There were patterns in the flames—not really, Quilla knew, but stare at them long enough and apparent patterns emerged. Garet was frequently there. Bits of him. A hint of his smile. An eye glinting. His chin. His ears. Never all at once and always for the briefest of moments as the flames crackled and waved, and became new shapes.

  The horns of a Volg appeared, and she jumped slightly, sloshing hot cider over her hands.

  “Hey, you okay?” Tarm said.

  Quilla turned her head, blinking several times to get rid of the impressions the flames had left on her eyes in the otherwise dim room. She placed her mug down on the table and reached for a cloth. “Yeah, yeah fine.”

  “You’ve been very quiet, Catalyst,” Jakka said.

  “Please, just Quilla. I don’t need to be called Catalyst all the time.”

  Jakka shrugged. “As you wish, Quilla. So, what’s on your mind that’s kept you so distracted?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Not about this morning, I hope,” Tarm said. “Really, we couldn’t have asked for things to go much better.”

  This morning had gone reasonably smoothly, though Annai had questioned and worried about it continually all day. That might be why Tarm was assuming Quilla was thinking about it, too.

  They had set out shortly after dawn, the five of them along with a pony-pulled wagon with a few supplies in it. Naturally, they had been stopped by Bloods at the gates of the city. One of them walked over to the wagon and pulled back the tarp.

  “Why is your wagon so empty?” the Blood asked.

  Jakka, who was leading the pony, piped up, “Business was good, milord. Sold almost all our goods.”

  The Blood covered the wagon again. “Where you headed?”

  “Elbeth,” Jakka said.

  “Elbeth? Why Elbeth?”

  “Because it’s home, milord. It’s where we live. We were just in the city to sell our goods.”

  The Blood walked up to Veronique and looked her over briefly before moving to Tarm and doing the same with him. Then he stopped at Quilla and spent longer looking her over, long enough to make Quilla start to worry.

  “We don’t have much left as you saw, milord,” Jakka said, “but if you’re interested in something…”

  The Blood turned from Quilla and rounded on Jakka. “Are you attempting to bribe me?”

  Jakka raised his hands. “Of course not, milord. Just attempting a last bit of business.”

  With a grunt, the Blood turned away from him again, and approached Annai. “You’re a Folith, aren’t you? With a bunch of Eloorin?”

  Annai’s face paled. “Yes, my...my Lord. There are Foliths in Elbeth, too.”

  He stared at her for several moments—at least, Quilla was fairly sure he was staring; it was hard to tell through his helmet. Eventually, he stepped back and waved his arm wide. “You can go. All of you.” He turned to Jakka. “But you be careful of your words in future. You don’t want to sound like you’re trying to bribe us. The Red Knights are unbribable.”

  Jakka tapped his forehead with two fingers in a sort of salute. “Of course, milord. I’ll be more careful.”

  Once they were well out of earshot of the Bloods, Tarm said, “Unbribable! That’s a laugh.”

  Jakka chuckled.

  “They recognised me, didn’t they?” Annai said. “And Quilla. They spent so long looking at us.”

  “If they’d recognised you, your Highness,” Jakka said, “they wouldn’t have let us pass. You have nothing to worry about.”

  But Annai had worried. Loudly. Virtually non-stop.

  She’d gone quiet now though, perhaps as quiet as Quilla was being, though it was hard to tell as Quilla hadn’t really been paying much attention to what the others were doing. The rest of their journey had gone smoothly, apart from the pony not liking Veronique much, but Veronique just kept her distance and everything was fine.

  The tavern they were now in was small, but busy. Elbeth was a small town, and this was the only tavern, so all the locals came here. They’d managed to secure a table for themselves near the fireplace with its Garet- and Volg-filled flames.

  “Well?” Tarm said.

  Quilla blinked again. “What?”

  “You’re not worried about this morning, are you?”

  She shook her head. “No, just thinking about other things. Don’t worry about me.” Her concerns were not about that morning, but rather what was to come tomorrow.

  The evening wore on and Quilla continued to pay little attention to what any of the others were doing or saying. She barely remembered what she ate—some sort of stew, wasn’t it? She only picked at it.

  Eventually, they retired to their “rooms”. Elbeth didn’t have an inn, but the tavern did provide accommodations in its stables. Those accommodations amounted to a couple of the larger stalls cleared out with fresh straw for a mattress and some blankets. It was not spacious accommodation, but it was something. They had two stalls, one for the men and one for the women.

