3rd Week of February, 1460

  The road up to Mangup was a rocky, steep incline, clever at breaking unwary ankles, twice as cruel at night. Stefanos took it at a quick bound, feeling every uneven stone through the thin soles of his boots, forcing himself to place each step with care. His breath misted from his lips, shallow and sharp, as he made for the western side gate of the great fortress of Mangup. Specifically, for an inconspicuous entrance carved into the rock, reserved for messengers bearing news too urgent or too delicate for the main doors.

  Two guards flanked it. These were not the bored, drawling men who lounged at the principal gate by day, but hard-eyed figures with hands already resting on sword hilts, backs straight even in the dead of night. They heard Stefanos long before he reached them; by the time he crested the last step, steel rasped softly in its scabbard.

  “Who goes there?” one of them barked.

  Stefanos slowed, letting his shoulders drop, careful to look as unthreatening as a lone man could under torchlight. “I come bearing messages.”

  “For who?”

  “The high roost.” That was the keyword used for the Doux, part of the ritual for smuggling words through the dark.

  “Give it here,” the stockier guard, with mean eyes and a jaw like a block of stone, commanded. Stefanos complied, movement calm and measured.

  The guard turned the seal toward the flame, giving it a practiced glance. Recognizing the mark on the wax was part of his duty, as only trusted agents of the crown or its vassals were permitted to use this hidden channel. After a heartbeat, he grunted his approval and shifted aside, thumping a closed fist four times against the wood at a particular rhythm.

  A small judas slit scraped open. A strip of darkness holding a pair of eyes.

  “Who?” came a voice from the other side.

  “Sideris, Theodorus,” the guard replied.

  The judas hole closed, bolts slid, and the gate groaned inward. Stefanos stepped through and into Mangup proper, feeling the stone steady him like a cold mistress.

  He was escorted through the fortress’s darker alleys and along a narrow postern way, where another set of eyes and questions repeated the ritual - a second layer of validation and protocol. From there, they climbed again, Stefanos winding through Mangup’s dim corridors and stairwells.

  He remembered faintly the first time he’d stepped through the castle. Back then, the fortress had seemed to him like some enormous man-made cavern, the portraits had seemed like divine icons, and the tapestries in the great hall the woven tales of heroes and saints. He had felt like a peasant boy trespassing into legend. Now, though the scale and stone still impressed him, the awe had dimmed. It was strange how familiarity stripped places of their magic.

  They brought him before one of the few doors braced with iron bands and reinforced hinges. Before it stood a man whose ruined face had shocked Stefanos the first time he had seen it, he was the Doux’s personal bodyguard.

  “Gennadios, message from Theodorus Sideris,” the serious-faced escort announced.

  “That brat again?” Gennadios muttered. The flickering torchlight deepened the twisted burn scars raking across his features, turning his expression into something unreadable. He raised his hand and rapped on the door three times, no doubt a specific cadence to signal the type of meeting to the Doux. This was only his second time running this series of small rituals, but at least he no longer stared openly at each strange pattern of signals and countersigns.

  “Gennadios.” The reply drifted from within, a gravelly rumble that reminded Stefanos of coarse rocks grinding together.

  The bodyguard slipped inside with a smoothness that did not belong on a man with such a stocky frame and a dragging leg. The door shut behind him without a sound. Stefanos caught only the faintest murmur of voices.

  Moments later the door opened again. Gennadios jerked his chin, and Stefanos was ushered into the chamber, left alone with the Doux and his fearsome shadow.

  “Report.” The Doux sat behind a stark, imposing desk, the lamplight cutting hard lines across his face. His gaze carried all the weight and pressure that only the second most powerful man in the principality could wield.

  Stefanos swallowed.

  “An urgent message from my lord, Theodorus Sideris, regarding the mission he was assigned in Suyren.” The Doux’s gaze tightened on Stefanos at that, eyes holding his for a few extra heartbeats.

  The mention that he might be aware of his Lord’s mission was a deliberate choice. It marked him as someone trusted enough to know of the assignment, and who might offer more than just the ink on the page. It was the sort of subtle conversational nudge he would never have thought to use or known about before his training.

  Stefanos stepped forward and placed the folded letter into the Doux’s outstretched hand, forcing himself to move past the weight of that stare. The Doux turned the envelope over, the wax seal of the Sideris household, a sharp-beaked heron, catching the lamplight. With careful, almost delicate precision, he broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.

  He read through the letter, his eyes widening as he read the lines, then narrowing to a focused slit. Out of the corner of his eye, Stefanos caught Gennadios straightening, at watching the Doux show the slightest bit of emotion. Stefanos felt a small surge of pride at catching the small, minute reactions, one thing he'd since learn he was quite good at.

  “The shape becomes clearer,” the Doux murmured at last. He handed the letter across to his bodyguard. Gennadios scanned the document with a speed that spoke of long practice, and his face shifted in the exact same pattern as the Doux.

  The Doux dragged a sheet of fresh paper toward himself and reached for a quill. He dipped the nib, poised it above the page to begin the first line, then paused and glanced back at Stefanos, as if some instinct had tugged at him, saying there was more than met the eye when it came to the one-armed servant.

