The large silver-gray dog leaped through the brush behind Leesil and crept forward with its head low, watching Hedi with crystal eyes.

There were tears running down Magiere's cheeks, but her feral features held no sorrow, only rage slipping beyond the edge of reason.

Hedi looked into the face of a monster and did not care. All that mattered was that Leesil died, here and now. She inched forward, ready to gouge out this monster's eyes.

"Hedi, get back," Wynn cried out. "Magiere! Don't hurt her!"

Hedi rushed at Magiere, and someone grabbed her wrist.

"Stop it," Emel snapped, and jerked her back against his chest, closing his arms around her from behind. "You do not understand."

"Yes, I do!" Hedi shouted, but no matter how she thrashed, she could not break free of Emel's hold. "He is the one! He took my life and did not bother to kill me for it."

"He was a slave," Emel said. "Like all those who serve Darmouth. Like his parents, Nein'a and Gavril. No different from that girl you brought out with you. What would have happened to Leesil's parents if he refused to obey Darmouth? You know the answer. You of all people know how Darmouth works, just as he used you against me for years."

Hedi stopped struggling, but she had no outlet for the hate inside of her.

Leesil huddled on the ground with his back turned and would not move at all.

The monster, Magiere, backed toward him, torso and inhuman jaws expanding in deep, agitated breaths. Her appearance slowly changed, becoming more human as her lips closed. She crouched over Leesil and took hold of his shoulders. By the time she had him on his feet, Hedi saw only a pale, tall woman in leather armor and long black hair.

Hedi kept her eyes on Leesil until Magiere led him out of sight beyond the tree shielding the fire. Then she saw Korey huddled in terror in Wynn's arms. Hedi could only think of what she had lost long ago.

"No more killing," Emel whispered. "There will be more blood in the days to come than any of us can bear."

She did not understand and did not care.

Hedi crumpled. Rage's heat and anguish bled out in tears as Emel gripped her in the black cold of the forest. There had been nothing but deceit and betrayal living under Darmouth. Slaves murdering one another to live one more day.

But Hedi had no pity for Leesil, and wished his life filled with all the suffering forever buried within her.

Magiere sat on a fallen log near the newly built campfire. All of them had returned to the wagon and then traveled northeast along the road. Not far, but enough that they'd never be spotted from the keep upon the lake. Far enough that she would never have to look at it again. Yet Leesil was still here to remind her of what she'd learned of his past in that place.

What she'd learned about him.

Emel gathered canvas tarps from the wagon's back and busied himself constructing makeshift tents. Korey scurried about in wool footings Wynn had fashioned from part of a blanket. By her hair and coloring, it wasn't hard to guess who were her papa and mama. The girl busily helped Emel with his work, which amounted mostly to getting in his way. Magiere wondered how long the baron would wait to tell Korey the truth about her parents.

Hedi assisted Emel as well, keeping her head turned away from Leesil. Magiere didn't believe so much hatred would ever die, and kept her eye on the woman when she strayed too far toward the trees beyond the camp.

Out there, at the edge of the fire's orange light, Leesil sat against a tree, gripping the bundled skulls. Chap paced back and forth at the camp's edge, watching him. The dog was still unsettled. Magiere had not forgotten Chap's maddened outcry in the crypt. It worried her almost as much as Leesil's silence.

Wynn took a blanket from the pile Emel set out and walked with a bit of a wobble to drape it around Leesil's shoulders. Returning to the camp, she retrieved a second blanket and came to drop wearily to her knees in front of Magiere. She dug in her pack and pulled out a cloth and the jar of healing ointment.

"Take off your hauberk and that wool pullover," she said.

Magiere did so, and Wynn began cleaning and bandaging her wounds.

"Is Leesil injured?" she asked.

"He's not bleeding," Magiere answered, though she'd seen the welt line around his throat. "I don't think there's anything to be done for him-for now."

Not in the flesh, at least. Wynn's attention wouldn't heal the real wounds he had taken.

Wynn finished bandaging Magiere, and firelight reflected off her oval face, still swollen and battered. Her injured eye was half-open.

Magiere was grateful that the little sage was still with them. Wynn suddenly turned her face away and settled to the ground, leaning against the log beside Magiere.

"I have something to tell you," Wynn said. "And it should not… cannot wait."

Magiere frowned as Wynn swallowed hard, reluctant to continue.

"Chane is still alive… or exists." She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I cannot remember much, but I saw him come for me in the keep. Hedi says he carried me out and helped her and Korey escape. Then he left us." She paused. "I needed to tell you. I want no more secrets between us."

Magiere absorbed Wynn's words. A Noble Dead loose in Venjetz, wearing stolen clothes? It made sense, and for an instant her instincts made her consider going back. Chane, loose in a city soon to see war at its gates, in its streets, and no one would ever notice his victims.

"Hedi said he cannot speak properly," Wynn whispered, "as if his throat was injured."

Too many thoughts filled Magiere's mind from this long night. She dropped off the log to the ground beside Wynn and pulled the blanket around both of them without a word.

"There is more," Wynn said. "In my journals and notes… the ones

I sent back to the guild… Not everything I wrote was about the people and lands we passed through."

"You mean about me," Magiere said flatly.

Wynn glanced at her. Some color drained from the sage's olive face.

It hadn't been hard to guess. From the very start at the Guild of Sage-craft in Bela, Wynn and her mentor, Domin Tilswith, had been quite curious about a woman born of a Noble Dead father.

"You're not very good with deception," Magiere said with only a touch of ire, and as her gaze drifted to Leesil, her voice dropped to a whisper. "Not like the rest of us." She took a long, slow breath before she looked back at Wynn. "It's all right… writing about me, that is."

Wynn sighed, huddling down closer to Magiere. "And how do we help Leesil?"

Magiere didn't know how. He had ensured more death and suffering in his homeland. And all he had to show for it were the last remains of his parents.

Leesil had lived with years of wine-smothered nightmares over what he believed had happened to his parents when he fled his first life. She had held him in the night, felt him twist and mumble in his sleep. Then in Bela, the Anmaglahk named Sgaile had given Leesil a spark of hope that at least his mother had survived. Along the way he'd chosen to go looking for his father as well.

He'd returned here to have his worst guilt-driven fears become real. This night, hope had died in that crypt more quickly than Leesil's last victim.

"Leave him be for now," she said to Wynn. "Darmouth is dead."

"Emel told me. You did what you could, but I cannot imagine what this has done to Leesil, trying to save a man who abused him in youth… only to fail."

Magiere gazed into the fire, not looking at Wynn. There was still a secret between them. Magiere could tell no one what had truly happened in the crypt.

Korey and Hedi laid out remaining blankets in the tents as Emel came to join Magiere and Wynn. Magiere had never been one to give manners much notice, but beneath his noble arrogance, there was something worthwhile in the baron. Perhaps.