His eyes opened to show him a drastic view of rotting planks nailed together to form a ceiling. The feeling in his limbs hasn't quite returned. Alive. He was alive.

But how? If Mersem's memory was correct, he was knocked out on his way out of the palace. Only the palace soldiers could have done that. Why wasn't he dead? Moreover, why wasn't he in prison?

His breath hitched. Silke. Where was she?

He sat up then immediately regretted it. His vision swam and a sickening feeling gripped the pit of his stomach. He clutched his head as his body swayed.

"Careful, you're still winded," a kind voice bled through the ringing in his ears. Through his blurry vision, a face slowly formed and his eyes registered an old woman with a white apron atop her usual layers. There was also a red, braided twine hanging from her graying hair tucked in a dun. A nurse. She's a nurse.

What was Mersem doing in a place with nurses?

He peeled off the woman and remained upright on his own without feeling like vomiting. "What happened? Why am I here?"

He also noticed he was stripped down to his first layer with his other layers bundled over the backrest of a nearby stool. A few steps from the rickety bed he's lying on burned a fireplace crackling with embers and freshly-tossed firewood. His feet were bare but, surprisingly, they weren't freezing.

Beside the bed, the nurse shrugged and went to gather a bowl of clear water, a pair of scissors, and a pot of salve. "Beats me," she said, answering Mersem's question. "You were found in the front yard of the hospital, unconscious. What's interesting, though, is that there was no wound in your head to suggest you've been hit with blunt force. No wounds. Nothing. What was the last thing you remember?"

Mersem tapped his chin, his mind scrolling through the events stored in it. The recent memories were there—vivid and not a single event omitted. Still, he couldn't tell the nurse he's helping his sister and his friends loot the palace armory. She'd have called the knights on him before the last word could escape his lips. So, instead, he said, "I'm just out in the street when some people knocked me down. I have been feeling light-headed lately. Something about the blood? Or something."

The nurse's face lit up in familiarity. "Ah, that problem."

He didn't even know if they were talking about the same thing but he nodded. "Yeah," he blurted. "That problem."

"Well, it looks like you're fine already," the nurse dug around her pockets and passed him a packet of dry leaves. "Have that after heavy meals and you should be good. It's known to cure that problem."

Mersem grinned. "Right," he said, fighting the growing awkwardness in his system. "That problem."

Soon, with the rest of his layers on him and his damp boots back to his feet, he was out of the hospital and into the wild streets of Zarasel. First things first. Silke. He has to find her. Did she get captured in the palace? Did the king already execute her? Why wasn't anyone talking about it? Usually, commoner executions, especially when the victim was from the rural cities, attracted a fair amount of chatter and a good stir of buzz.

He wandered through the streets, sidestepping passing merchants and ducking out of the socialites' way, without a definite destination in mind. He couldn't just go home and tell their father he lost Silke somewhere in Zarasel. That wasn't the right thing to do. Plus, that's sure to earn more questions along the lines of what they're doing on Zarasel in the first place.

Mersem tightened his grip on the scarf tied around his neck. Where would Silke go if she was being hunted by the Palace Knights? Nowhere. If that girl had half a brain, she would go home. Perhaps, their father could do something about the knights like, maybe...hack them to pieces with his ax? Maybe Silke beat him back to Falkmena already and when he got back, she would hound him forever about getting to sit on the cossum chair for a long time in his absence.

It had taken them two days to trek from the thick forests of Falkmena to the edge of Zarasel. Silke must have the time of her life without Mersem to annoy her every day. A small smile spread to his lips. Yeah, he'd go with that scenario just to ease the twinge in his stomach. His vision still hasn't gotten back to their usual sharpness so everything was still hazy but recognizable.

He passed a wooden postboard where anyone could put up notices. It was a thing used from all over the continent of Solon but Mersem had never encountered one in such a big city as Zarasel. He knitted his eyebrows at this particular postboard where about a dozen people dressed in simple coats and even simpler boots gathered. They seemed to be clamoring about something.

He should check it out.

He peeled out from the other side of the road and crossed over until he was outside the rim of people. If there was one thing he regretted, it's nosing into that. Ignorance was bliss, indeed.

With muttered excuses and by enduring whispered curses at him, Mersem pushed past the crowd until he was a mere feet away from the postboard. Then, his heart dropped to his stomach. Plastered all over the postboard were portraits of none other than his sister: Silke.

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
FUGITIVE - THIEF - MAGE
Bounty: 100000 burams
Claim at the Treasury upon presentation of proper proof and upon inspection.