  “Is Theodorus’s position compromised?” he asked, sensing the servant might hold the answer.

  “Slightly,” Stefanos admitted. “The Hypostrategos, Hypatius Nomikos, has acted against my lord since the beginning of his tenure, and likely suspects something might be amiss. But nothing to indicate he knows of our mission or these messages.”

  The Doux steepled his fingers for a moment, thinking, then set them back to the quill and began to write, speaking as the words flowed onto the page. “He must maintain his cover and somehow get his hands on one of Philemon Makris’s letters to Adanis.” His tone was flat, stripped of comfort. “I will not sugarcoat it. It is a highly dangerous mission, and he will be killed if found.”

  He finished the short, precise message and set the quill aside. From a shelf above his desk he took a stick of red beeswax, broke off a piece with practiced fingers, and placed it in an oddly curved metal spoon blackened from previous use. He held the spoon over the flame until the wax softened and began to pool.

  “If there is any, and I mean any, sign of being compromised and found out,” his voice was low and even as he tilted the spoon, methodically pouring the melted wax onto the folded paper, his eyes never leaving Stefanos, “leave Suyren immediately and escape to Mangup. That is a direct order.”

  He pressed his signet ring into the soft wax with a slow, deliberate motion, sealing the command with all the weight of his office. It had the grim finality of a man who knew he might be sending the most promising military officer in the Principality to his death. But with the Principality itself nearing its breaking point, he could no longer afford to leave any tool unused.

  …

  Stefanos neared Suyren as the night thinned toward dawn, the first pale suggestion of light brushing the rim of the valley. His legs felt like lead and his eyes burned, utterly exhausted after the brutal journey. Even with the advantage of riding part of the way behind one of the Doux’s horsemen - who had left him at the mouth of the valley that led into Suyren - the timeline had been tight.

  Just as in Mangup, the approach to Suyren demanded its own protocol, though this one was of a more deceitful sort. Stefanos did not head for the proper gate used by high-priority messengers; instead, he slipped toward the western gate of the Suyren fortress, which was conveniently manned by guards whose loyalty Theodorus had painstakingly cultivated over the last few months. They had volunteered for the night shift, and the weight of silver in their purses kept their tongues still and their eyes conveniently blind.

  Stathis was waiting just inside the gate, cloak thrown over his shoulders against the chill, ready to whisk Stefanos into the castle before any stray eyes noticed. Together they moved through darkened corridors where a mere servant would never be permitted at such an hour. Stathis knew the usual routes of the patrols and the current habits of Lord Adanis’s men, and he guided Stefanos along unused staircases and side passages with quiet confidence.

  “They’re still in the study?” Stefanos whispered, realization dawning as he understood where Stathis was leading him.

  The man nodded, mouth set in a grim line. Stathis had become one of Theodorus’s most trusted men within Suyren, but he had not been fully briefed on the deeper nature of their spy mission. He knew enough to understand that something dangerous was at play, however.

  Stefanos had long since resigned himself to spending the coming day utterly exhausted while pretending not to be. What he had not expected was to be joined in that state by his own lord and Demetrios.

  Stathis eased the study door open with a low groan of protesting hinges, revealing a cramped, candlelit room that smelled thickly of burnt wax and woody smoke.

  Theodorus and Demetrios both turned at once, their postures snapping taut, nerves flaring at the slightest intrusion. It spoke to the tension that had likely clung to them through the night. Theodorus’s eyes were bloodshot.

  “The Doux,” he said, cutting straight to the heart of it. “Do you have his orders?” The question was simple, almost obvious, which was unusually blunt for him.

  Stefanos stepped forward and handed him the letter. Theodorus did not waste time with ceremony; he snapped the wax seal with a thumb and unfolded the parchment, devouring the contents with feverish concentration.

  “What does it say?” Demetrios asked, the strain in his voice barely held in check.

  “That the Doux reached the same conclusion as us,” Theodorus replied, eyes still on the page, expression transforming into resolve. “We must get our hands on the next missive Lord Adanis receives, at all costs. And in such a way that he does not notice after the fact.”

  “I may be able to help with that,” Stefanos said quietly. He slipped his travel pouch off his shoulder and began drawing out its contents. One by one, he laid the items across the table in the small archive room - the same room that had, not so long ago, served as the dull administrative hub for their record-keeping and inventory lists. He would never have guessed, on those tedious days, that he would one day stand here plotting espionage of this scale.

  “What is this, Stefanos?” Theodorus asked, leaning closer. On the worn wood lay a thin stiletto, a wax seal mold, several sticks of fine wax, a signet ring bearing a forged impression in the shape of a goblet, and a small vial filled with a viscous, dark brown liquid that clung thickly to the glass.

  “Weapons for the task,” Stefanos said, repeating the Doux’s phrasing almost word for word. “And a warning. If at any point there is any danger to you or your own,” his tone grew somber, the fatigue momentarily forgotten, “flee to Mangup. No ifs or buts.”

  Theodorus’s gaze moved slowly over the tools. They were tools with a singular purpose: open a sealed envelope without leaving a trace. As he took them in, the abstract idea of their plan hardened into something sharp and real. What they were about to do could no longer be dismissed as mere speculation or talk around a table.

