Jaycen ducked low to dash into the short, narrow doorway of the ancient cottage, hugging his two outcasts close to prevent them from hitting the door frame. Khazmine groaned in his arms, the wound on her face having smashed against the lieutenant’s armor when he hugged her. The outcast's blood left a smear on his chest plate, making one of his twin sun insignia resemble a burning comet shooting across the sky.

“Come on, come on!” Tatty insisted as she slammed the door behind them, causing the wanderers in pursuit to smash ineffectually into her front door. “This way, into the guest room.”

Harriet meandered to the back of her dwelling and shoved the remaining costumes off the bed to make room for Khazmine and Pavo. Jaycen set them down gently, with Pavo tucked into the crook of his big sister’s arm. The weary Solanai warrior brushed Khazmine’s bangs away from her face to get a better look at her scrape before turning to his savior.

“Thank you for helping us, mistress—?”

“Harriet. I’ve seen you lot ‘round here,” Tatty said as she smiled weakly up at Jaycen. “I run fires for the bread-peddler’s ovens in Merchant’s Quarter… And I’m a friend of Miss Khazmine there.”

A friend? Jaycen wondered, having forgotten the face of the woman Khazmine had saved over a month ago from Lord Farthing. How odd it was that the lieutenant hadn’t even considered that the aloof outcast had any acquaintances besides himself and Rida. It wasn’t that Khazmine was lacking, but her half-breed status hadn’t helped the outcast make any friends in the camp, so he’d assumed…

“Poor thing’s had a rough go of it, yeah?” Tatty commented as she examined Khazmine’s wound. The friendly woman turned on her heels, presumably to retrieve a healer’s kit from another room.

Sure enough, Harriet returned with a nearly-spent roll of healer’s tape, which had a faint trace of magic that gave the roll a subtle golden glow. Her other hand had a wet cloth, which she passed to Jaycen before attempting to separate the tape from its paper backing. “Wipe the wound clean first. Last thing you want’s an infection.”

Jaycen stroked Khazmine’s forehead and temple with his damp linen cloth, daubing away grit and blood that had discolored her face. The Solanai clenched his teeth and winced as he watched Khazmine squirm weakly under his care.

It had been so long since Lieutenant Mevralls had to use his spikes to defend himself, and it left a hollow, aching feeling in his chest. He realized that it wasn’t the wanderers’ fault, but they’d given him no choice. Using ether to attack was much different on the battlefield. At least there his attacks were limited to the enemy, but here, they were civilians, and that never felt right.

“Mama? Why are they ringing the bells?” a short, red-haired boy with an abundance of freckles asked from the hallway.

“I’m not sure, love,” Harriet confessed. Her eyes traveled up to meet the Solanai’s as she continued. “Looks like somethin’ bad’s happened outside. Maybe the mister knows…”

“There’s… some kind of sickness going around,” Jaycen explained. “And people are trying to get away from the danger. Many are heading east, but I doubt the holy house can take everybody.”

A faint banging rattled the window shutters, accompanied by wails and moans which sounded more like dying animals than sick people. Harriet flinched at the noises before she snuffed out the candlestick near the window without touching it, shrouding the room in near total darkness. With luck, Doomsayers outside would simply pass the cottage by if there wasn’t any evidence of people within.

“MAMA!” Alix cried out at the sudden lack of light in the room, which only had the glow from Khazmine’s tape giving off a trace amount to see by.

“Shh, baby,” Harriet whispered. “It’s okay. We’re still right here.”

Little Alix shivered where he stood, until Jaycen produced a small stone from his pocket that outlined everyone in the guest room with its faint blue-green glow. Alix grabbed the stone from the lieutenant’s immense hand and marveled at the magic within.

Jaycen didn’t have nearly enough ether to craft a shroud of darkness around the cottage, but he did have enough to make a single stone glow. He was, after all, a light magician, and a skilled one at that. Harriet seemed to piece together this information as well, and smiled at the Solanai for helping calm her frightened son.

