The packed earth road forked up ahead and Mads led them up the darker path, snaking up a treacherous slope. A shortcut, Mads had said, faster on foot than the slow road curving around the hills that separated Arable from the Merchant town.

Mads hopped easily from rock to rock, pulled himself up when needed, while she scrambled and slipped, hands soon scraped raw from catching herself on rough stone. 

“Keep up, Jordie!” Mads laughed, but he kept ahead, restless and impatient. 

She gritted her teeth, sword shaking against her legs, bumping into her feet, determined not to let it show. 

But as the night wore on, going into early morning, her lack of experience became apparent. She tripped over her own feet, snagged her clothes on thorny bushes, managing to rip a hole through a certain flower section of her red skirt she was extra fond of. 

Eyes on the dress, she walked face-first into a low-hanging branch. 

“Shiin’s arse!” She cursed, rubbing her aching nose. Mads chuckled, despite himself. Cleared his throat once he caught Hjordis dark look. 

“Ye’re not much for the outdoors, are ye?”

Heat burned in her cheeks. “I managed just fine in Arable. Ye on the other hand. Those few hikes with Tomsun hardly seemed enough to prepare ye for this.”

Mads paused, rubbing his chin. “Must be me unknown lineage. Perhaps I got wanderin’ folk in me blood.”

A pause. Hjordis’s eyes narrowed. He shrugged, turned and kept moving.

“More in yer damn tall legs,” she muttered while Mads was skittering downhill now on quick feet. Hjordis let out another curse at the divine and followed less gracefully. Her whole body screamed for rest but her mind kept being too proud to tell Mads so. He knew she’d never admit it and used it against her. That bastard. 

They kept walking all night. Mads persistence to keep moving was both admirable and alarming. Mads was trying to tire her out. She'd seen the goats do the same thing to a persistent gadfly — just run until it gave up. 

Finally as dawn’s cool air traded for noon’s searing sun, Mads showed mercy by declaring rest. Hjordis sank to the ground, resting against a thick fir that reeked of stale wood and resin, grass dried and crispy beneath her. A path of red ants carrying fir needles at her feet. Her legs were shaking, her lips and mouth parched. Mads sat hunched beside her in the shade, drank deep and steady, passed her the water skin, then busied himself by poking at the ant path with a stick. Pockets of chaos emerged around the stick, Mads sat grinning as the tiny ants  got into a combative position, swarming the invading stick.  

Hjordis watched, drinking greedily like someone who’s been traversing the Arbian desert. Not the temperate woods of northern Cora. 

The ants began to crawl up the stick, then sneakily up Mads’s boots. He noticed too late, threw away the sticks, made a little dance. Feet kicking, hands slapping his thighs. Hjordis snorted. Mads laughed too, exchanged a warm look. It lingered a bit too long. Hjordis didn’t mind. Then like he suddenly remembered their mission, remembered Tomsun was dead, remembered he was the new chief of Arable, Mads straightened and sat down further away. He just sat there for a while throwing rocks down the dusty slope below. The ants returned to their designated path like nothing had happened.

 More than once, her feet would find a loose stone, then Mads strong hands on her arms, hauling her up steep inclines. Hjordis knew, she’d be fine if she hadn’t taken the cursed sword with her. Mads couldn’t carry it for her even if he wanted to. He kept avoiding the sword like burning coal. 

As the sun dipped toward the horizon marking the end of yet another day, came the the distant roar of rushing water. A river stretched before them. Wide and wild. 

“We have to cross that?” 

Mads nodded grimly. “Aye, there’s a ford up ahead, but it’ll be tricky.”

The river widened sure enough, its fury somewhat tamed but still daunting. Hjordis stared at it, the amount of water. She remembered suddenly she couldn't swim. That she was, in fact, terrified of running water. The very concept of it. 

Hjordis backed up, the sword tip getting stuck in a tangle of blueberry bushes behind her.

“We’ll go together,” Mads held out a hand, lowering himself to catch her eyes darting away from the water. Then he kept smiling reassuringly, like he was the mature reliable one of their duo. Mads stepped into the shallows of the river, completely unbothered. Hjordis nostrils flared with vindication. Mads couldn’t swim either and that new found confidence bothered her more than the buzzing flies demanding a taste of her salty forehead. 

“Fine. If I drown though, at least I wouldn’t be alone.” She muttered. Mads made a funny face at that. 

“Do ye trust me Jordie?” His hand remained outstretched, feet steady. 

