CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Retelling, Recollection, Reconnection
We sat around the Grin’s largest table. A circular, ale-stained thing with a permanent lean and the quiet dignity of something long resigned to its fate. Evidence of the recent scuffle still lingered in every corner.
They’d intended to open the tavern to the public once we got back from the stump investigation. That had been the plan.
Return from the forest, wash the mud from their boots, share tales of stump-based bravery, and welcome in the people of Dawnsheart to a tavern reborn; refurbished, respectable, rustic charm with only minor structural instability.
Instead…
Broken furniture was piled on the stage in what could generously be called an artistic statement. Several windows had been reduced to jagged memories of themselves by the enthusiastic delivery of flaming cocktails. Scorch marks tattooed the floor and a few tables. Bloodstains dotted the room like unsettling punctuation. I tried not to look too closely at the one near my foot. Some of the chairs bore fresh blade marks. One of the beams near the stage had splintered from a poorly aimed spell – or possibly a very well-aimed one.
There had been attempts to clean, of course. Wikis had swept. Carrie had stitched a curtain. Yak had gathered the larger shards of broken glass and set them aside, apparently with plans to make a sculpture. Or a weapon. Possibly both.
Day had tried to polish the bar, but some stains had sunk too deep, etched into the wood like memories that refused to fade.
The place still smelled of smoke, sweat, and scorched furniture.
It looked worse.
Din sat in contemplative silence, cradling his mug of ale like it held the last warm thought in the world. Umberto was sitting on his chair backwards, humming a tune with no identifiable melody. He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and popped his knuckles one by one with slow, deliberate menace. Carrie was quiet – unusually so, staring out through one of the broken windows as if willing it back into place.
Day sat rigid, arms crossed over his chest, a locked vault of thought. Yak leaned back in his chair, feet up on a nearby stool, balancing with the kind of reckless ease that made furniture nervous. Trunch’s brow was furrowed, eyes closed, head drooped forward – possibly meditating, possibly napping, possibly communing with something best left unnamed.
Wikis crouched on her stool like a cat preparing to leap. Her eyes flicked constantly around the room: the broken windows, the scorch marks, the shadows beneath the bar. Surveying the damage. Or looking for enemies hiding in unwatched spaces.
I sat with my quill poised, the page open before me.
“Alright,” I said, glancing around the table. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. Jonath, the man we brought back from the forest and you proceeded to do body shots off on the bar, wasn’t actually Jonath?”
Yak raised a thumb. Day gave a quiet nod.
“He woke up and started attacking Tufulla.”
Another finger from Yak. Carrie joined Day in nodding.
“You fought him, while someone was hiding upstairs.”
“Not hiding,” Wikis snapped, eyes locking onto mine. “She arrived,” She spoke through gritted teeth, “In the middle of the fight.”
“Right. Yes. We’ll circle back to that.” I made a quick edit to my notes. No one said anything.
“Tufulla banished him. And you knocked her out and tied her up in the kitchen?” I glanced across the room toward the small archway that led to what could generously be called a kitchen.
Another finger. More nods.
“Someone tried to set the place on fire.”
Nods from Carrie and Day. A growl from Umberto. A scowl from Din. Yak raised another finger.
“He came back. Escaped into the alley. You caught him. Defeated him. Removed his head. Brought it back here.”
“Sounds about right,” Day nodded. A low murmur of approval followed. More nodding heads. More fingers.
“Umberto was naked,” Carrie blurted, as if that were the part I might’ve missed. I glanced his way. He was clothed again, mercifully. Turns out he owns more than one loincloth.
I cleared my throat gently.
“So…Tufulla?”
Din set his mug down and spoke calmly. “Tufulla poured himself a drink and sat by the hearth.” He nodded toward one of the armchairs. “Bones took a liking to him. Tufulla didn’t seem fussed, either didn’t mind the skeleton cat, or was too tired to notice.”
“He just sat there,” Carrie said, already struggling to hold it in, “sipping a Goblin’s Nut.” That broke her. She doubled over laughing. Yak slapped his knee. Even Din cracked a smile. Out of respect for Tufulla, I tried very hard not to laugh. I don’t think I did very well.