“Thank you, sir,” Tatty said with a fragile smile, relieved that she didn’t have to take matters into her own hands and risk discovery. “Though I hope you’re not attached much to that rock. Like as not, Alix will want to keep it.”

Distracted by the glowing stone, Alix toddled off to show Sprig, who was desperate for the ringing bells, moans, and panicking people outside to stop. Seeing her two boys struggle to sleep, Harriet produced a palmful of sweet thistle-wheat fluff from her needlework basket and shoved some of the fibers in their ears to muffle the screams outside. Alix and Sprig curled up on the end of Khazmine and Pavo’s bed after some coaxing and eventually succumbed to exhaustion.

I guess that’s that then, Tatty sighed to herself before looking back at her guests. With three strangers needing protection in her home, there would be no fleeing the cottage tonight. Harriet took another deep breath before resolving herself to the new plan.

“There now. At least the littles will get some sleep.” Harriet draped the house panther costume over her sons to keep them warm. A slow, pervasive chill had seeped in through cracks in the old cottage’s walls, giving even Jaycen a patch of goosebumps. “An’ you could do with a bit o’ rest too, I’d wager.”

Jaycen was distracted and didn’t respond, as he stood stock-still, listening through the din outside. A crackle of electrical static and the lingering chill he detected in the distance weren’t natural phenomena, and could only be the result of one thing.

Major Barshaw and the colonel. Jaycen flinched.

While he and the outcasts had taken refuge in the ancient cottage on Crescent, his superior officers were out there in the thick of things, warding off this horrid outbreak. The exhausted lieutenant staggered toward the door, but found himself blocked by the plump, resolute woman with fire in her eyes.

“Where do you think you’re going, mister?” Tatty asked.

“My unit is still out there fighting. I should help.”

“Not on my bloody watch, you ain’t!” Tatty scolded, her voice a holler wrapped in a whisper. “Look at you, all tired just standin’ there. And I’ll bet that ether’s gone bone-dry, yeah? Go on back to the room down the hall and sleep. No sass, mister. Go on, shoo!”

For such a soft, pleasant woman, Tatty was a ferocious little tyrant when she wanted to be. Unable to argue with her, Lieutenant Mevralls crashed on the still warm bed after removing the bulk of his armor down to his padded gambeson. It would be hours before Jaycen would wake, leaving his hostess to defend their battlements alone.

Tired as she was, Harriet paced the house in a silent vigil, discouraging the more insistent of interlopers from breaking in with a talent she’d kept hidden for many years, even from the children.

Only once in the night did one of these pus-covered Doomsayers manage to sneak their filthy, sore-encrusted arm between slats in the window shutters, much to Tatty’s disgust. The frazzled woman raised her left hand with her thumb and middle fingers together and snapped both with a crackle. From her hand, a bright, red-orange ember burnt the wanderer’s limb in an instant, causing them to recoil from the window and flee in agony.

Not strong enough for a soldier’s life, nor powerful enough for forge work, Harriet was still an exceedingly rare ether user, one who could at least defend her own home from attack. Most mainlanders hadn’t seen one in fifteen-odd years, with some saying that the whole lot of them had died out during the First Territory War.

It was a secret that her horrible auntie had lorded over Harriet and cowed her into submission since Tatty first showed signs of manifesting ether many years ago. The fiery redhead needed no flint-steel striker or expensive starters to ignite embers on command, after all…

Tatty Cadlen was a pyromancer.

---

Far from Cheapside, high above the scrambling swarm of desperate townspeople, stood the Grand Cathedral, looming from its stately hilltop perch. A ring of lit, caged braziers cast their flaming lights against the holy house of glittering gold, magnifying its impressive façade like a sunset mirage. Were it not for the screams and cries of the Cheapsiders fenced out below, one would almost believe that there was some kind of festival going on, one that emphasized the house’s benevolence and largess.