“Asking that gives a lass reason to doubt ye,” she said with a half smile, secured the slipping blade and waded in. Icy water soaked through her boots, dragged down her dress, the tied slacks and skirts. Mads pulled her close, arm firm around her waist. 

“Hold onto me, and don’t look down. Ready?”

Hjordis nodded. The current tugged at her legs. Cold hands below the surface, desperate, ready to sweep her away. Mads remained steady, or performed steadiness well enough that it didn't matter which.

 Halfway across, her foot slipped on a mossy rock. She let out a yelp, pitched forward, but Mads caught her— arm shooting out effortlessly, arm back around her waist. For a moment their faces were inches apart. Romantic like. She waited for it. 

Instead he grinned. No flush. “Steady now Jordie.”

They emerged on the other side, soaked and shivering. Hjordis was questioning if she’d let Mads go on this adventure on his own. Mads pulled his tunic and shirt over his head, wringing out the excess water. 

Hjordis found herself staring. Not at his exposed body— though that was there, lean and tanned muscles working beneath skin— but at how Mads looked down on his chest, one hand grazing the sparse hair on his chest, slow and distracted, like he was checking it was still there. Hjordis remembered the hand against Mads’s warm slacks, the mortification, the desperation. All gone now. Mads just stood there, half naked against the bank, completely at ease in his own skin.

“Almost there,” Mads pulled on the damp clothes, flung Trinny’s satchel back over the tunic last, already moving on, leaving her to follow without another word. 

The walls of Greenlake rose before them, weathered stone the color of old bone in the moonlight. Bigger than she’d imagined. Tomsun’s old stories never had a sense of scale, nor detail. 

“Me auntie, Hathora,” She said out of breath, to fill the last stretch of the road. “Da’s sister. Haven’t seen her since I was small. She got the family house after he died. And the gold. The connections.” A pause. “All me and Mam got was this cursed blade.” 

Mads turned, frowning skeptically. “And d’ye think she’ll help us?”

“She might. She and Mam don’t speak, but she knew Da better than anyone living.”

The gates were old — rebuilt twice over according to Tomsun, once to hold back Norellian raiders in the bad century, once again after something worse, beast-kin from across the frigid waters, that hadn’t been seen in these parts for two hundred years. The stone showed it, thick and patched and thick again, different colors where new rock met old. Hjordis looked at it and thought that whatever it had been built to keep out was long gone. Now it kept out peasants like her.

The guards posted either side didn’t look particularly martial. Tricorn hats, blue surcoats with The Magistracy crest faded from too many washings, glaives propped against the wall more for ceremony than any practical needs. A folding table between them held a candle stub and a card game in clear progress. One had his feet up. The other was pouring something from a flask. 

They barely glanced up. 

Mads said something she didn’t quite catch, they laughed and that was that. Inside the walls the city hit her all at once: the smell first, coal smoke and canal water and something sweet and rotten. She looked down, seeing brown remnants of mashed apple caught between the cobble stone. Hjordis pictured what Shiin’s day celebration had been like in the city. Spectacular. That game where you dived after an apple. Maybe an apple pie contest. She would’ve preferred that over seeing Trinny clutching her father’s sword like she’d done. 

Merchants packed up stalls in the central marketplace, Bluecoats on horseback shouldering through the crowd demanding travel papers. Agitated voices. Someone mentioned the lunar eclipse. Noise. Then the sheer press of buildings rising on either side, taller than anything she'd seen standing, taller than Goria's church by three floors at least.

Men everywhere. Men all ages and sizes, more than she’d seen a lifetime, all busy with assignments. 

A young man with a gray coat that dragged, carrying a stool and a torch hurried past to lit the nearby lamp post as the sun was about to set. 

She’d have stopped dead to take it all in if Mads hadn’t kept moving. She followed his teal back and tried not to stare too much at passing townsfolk. She stared anyway.

They climbed towards the higher district, were lamps where already lit and the cobblestone where more aligned and less treacherous. 

At a lamp-lit corner, Mads stopped a man rolling a barrel and asked the way to Hathora Helmbane’s house. 

The man straightened immediately. “Ay, everyone kens Hathora Helmbane.” He pointed up the hill without hesitation. A woman passing on the other side of the street caught the name and snorted. 

“Helmbane.” She didn’t slow her pace. “Lives on Magistracy grants and Crowley’s dinner parties like it’s still the happy forties. Some of us canna afford that luxury.” She was gone before either of them could answer. The barrel man shrugged. “Fourth street left, narrow grey house, four floors. Ye’ll ken it by the iron fence.”