  The stall Quilla, Annai, and Veronique were in was cold. It was along the outer wall of the barn and there was a small piece of one of the planks missing, allowing cold air in. It wasn’t horrendous, and was certainly better than sleeping outside. Veronique piled their supplies up to block the hole, which helped a little.

  There was no point changing for bed, so Quilla just climbed onto the straw.

  “I need the outside,” Veronique said.

  Quilla shrugged and moved to the side against the stall wall. Annai climbed in beside her, and then Veronique doused their lantern and took the outside of the “bed”.

  Annai quickly fell fast asleep, and Veronique… Quilla wasn’t sure about Veronique. She was lying down, but whether she was sleeping was anyone’s guess. Quilla, however, didn’t even bother to lie down. She just sat there, letting the hours slowly creep by. The last thing she wanted right now was sleep.

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  “You should at least try to get a little sleep,” Veronique said eventually.

  Quilla glanced over at Veronique’s shadowy form in the darkness. She hadn’t sat up.

  “Of course, you don’t have to listen to me. Just making a friendly suggestion.”

  Quilla grunted, then sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  The straw rustled and Veronique sat up. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Whatever’s got you so distracted. Again, you don’t have to, but I’ve heard it can sometimes be good to talk to other people about things that are bothering us.”

  Quilla stared at her, tried to look her in the eye, though in the dark, it was hard to be sure if she’d made eye contact. Veronique’s eyes were not reflecting any of the very little available light. “I don’t even know you.” Not to mention a Darker as well. There was no way in hell she was opening up to a Darker.

  “I’ve heard that sometimes it can be better to open up to a stranger.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I suppose I don’t, but I am your bodyguard, and as long as you’re sitting there refusing to sleep, I can’t be sure you won’t try to skip out without me, so I have to stay awake too. And if I don’t get any sleep, my effectiveness as your bodyguard decreases considerably. So in that sense, I do care.”

  “Will you two shut up?” Annai muttered. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “I’m trying to help your friend here, your bitchiness, but she doesn’t seem to want it, so sure, I’ll shut up now.” Veronique lay back down and turned on her side to face away from Quilla and Annai.

  Quilla sat there a little longer, but eventually stretched out and lay down as well. As much as she didn’t want to admit that a Darker might be right about something, Veronique had been right that she should try to sleep.

  Sleep didn’t come easily though. She tossed and turned quite a bit. After a while, when she turned so that she was staring directly into Annai’s face, Annai whispered, “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong? I know I haven’t always been kind to you. In fact, I’ve been terrible to you at times, and you have every reason to hate me, but we’ve been through a lot together the last few months, and I’m learning. At least, I’m trying to learn. I really am, and I actually think of you as a friend now, so… If you want… Believe it or not, I can actually be a good listener.”

  Quilla stared at her a moment, then broke into tears.

  “Come here,” Annai said, and put her arms around Quilla.

  Annai held her for the next several minutes or more. Quilla wasn’t sure how long it was and didn’t really care. It was her turn to cry for once instead of always Annai.

  When she eventually lifted her head from Annai’s chest, Veronique was sitting with a lit lantern beside her. She handed a handkerchief to Annai, who took it and started to dab Quilla’s tears.

  “I can step out of the stall if you want to talk privately,” Veronique said.

  Quilla nodded, but as Veronique stood up, she said, “No, Veronique, wait. You can’t go far so you’ll probably overhear half of it anyway. Besides, you probably need to know to protect me better.”

  Veronique sat back down. “That depends on what you’re about to say, but maybe. And please, call me Vern. I like Veronique—there’s a reason I chose it, after all—but I generally go by Vern.”

  “You chose your name?” Annai said.

  “Come now, your bitch...sorry. Annai. Surely you don’t think I go by my birth name?”

  Annai snorted, and continued to wipe Quilla’s face. “No, I suppose not.”

  When Annai finished, Quilla took the handkerchief and blew her nose. “I’m sorry if I’ve been...distracted. It’s this place.”

  “The barn?” Annai said. “Elbeth?”

  “No, sorry, I mean the place we’re going to. It’s where the Volgs took me when I was their prisoner. I know we’re not going to be in literally the exact same spot, but it’s the same general area, and when I think about it, I just…” She dabbed the handkerchief at her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Vern said. “I didn’t know you’d been held prisoner by the Volgs. That must have been horrible. How’d you get away?”