Mersem snatched one of the posters and read it over and over. A hundred thousand burams? That should set one up for life without having to hunt or collect timber from the woods. Judging from the murmurs and the attention this certain notice brought forth, a lot of people seemed to think that way as well. His fingers closed around the edge of the poster, crumpling it with a solid crunch.

Ridiculous. This was ridiculous. A hundred thousand burams for a thief? There was something going on and Mersem had to find out what it was. He straightened out the poster once more. Fugitive. Thief. Mage.

Wait. Mage?

Something Silke said flashed into his mind. Mages ran out of oil a long time ago.

So why was the Palace claiming Silke was one all of a sudden?

Mersem couldn't erase the growing dread on his gut. Home. He has to make it home. That thing should come first. He looked around and spotted a herd of horrida calves a few months away from birth. Those should do. Advanced apologies to whoever owned them.

He burst across the street and before anyone could guess what he was doing, he jumped past a rickety fence and slung a leg across the first calf he could straddle. The animal reared and bucked but he gripped its premature horns and held on for dear life. When he had righted himself on the calf's back, he slapped his foot on its hump, urging it forward. Like a trained horse, the calf buckled forward and tore off into the wide road, upturning snow with its small hooves.

Without a glance back, Mersem left Zarasel in the dust.

The journey and the rest of the dunes of snow and the clumps of trees lining the path he and his friends had trekked mere days ago blurred in his vision. There was only one place flashing in and out of his mind. Home. The cabin in the middle of the woods. Please let Silke be okay.

When he arrived in Falkmena, it was the same as when he left it. He jumped off his stolen horrida, tied a braided twine to its horn and the nearest tree he could find, and flung the doors to the cabin open. There was no Silke glowering at him from the cossum chair but his father was there, stoking the fireplace in the middle of the living room. He looked up at the commotion before going back to tending the fire when he confirmed it was Mersem.

"Dad," Mersem siddled closer to his father and shoved the poster bearing Silke's face into his face. "Look at this. What should we do?"

His father snatched the poster from Mersem's hand and gave it a quick skim. A few seconds later, he tossed it into the fire which made a few embers scatter and almost burned the tips of Mersem's boots off. Mersem scampered back. "Dad! What have you done? I need that!"

"No, you don't," his father snapped, poking the fire a little bit ruffier than usual. "Forget that notice. You're supposed to gather firewood yesterday. Where were you?"

"Silke's gone, Dad," Mersem said, like he had to explain it to a five year old. He shot up and began pacing like he always does when he's agitated. "Why aren't you bent on finding her? Why aren't you bothered by the poster? She could be in trouble!"

A small but bitter laugh tore off his father's lips. "If she has one of those notices, she's as good as dead," he raised his eyes to meet Mersem's. He shook his head without as much as a sigh. "Seriously, let it go. Those bounty hunters are ruthless and efficient. If there's anyone who can find Silke, it's them. And if they find her, she's one foot beyond death's door. There's no use spending time looking for her."

"So, that's it?" Mersem didn't like the sharpening edge in his voice. He was close to tearing his father's hair off his scalp. "You're just giving up?"

His father's passive expression didn't change. "That's it."

Mersem clenched his fists. This couldn't be the end of the road for Silke. She's a tough girl. There's no way she'd be gone like this. "Fine," he said, turning away from his father and going out of the living room and into the firewood shed. "If you won't look for her, I will."

"Mersem, come back here. You don't know what you're getting into," his father warned from inside the house.

He didn't listen. His footsteps crunched against the snow as he headed out of the house. His father's cries rang behind him but they fell on ears he had forced to become deaf against them. Yeah, Mersem didn't know what he was getting into but he sure as hell couldn't give up on his sister. Sure, she's insufferable, a brat, and whose only heavens-awarded purpose was to annoy him, but she's still his sister.

His one and only sister.

As he tore into the path on the way to retrieve his stolen horrida calf, something his father said came through. Bounty hunters. They're on their way to get Silke in exchange for a hundred thousand burams. They're efficient and always get the job done.

A small smile painted his lips as he untied the makeshift saddle he made from a dried up tree a few steps outside his house as a plan slowly formed in his mind. Well, Mersem should join them and get to his sister before anyone else could.

He led the horrida calf into the street despite his father's piercing stare from behind the cabin's fences and stared out into the horizon dotted with thick lines of trees and particles of falling snow. The carpet of white looked brighter than ever.

Here goes nothing.

Mersem felt his fingers tighten on the horrida's makeshift bridle made from the very twine Silke was known to braid. He has to go back to where it all started. Zarasel. He's going back to the Imperial Capital.

Silke, wait for me. I'll get you home.

By all means available.