Piotr Kallas had delivered his court's demands in the enemy's own tongue for twelve winters, and no one guessed a stranger had taught him every word. He spoke Fangfrost better than the lords who owned it. Tonight he wanted only one thing: the face of the teacher who first whispered that tongue into his ear. He remembered the voice. He remembered nothing else. He sat alone in a cold field and turned a wooden whistle over in his scarred hands. The whistle was his oldest thing. Silver trim ran along carved grooves worn smooth by his thumb. He had carried it since he was a boy, and he did not know who gave it to him. He raised it to his lips. He did not blow. He only waited for the shape of a face to come. It did not come. His tiger lay beside him, white and huge, silver stripes catching the moonlight. The beast lifted its head and stared at the treeline. Piotr followed its gaze. A silver stag stood among the trees, pale and glowing, watching him without fear. The tiger did not rise to hunt. It only watched, still as stone. Piotr had seen a stag like that before. The certainty struck him hard. Not in war, not in any court. Somewhere older. He pressed the whistle to his mouth and blew one soft note. The sound was thin and clear. The stag's ears turned. And the note broke something loose in Piotr's head. He saw a stone room. Snow-covered vines crawled across cracked walls. A small schoolhouse, half-ruined even then. Frost blossoms hung by a wooden door. He saw a child's hands on this same whistle. He heard the voice correct him, gentle and firm, shaping each hard Fangfrost word. He blew the note again. The memory sharpened. He saw the teacher bent over the whistle, showing small fingers where to press. He saw a sleeve, a hand, the edge of a jaw. Then the face turned toward him. Piotr saw it. A woman. Gray at the temples. A pale scar cut across her left brow, the twin of the one that split his own lip. He had not made that scar in battle. She had marked him, or he had marked her, in that stone room long ago. The whistle had been hers. He lowered his hands and breathed hard. The stag stepped back into the trees and was gone. The tiger settled its head on its paws. He had the face now. A scarred brow. Gray hair. A ruined schoolhouse wrapped in winter vines. It was enough to begin. But the face carried a colder fact. She had scarred him, and he had forgotten it. Whatever passed between them in that room, his own mind had buried it. Piotr closed his fist around the whistle. He would find the schoolhouse. He needed to know what she had done to make a boy forget her face.