Mud squelched beneath Dareth's buckled shoes as he stepped down from the Magistracy wagon. The leather soles meant for Cora's cobblestones, not rural mire, would surely be ruined. Sweat prickled at his collar despite the cool northern air, trapped beneath layers of silk at his throat and wool vestments. Behind him, Cornelius wheezed slightly as he navigated the steep wooden steps, his ample form ill-suited to field investigations.

"Damnable roads," Cornelius adjusted his periwig with one hand, the other gripping his walking stick. "Scarcely better than cattle path."

They passed a pair of grazing cows, a tail lifted to greet them. Swiftly Dareth pulled out a handkerchief and placed it over his mouth. A venture to the wild north, breathe some fresh air, he'd thought.

Arable: a peculiar hamlet centred around a simple limestone church. Colonial farming issue.

The particularity struck him at once. Women worked the fields in homespun wool and linen caps, toted water in wooden buckets, mended thatched roofs. Children darted between wattle-and-daub cottages like minnows in a stream. But adult men — save for himself and Cornelius — were nowhere to be seen.

Garlands of spent Shiin's Day flowers still hung from the eaves. The square held three tables not yet cleared.

A broad-hipped woman with a child on each hip fixed them with a suspicious glare as they passed. Three old crones paused their spinning wheels to stare openly.

"Where are all the men?" Dareth withdrew his pipe, more for the familiar gesture than desire.

Cornelius cleared his throat meaningfully, eyebrows lifting toward his hairline, fingers twirling his newly waxed mustache.

"I see." Dareth's lips thinned behind the pipe stem. "Makes one question Sir Helmbane's moral choices, settling in such a place."

Further down the village square, blue-uniformed Magistracy agents had already gathered. Sir Hornbach stood out among them — taller than most, cuirass gleaming despite mud-spattered boots. He removed his tricorn as they approached, revealing sweat-darkened hair, and bowed deeply.

"Magistrate Oakenshield." He held it a beat too long. "An honour beyond the usual, sir."

"It rarely is," Dareth said. "Walk with us."

Hornbach's mouth twitched. He fell into step. Cornelius, noting Dareth's impatience, declined to offer the clever retort he'd been preparing.

Hornbach walked them through it against the backdrop of the watching village, voice low. The stranger arriving on Shiin's Day with a dead buck and a borrowed name. The children who took to her immediately. The women who'd warmed to her. The fruition ceremony, Tomsun's collapse — natural causes confirmed — and then the eclipse.

"She broke into the Helmbane cottage," Hornbach said. "Stole the Demon Slayer. Two witnesses found her holding the sword to her own chest. Hjordis Helmbane and the apprentice stopped her."

"The demon attempted to use the sword on themselves while its magic was subdued," Dareth said.

"Aye. Tried to drive it straight through her own ticker."

"That's not the behaviour of a predator." Cornelius fingered his long mustache.

Dareth looked out over the hillside, past the golden fields of barley. The breeze moved through them in slow repetitive waves. The sight was simple yet familiar. Painfully familiar. This place bore traces. Unexplainable traces. 

 He pulled himself back, met with concerned faces from the two taller men. "And then?"

The eclipse ended, Hornbach continued. The Changeling transformed — from a large woman, Rakatullian build, to a man. Slim and young. Then back again.

"Blonde," Hornbach said. "Zyrellian."

Dareth's hand went to his pipe. Didn't pull it out.

"Blonde," he said.

"Common enough among Zyrellians." Hornbach glanced sidelong. "Partly why old Rothwell sought your expertise, I'd wager."

"Amongst others." Dareth's hand came out of his pocket empty. "Continue."

Cornelius said nothing. His silence had weight to it. Dareth didn't look at him.

The rest: the barn, the bound prisoner, the funeral. The apprentice Mads returning to check on their prisoner alone. Hjordis's note — gone to Greenlake with Mads, back by the morrow. Unaware she'd left with the wrong person.

"Courier already dispatched to Crowley in Greenlake, sir," Hornbach said. "Lockdown being issued forthwith. Wanted posters underway."

"Good. Show me the victim's body."

Cold, dimly lit, smelling of dried flowers from the interrupted celebration. Tallow candles threw inadequate light across braided garlands of wheat and flowers. The whole place was neglected and unremarkable save for what waited centre stage beside a wooden statue of Goria — the bier, surrounded with candles, the dead flowers morbidly fitting.

A greying woman dressed in black stood vigil beside the shrouded body. Hands clasped, face worn through with days of crying.

Dareth gave her a brief nod and she pulled back the sheet.

Dareth looked.

