The man spoke cautiously, but Ashne had guessed as much already. Before the fall of Khonua, foreigners often took refuge with both the Khonua and Awat courts: some of them exiled, some fleeing from war or political infighting, some seeking to make names for themselves. Most, like Earth Minister Muntong, came from Krengsra to the west; others, like Phas, came from Rha to the north. Only a few, like the twins, came from the more distant domains of the Dragon Court. Phas, though he spoke as a well-educated man, did not seem so much older than herself and the apothecary; he must have arrived only in the waning years of Khonua, and could hardly be anyone of importance.

“I will not hold past loyalties against you,” she said at last. Still, decent as he seemed, she would have to remember to be careful. Never again would she make the mistake of being too easily trusting. She continued, “The war is long over, and bandits are the scourge of the land no matter who bears the reeds.” Indeed, the commonfolk cared little for the machinations of kings and lords. Perhaps these bandits just now truly had nothing to do with her mission.

At her words, the man named Phas seemed to relax. “It was my intention to head to Tham in search of work. May I ask where the sir and miss were heading?”

“Oh,” said Ashne, suddenly flustered, and wondered just how much of their strange earlier exchange the other man had witnessed. “We weren’t traveling together.”

“I,” declared the apothecary Braksya then, “am searching for a sorcerer.”

Ashne froze.

At this Phas frowned again, and turned to regard the apothecary with renewed consideration. “You chase after the recent rumors, then.”

She grew chill at their words. “The foreign sorcerer?”

“Yes,” Braksya said eagerly. “Do you know him, then?”

She thought, for some reason, not of Minister Aorang’s glum warnings, nor of Muntong’s resigned orders, but of Kitzon, who had been no sorcerer but a well of stories, both fantastic and real.

A part of Ashne still remembered those days fondly. How he would regale them every night with colorful accounts of his varied experiences serving under chieftains from his native Pra, and noblemen from Krengsra and Khonua. Zsaran would laugh, teasing him about his atrocious accent, or his latest wild tale, while Ashne listened quietly and Kitzon’s beloved red mare stood grazing beside them.

He had known more about the spirits and the old ways than anyone she had ever met.

“No,” she said. “Although I knew a man, once, who might have been able to help you in your search.”

“Oh? And where might I be able to meet this man?”

Ashne bowed her head.

“He’s dead.”

For some time none of them said a word, and she regretted her response, wondered why she had spoken of him now, here, of all times and places. But at last Phas the archer spoke, breaking the silence. “I will not ask why you seek him. But I can tell you that I heard, not more than a week ago, that the sorcerer was sighted near Tham. I cannot vouch for the truth of these tidings. If you wish to go, however, I am not averse to traveling with a companion.”

Ashne had expected the apothecary to accept immediately, but to her surprise he considered the offer for some time before responding, all madness suddenly gone from his eyes, replaced instead with an impenetrable dark gleam. “Very well.”

“And you, Miss Ashne?” said Phas. “What of your plans?”

The spirits have returned. They’ve breached the gap.

The sorcerer, she thought. It all came back to him. If this mysterious sorcerer indeed existed, as the ministers had feared, if he had truly allied with the bereaved loyalists of Khonua —

If he existed, and if he were not working with those who had summoned the Tiger, perhaps he would at least know how to pursue it.

It was a risk she would have to take.

“I, too, have business in Tham,” she said. “If neither of you mind, I should like to join you as well.”

With company she would be less conspicuous. She would be able to travel the main roads without attracting the attention she so feared from any potential pursuers, or from enemies alerted to her movements.

Braksya the apothecary shrugged as if to say, Fine with me. But Phas Tiuknin said, “A young woman such as yourself traveling alone with two strange men...”

“Is no more unseemly than a young woman traveling alone.” Especially with bandits on the loose.

At that Braksya snorted. Phas ignored him.

“If you are certain, then.”

“I am,” said Ashne, pulling back on her hat. The apothecary she could handle, mad though he seemed. Of Phas she was less certain in her current state, but neither could he take her so easily if she remained on guard.

If the two were somehow working together — she began to dismiss the thought, but then it gave her pause. They were both northerners, albeit from unallied domains. They seemed strangers, but it could be an act. It could have all been an act. For what reason she could not say, but she needed no reason to be wary.

Still, Tham was less than a week away. If worse came to worst, she would flee on the kammrae. On foot they would never catch her, and Phas’s arrows would never hit.

Of that, at least, she could make certain.