Verecleeve had tracked the Magus who killed his family across a distance that wore through two pairs of boots. Tonight the trail ended at a wooden door with a hanging sign that read Jorum's Pub. He pushed inside. The talk died the moment his hood cleared the frame. A dozen fighters sat over their cups. He crossed to the nearest table and set a coin down. "The man in black robes. Lion's mane of hair. He passed through here. Where did he go?" The fighter looked at the coin. He did not touch it. His eyes went to the door, then back to his drink. "I don't know any such man." Verecleeve moved from table to table. Every man gave him the same answer, or no answer at all. One woman pushed her chair back and left rather than speak. Fear kept their mouths shut. The Magus had passed through, and his name had bought their silence. Verecleeve leaned his rifle against the bar. It looked homemade because he built it himself, and it shot truer than any shop could sell. He rested his hand on the barrel where they could all see it. Behind the bar stood a fat, bald man pouring a drink. A red triangle marked his forehead. He watched Verecleeve's hands, not his face. When Verecleeve set another coin on the wood, the bartender slid it back. "I'm Jorum. This is my pub. Keep your coin." He filled a cup and set it down. "You want the man with the wild hair. So does half this room, though they'd sooner die than say it." "You'll tell me where he went." "I might." Jorum set his rag down. "Someone waters my barrels before I tap them. Six years back a stranger bought me a drink from my own stock and walked out my supplier. I got too drunk to remember what he poured. I've been cheated in my own house ever since." He looked at the rifle, then at Verecleeve's eyes. "You look like a man who finishes things. Find who thins my barrels. Then I talk." Verecleeve studied him. The bartender did not soften the offer or repeat it. He meant every word. "The Swordmaker sells him steel," Jorum said. "Skinny man, long black hair, bald on top. His forge is close. He forged blades for your Magus more than once. Start there. But the Swordmaker won't hand a stranger anything for asking. He tests hands before he trusts them." Verecleeve lifted his rifle. The silence in the room told him Jorum spoke true. No one had denied the black robes. They had only refused to name them. "If I find your thief," Verecleeve said, "you point me to his door." "My word." Jorum picked his rag back up. "I keep it. Rare thing in this town." Verecleeve stepped out into the dark and turned toward the forge.

The forge sat under a patched canvas roof, timbers gray with age. A small fire burned in a stone pit. Verecleeve stepped in from the dark, rifle across his chest. The blacksmith who forged the Magus's blades stood at his anvil. Jorum had named him. Verecleeve had walked here to earn what the man knew. The Swordmaker looked up. He was a thin man, near skeletal, with long greasy black hair and a bald crown. His mustache flared at the ends. His face looked sad, but his eyes were sharp. He set his hammer down. "You want the man in black robes," the Swordmaker said. His voice was soft. "They all do. I forge his steel. I know his door." He nodded at the rifle. "But I don't hand secrets to a man who carries that." "It shoots true," Verecleeve said. "Any coward can pull a trigger from far off." The Swordmaker walked to a rack of blades and drew a raw steel bar, unfinished, no edge. He carried it to a wooden post and set it in Verecleeve's hands. "A blade tells me what a man is. Prove your hands deserve to know." He pointed to a small bell hung from a beam by a thin rope. He reached up and set the bell swinging. "Cut the rope before the bell swings back twice. One stroke. Show me you're more than your gun." The bell swung out. Verecleeve gripped the cold bar. He had never held a sword in a fight. His whole life was breath, aim, and a steady finger. The bell reached its height and started back. He swung anyway. The dull bar hit the rope and slid off. The bell rang and swung on. The Swordmaker shook his head. "I thought so," he said. He turned back toward his anvil. "Take your rifle and go." Verecleeve stood there. Two pairs of boots worn through. Every stop the Magus made, memorized. And now a bald man with a bell would end it. His jaw tightened. On the timber beam, a purple frog with green stripes sat blinking, watching him fail. "You forge his steel," Verecleeve said. "You know when he needs it. You know when he'll come here." The Swordmaker stopped. "I don't need his door," Verecleeve said. "I need to know the next time he sends for a blade. I'll be waiting when your runner leaves with it." The thin man turned. He studied Verecleeve a long moment. Then, slow, he almost smiled. "Those hands can't cut," he said. "But that head thinks." He set his tongs down. "He sent word three days back. A new sword, finished by the next full moon. My boy carries it east when it's done." "Then I follow your boy," Verecleeve said. "You follow my boy." The Swordmaker picked his hammer up. "Don't get him killed." Verecleeve had his trail again. The full moon set his clock.