  His eyes finally settled on the unmarked vial. It looked entirely ordinary, almost laughably so, and yet it drew his attention like a lodestone.

  “What is it?” he asked, voice dropping.

  “Poppy syrup,” Stefanos replied.

  Theodorus’s breath hitched. “Opium,” he murmured, barely louder than the candles’ quiet crackle.

  “The Doux explained the concoction is dosed to cause unconsciousness with exactly twelve drops,” Stefanos said, also finding himself whispering. The knowledge felt heavy in his mouth. “Or approximately one spoonful in a cup of heavily spiced wine. The entire vial for a medium-sized jug.”

  The room seemed to contract around them. The three conspirators shared a long look in the half-light, faces drawn and serious as their gazes passed from the vial, to the forged seal, to one another.

  The tools on the table were small and innocuous, but the plan they would forge around them might very well decide the fate of the rebellion.

  4th Week of February, 1460

  “The stones won’t scrub themselves. Get to it.” Madame Iris, head maid of Suyren, never missed her chance to bestow that little jewel of wisdom on the scullery maids. It was the grand finale to the public dressing-down she delivered every morning to the lowest caste of servants, scolding them for the slightest speck of dust or smear of mud in plain sight. As if it were their fault that soldiers tramped filth through the corridors before dawn, long before anyone had a chance to clean.

  “Is that clear, Agape?” Madame Iris turned the full weight of her glare on her, eyes like knitting needles.

  “Perfectly, Madame.”

  That was the biggest difference in the past few months: the way Agape now answered - with clipped respect instead of fiery rebellion. She had learned to quench her inner fire, a task of tremendous effort, given the daily conflagrations that threatened to rise with the way servants were treated in this castle. But she had learned that talking back only brought more trouble than it was worth. Not just for herself, but for the small thing perpetually clinging to her waist as if the world beyond her skirts were a storm.

  “Come along, Valeria.”

  The girl she’d picked up on the street looked like a different creature altogether since being properly washed for the first time in perhaps her life. Pale skin, mottled with freckles, replaced the grey mask of grime. Her brown hair, shorn short, lay in uneven waves around her face, framing a pair of wide, beautiful hazelnut eyes.

  It had been a wild gamble to speak to Lord Theodorus about her, one born from the desperation of seeing ribs jutting through rags, the chill gnawing at the child’s thin shoulders. Against all hope, he’d accepted and found her a place in the younger servants, working as a runner, as she was awfully quick, though she did some shifts scrubbing like the older women.

  Valeria followed close at her heels now, hazelnut eyes bright and restless as they swept over their surroundings. She always did that, as if expecting the shadows themselves to lunge at her. It was a habit learned on the streets. Agape shuddered to think why she'd had to learn it.

  As they moved along the corridor, Agape spotted a grizzled man-at-arms with white streaks running through his beard, leaning in the corner and watching her with too much interest.

  “Valeria, go grab some fresh scrubs,” Agape said quickly, heart tightening.

  “But we already have these,” Valeria murmured. She always spoke in small, quiet bursts you had to strain to hear.

  “The steward wants the upper hall done with the good cloths today,” Agape lied smoothly, not missing a step. “These are for the kitchens. Go on, before Madame Iris sees you standing idle.”

  Valeria knew better than to argue. Her small hand tightened briefly on Agape’s apron in a silent be safe plea, then she darted away down the hallway.

  The man pushed himself off the wall and sauntered toward Agape, his eyes raking over her figure, mostly imagining it as there was to see beneath the layers of worn wool and linen.

  “Looking mighty fine today, Miss Agape,” he drawled.

  “Thank you, Sir Perikles,” Agape replied with a small curtsy, swallowing the bitterness that rose in her throat and conjuring a smile she did not feel. “How are you today?”

  “Better, now that I’ve seen you.”

  He stepped in closer, reaching for her waist. Agape pivoted just out of his grasp, turning the movement into a light, almost playful spin, as if she were teasing rather than evading him.

  “Running away now, are we?” he chuckled. His breath already reeked of stale beer despite the early hour.

  “I don’t let myself get caught easily,” Agape laughed. The sound that left her lips was light, almost musical, but inside it felt like she was walking a tightrope over a pit. She’d been charming this useless, drunken man for some time now, and the act was a constant balancing trick - never giving too much of herself, just enough to keep him interested.

  It was disgusting how lecherous men could be. She’d seen enough of that in her life. She’d also learned enough of how to charm a man to wring what she needed from him. The knowledge made her skin crawl, prompting a shiver that ran down her spine, which she disguised as a ripple of pleasure.

  “What must I do to catch you, milady?”

  The man’s black beard, streaked with grey, reminded her too much of Vasileos. For a heartbeat her body threatened to lock up, breath catching in her throat. But she forced herself through it, drawing instead on the anger that had pushed her to seduce this drunk in the first place, the same anger that had driven her to consummate her marriage with Christos so soon after suffering beatings and…the horrors at the hands of his monster of a father.

  Because there was no fuckin’ way Agape was going to let that shadow hang over her for the rest of her life.