“He said he just needed to think,” Day added, trying to bring the tone back down. “Said it twice, actually. Once to us, once to the cat.”
I briefly ran my eyes over my notes as the ink began to dry. “So Tufulla was safe. Let’s get back to the woman in the kitchen.” I returned my quill to the parchment.
Trunch didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t lift his head. “Unconscious. Tied up,” he said, like someone reading off a grocery list.
Din exhaled loudly. “We needed answers. I could’ve gotten some from the head, but I lacked a few necessary items. So we tried to see what she could give us.”
“I read her mind while she was unconscious,” Carrie said, far too casually.
“You can do that?” I asked, with much more terrified realization than I’d intended.
“Of course.” She looked at me and softened her expression. “Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t do it to you.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” she said sweetly. “You don’t have anything interesting I want to know about.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again.
She wasn’t wrong.
Most of what lived in my head was ink and trivia; half-remembered footnotes, obscure local laws, and the lyrics to a children’s rhyme about an eel who wanted to be a frog. Still, the idea that someone could just… look inside without asking, that left a chill. Not from Carrie, necessarily. But from the knowledge that someone else might. I made a mental note to start thinking in code. Then immediately forgot what the code was.
“So you read her mind while she was unconscious?”
Wikis chimed in from her perch on the stool. “She made that weird face she makes when she’s concentrating. You know, like she’s trying to sneeze without opening her mouth.”
“I do not do that,” Carrie muttered.
“You kind of do,” Day said, not looking up from his ale.
Din interjected, stoic. Firm. “She found out a fair bit. Found out her name was Naida, that she had a list of targets, and that she had come looking for someone she was working with. Dominic.”
“And Dominic is …” I started.
“Jonath,” Carrie said. “Or rather, the man pretending to be Jonath.”
“Not Jonath” Yak mumbled through a mouthful of what I assumed was something pastry based, “Dominic is Not Jonath.”
“Exactly,” Carrie said. “And the woman came here using a pendant that was supposed to land her within a hundred feet of him.”
“So why didn’t she find him?” I asked.
“Oh she did,” Umberto said after swallowing a large mouthful of ale. “Upstairs. When we were fighting downstairs.”
“She arrived in the tavern,” Wikis said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “He was in the main room below. We were fighting him when she arrived upstairs. She just didn’t know it.”
“Because,” Carrie said, leaning toward me, “Just as she was getting her bearings, you know, what with the disorientation of instant teleportation, Tufulla banished Dominic. Poof. Gone. Sent to a harmless pocket dimension filled with probably moss and echoes.”
“And Carrie,” Umberto cut in proudly, “Pushed her down the stairs and knocked her out. Very efficiently, I might add,” He gave Carrie a high five.
Yak smiled. “She never saw him.” He spread his hands with the quiet satisfaction of a street magician who’d just made a coin vanish. Again.
Day cut in. “She arrived near him exactly as they had planned, but she missed him. Not because the spell failed, but because our timing was, for once, accidentally perfect.”
“Then we chucked her in the kitchen,” Umberto added.
“And then Dominic came back,” Wikis finished.
I blinked at all of them.
“So she was never more than what, forty feet from him the whole time?” I asked.
Carrie nodded. “And she never laid eyes on him.”
“That’s…” I flipped a few pages forward and wrote the word tragic in oversized letters. Then I added also hilarious. “Amazing. You got all that from reading her unconscious mind?”
“No,” Carrie huffed. “I got more than that.”
“More?”
Carrie leaned back again, “There were three of them. Her, Dominic –”
“Not Jonath,” Yak added helpfully.
Carrie rolled her eyes and kept going. “—and someone named Erik.”
“We don’t know who that is. Or where they are,” Trunch cut in, his tone edged with concern. He finally opened his eyes and lifted his head, “But they had a list of targets that included Tufulla among others.”
“Which is why we had to act quickly,” Day said, now behind the bar pouring himself another drink. “We knew we needed more information, so we came up with a quick plan to get some.”
