Book One – Chapter 17

So maybe you can explain away a few missing guards. Say they were killed by witches or beasts, or vanished in a storm, or they just left, like those many guys who found random treasure on the trail, but you could not do that with the watch-captain. Not with him. Kill him, yes, but not have him disappear without a trace and consequences. There would be procedures. Reports. Signatures. A reassignment of title or at least some official notice. Maybe even a formal delegation to investigate and appoint a new one.

So of course, that one singular guy who cannot go amiss is not dead. No, he is just not present, not currently. But, well now, that is nothing to worry about, nothing suspicious at all. He is just out and about. Conveniently.

“On patrol”.

Alone. In a storm. Up and down a mountain path crawling with orks and witches and god-knows-what-else.

As if that were in any way reasonable. As if that could ever be protocol. As if any sane captain would actually do that. As if that did not scream set-up. As if they thought everyone was too stupid to notice.

But now that Yu had noticed, it was such an obvious lie.

How? How the fuck did no one else notice that?

Because they all had arrived not a day ago. Exhausted. Cold. Grateful to have survived the trek at all. Eager for warmth, for food, for a bed to collapse in. Eager to overlook anything they did not want to see. At least Yu had been.

Now he looked around, on the platform — but the other travellers were inside. All except Imbiad, who stood near the edge, staring out into the white. Still. Like he had not notice a thing of what had just happened. Not the reading. Not the monster-wearing-shaman. Not the invitation. Yu followed his gaze. Out, down the steps. Toward the shape in the snow. The witch. Still there. Unmoving.

Imbiad had wanted to kill her. Yu still did not know what had broken his ice magic.

And just then —

It stopped.

Truly stopped.

The shaman’s reading was over.

The Listener withdrew, and with him, the final traces of the hunger within Yu. Yu made sure. This time, he really followed and focussed as the voice withdrew within him, until he heard its absence in the ensuing silence, deeper than quiet. A hollowness with shape. He had never been this relieved in his life.