“PLEASE, LET US IN!” a hooded figure called out with a distinctly D’jabarese accent until his voice went hoarse. The hooded man banged against the locked golden gate with a clenched fist, while clutching the hand of a half-sized, cloaked echo of himself with his other one. “HAVE MERCY! PLEASE!”

Throngs of frantic, pleading citizens pressed against their backs, smushing Rida and Aranthus into the vertical slats of the Grand Cathedral’s shining gates. The healer didn’t need to turn to see how many were ganging up on the pair from behind, as their voices rang out with a continuous chorus of shrieks and wails. Through the peals of clanging bells and shouting citizens, little Aranthus’s hand went clammy in Rida’s grasp.

Hang in there, kiddo, Rida thought as he squeezed the Outsider’s hand to comfort him. The healer’s arm rattled from Aranthus’s terrified trembling and it was all Rida could do to keep the young outcast calm. Aranthus, meanwhile, scanned the perimeter behind them through a tangle of flailing limbs and bodies, searching for release from this terrible place.

As uncomfortable and frightening as this experience was, it paled in comparison to an hour or so prior, when scads of mindless wanderers from The Dregs had overtaken the healer’s hovel. It was fortunate indeed that Rida was still awake, pouring through his collection of old weeklies for news of the strange Marquis Banebury, when the first-floor windows of the hovel shattered at full-dark.

Rida had just enough presence of mind to grab his oversized black bag and secure it over his chest before racing through the library to reach the recovery room. Aranthus was inside and lying on Pavo’s bed, finally asleep after hours of pouting and sassing the frazzled southerner. The Outsider child had refused to give any hints at where Khazmine and Pavo might have gone, stubbornly maintaining his pleas of ignorance the whole time. Exhausted by his efforts, Aranthus looked almost peaceful as he nestled the warm blankets on Pavo’s bed.

Not wanting to startle the lad, Rida frowned before jostling the sleeping Outsider with his hand ready to recoil, should Aranthus decide to take another bite out of the well-meaning healer.

“Aranthus, wake up!” Rida pressed upon hearing another window shatter in the distance. Any moment now, one or more of those Doomsayers would stumble into the recovery room and find them there. Aranthus startled at the sudden contact, and his ears drew back upon seeing the fearful expression on Rida’s face. “Come on, kiddo. We’ve gotta go.”

The pale Outsider followed behind without complaint, despite his struggles with acres of fabric from the oversized cloak Rida had managed to grab for him on their way out. The hovel overrun, Aranthus had no choice but to follow the only other elder who’d shown him a hint of kindness since Lady Kiss-Me had left. Jaycen had shouted at him, but this man…

“You okay, kid?” Rida whispered as he bent low to Aranthus’s ear. His voice was a raspy, strained croak that betrayed the depths of his efforts to be heard over the mob.

Aranthus locked eyes with the healer, forcing himself to stop trembling on the spot. A resolute nod was all his reply, as the young Outsider battled a wellspring of frightful sensations within that begged him to make a run for the outskirts of the screaming townspeople.

A fleeting tug at the corners of his mouth gave Rida the faintest hint of a smirk as he glanced down at the stubborn child whose stare bore right back into the healer’s. Aranthus staunchly refused to admit how frightened he was aloud, despite the twitching of his sensitive ears and slight flinching every time a shrill cry broke through the din. Unlike Khazmine or Jaycen, the Outsider had far greater command over his expressions.

Say what you want about the little guy, Rida remarked silently. But this kid’s a d*mn good liar.

Rida’s expression turned abruptly upon seeing Aranthus’s eyes widen at something above them. The tiny Outsider’s ears drew back sharply and his tough-guy veneer crumbled at the sight of some strange, distant figure looming overhead on the balcony of the Grand Cathedral. Rida couldn’t get a good look at him from that angle, but the color of his opulent vestments was damning.

For reasons outside the healer’s understanding, Aranthus blanched at the sight of the holy house’s scowling high cleric—Lord Amias Vythorne himself.