  Neither hers, nor Christos’s.

  So she made a point of leaning into the moments that made her chest tighten, of pushing back against the choke in her heart whenever she was cornered by a bigger man like the idiot in front of her. If she didn’t walk over that fear, it would crush her.

  “You must tell me something,” she said, lowering her lashes.

  “Oh?” he smirked.

  “I’ve heard that the brother of the late Lord died in a hunting accident.”

  Perikles’s brow furrowed at the odd turn in conversation. “Aye, he did.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “And the older maids mock me for my ignorance,” Agape added, letting her mouth pull into a pout. “For being younger.”

  “Hah, for being prettier,” Perikles laughed, chest swelling. Now he thought he understood - it was just gossip. Maids and their chatter. It was exactly what men like him imagined went on in the female servants’ quarters from dawn to dusk.

  Agape faked a blush, tilting her head so a strand of hair fell forward. “It is infuriating, Sir Perikles.” She stepped a little closer, letting her shoulder just brush his arm, he practically preened at the contact. “I want to know what happened. They say it was a wild beast that took him.” She parroted the line Demetrios and Stefanos had fed her. The Lord wanted to know more about the incident for some reason, had told her to keep her ears open for anything about it. They had not asked her to undergo this dangerous dance, but well… Agape was tired of only pretending to be meek. She was not made for sitting still, and she never backed down from a dance. No matter the dance partner.

  “Aye, it was a terrible beast that took him,” Perikles said, puffing up, half bragging, half relishing the story. “I was there, on that very hunt. Saw the body with my own eyes.”

  He leaned on the wall, settling into the telling. “Mangled, he was. Flesh torn, jagged cuts all along the body. One arm gone, taken clean by the beast.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Never saw the beast itself, not clear-like. But some swore they saw a shape in the trees, striped and lean, stalking the forest. Quick as lightning, the attack was. Lord Kostakis stepped out of sight for a breath and then- Wham!”

  He mimed a pounce, clapping his hands together with a wet smack.

  “Never thought I’d see such a thing in my life,” he went on, shaking his head. “Lord Adanis was beside himself. Couldn’t be consoled. Had everyone involved in the hunt, even old Gerasimos, thrown out on their arses. Summarily dismissed, just like that.”

  Agape widened her eyes, letting out a soft little “Oh!” of horror at the appropriate moments, feeding him looks of awe and sympathy. Inside, she sifted his words, weighing them against what little she already knew. A beast with stripes.

  Once he’d exhausted his tale, his hands grew bolder. He let one stray upward, grabbing at her bosom with a clumsy squeeze. Agape’s first instinct was to smack him across his stupid, bearded face, but she forced herself still, turning it into a shy giggle and a breathless, “Sir!” while she gently peeled his hand away. He might be useful again, she told herself, so she couldn't break his grimy, chubby fingers.

  He winked at her, leering. “I’ll be seeing you around, pretty Agape.” Then he lurched off down the corridor, boots echoing against the stone.

  Agape stood for a moment, rubbing at the spot on her chest as if she could erase the touch, ruminating on how little she had actually learned. Details, yes. But at the end of it, it was still just a tale.

  Valeria reappeared not long after, arms full of fresh scrubbing cloths, bare feet soft on the flagstones.

  As they headed toward the stretch of floor Madame Iris had assigned them, Valeria leaned closer and whispered, “I know where the old huntmaster lives. The one they cast out. He’s in the slums now. Like a vagrant.”

  Agape blinked. “You were listening?”

  Valeria kept her eyes on the floor and did not answer.

  “Little rascal you are,” Agape muttered, unable to keep the fondness from her voice. “Don’t do such things again. They’re dangerous.”

  “If one dog is in danger, the whole pack backs him up,” Valeria said quietly, the words spoken solemnly, almost philosophical. “I’ve seen it plenty, hard to keep hold of a scrap when they all come together.”

  Agape scoffed, dipping her brush into the bucket. “We are not dogs. And I definitely don’t want you dying on the side of the road like a stray one. So. No. Risks.” She flicked her finger into Valeria’s nose, prompting a hasty evasion. It didn't stop Valeria from speaking again, cheeks coloring.

  “But you’re my pack,” she murmured.

  Agape’s hand froze. She turned to the girl, then pulled Valeria into a fierce hug. The child stiffened at first, as she always did at sudden touch, then slowly relaxed against her. A pale, fragile little piece of innocence that was too damn cute.

  “I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Agape said lightly.

  Valeria tensed again at the words, and Agape felt a sharp pang in her chest. What had this child lived through, to flinch so quickly at the hint of rejection?

  “But I suppose we are,” Agape finished, softening her tone. She drew back just enough to press her forehead against Valeria’s, locking eyes with her.

  If she did nothing else right in this life, Agape swore she would do right by this stray she’d picked up - and by the little pack they were building together.

  Theodorus stopped before the shabby hovel that clung to the northern edge of the southern slums of Suyren’s castle town. Calling it slums felt like a misnomer, he thought as he glanced around. Three-quarters of the town was one great slum, all of its inhabitants bent under the weight of abject poverty, trying to claw their way through winter after yet another round of harsh taxation.