The Swordmaker gave Verecleeve a trail, but the trail cost him time. He still owed Jorum a debt. The bartender knew more about the Magus than he had told, and he would keep the rest until Verecleeve found the person who had wrecked his barrels for six years. So Verecleeve went back to the pub with a lantern and started under the floor, where the casks sat in the dark. He found scratch marks on the oak. Small tools had bored the plugs, then sealed them again. Whoever did this drained a little from each barrel and left no leak a bartender would notice. Verecleeve traced the pattern to a loose board in the wall. Behind it he found rope, a hand drill, and a stopper carved to fit Jorum's casks. A woman stepped out of the shadows before he could stand. She wore ragged tight pants and a torn tank top. Three wave marks were tattooed on her cheek. She held a knife low and easy, like she had held it many times. This was the barrel tamperer. "You Jorum's dog," she said. It was not a question. "I track a man in black robes," Verecleeve said. "Jorum pays me in what he knows. You're the price." "Sea Runner," she said, tapping her cheek. "Stuck ashore. A ship costs coin." She nodded at the casks. "His liquor sells. I sold it back to sailors. Six years of tolls for standing on ground that hates me." Verecleeve lifted his rifle a hand's width. She did not flinch. She only shifted her weight, ready to cut him if the barrel came up. "I don't want your throat," he said. "I want you gone. Off his barrels. Off his floor. That's what he asked." "Then let me buy the ship," she said. "One more night. I take enough for passage. I leave for the water. You never see me." He thought of the full moon, and the runner heading east, and the hours he was burning down here. He lowered the rifle. "No," he said. "You leave now. Empty-handed. I tell Jorum it's done and he can't say I lied." Her knife hand tightened. Then she looked at the barrel, at his steady eyes over it, and read the odds. She spat on the floor and slid her knife away. She gathered her tools and climbed the stairs into the pub, gone toward whatever water would take her. Upstairs Verecleeve set the drill and the carved stopper on the bar. Jorum stared at them. "Sea Runner," Verecleeve said. "Six years. She's off your barrels for good." Jorum ran a thumb over the stopper. He believed it. He poured a drink and drank it himself. "The man you want," Jorum said. "He doesn't travel light. He keeps a healer with him, a woman with silver hair and a blue stone at her chest. Grondallynn. She mends any wound with the Magus arts." Verecleeve went still. A tracker could kill a man. He could not kill a wound that closed itself.

Jorum's words about the healer stayed with Verecleeve for three days. A woman who sealed wounds with the Magus arts. He could not kill a man she stood beside. So he stopped hunting the Magus and started hunting her. He asked at the docks. He asked among the Sea Runners loading crates. A gray-haired girl mends the fighters at the temple, they told him. She comes to the yard when the sun sets. He found her there, kneeling over a bleeding sparrer. Her silver hair fell past her shoulders. A blue stone hung at her chest and glowed as she pressed her hands to a gash on the man's arm. The wound closed under her palms like water smoothing over. This was Grondallynn, the healer who kept the Magus alive. She looked far younger than Verecleeve expected, and her green eyes were soft, not cruel. He waited until the fighter stood and walked off. Then he stepped from the shade, rifle across his chest. "You ride with the man in black robes," Verecleeve said. "The one they call the Destroyer." Her hands stilled. Fear crossed her face, quick and plain. "You've come to kill him," she said. It was not a question. "Then you'll want me dead too. Everyone thinks I'm his." "Aren't you?" "He holds my sister." She said it flat, the way people say things they have said to no one. "Two winters now. I mend his men, I mend him, and she keeps breathing. I stop, she stops." She wiped blood from her fingers. "I heal fighters here for coin. It's the only work that's mine." Verecleeve studied her. He had spent months building the healer into a wall he could not break. Now the wall was a frightened girl saving strangers to feed a hostage sister. His grip on the rifle loosened. "If he dies," Verecleeve said, "your sister goes free." "If he dies and I'm not there, he kills her first." She stood. "His men have orders. My magic is the only leash on that." "Then leave the leash where I need it," he said. "When I come for him, you step back. You don't seal his wounds. That's all." She searched his face for the trick in it. "And my sister?" "Tell me where he keeps her. I'll pull her out before I pull the trigger." Grondallynn was quiet a long moment. Then she pressed the blue stone against her chest and nodded. "A stone tower, three days east," she said. "He moves the girl there before every job. His next blade comes east under a full moon. He'll be at the tower to meet it." Verecleeve felt the ground shift under him. The healer was not his enemy. She was his map. But now a second life hung on his aim, and he had three days to reach a tower he had never seen. "Three days," he said. "Then he's not the only one traveling east."

