A main road paved with stones. Lanterns to light the way at night. The older buildings either torn down or in the process of, and the ones built in their stead larger, their sandstone walls and wood-beam rooves clean and cleverly fitted.

Magenta’s heart lifted to see the change wrought in her hometown. The familiar streets all dusted off and dressed up. Nothing like what she had feared when the dirge-song had struck her that night. She had feared decay, danger, destruction.

Perhaps Victus was right. Perhaps the darkness had not yet reached its putrefying fingers this far east of the coastlands.

Far from diminishing her determination, though, this only spurred her on with a greater sense of purpose: Protect Bluddrayl to keep it this clean and good and industrious. In order to do so, she’d need the council on her side. To get the council on her side, she first needed to find Tabitha.

If the darkness had not reached Bluddrayl, then it was only a matter of time. They needed to be ready.

Even the turn off the main road toward the Settler’s Annex was dusted and paved and dense with people crossing paths. She thought of how often, as a kid, she’d track mud from the roads into her room at night, onto the carpets, and with a sigh she’d venture out to get cloth and bucket, even when her whole being cried out for her to just collapse into bed. Because if she didn’t clean it right away, and Tabitha happened to see…

The wisewoman was a formidable mix of nurturer and dictator.

But Magenta supposed that her room, her section of the hut and everything in it, would have gone to another of the Nexed when she left. There had never been enough to go around, certainly not enough to put her perfectly usable things aside in a box, just in case she returned for them. Even before she had left, what was hers had barely been hers, often shared around or traded, quickly passed down or passed on. She had reckoned a long time ago with the loss of anything not in her pack the night that she’d left.

The only thing she’d left behind and missed — aside from Tabitha and maybe a few others — the only material thing she’d missed was never hers anyway. Magenta flexed her fingers just thinking about the give and spring of the elegant white keys.

Would she play for Tabitha, to demonstrate her powers?

Well, that depends, Magenta thought. Would Tabitha welcome her in or turn her away?

She wasn’t sure. Once a Nexed, always a Nexed; so it went, anyway. So she had seen before with others who’d strayed and returned. But none that had done what you did.

Well, only one way to find out.

Time to face the music.

Further into the sprawl of the Settler’s Annex, the soil thinned and the ground became unworkable — well, almost unworkable. You could build on it with shallow foundations if you first put in the back-breaking work of clearing the rocks and levelling the ground. The fact that there were homes here at all spoke more to the residents’ basic need for a place to live than an innate love of the challenge.

And if you ventured even farther still, on past the Annex and a few miles out of town, the rocky terrain transformed from obstacle to asset, giving way to the old quarries and surface mines. The thick layers of sandstone and quartzite were the original lifeblood of the town, though the town’s industries had expanded considerably since. Magenta thought of the black mica pendant that had so often hung from Tabitha’s neck, a relic of Tabitha’s ancestors that proclaimed her as old blood.

When Magenta had stood on the bluff that morning, she had wondered if the Annex had grown, and the crowds of people were proving her suspicions true. She met these strangers in the eye and nodded and smiled. Mostly they nodded back or offered her a light frown. With her pack and violin case on her back, her travel cloak now bundled around them, she knew she looked just like a traveller who had only just wandered into town.

But gradually the streets were thinning; people were getting wherever they were going for the day, and Magenta was moving further out from the town proper.

She paused at the junction where the old tavern stood on one corner. Still stood, though just barely. Once the only two-floor building this far north-east of Bluddrayl’s inner core, the tavern had aged from dignified to dingy. One side of the roof had entirely collapsed in. Even the single wood board that barred entry through the front door hung down to the ground on one side.

Well, Magenta mused, not all things can last.

To the left a little ways, she’d find the Nexed’s base. If she turned right, though, she would see — what would she see? Would the remains of the fire be cleared, like it had never happened? Would there be charred remains still, waiting to stand in accusation of her?

For a moment she caught the scent of smoke in the air. She shook her head. Some nearby forgework, brewery, or bakery, perhaps. And anyway, it was gone as fast as it came.

You should go. See for yourself. Time to face the music, you said.

Yes, I did say that. But. One thing at a time, all right? (Magenta wondered if three days of travel with only her own self for company had encouraged a bad habit of talking to herself.)

So she turned left.

And stopped short.

Between her and the Nexed base were two men of the Gwerr. Their garb of deep moss green distinguished them as such, just as it had Victus, but neither of these were childhood friends of hers. Just the sight of them gave her that familiar dread she’d known as a kid, like you were going to get caught up to no good, even when you weren’t up to no good. Sometimes, when you were Nexed, that didn’t matter.

The Gwerr, fortunately, were not paying any attention to Magenta. They were, in fact, helping a man with his cart, as its wheel had broken off; one was assessing the damage while the other guard gathered up some of the rocks that had tumbled out and across the street.

But if she stood there gawking long enough, they might take notice.

She hurried on.

The Nexed base was bigger than it looked from the skinny entryway that ran between two modest homes. Beyond the backs of those houses, the space opened up. The centre circle was set with cobblestones — which was a lot more impressive back when most of the Annex was mud ground, Magenta supposed. Three rings of huts faced in toward the shared centre space. The larger boulders that accented the space and the sparing use of wood always gave Magenta the feeling of an opened cave. The Nexed were strong, solid, and timeless as rock.

The central firepit smouldered, but not with the smell of pine — with the smell of garbage. Magenta crinkled up her nose. Who let some fool try to burn garbage in the communal fire? Wool, by the reek of it, she thought. Tabitha must have been fuming.

Magenta chewed her lip. Where was everyone? Something — aside from just the smell — seemed off.

She stopped in the doorway to the main hall. Usually a space full of people, it was now a space full of — stuff. Cooking pots, spinning wheels, buckets, candles, even a pile of rocks. Screens delineated cluttered spaces strewn with blankets and furs, and in the far corner was an upturned mattress which rested against a haphazard collection of furniture, almost like a child’s fort, but constructed poorly even for a child.

And no sign of Tabitha.

Two young kids stood just within the entry and glowered at her, evidently waiting for her to explain her presence. When she didn’t, one of them finally cleared their throat. ‘What do you want?’

Tabitha had been the leader of the Nexed all Magenta’s life. But she’d eventually have to retire, right? Step aside for someone else?

‘Hey! I said, what do you want?’

‘I’m looking for Tabitha.’ Though Magenta spoke in reply to the question, her voice was quiet, the words meant mostly for herself. If Tabitha clearly wasn’t here, where would she go to find her?

The two kids exchanged a glance. While Magenta didn’t recognise them specifically, they did look passing familiar. She supposed they might have been older than they looked, but it seemed to her that they should have been in classes at this time of day.

‘For Tabitha, eh? What makes you think you can just see Tabitha?’ the boy jeered.

Magenta raised her brows at them. Looked them up and down and then drew herself to her full height. Which was still shorter than either of them.

‘I’m Magenta Black.’ She didn’t have to say that she was Nexed. Just her name told them that.

The girl was not impressed. She stepped in closer and scrutinised Magenta’s face. ‘Nexed? How come I don’t recognise you?’

There was the sound of movement over near the makeshift mattress fort. ‘Look, I’ve been gone a while.’ Magenta adjusted her pack as if to say: See? ‘Is Tabitha around somewhere — do you know where I can find her?’

‘Magenta Black, did you say?’

Magenta was relieved to find that she recognised the figure who stepped out from behind the mess. Her age, or a little older. His name was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite summon it forth as he strode over.

And then he said, ‘Is that really you, little pink?’

The relief dissipated immediately.