  Even after months of walking these streets, seeing the common miseries of the townsfolk, Theodorus still could not quite grow numb to the sheer destitution. Barefoot children picked through frozen refuse, their toes blue and raw where their shoes had long since rotted away. Men huddled around smoky braziers burning damp wood and dung, their bellies filled with little more than watered barley gruel and the occasional scrap of turnip. Smoke leaked from crooked chimneys of wattle and daub, the walls so cracked that the wind seemed to breathe in and out through them.

  But in small pockets, Theodorus could see the differences he’d managed to make in his own, limited way. The new nomad market fair brought a steadier supply of yoghurt from the steppe tribes and other simple but nourishing produce from nearby villages. Whenever he noticed a surplus of any one thing during his patrols, he would requisition the castle, through Steward Theophylaktos, who bought it up at a low, if somewhat fair price. That stock could then be redistributed without him dipping into the alms that had become a matter of survival for Suyren’s poorest. Though in winter, there was little surplus to go around.

  With Hypatius still partially bankrolling the feasts, the alms chests were fuller than they might otherwise have been, and that meant the city’s unfortunates at least scraped by instead of simply slipping under.

  Billeting his troops inside the town proper had helped as well. The men had come into real contact with the people whose taxes and labour sustained the castle. Theodorus quietly encouraged it, urging them to interact with the people on daily tasks, in the hopes of building a community spirit of mutual aid. He himself spent time among the populace, listening to complaints about broken lanes, cracked roofs, and sour bread. With the daubing and building skills they’d honed while rebuilding their Dung Quarter, his soldiers had been able to help re-daub some of the worst-off houses for people who simply could not afford to do it themselves.

  Once every few weeks, Theodorus ordered a small rota of men to repair an alleyway, shore up a sagging wall, or re-pave a treacherous patch of lane. Officially, it was to keep their skills sharp. In practice, it served as a kind of rough social care that fostered goodwill with the townsfolk, built personal bonds, and nudged the men into helping acquaintances of their own accord.

  Now, the other aides’ companies were following suit, copying his methods almost exactly. The result was a quiet, piecemeal revamp of both the town’s crumbling infrastructure and the people’s relationship with the garrison and, ironically, their own relationship with Lord Adanis, who they credited for the army’s work and the increased alms.

  It was a small thing in the grand scheme of the Principality, but one that made all the difference here. It gave Theodorus a kind of soft power among the populace that men in high towers often overlooked, and his enemies above almost certainly did not bother to count.

  For example, when a young boy in the southern quarter had taken ill with a raging fever and loosened bowels after drinking from a fouled cistern, Theodorus had been summoned. He had ordered the water boiled, the child kept warm and given thin oat porridge instead of heavy food, and a bitter tea brewed from willow bark he’d had the steward fetch from the apothecary. The family had followed his instructions to the letter and, as a result, the boy’s fever broke on the second night. Ever since then, whenever he passed that lane, the mother pressed her hand to her heart and bowed.

  He’d also procured a small store of ingredients for the honey mixture he’d once used on the men in the Probatofrourio when dysentery had cut through the ranks - honey, boiled water, and a pinch of salt and herbs. It was not a miracle cure, but it soothed, and sometimes that was enough to pull a man back from the brink.

  It had become a self-perpetuating cycle: Theodorus used the connections and authority he’d amassed during his stay in Suyren to nudge lives in the right direction, and those small acts of help, in turn, deepened his influence among the people, who brought him more problems to solve.

  That was why, when he walked through the least favoured slum with armed men in tow, suspicious glares did not immediately follow him. Faces turned toward him not with fear, but with cautious respect. When he greeted the familiar stall-keepers by name and asked after old Gerasimos, they pointed him without hesitation toward this very hovel. And when he needed to keep people quiet or something done, he knew just who to speak to.

  Theodorus paused at the fork in the lane, snow slushed into grey mush beneath his boots, then turned toward the local midwife’s house.

  Thea was waiting outside her low doorway, sleeves rolled past her elbows despite the cold, a wool shawl hanging crookedly from one shoulder. Even at this hour, she moved like she was late for something, hands never still. Among these cramped houses and broken roofs, she had a reputation as the one people went to when things went wrong, not just births and fevers.

  “Lord Theodorus,” she greeted, breath puffing in quick little clouds. “You’re far from the pretty parts of town.”

  “I prefer the honest ones,” he replied, offering a small nod. “How have the births been?”

  “Bloody,” she snorted, plucking lint from her apron and scrubbing herself raw with a block of lye Theodorus had procured for her. “Same as always. Women screaming, men pacing outside pretending they’re not scared, babies deciding whether they want to live in this world or not.”

  He huffed a quiet breath through his nose. “Have you been following the new practices we spoke about?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but not unkindly. “With the washing and the boiling and the fussing?” She flapped one hand. “Yes, yes. I boil the linen till it’s soft as butter and the scissors too, damn you very much. Wood’s not free, you know.”

  “Any difference?” Theodorus asked with a quiet smile at the woman's antics.