The body was young, naked, male, strongly built. The hands of someone dedicating his life to farm work. Dark hair, tousled, damp at the temple showing early stages of decomposition. Once healthy olive skin. But most peculiar was the face. Or the lack of it.

An uninterrupted curve of flesh, blank as the back of a skull, stretching from hairline to jaw without feature or break. No eyes. No hint of a nose or mouth beneath. Simply absent, as if a sculptor had blocked in the head and not returned.

His pulse kept ticking. He stood there, watching. Only the hairline and ears remained as distinct features. His inner eye made its attempt to reconstruct the rest — dark hair, olive skin, the jaw's probable set. Strong nose, thick-lashed eyes partly closed. The more he looked, the more he assembled his own face on it — younger, clean-shaven, dead.

"His name was Mads," the woman said.

Dareth pulled out of his ruminations and back to the blank canvas of flesh before him.

"Mads." He pulled on his leather gloves with a sharp professional snap. "That's quite a common name in Zyrellia."

He did not mention that it had been the name of his late father.

He made himself examine the wound, pushing the cold shoulder over. A dark hole between the shoulder blades, ragged, not the clean cut of a proper blade. The Changeling had used what was available. Quick, functional. He eased the stiff body back, head settling to the side.

"I'll need privacy," Dareth said.

Hornbach and Cornelius withdrew with the woman in tow.

Alone with the body, Dareth stood for longer than was strictly professional.

He had been forced to read four dead minds in his career as Tipstaff. None willingly. Each time he'd held his wand with sweaty fingers and reminded himself the practical necessity outweighed the moral implication. The murdered dead had given him enough to grant them justice.

After a long centering exhale, he pulled out his wand, placed the tip where the temple would have been while his other hand rested on the cold cheek, the smooth strange blankness of it.

He closed his eyes and reached. His fingers shook with the effort. The moonstone shards inside the wand's core burned in his palm. There was only coldness. The wet and damp air associated with Chakchar's kingdom, the king of Lily’s alabaster steps where Dareth’s powers, though said to be divine gifts, would not reach.

Nothing. No memories, no images. Not suppressed or shielded. Simply absent. This boy, Mads — bearing his father's name — had evacuated so cleanly it was as if no mind had ever been there.

He withdrew.

The relief came first. Then the smaller, less comfortable thing underneath it.

He brushed a lock of dark hair from the smooth curve. Adjusted a fallen hand back to its original position.

"Spared that violation, at least," he said. "The Nine keep you."

He turned, stripped the gloves with a sharp tack of professional finality, and walked out.

The woman pushed back in before Dareth stepped back outside, fists on bony hips, face flushed with four days’ worth of held anger. 

“When will ye be done pokin’ at the poor lad?” She planted herself between Dareth and the door. “He needs proper rites. His soul will wander if ye don’t let us put him to rest — hauntin’ these grounds by midnight, mark me words!”

“His spirit has departed completely,” Dareth said curtly, watching his fingers stretch the soft leather. “Rest assured, it was most likely a swift departure.”

“Then let us bury him!” Her voice cracked open “Five days he’s been lyin’ there while yer men tramp in and out with their boots and their questions and their— ” she stopped. Drew breath. “The Helmbane lass. It all started with her, cursed red dress. She went south with the creature wearing’ Mads’s face and none of yer men have moved an inch towards Greenlake. We’ve women here afraid to sleep in their own homes. How long must we wait?”

Dareth looked past her. 

“Hornbach.” He didn’t raise his voice. 

“Sir.”

“The body is released for burial. See to it today.” He met the woman’s old eyes for two seconds. “And I want every available rider dispatched south within the hour.”

Dareth cut across her and she let him pass. He looked down. Blood on the white steps. Browning and probably a permanent addition to the church’s steps. 

The witness statements took less than an hour — Dareth moved through them efficiently in the annex beside the church, Cornelius taking notes in his small careful hand beside elaborate robes and tapestries decorated with acorns and oak leaves. 

The accounts converged: the paper toys made for the children, the rhymes about toads and turnips, the way Trinny seemed to have moved through the village like a warm breeze. Paper brought to life with a breath. 

“This… creature came here for a reason,” Dareth said, settling the last page down. Cornelius focused his glasses at him, “It came for prior knowledge of the Helmbane family. For the sword.” He reached for the pipe, sucked it, didn’t light it. Not yet. ”It’s all too familiar.”

Sir Hornbach bustled into the small space, letting in sunshine and warmth before shutting the door closed. 

“Mrs Helmbane won’t talk to me. Won’t speak to any of my men.” He clutched his hat, “Says she’ll speak to Oakenshield or nobody.” 