Verecleeve had three days to reach the tower. Before he rode east, he took stock of his weapons. His rifle was sound. His powder was dry. But his casings were spent. A sniper without ammunition was a stick. And the tower meant close work, indoors, where a long rifle turned clumsy. He needed more than one gun in his hands. He knew only one man who could fix this fast. He returned to the smithy. The Swordmaker stood at his anvil, hammer in one fist, tongs in the other. The thin man was all sharp bones under a filthy leather apron, his mustache flailing as he bent over the heat. He had once refused Verecleeve every secret because Verecleeve carried a rifle. Now he looked up and set the hammer down slow. "You again," the Swordmaker said. "The one who wouldn't put the gun away." "I need casings," Verecleeve said. "I have powder. I have coin. Enough coin to forget you're troubled by my rifle." The thin man wiped his hands on the apron. "Coin doesn't move my hammer. You know that. You failed my test once already." His sad eyes stayed level. "Show me your hands still deserve steel." Verecleeve had feared this. There was no time for a long trial. "Then make it quick," he said. "Name it." The Swordmaker pointed to a scrap of iron plate hung on a cord across the room. "One of your pistols. One shot. Cut the cord, not the plate. Miss the cord, or crack the plate, and you leave empty." Verecleeve drew a pistol from his belt. His last two shells sat in the chamber. He had no more to waste. He raised the barrel, breathed out, and fired. The crack filled the hut. The cord snapped. The plate dropped flat to the dirt, unmarked. The thin man studied the fallen plate a long moment. Then something near a smile moved under the mustache. "Steady hands," he said. "Even up close." He went to work. By dusk he had pressed a row of fresh casings, each seated true. He laid them in a cloth and pushed them across the bench. Then he reached beneath it and drew out something short and heavy, wrapped in oilskin. "You wanted a scattergun," the Swordmaker said. "I heard it in how you asked. No time to forge one." He unwrapped a stubby double-barreled piece, cut down for one hand. "I built this for a man who never came back for it. Two barrels. Wide spread. For a room, not a field." Verecleeve turned the short gun in his grip. It was ugly and it was perfect. "How much?" "The coin for the casings," the thin man said. "The gun you already paid for. You didn't crack my plate." Verecleeve loaded the fresh casings and holstered both pistols. He slung the rifle and tucked the scattergun close for the tower's tight halls. He was as ready as time allowed. Now the road east, and the tower, and the girl he had promised to pull out alive.

Verecleeve rode east and left the road behind. The Magus kept a crew, and that crew watched the roads. So he cut into the ancient forest of Chronchara and moved under its trees. The tower waited three days out. He meant to reach it unseen and approach the last stretch from cover. On the second night he made a cold camp between two pines and slept with the rifle across his chest. He woke to a shape standing over him. It had not made a sound. A huge figure in armor that looked like grey stone, a black-green cape hanging off its arms. A long braided beard spilled from under a tight hood. A broadsword rode its back, and its hand stayed far from the hilt. Verecleeve grabbed his rifle and rolled clear. The figure did not move. "Keeper of this forest," the figure said. "Grenwook. Lower it." Verecleeve kept the barrel up. "You crept on a sleeping man." "I creep on everything. It is my wood." The old eyes held no threat, only weight. "You go to the tower." "That's my business." "The wood is dying," Grenwook said. "From the inside. I do not know why." He went quiet, and each word came slower. "The rot spreads from the east. From where you walk." Verecleeve lowered the rifle an inch. "Then we want the same man dead." Grenwook did not answer that. He reached into his cape and drew out a stone. It was green and smooth, the size of an egg. He held it out on a flat palm. "Take it," he said. "What does it do?" "I do not know." The keeper's voice dropped near to nothing. "It came from the heart of the wood before the rot. It is meant for you. That is all I have." Verecleeve studied the stone. He trusted nothing he could not aim. But the giant had stood over him with a blade on his back and left it there. That meant something. He reached out and took the stone. It was warm, warmer than a stone should be. The warmth sat in his palm and did not fade. "A warning too," Grenwook said. "The man in the tower is not alone. His crew hunts the wood tonight. They caught your track a mile back." Verecleeve's gut went tight. "How many?" "Enough." Grenwook turned toward the dark trees. "Move now. Off my straight paths. They watch those." He walked three steps and the greyness of him faded into the trunks until nothing marked where he had stood. Verecleeve pocketed the warm stone and kicked dirt over his cold ashes. His hidden route was blown. The crew was already in the trees behind him, closing. He slung the rifle, drew the short scattergun for the tight ground ahead, and ran east through the pines. Reaching the tower unseen was finished. Now it was a race, and the hunters had his trail.