  She rocked her head from side to side, considering. “Too early to say for certain. Maybe… a few more little ones breathing proper by morning instead of going limp. Maybe." She said, frowning at Theodorus's chirp expression. "Or maybe the saints just feel generous this month. But it’s a terrible hassle, all that boiling. I’m always chasing firewood, and people look at me like I’ve gone mad when I tell them not to reuse a dirty cloth.”

  “Keep doing it,” Theodorus said quietly. “Despite the hassle. Every little effort helps.”

  As he spoke, he reached out as if to pat her arm in thanks and instead slid a silver stravraton into her palm, closing her fingers over it with gentle insistence. The weight of the coin pulled at her hand.

  She arched an eyebrow at him, all sharp, quick intelligence behind the practiced chatter. “That much for hot water and sore hands?”

  “I’d rather spend silver on your firewood than on another funeral plank,” he said. Then, lowering his voice, “I also need a favour.”

  Her gaze flicked to the men at his back, then to the miserable line of hovels further down the lane. “Ah.”

  “I you catch anyone spreading word or rumour that we were here today, tell them we weren't," he said. “And that no one visited old Gerasimos. If anyone comes to any of you with questions, you know nothing.”

  Silence hung for a moment. Thea’s fingers tightened around the coin, knuckles whitening, eyes searching his face.

  “You come with swords and secrets, Lord,” she said at last. “Nothing good ever follows that mix.”

  “Sometimes it does,” he replied. “If we’re careful.”

  She blew out a breath, sharp and impatient. “If this brings trouble from the high nobles-”

  “It won’t,” he cut in gently.

  She held his gaze a heartbeat longer, then nodded, jaw tight. “Gerasimos is at the far end. The last hovel before the ditch. You’ll smell it before you see it.”

  This section of the district sat on the very fringes of the town, and it was one of the few corners untouched by any of the company’s past charitable efforts. Here, the shadows between the houses seemed denser, the smells thicker - smells of smoke and rot and old piss clinging to the air.

  In a ramshackle hut that looked one good wind away from collapse, they found an older man sitting on a low, broken step. Snow had been trampled flat around him; he sat as if rooted there, a fixture of the street. His skin was darkened by sun and weather, but stretched too tight over sharp bones. With one twig-thin finger, he listlessly drew shapes in the dirty snow.

  “Gerasimos?” Theodorus called.

  The man lifted his head, watching them from deep green eyes the colour of a thick forest in summer, but did not answer. His shoulders remained hunched, spine bowed as if under an invisible weight.

  “We want to ask you about something,” Theodorus continued, keeping his tone mild.

  “Ask away,” the man rasped at last. His voice was high and thin, the sound of a throat unused to human speech for a long, long time. “Ain’t like I’m going anywhere.”

  He gestured vaguely to his legs. They were little more than sticks beneath the tattered cloth, the muscles wasted away. All of him was paper-thin, skeletal, as if he’d been living on the edge of death for months and simply hadn’t noticed yet.

  “It’s sensitive information,” Theodorus said softly. “Perhaps best discussed inside. It’s about your last hunt.”

  Gerasimos stared up at Theodorus from his low perch, snow clinging to his bare feet, weighing the words. Then he sighed, long and slow, and braced his hands on his knees.

  “I had a feeling this day would come,” he muttered.

  He pushed himself to his feet, using his elbow and the doorframe for leverage. Theodorus stepped forward instinctively to help, Christos and Stathis moving in the same heartbeat.

  “I don’t want any help,” Gerasimos snapped, flicking his hand at them like a man scolding flies.

  “You look about to keel over, old man,” Christos grumbled under his breath.

  “If I fall, let me,” Gerasimos said, jaw tightening. “I’ve my dignity at least.”

  He did stumble once on the short, uneven path from the step to the doorway. All three younger men tensed, but he waved them off again, teeth gritted, and clawed his way upright without their hands. Theodorus forced himself to respect the refusal, he would gain nothing by going against the man.

  Inside, the hovel was little more than a single room, low-ceilinged and dim.

  “Perhaps we can get some broth for Gerasimos,” Theodorus murmured to Stathis, keeping his voice low.

  Stathis nodded and started toward the door.

  “Maybe Gerasimos doesn’t want any,” the old man rasped, without turning. His hearing, it seemed, was keen enough. “So don’t bother.”

  Theodorus studied him a moment. Under the dirt and ragged clothes, the man was not nearly as broken as he looked. There was pride there still, coiled tight.

  “You can barely stand upright,” Theodorus cautioned. “Allow us this grace. We are asking you for information, and we were going to pay anyhow.”

  “I don’t want any payment,” Gerasimos cut in. “And I don’t need any food.”

  His cheeks were hollows, his collarbones sharp as knife-edges, but his eyes were steady. Theodorus had seen that look before.

  “I will tell you all I know,” the old huntmaster went on, “but only because it is my way of making peace.”

  It was the look of someone with nothing left to lose.

  “Are you looking to die?” Theodorus asked quietly.

  Christos and Stathis both turned to him, startled. First by the bluntness of the question, then by the certainty behind it.

  For a heartbeat, Gerasimos’s face went utterly still. His eyes seemed like hollow shadows, like a man already halfway beyond the grave. Then he barked a short, humourless laugh.