The house stood narrow as a coffin stood on end — four stories of grey stone leaning slightly inward over the street, windows growing smaller with each floor until the topmost were barely slits. Between it and the next building, barely an arm’s width, moss growing thick in the gap. Behind the iron fence a small garden held roses and herbs arranged in straight patterns. 

There were lights in the upstairs window. 

Hjordis lifted the brass knocker — a snarling bear’s head with a ring in its teeth — and let it fall. 

Measured footsteps came down the stairs. Not hurried. Not alarmed. 

The door opened. 

Hathora was taller than Hjordis remembered. Or she’d shrunk in the memory. Silver hair loose around angular shoulders, face all high planes and sharp cuts — and there, suddenly, was her father. The same nose. The same set of the brow. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Hjordis,” she spoke in equal measure of calm and surprise. “Child. What in the name of the nine are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry for the hour, Aunt. We’ve come from Arable. There’s been trouble—”

Hathora’s gaze shifted to Mads. Her nostrils flared the smallest fraction. The look she settled on him lasted a beat longer than polite. 

“And this?”

“Mads, ma’am. From Arable. Tomsun’s apprentice.” 

Something moved through Hathora’s expression and was gone. “Indeed.” Her voice had taken on a different cadence — measured and dry. “How you’ve grown.” She pulled her night robe closer and stepped back from the door. “Come in. The neighbors are insufferable.”

The sitting room fire burned low. Hathora gestured them toward cherrywood chairs and took her own, high-backed, positioned to overlook the whole room. A large orange cat claimed her lap before she’d fully sat down. Her old hand moved to it without looking. 

“Speak then. All of it.”    

They told her in pieces, interrupting each other. Tomsun’s collapse, the panic. Trinny in the barn. The transformation during the eclipse. 

“Her hair went blonde,” Hjordis said with sweaty palms, tugging at her skirt. “Pale as wheat. And that face, sure he were cryin’—”

"Golden, maybe. Not wheat." Mads turned his cup in his hands, “And that wasnae tears, Jordie. Sweat, more like." 

“It wasnae a trick of the light. I was standin’ two feet from her—” 

Hathora’s teacup met its saucer with a crisp click. Silence fell. 

“Fact,” she reminded them, “Not interpretations, if you please.”

The fire popped once. The cat kneaded and purred. 

“Your accounts bear certain familiar elements.” She rose, moved to the sideboard, selected a decanter and poured three glasses. Hjordis was barely a finger’s worth, Mads portion far more substantial. “This requires considerably more qualified attention than any local constables can provide. Magistrate Crowley holds court tomorrow. I shall arrange an audience.”

Hathora studied them both over the rim of her glass with full attention. Then her gaze dropped to the sword in Hjordis’s grip. 

“May I?”

Hjordis hesitated. Then drew it from her belt and laid it across her aunt’s outstretched palms. She didn’t flinch at the touch. 

The blade caught firelight and reflected it strangely, like it came from the inside. Hathora’s fingers moved along the flat without ceremony, tracing the ancient script the way a person traces a scar they know by touch. 

Across the room Mads set down his cup. Lips drawn tight, eyes wide. 

“Your father earned this, ” Hathora said. “Not inherited it. The Baalian campaign —1545. He was the first human to ever receive mythril-work from the southern elves.” She tilted the blade, watching light pool in the runes. “Your mother never spoke of its origins.”

“Never.” 

“She could not.” Hathora’s thumb passed over the dragon pommel, the empty eye socket, the withered berry standing in for the missing emerald. “Whatever has found you niece, it is rooted in his past. Of that I am quite certain.”

She returned the sword. It felt heavier than before. Hjordis strapped it back without quite knowing what to do with that knowledge. 

Hathora’s attention shifted once more to Mads. She studied him with a small sad smile, as if reaching for a memory just out of reach.

"You have grown into quite the young man." A pause, fractional. "So like—"

She stopped.

Mads had gone pale. Sweat beading at his upper lip despite the room's warmth, cup back in his hands, turning, turning.

"Your colour is poor," Hathora said. Her voice had returned to its usual temperature. "Are you unwell?"

"Just the journey, ma'am." Steady. "Tired is all."

"Of course." She looked at him one moment longer. Then away, the moment sealed. "Bertha shall prepare your rooms, cook you some supper. We will speak properly in the morning."

She rose. The cat dropped from her lap without complaint.

Hjordis followed Bertha — A middleaged servant woman in a sad gray dress, up the narrow stairs, the sword bumping against her hip at every step. Mads lingered for a beat in the sitting room, eyes on the door. Before he struck his thighs, slapped on a grin and followed.