I may have let out an audible groan, or perhaps just made a particularly expressive face. Either way, they all looked at me accusingly.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. Well, no, that’s exactly what it was. I didn’t trust them. Not when it came to plans made in less time than it takes to boil an egg. I’d seen what “quick” meant to this group. It meant shouting. Improvisation. Fire. Sometimes literal fire. It meant vague hand gestures followed by combat, then arguments about who was technically in charge of what.
And yet, somehow, it also meant results.
Which, frankly, made it worse.
“Sorry,” I said aloud, regaining some composure. “Please, do go on. I’m sure this ‘quick plan’ was… extremely reasonable.”
“In hindsight, it wasn’t,” Day reflected. “But it was effective. In its own special way.”
“It was a solid plan,” Umberto cut in. “A bit too convoluted and theatrical for my liking—”
“It was better than your idea of torturing her for information,” Carrie snapped, her voice rising with indignation.
“You say torture, I say bargaining,” Umberto barked back.
“You suggested we cut off her fingers if she didn’t talk.” Carrie was now hovering in the air, inches from Umberto’s face.
“Yeah,” he spat. “And we would’ve told her that, maybe taken one as an example first. A pinky’s usually a good choice. Then let her know she could keep the rest if she gave up the information. Bargaining.”
Wikis leaned between the two of them and locked eyes with me. “We quickly went with a different plan,” she said calmly.
Carrie dropped back into her chair, arms crossed. Umberto grunted and reached for a loaf of bread.
“I made myself look like Dominic,” Yak said, sitting up straighter and looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. “I went in, woke her up, and tried to get information from her through a series of questions.”
I blinked, tilting my head. “That’s… actually quite logical, when I think about it.”
“Yeah,” Din nodded. “It actually worked better than we thought it would.” He sounded almost proud. “For a while.”
Yak beamed and clutched his side. “I was really clever about it,” he said, sitting up even straighter. “I woke her gently, acting like I was worried. She asked me to untie her. I told her I couldn’t. Said they were still there.”
He switched into a bit of a performance, clearly relishing the memory. “She asked what was going on, so I told her they thought I was their friend—the one who came through the portal. I even made myself look like Jonath for a moment, then switched back to Dominic.”
“She asked why she was tied up. I said she’d tripped and fallen down the stairs. While they were out on an errand. I heard them coming back, so I tied her up and stashed her in the kitchen—for her own safety. Told her I didn’t want them to hurt her.”
I blinked again. This was… a lot.
“She asked who ‘they’ were,” Yak continued, “so I said I didn’t know—just a group who owned the tavern. Angry and prone to attack people before asking questions.” Day gave a resigned shrugging nod as if to say that was a fairly accurate description. “ I said they were friends with the guy who came through the portal. I told her that when I arrived, I made them think someone was after me. Said I ‘passed out’, and they brought me here.”
He was clearly proud now, hands moving with the story. “When she asked what was going to happen next, I said they were going to get Tufulla. Figured that was a good out, that once they left, I could sneak her out.”
“That’s when she got excited. Said if Tufulla was coming, we could take him out get one off the list. Then hit Yun. We could be two down before Erik had even found one of the others.”
“So I told her to stay quiet,” Yak said. “Said they were coming, and I’d come back when it was safe. Then I grabbed a sack of apples off the shelf, walked out like nothing happened, and said—”
He sat up even straighter and declared with theatrical volume, “I found the apples!”
There was a beat of silence.
“Then I quietly let the group know that Tufulla was a target, along with someone called Yun.” he finished.
Yak sat back, clearly pleased with himself.
Carrie beamed proudly and added. “So that’s when we told Tufulla he had to hide.”
I frowned. “Hide? Why would Tufulla need to – ”
“If Dominic can disguise himself as Jonath,” Day said carefully, “then Erik could be anyone.”
“Anyone close to Tufulla,” Trunch added.
“Someone trusted,” Carrie nodded.
“Someone like…” Din glanced at me.
“Me?” I said, blinking. “You think I could be – ?”