  “I wasn’t supposed to last this winter,” he said. “Thought I’d let the cold take me. Seemed fitting, dying under the snow like so many of my quarry.” A flicker of something like pride, or grief, crossed his features. “But now I know why my body held on. It was to give a final spite, a final revenge. To close the chapter on the last hunt of my life.”

  “It is still a job you are doing for me,” Theodorus answered, his voice as gentle as one could be in a room like this. “A hunter unpaid is not a huntmaster but a serf.” Theodorus countered, appealing to what he knew of stubborn old men, as he was one himself. You could not argue them out of their decisions, only dress those decisions in a skin they found acceptable. “Every partner in a hunt gets a slice of the prey.”

  Gerasimos’s eyes narrowed as he studied him, taking the measure of this strange young lord.

  “Very well,” he said at last, grinning as if accepting it only because he found the logic funny. “A bowl, if you’re going to be so stubborn.”

  Theodorus inclined his head and murmured fresh instructions to Stathis. This time, the old man said nothing as the younger man slipped back out into the cold to find broth.

  Gerasimos settled back against the crooked wall, eyes fixed on some point far beyond the smoke-stained rafters. When he spoke again, his voice had less rasp and more weight.

  “It was a different kind of hunt,” he began, “that much I knew from the start.”

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, as if feeling old reins there.

  “I’d been out in the woods for days beforehand with my chosen men doing the dirty work most nobles don’t see. Marking tracks, watching where the deer cropped the new grass, testing which streams still ran clear enough to drink from. You lay the groundwork plenty in advance, though half the lords think you’re just a man with a horn and a dog.” A faint, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “Lord Adanis is a good huntsman in his own right. Too good, sometimes. Being huntmaster for a man who takes it as seriously as he does is no easy task, let me tell you." He huffed, half in pride, half in bitterness.

  “He’d burned through five huntmasters before me,” Gerasimos went on. “Five. Couldn’t stand their carelessness, or their laziness, or their lack of nerve. But me, he kept. I liked it, truth be told. Liked the challenge.” His smile faded. “But that’s neither here nor there.”

  He fell quiet for a heartbeat, then picked up the thread.

  “Where was I… ah. The woods. They were wrong that week. Sparse. Quiet. The tracks thinned out in places where they’d never been thin before. As if the prey had been scared off. And this in late spring, when the forest should’ve been fat with life. With Adanis hunting as often as he did, I knew the rhythm of those woods like my own heartbeat. It hadn’t been like that before.”

  Theodorus leaned forward slightly. “When does that happen?” he asked.

  Gerasimos looked at him, green eyes catching the low light. “When a new predator enters the fray,”

  He let the words hang, then continued.

  “We should’ve called it off,” he admitted. “But we didn’t. Lord Adanis… he always wanted to test himself when something dangerous appeared. He relished it. And he dragged half the damned court with him that day. Falcone-feathered hats and polished boots, laughing like it was a feast. His brother came too, of course.”

  “Kostakis?” Theodorus asked.

  Gerasimos nodded.

  “We’d already marked the path the beast was likely to take. Something big was moving through those woods, leaving broken branches and deep prints where no boar had any right to be. On the day of the hunt, the leash hound picked up the scent straightaway. Nose to the ground, whining, straining at the cord.” Gerasimos smiled at the mention of the beast. “What a fine dog he was.”

  “The forest was quiet as expected,” he said. “Just the clink of harness and the beaters shouting at the edges. But nothing enough to warn us of… what was coming.”

  His gaze went distant, as if following the echo of those shouts down some long corridor of memory.

  “We were working our way up along a steep, ugly ravine, and had the poor folk in a ring around us, beating the bushes with sticks and yelling to flush the game toward our spears. Beaters, we call them. A wall of noise to drive the beasts where we want them.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “One of them saw something,” he said. “I heard the crack in his voice when he shouted. Not the sound of a man startling a hare. Something else. Lord Adanis was off like an arrow, the leash dog near tore its handler’s arm out of the socket trying to bolt after whatever it smelled. So we followed.”

  He drew in a breath, slow and thin.

  “Kostakis…” Gerasimos’s voice softened. “He hung back. Always did. He was the quieter of the two. Happier to let his brother ride ahead and claim the charge. That’s why they got on so well.”

  Theodorus stayed silent, holding his thoughts in his head.

  “We reached the place where the dog had dragged us,” Gerasimos continued. “A little hollow, sheltered under the ravine wall. But there was nothing there. No boar, no stag. Not even fresh droppings. We thought we’d spooked whatever beast it was, that it had slipped us. We were making ready to cast wider, pick up the trail again, when we noticed Kostakis was gone.”

  The small room seemed to tighten around them. Christos shifted his weight, the boards creaking.

  “He’d been not twenty horse-lengths behind me.” Gerasimos said. “We called his name. Once. Twice. No answer. The beaters went quiet, one by one, as they realized something was wrong.”

  He paused, licking his lips.

  “When we found him…” His voice roughened. “I’ve seen what wolves do. I’ve seen men trampled, gutted by boar tusks. This was… worse.”