Verecleeve ran east until his lungs burned. Then he stopped. Running got a man killed. Hunting kept him alive. The crew was on his trail, so he would let them come to him. He turned off his own path and climbed toward higher ground. He found what he wanted on a slope of thinning pines. One old tree stood taller than the rest. Its crown faded from green to yellow, and its lower branches lay broken and wrapped in moss and roots. A split in the trunk gave him a notch to rest the barrel. He wedged himself into the roots, slid the long rifle up, and went still. The stone in his pocket sat warm against his leg. He ignored it and watched the dark below. The first man came fast and careless. He followed the boot prints Verecleeve had left on purpose. Verecleeve breathed out, held, and fired. The shot took the man through the chest and dropped him without a cry. The crack rolled through the trees and faded. Two more froze at the sound. They crouched and swept the slope with their eyes. They looked everywhere but up. Verecleeve worked the action. He picked the left one first, because the right one stood near open ground and would run the wrong way. His rifle spoke again. The left man folded over his own knees. The last one broke and ran, just as Verecleeve had guessed. He ran downhill into the open. Verecleeve tracked him, led him, and squeezed. The man pitched forward into the roots of a fallen tree and did not move. Three shots. Three dead. His homemade rifle had shot true, the way he built it to. He stayed in the roots and counted his breaths and listened. Nothing moved but the wind in the yellowing needles above him. This was easy work. Average men against a marksman were no contest. He almost felt cheated. Then the warm stone burned. Not warm now, but hot, hot enough to make him gasp and dig it out. It glowed green in his palm. He had never seen it do that. It pulsed once, twice, like a slow heartbeat, and grew hotter with each beat. Far off, past the last trees, a shape rose against the sky. The tower. And something at the tower answered the stone. A thin green light climbed its side, matching the beat in his hand. Verecleeve understood, cold and sudden. The stone was not only a gift. It was a marker. Someone had just felt him through it. Someone now knew exactly where he stood. He shoved the stone deep in his pocket and grabbed the rifle. His three kills meant nothing now. He had cleared the men behind him, but he had lit a beacon for whatever waited ahead. The tower had seen him. He rose from the roots and ran, no longer the hunter.

The tower had seen him. So Verecleeve stopped running from it and ran toward it. If the walls knew where he stood, then hiding was worthless. He crossed the last dying trees and reached the base while the green light still crawled the stone. He circled the tower and found what he wanted. The walls held many doors, and most stood forgotten. One low arch hung open, choked with dead vines. He slipped inside. The passage was dark and cold. He kept the scattergun ready and moved slow. A guard stood at a bend, his back turned, watching the wrong way. Verecleeve crossed the stone without a sound. He wrapped an arm across the man's throat and held until the body went slack. He lowered it gently and left it in the shadow. One less between him and the Magus. He climbed a curling stair and pushed through a warped door. A small room waited beyond it. A girl crouched in the corner. She was thin and pretty, with pale hair and a light green dress torn at the hem. She flinched when the door moved, then went still and stared at his rifle and his hooded face. "You're Grondallynn's sister," he said. "Calliope." Her eyes changed at the name. "You know my sister?" "I made her a promise." He kept his voice low. "I get you out before I finish the man who put you here." She did not move. "They'll kill her if I run." "They won't get the chance." He held out his hand. "But I can't drag you through the whole tower. Not with what I mean to do next." She looked at the hand, then at the dark stair behind him. He saw her decide to trust him. She took his fingers and stood. Her hand was warm, warmer than a scared girl's hand should be. He noticed it and let it go. He pulled her back down the stair to a storeroom off the passage. Crates and old barrels filled it. He cleared a gap behind the largest crate and set her there. "Stay small. Stay quiet." He crouched to her eye level. "If I don't come back, wait for the noise to stop, then run the way I brought you." "What noise?" "You'll know it." She caught his sleeve. "He's not a man you fight. I've watched him. He breaks things just to show he can." "I built a rifle for a man like that." He checked the scattergun and stood. The girl was safe, hidden, out of the line of fire. His promise to Grondallynn was half kept. Now only the stairs and the Magus stood between him and the thing he had crossed the whole map for. Verecleeve turned toward the deep of the tower and started to climb.