“No,” Din said evenly. “We think Erik could be.”
“Disguised as me?”
I watched as Umberto’s fingers curled around the handle of this axe, his eyes never leaving me.
“Exactly,” Wikis said, narrowing her eyes and leaning in across the table. “In fact… how do we know you’re really you?”
Yak placed a dagger on the table with a not-so-subtle flourish.
I let out a nervous laugh. “Because I am me.”
“That’s exactly what Erik would say,” she whispered, dead serious.
My eyes darted from face to face. “Surely someone can confirm”
“When we were in Nelb,” Yak said slowly, fingers tapping the dagger’s hilt, “what colour was the cabbage?”
“What? That’s not”
“Answer the question, Klept,” Trunch said, steepling his fingers which began to crackle with energy.
“Green!”
“Aha!” Carrie pointed dramatically. “Wrong. They were purple!”
“They were not!” I protested. “They were green! Mostly! I wrote it down!”
They held the silence for three long seconds before bursting out laughing.
“Gods, your face,” Umberto wheezed, letting go of the axe.
I clutched my notebook to my chest and tried not to look wounded.
“We were just making a point,” Din said, wiping his eyes. “If Erik were disguised as someone close to Tufulla, we’d need to be sure. That’s all.”
“You gave me an existential crisis for the sake of a point?”
“And we made it beautifully,” Wikis said, deadpan. “You’re welcome.”
“Anyway,” Yak continued, cheerfully ignoring the existential implications, “We told him Tufulla were the only ones who could keep him safe. No guards. No council. Just us.”
“And he believed you?” I asked, stunned.
“Eventually,” Wikis said. “We convinced him to hide in a pocket dimension I conjured in the ceiling. Rope Trick.”
“You stuffed the High Reader of the Church of the Prophet into an invisible ceiling cupboard?”
“Temporarily,” Trunch clarified.
“And then Din threw a severed head in after him,” Yak added.
“That part was symbolic,” Din muttered.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You do understand that Tufulla is the high Reader of the Church, yes, and that he is technically the Mayor of this city?”
“No one said he wasn’t,” Carrie replied, a bit too breezily. “That’s why we had to hide him well.”
“If you ask me,” Trunch chimed “I think he accepted the idea just so he could get some time to himself for a bit.”
“Anyway,” Yak waved a hand dismissively, “after that, I went back into the kitchen as Dominic. Carrie turned herself invisible and followed me in. The rest of them headed to the square to keep watch on Yun’s shop.”
“Yun?” I asked. “Runs the Mortar and Pestle, the herbalist?”
“Another name on this list, apparently” Carrie’s voice was quiet now, remembering. “Yak convinced Naida, the woman, that it would better to take out Tufulla later. There’d be too many people around when he came back with us and they might not make it out alive. But Yun—she’d be vulnerable, now.”
“So you let her go?”
“Followed her,” Wikis clarified, emerging from the shadow of a memory. “We needed to know where she’d go. Yak went with her, disguised as Dominic.”
“But first,” Yak grinned, “I got her to give me her medallion.” He pulled it from his robe and threw it on the table.
“How?”
He gestured around the table. “Told her the group had taken mine when I passed out. Said I’d use hers to return to the castle, and she could follow after using her pendant.”
“And she believed that?”
“Of course,” he beamed. “I’m very convincing.”
Day set his mug down on the table. “We knew the Mortar and Pestle was on the edge of the town square. So the rest of us, except Din, headed out and got into position. The plan was to spread out, keep an eye on things, and intervene if necessary.”
He glanced at Umberto. “At least, that was the initial plan.”
I turned toward Din, but he was already answering the question I hadn’t asked.
“I was angry,” he said flatly. “Umberto decapitated the best chance I’ve had in years to find out what happened to my people. So I went to the Office of Records. Thought maybe Avelyn had found something new.”
There was a pause. No one challenged him.
Umberto stared at the tabletop. His jaw worked slightly, like he wanted to speak—but didn’t.
Then Yak, brushing pastry crumbs from his chest, piped up. “I waited a few minutes, then untied her and convinced her we would go for Yun.”