  He took a deep breath, unveiling the scene he’d seen that afternoon.

  “His throat was raked clean open. Not torn like a wild dog might do, but… carved.” He dragged his fingers across his own neck, slow and straight. “There were claw marks along his chest, deep and jagged, as if something had gripped him there and shaken him. One arm was barely hanging, bone peeking through like white wood. His left leg bent the wrong way, twisted under him. His horse was gone. No sign of it, no tracks clear enough to follow.”

  The silence stretched.

  “Lord Adanis…” Gerasimos’s gaze dropped. “I’d never seen him like that. He was always loud, quick to anger, quicker to laugh. That day, he went very quiet. Fell to his knees in the mud beside his brother and just… stared. Like the world had tilted under him.”

  “The body,” Theodorus said quietly. “What did you see?”

  Gerasimos’s gaze sharpened, fixing on some point just past Theodorus’s shoulder, as if the corpse were lying there still.

  “What you’d expect to see in an animal attack,” he said slowly. “They called it a leopard, some beast of legend prowling our little forest.”

  He snorted faintly.

  “Fools, the lot of them. The blood was all wrong. I’ve seen my fair share of beasts go for the neck. It’s a mess. It sprays, it spatters, it paints the ground in arcs. This…” He shook his head. “This had petered out into a puddle. Like someone had opened a wineskin and let it drain.”

  He tapped his own chest. “The claw marks were uniform. Straight. No tearing, no twisting. No messiness about it. A real animal doesn’t care about neat. The arm? Cleanly severed, as if cut with a blade instead of bitten off. And only one arm taken.” He spread his hands. “Tell me, captain, what kind of beast kills and then leaves its meal on the ground at the first sign of trouble? None I know of.”

  “You think he was murdered,” Theodorus said, though it was barely a question. He wanted the word spoken aloud.

  “I’m sure of it,” Gerasimos replied. There was no hesitation.

  “And did you tell Lord Adanis?”

  “Hah.” The old man smiled at that, a bitter twist of the mouth. “I did. Told him it wasn’t a leopard, nor any other beast of forest or field. Told him it was a man.”

  “And?”

  “And he fired me on the spot.”

  “Just for suggesting murder?”

  “No,” Gerasimos revealed, “But for saying who it had to be. Only someone who knew the woods, knew their routines, knew his and Kostakis’s habits on a hunt could have done it. An ambush predator only strikes when he has perfect information.”

  He leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath his thin frame. “And there was only one beast I knew of who had the means, the wit, and the warning to pull such a thing off.”

  “Hypatius,” Theodorus said, the name landing in the cramped room like a boulder.

  Gerasimos held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once.

  The door creaked open and Stathis stepped back in, the steam of a hot bowl of broth curling around him.

  “You have your story, captain,” Gerasimos rasped, glancing at the bowl but not reaching for it. “Now let me have my peace.” He jerked his chin toward the door.

  “You can join us, Gerasimos.” Theodorus gazed upon the hunched shell of a man before him. He’d seen enough to recognize the mind buried inside the wasted body, and what a waste it would be to let it simply fade into the snow. “Your hunt doesn’t have to end here.”

  Gerasimos gave a soft, humourless laugh. “After he cast me out, I had a long time to think,” he said. “Longer than I wanted. I realized there’s nothing in this world I’d rather do than that grand moment of the hunt. Laying the trail, reading the signs, arranging the prey just right so you couldn't miss. The puzzle of it. The challenge.”

  He shook his head. “I could’ve gone back to hunting on my own, it would be easy enough. But without my place, without my title, without everything I’d built… I found I didn’t care to live half a life. Not after tasting the whole of it.” His shoulders sagged with the weary resignation of a man who had decided long ago and grown used to the decision.

  “My time on this hunt is finished, young lad,” he said at last. “In this story, I’m the hound. I sniff out the trail. I circle the quarry,” His green eyes darkened. “And I point you toward the beast. The rest…”

  He shrugged his shoulder in mock nonchalance, but Theodorus could tell the layers of hurt that lay beneath.“You’ll have to hunt this one yourself. And he is as dangerous as they come.”

  A chill walked down Theodorus’s spine. He did not doubt the old man’s measure of danger.

  “I disagree with you,” Theodorus said, rising to his feet. “I think there are plenty of hunts left for an old hound such as yourself. Perhaps he simply needs a new purpose to guide him.

  He took the bowl from Stathis and set it personally into Gerasimos’s hands. The broth was thick, full of fatty meat, onions, and root vegetables, the sort of food that warmed a man from the inside out.

  “If you ever grow back your taste for meat,” Theodorus added quietly, “you know where to find me.”

  Gerasimos looked down at the bowl, then up at him, a million thoughts happening behind the green curtain, watching him all the way to the door.

  “Captain,” Christos said as soon as they stepped back into the brittle winter air. “What do we do now?”

  Theodorus lifted his gaze to the vast, ancient bulk of Suyren looming over the town, its towers knifing into the pale sky. He now had a weapon sharp enough to draw blood, sharp enough to cull his greatest enemy within those four walls.

  “Now,” he said, his eyes hardening into something predatory, voice low and certain.

  “Now we hunt.”

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