  “Garet saved her,” Annai said. “My brother, her fiancé.”

  “It’s weird,” Quilla said. “That time is somehow both the worst and best of my life.” But the worst was so much longer than the best. Meeting Garet was only a brief moment at the end of the ordeal, but it had been such an important moment to her.

  She heard the fighting well before she saw him. There were yells, cries, and crashes. It went on for ages. Early on, her guards went running to see what was happening. Eventually, the yells and thuds stopped. Quilla pressed herself up against the back of her cell, knees huddled against her chest, shivering.

  Then a large shape approached the bars. In the dark, and the blurriness from her tears, she couldn’t make out much about the shape, other than size. Garet was a big man, not actually as big as a Volg, but in her state, he was close enough that she assumed he was a Volg. She didn’t immediately notice the lack of horns or wings.

  “My name’s Garet,” he said. “I’m gonna get you out of her, okay?” He began to work at one of the bars. They were just wooden posts driven into the floor and ceiling of the cave. After a few pounds, he managed to crack it and pull it free. Then he came into the cell, hunched over because the ceiling quickly lowered beneath his full height.

  Quilla whimpered and had actually tried to back away from him, terrified he was about to kill her.

  He just held out a hand. “It’s all right. I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise.” He hunched like that for the next several minutes, not tiring, not getting impatient, only holding out his hand.

  Eventually, she worked out that he wasn’t a Volg, and she reached out tentatively and touched his hand. She almost immediately pulled her hand right back, but when he didn’t jump at her, she reached out again and took his hand.

  He helped her to her feet and led her past the bars. With the ceiling high enough for him to stand straight, he picked her up and carried her out of the cave. He didn’t complain about the state she was in, covered in her own shit, piss, and vomit. He just carried her into the light.

  Looking back on it now, Quilla wanted to tell Annai and Vern about how it was the first time she’d seen the sun in weeks, and how gorgeous the landscape looked in the light. But it wasn’t like that. It had been a miserable day out—cloudy and rainy—and the landscape was wet and muddy.

  “Garet was always so valiant,” Annai said.

  While it was nice for Annai to admit that, Quilla didn’t want to start an argument by reminding her that she never had thought of Garet that way while he’d been alive.

  “I’m really sorry you had to go through that,” Vern said.

  Quilla couldn’t be bothered to reply. She didn’t need platitudes from a Darker.

  “I’m being honest,” Vern went on. “I know you don’t like us Darkers as you call us, but—”

  “There are a whole bunch of you Darkers who want to do the same things to me as the Volgs did,” Quilla snapped. “I’ll remind you your whole reason for being here is to protect me from those ones.”

  “Yes, I know, but my presence should also be proof to you that we’re not all like that.”

  “You worship the Lord of Darkness!”

  “Define worship,” Vern said.

  “What?”

  “Exactly what I said. Define worship. We don’t hold services to Night the way you do for your gods. There are some prayers, I think, but most of us never say any of them. Most of us weren’t even given a choice to be a Servant.”

  Annai scoffed. “What nonsense. If you don’t want to be a Darker, why don’t you just leave?”

  Vern laughed. “I never said I don’t want to be a Servant, but even if I didn’t, you think it’s that easy to walk away? You don’t just leave the Servants. At any rate, I didn’t mean to turn this moment into an argument. Whether you believe it or not, I truly am sorry you went through that, Quilla. And now I’ll shut up on the subject. We should probably all try to get a little more sleep. We’ve got a couple hours at most before dawn.” She doused the lantern and lay down again.

  Annai hugged Quilla. “If you need anything from me tomorrow, just let me know. I’m here for you, okay?”

  “Thank you,” Quilla said. “I appreciate it.”

  Quilla sat up a little while longer. Gods, the nerve of Vern trying to pull the whole “not all of us are that bad” routine. They were Darkers. They were… Oh gods, how long had she been thinking of her as Vern? Since she’d asked? Damn. Vern sounded too much like she was a friend. She was no such thing. Veronique was her name, and that was what Quilla was going to call her.

  Now she was sufficiently angry, she lay down and tried to sleep again. This time, sleep actually came. It seemed the anger was enough to hold off the fear. At least for a little while.

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