“I followed,” Carrie said simply “Invisible, of course.”
“So did I,” Wikis added. “From a distance. Quietly.”
I leaned back in my chair, stared at my notes, then looked up again. “I’m sorry, just to recap: your plan involved shapeshifting, lying, gaslighting, divine concealment, a severed head, and trailing an assassin while invisible?”
They all nodded.
“And it worked?”
“We’re still here, aren’t we?” Umberto said, tearing a piece of bread in half with his teeth.
It dawned on me that earlier that morning, I had wandered through the market square entirely unaware that my companions were, at that very moment, punching a shapeshifter, tying up an assassin, and banishing someone to a moss-filled pocket dimension in my absence.
I was looking for ink.
Maybe a new quill, too. My current one had developed an unfortunate squeak when I wrote lowercase g’s. It was distracting.
I also needed incense for the church. The wandering crypts had finally been evicted of their kuo-toa infestation and were, once again, available for more traditional occupants.
The square had been, at the time, a gentle swirl of morning bustle. Merchants haggling. Street musicians warming up. The bread stall already surrounded. Children chasing each other between carts. Even the pigeons seemed less judgmental than usual.
For the first time in days, I felt… untethered. Free of immediate peril. Free of moral dilemmas, cryptic sigils, suspicious stumps, and undead pets with boundary issues.
It was peaceful.
It was boring.
I stood for nearly five minutes comparing parchment weights, and not a single thing caught fire. No one shouted. Nothing exploded.
I should have been relieved.
Instead, I just felt… disconnected.
I didn’t miss the danger, exactly. But I missed the voices. The noise. The feeling that, somehow, I might actually be part of something bigger than myself.
I’d told myself I needed space. That stepping away would give me clarity. Perspective. A safe distance from fireballs and crossbow bolts.
So I went back to the dorms. Back to the scrolls.
I busied myself with transcription. Copying ancient, crumbling texts onto fresh parchment. The kind of work that didn’t require decision-making or courage or charisma. Just patience. Focus. A steady hand.
Most of it was mundane. Lists of rituals, faded blessings, half-legible prayers to long-forgotten deities. Simple. Comforting.
And then, one scroll, wedged behind a binding so fragile it flaked beneath my fingers, caught my eye.
I don’t know why I read it aloud. Or why, as I read, I found myself mimicking the small, unconscious gestures I’d seen the others make – Carrie, Din, Trunch, Day.
Maybe it was just idle imitation. Maybe I was just… playing. But something sparked.
Just for a second.
A flicker of energy, dancing from my fingertips, warm and impossible and real.
I didn’t tell anyone. Not yet. But I bought ink that morning with a very specific spell in mind. And a quiet, growing hope that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t entirely useless in a fight.
I left the square just before they arrived. I remember passing a man unloading apples near Yun’s shop. He nodded politely. I nodded back.
Neither of us knew we were both about to have very interesting days.
“So let me see if I’ve got this next part straight,” I said slowly, scratching a note in the margin. “You sent a pastry-dusted shapeshifting assassin”, I nodded at Yak, “with a Dan’del’ion master assassin, followed by an invisible fairy, and a wild halfling – no offense,” I added, looking pleadingly at Wikis, who just shrugged, “to the town square, while the rest of you decided to… improvise?”
“Technically, yeah,” Day muttered.
“But, there were guards,” Yak said, leaning back. “They started tailing us as we got closer to the square, so Naida and I had to take the long way round.”
“Why did they start following you?” I asked.
“Because we kind of forgot about the fact that she was wearing Dan’del’ion robes” Wikis cut in. “Kind of stood out.”
“So, you were walking around town, in the open, with an obvious threat.” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah, but we lost them through some of the alleyways,” Yak beamed.
“Meanwhile,” Day added, “Umberto, Trunch and I scouted ahead.”
“You two scouted,” Carrie said. “Umberto intervened.”
Umberto shrugged. “It was taking too long.”
“What exactly did you do?” I asked.
