Delph stretched, before pulling the covers back up to his chin and enjoying the last of their warmth. Across the room he saw Mistress Hen asleep in an armchair, but the dancer from the Sirrup House was nowhere to be seen. Recovered from the night before's cup-shot sickness, he found his empty stomach was aching to be fed. Slipping out of the Witling Woman's bed, he went in search of breakfast.

"Is she still asleep?" Lyre asked him, as he wandered outside to where a small iron stove was burning brightly. "You needn't fear eating my stew this time, I've every intention of keeping you awake."

Stew again, thought Delph.

"Will you take me back to the theater?" he asked her, "I'd say it was the least you could do to repay the trouble you caused."

"In time," said Lyre, "But we cannot have Mistress Hen travel on an empty stomach, now can we?"

"She's quite different to you," Delph noted.

Lyre's jealousy was stoked; but she could still not determine its root. 

"What do you mean?" she asked with a pout.

"Nothing. Just... different," said Delph, returning inside having fanned the flames of her unease.

"Good morning," yawned Hen upon spotting him. The sudden realization that the Divine was awake before her, and had yet to be attended to, suddenly dawned. Jumping from her chair, she quickly tidied her hair, smoothed her dress, and wiped the sleep from her eyes.

"What might I do to be of service?" she asked, "Are you quite unwell? Should I gather some herbs to decoct you a tonic?"

"I am well," he told her, unaccustomed to such courtesy.

"Then breakfast, I will make you something."

"Lyre is cooking out back already," said Delph, "Mistress Hen, I think you can resume your seat."

"What? Oh! No, please. Take it, it is yours."

The two stood facing one another in the room, neither one willing to lose in the battle of politeness. Poking her head in through the door, Lyre determined there to be only one course of action. Striding inside, she plonked herself down on the chair.

"There is a spring outside. The pair of you wash your faces and hands before we eat. I've earned myself forty winks."

Hen finally relented in the second stand-off of the day; washing up first, before helping Delph to clean the parts of his face he'd missed.

"Do you like the water?" she asked him, realizing how bizarre it might sound, she adjusted herself accordingly. "I mean, do you like to swim, perhaps? Do you spend much time in the water?"

"We have a lake at home," he informed her, "I would swim in it regularly, and taught my brother how to swim there. With him being the eldest you'd have expected it to be the other way round; but I suppose he hadn't occasion to learn before the accident."

Hen had the advantage of having read Hekse Strahl's journal. 

"Is that how you injured your wrists?" she asked, "There was an accident?"

Delphin's sleeves had been carefully rolled so as not to wet them. He forgot sometimes that his scars would show.

"Caught in the printing press. Father said the pain was so great I jumped into the lake, and Fiepet not long after me. The pair of us ended up struggling under the water for quite some time."

"Aquis save you, how terribly frightening! A thing like that can certainly take its toll on one's body... and even one's mind."

"It did!" cried Delph, amazed at Hen's astuteness, "My brother and I lost our memories of all that came before we fell into the water. Father was left to piece together what we failed to remember on our own."

"And did your memories ever return?" asked Hen, "Your youth perhaps, or the day of the accident... before you fell into the water?"

Delphin shook his head.

"Isn't that a little strange?" probed Hen, "You must have been young when it happened?"

"My brother and I were adopted as children, and our father didn't know our ages when we came to be his sons; only that Fiepet is older. I was about sixteen when it happened, and my brother a year above me. Ten years have passed in which we've grown into the men we are today."

"Sixteen?!" Hen had to remind herself that time passed differently in the other world. He could not have meant that he was an infant when he fell.

"We'd just begun work in father's business," Delph explained, "It's ours now that he's passed."

"Do you want to go back there?" asked Hen.

"Of course! Nothing has good has happened since I came here. I miss Fiepet, I miss home."

Hen patted his hand when another came and landed on her own.

"Enough comfort my dear," said Lyre, "Nourish the man with food, rather than your delectable touch."

The three took their seats on a little stone wall that separated a rear garden from the outdoor kitchen, and with Lyre making a point of squeezing in between them while they ate.

"We'll head on to the village soon," she announced, "If visitors come again in search of the witch, then finding a ride towards Velmund Drum should prove no trouble. There's a lake there where young Master Strahl can... bathe."

Delph clutched his robe to his chest.

"Only if you should find it comfortable to do so," Hen added, "I'm sure Mistress Lyre only means to give the option should you need it. But Velmund Drum is indeed not far from the Sirrup House where we might find your brother."

"If Cuttle was here," mused Lyre, "We could find him in a heartbeat." 

Cuttle didn't need to ask the wind where he could find Fiepet Strahl; he and Ramun had been watching him from a distance. To better camouflage their tail of the Counsel, they ditched their carriage, and after an unfortunate period of traveling on foot, had been riding atop a large boar of Ramun's creation. Close to giving up several times over, when at last the Warlock and Fiepet were found, they commended their own resolve.

"I must say," whispered Cuttle, his voice in Ramun's ear like an irritating fly, "I don't quite understand why we must remain hidden. Now we know that Master Strahl is freely walking around, can we not go over and speak with them?"

"And what would you say? We followed the Warlock's Counsel in secret to find you? Do you think such news would be well received?"

Elion would not be pleased to see him. Ramun abandoned his task of helping Lyre with the Innate's spy at the palace, all because he believed his instincts were leading him to something greater. Now Lyre was alone, and he was in danger of stepping on Elion's toes.

"We should find the women," Ramun relented, "See if they located Delphin Strahl. He doesn't appear to be among their number, and according to Mistress Hen, he could prove useful."