Dareth turned, pipe still sealed by his lips, lowered it.  “Interesting.” 

The cottage door opened before he could knock. 

Catrain Helmbane's eyes were sharp beneath the exhaustion. They took him in — his hardly impressive height, the three chains of command at his shoulders — with recognition, though they'd never met, then signaled with her head for him to enter. 

"Magistrate Oakenshield now, is it?" Her voice rasped from whatever she'd been drinking last night. "Took ye long enough."

Inside: poor but well tended. Books on sagging shelves. Thin pottage above the fire. Dareth tilted his head at the rectangle of unfaded paint above the hearth, where the Demon Slayer had hung for twenty years and now hadn't.

Before she even offered him a seat, Catrain reached beneath the working bench for a wooden box, worn smooth with years of handling.

"There's somethin' I've been needin' to show ye." She lifted it carefully. "The creature made these. Flowers, animals — beautiful, they were. The way Oskar used to—" She stopped. Set the box on the table. "The village burnt 'em. I managed to rescue but one."

She held out a paper crane. Delicate pointed wings, fold lines placed with a certainty he recognised all too well. Dareth took it. Made sure none of his emotions showed.

"Why me specifically," he said.

"Oskar spoke of a Zyrellian lad." Catrain's eyes stayed on his face, a challenge in them. "Went on about him fierce in his letters. Fond of the lad in a way he never quite explained, even to me. Clever with his hands, he said." A pause. "Strange, that the boy never came to pay his respects, aye?"

A pressure gathered beneath Dareth's sternum, building toward his throat. He swallowed. Tested his voice with a quiet cough.

"Tryggve Beardaughter died shortly after arriving in Cora." The sentence arrived smooth as glass. Twenty years of certainty behind it.

The room went quiet. 

Catrain reached for the keg beside the hearth. Poured herself a cup. Didn't drink it. Set it on the table between them and looked at it.

"Funny thing," she said. "The way me Hjordis described the changeling's true face. Summer wheat hair, thick and wavy, she said. Strange eyes — green, she was certain of it. A nose that turned up. Lean, more boy than man, Trinny's dress hangin' off him." She turned the cup slowly in her hands. "Put me in mind of how Oskar described the lad, in his letters."

She looked up, met his eyes, demanding an explanation where Dareth had none.

The lump kept building. Dareth's hands went to his pockets, reached for the smooth meerschaum comfort of his pipe, couldn't find it. He clutched the crane in his fist instead — gently, making it shift but not crumble — and placed it in his breast pocket. Rose, head grazing the herb rack. Hand on the door.

"I'll find your daughter, Mrs. Helmbane," he said, eyes fixed on the empty weapon display one last time. "You have my word."

"Aye." She set the cup down untouched. "I expect ye will." A beat. "But dinnae expect she'll come back here willin'."

Dareth attempted a smile that came out more like a concerned frown and stepped outside. 

Dareth’s eyes adjusted. Cornelius was waiting by the gates. Dareth hurried past him, heeled boots slipping, stopped by the low stone wall at the field’s edge. Pressed both hands to the rough surface. He looked out over the yellowing grass and the fields beyond it. 

The corn-heads grew faces! I swear by the all father, they turned their small heads and looked at me! Tryggve had tried to explain it to him, one time in Wolflake. Dareth had laughed and called him a fool and believed that had been the end of that. The second time he’d returned from the field with a thousand tiny cuts across his body. Dareth had not laughed. Tryggve had been strangely quiet about what really happened those times Oskar sent him to the fields.

Cornelius had followed him. His hand came to rest on Dareth’s shoulder. Dareth turned too fast. Stepped back, eyes wide with fear. Cornelius registered it, withdrew his hand, looked at the middle distance.

Dareth straightened his cravat.

“He’s alive.” His voice came out flat. Even. “The Changeling is Tryggve Beardaughter.” His eyes darted across the fields. He laughed suddenly. Brief. Wrong. Then shut it down.

Cornelius blinked, scratched at the hairline of his wig confused.

Fury, grief, indignation. It simmered in a dangerous broth beneath Dareth’s sternum. His strong jaw worked, the painful lump kept growing and Dareth’s deep voice wobbled dangerously. “He drove the Demon Slayer towards his own heart. Consciously. He would be dead again if they hadn’t stopped him.”

Cornelius was quiet, then. “He’s not simply a demon then.”

“He never was.” The heat in his voice was anything but professional. “We find him. Not a mark on him — Rothwell’s orders, Tryggve Beardaughter comes back breathing. And Hjordis Helmbane with him.” He turned, cape whirling behind him. “Hornbach’s fastest rider. Now.”