Cuttle didn't hear him, he was far too invested in the scene playing out before them; and in particular, the flirtatious looks that Elion was throwing in Fiepet's direction.

"Elion is quite mistaken if he suspects Fiepet Strahl to be his type. Hasn't he something going with that girl in the chorus in any case? The one with the dreadfully large ears?"

"Cuttle."

"It might not be too strange should I run into them by chance. I could say I was traveling home from Forinstad; though it's unlikely I would have made it there and back again so quickly. Or maybe I could throw myself in with the rest of the rabble? Say I'd come to find the witch? Though that wouldn't do either. I wouldn't want the Divine's brother assuming I'd made up the mob out looking for the witch."

His ordinarily insipid ramble had brought to light a rather curious revelation.

"Who's brother?" asked Ramun.

"That is... it's yet to be confirmed," said Cuttle.

"And what would be your reason, for having assumed it possible that Delphin Strahl was the Divine? Did Mistress Hen say something to you all cozied up in the back of the open carriage..?"

"Not quite... she merely asked me to speak his name into the wind."

"The Maddening Witch? Or Delphin Strahl..?"

"Well," Cuttle explained as though to absolve himself, "Speaking 'Delphin Strahl' wasn't working, you see; and the witch became the alternative. But! Now there is the rumor of the Witling Woman, it's possible that we weren't following the youngest Strahl at all."

"We were following the witch?!" asked Ramun, aware of the colossal mistake he'd made in letting him go; "And you're sure the wind answered you?"

Cuttle nodded resolutely. "I can do it again if you don't believe me."

For some unknown reason, it failed to work under Ramun's watchful eye.

"If you're fucking with me..." threatened Ramun.

"I am not! Fine. Let me see where Lyre and Mistress Hen have got to." Again the wind did not answer him. Determined to prove himself, Cuttle successfully demonstrated how easily Ramun could be found. Elion too, and the Counsel. The Warlock had clearly eaten his own name long ago, but Fiepet Strahl was another who couldn't be placed. Only three out of seven were known to the wind. The odds were unusual.

"Lyre I could understand... there are those from whom it's best she remain hidden. I wouldn't put it past her to have stolen a piece of Merit Janney's Cloud Scroll. But why Mistress Hen? Are there protections in the palace that we're unaware of?"

"How would I know?" answered Cuttle.

Left with the choice of searching for Lyre or following Elion, Ramun chose the least likely to incite Elion's wrath. But not before finding a way to deliver him a message.

"How's your acting these days?" he asked Cuttle.

Twisting his body on the back of the boar to display his most attractive angles, Cuttle felt he was exhibiting his most theatric self. Ramun regretted that this was the only doll he had to play with; but he had yet to master making ones of his own as Lyre could. Given that Cuttle had failed to recoginize Fiepet Strahl from a distance, he had to trust that the inability to place one another would cut both ways.

After a brief costume change and a little make up, Cuttle was sent along with a message, riding side saddle atop the horse that Ramun had crafted. Elion had just butted in to an argument between Fiepet Strahl and the Warlock, when a sole female rider appeared upon the path.

"Excuse me, my good sirs," came a soft and elegant voice, "Is this the road to Relmund?"

"Who goes there?!" demanded the Warlock, "You!" he barked at Fiepet, "Is this the woman you rescued last night?"

Fiepet shook his head. The woman he'd saved hadn't been half as pretty.

"You've wandered too far north," Elion informed her, "Go back the way you came and take the wider road."

"Thank you," smiled the woman, "Your innate goodness has not gone unnoticed."

Cuttle steeled himself to deliver the performance of the century. Despite the countless lines of dialogue he'd spoken in the theater, the next was the hardest he'd ever had occasion to say.

"A good man is hard to find. But one with so handsome a face as yours is a tribute to Maphis herself. A poetic kind of beauty. Just as the lilypad hides the water nymph, so too will the peacock crook its head to drink."

Ramun had made him recite it five times through before sending him over.

"Elegant prose indeed Madam," Elion told her with a bow.

"Have you need of an escort?" Fiepet offered.

Cuttle very nearly forgot himself and was preparing to accept, when the Warlock dismissed the idea entirely.

"On your way," he told the woman, before issuing a warning to Fiepet; "Did you think because you are not in chains that you can wander my land freely? Not until your brother is found will you leave my sight."

"Then, good day to you sirs," said Cuttle, turning his horse and going back the way he'd come. Out of view of the Warlock and his men, he dismounted to meet the waiting Ramun. The horse was vanished to nothing, and Cuttle's costume sack was tossed back to him.

"I said it as naturally as I could," he declared, "Though I still do not understand why I had to be the one to do it."

Ramun could not disclose that had Elion seen him here, the least punishment he could hope to expect would be an end to his career. So just as Cuttle had forced himself to call Elion handsome in the company of Fiepet Strahl, he too had to make allowances he did not agree with.

"You make a far prettier woman than I," he told Cuttle, "And women are less threatening in the midst of all that raw male energy. It required your expert skills to sell the concept of the female poet. Besides, didn't you want another look at the elder Strahl?"

Cuttle's grievances gave way to a smile. "He looked well," he confessed.

The well-looking Fiepet was disappointed that his wings had been clipped. Since he could lend no assistance to the traveler, and the Warlock and Counsel continued butting heads over the witch's existence; he declared that it was time to leave the forest, and continue their talks in a more suitable location. Surprisingly, none thought to argue.

As they saddled their horses to journey east, Elion looked to the treeline. The Maddening Witch was alive, and Lyre had found him. Already he had a card to play.