“He went into Yun’s store,” Day said with the resignation of someone who finally understood the difficulty of supervising a cluster of weasels. “I followed. Just in case.”
“I had questions.”
“I had concerns,” Trunch added quietly.
“What kind of questions?”
Umberto grinned like a man remembering his favorite punch. “Whether they were involved with the Dan’del’ion Court.”
“And…?”
“They said they weren’t. I countered. Said they must have been, because the Court sent an assassin after them.”
There was a silence.
“That’s how you opened?” I asked.
“With directness,” he said proudly.
“And Yun’s response?”
Umberto shifted slightly in his chair. “They stepped closer and I felt a little prick,” His eyes drifted downwards. He raised an eyebrow and nodded toward his loincloth. “They threatened to sever my sizable manhood with a dagger if I didn’t leave.”
“That’s far, all things considered.” Din muttered. “I had similar thoughts after you cut off Dominic’s head.”
“Yun demanded that we leave immediately.” Day added regretfully.
“It was a very sharp dagger,” Umberto added thoughtfully.
I wrote “sharp dagger diplomacy” in the corner of the page, and underlined it twice.
“Back outside,” Wikis continued, “Carrie and I lost track of Yak and Naida, so we… waited. In the square.”
There was a sheepishness to the final words. Trunch furrowed his brow.
“I set myself up at the apple stand near the Mortar and Pestle,” he said. “Made it look like I was buying produce. There was a commotion across the way, and a small crowd had started to gather.”
He looked at Wikis, pointedly.
“I wanted to climb the flagpole to get a better view,” she huffed. “It was slicker than I thought.”
“She ended up putting on a little show for a few of the market-goers,” Carrie laughed. “It looked like an interpretive dance routine.”
Wikis hissed and shrank into her chair.
“We finally reached the shop,” Yak said.
“Just as we were being ushered out,” Day added.
“We clung to the wall at the corner. Naida said I should give her a dagger. Said she’d handle it quietly.”
I leaned forward, hopeful. “And you didn’t give it to her, right?”
“Of course I did.”
I closed my notebook. “Why?”
“She said please. Said it was her target and she’d make ‘him’ proud.”
“Gods.”
“She put a hand on my shoulder. Looked me in the eyes. Said, ‘Thank you, brother.’ Then she stabbed me.”
There was a pause.
“Right in the gut. Twice.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that I briefly considered passing out. For dramatic effect.”
He pulled his robe aside and lifted his shirt, revealing a heavily bandaged abdomen.
“Still hurts if I laugh too hard.”
“Then she ran,” Trunch said. “I fired off an Eldritch Blast, clipped her shoulder. I wanted to make sure I didn’t hit any civilians.”
“I fired two arrows, but she was moving fast,” Wikis said. “One landed in the shop wall. The other hit a vegetable stand.”
“I tried to hit her with Sleep,” Carrie added. “Which unfortunately didn’t hit her, but did hit a fruit vendor, a cobbler, and two elderly women arguing about soup prices.”
“And a guard,” Day muttered.
“Anyway,” Wikis cut in, “she turned, smiled, did that smug little half-curtsy thing – and vanished.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Into the air,” Carrie said bitterly. “Like he did. I’m starting to hate it when they do that.”
I shook my head, lightly, “But, if it was the same spell as his she couldn’t have gone far?” I looked around the table at the group. “I mean, he popped back only a few meters away, right. From inside the Grin to outside in the alley?”
“Probably. In all likelihood she was very nearby,” Trunch conceded, “But by then all hell had broken loose in the square. People were falling asleep on the spot, arrows were flying. People panicked.”
“Yun came out,” Umberto said. “Saw Yak bleeding. Gave us a look like we were the dumbest people in town, and patched him up.”
“They said they’d only speak to us if Tufulla was there,” Day added.
“So you came back here?”
“Got him out of the ceiling,” Trunch confirmed. “He was meditating. Or napping.”
“Or quietly questioning all his life choices.” Din added quietly, shaking his head.
“And then?”
“We sat and had a chat,” Carrie said. “Locked the door. We needed answers. Umberto acted as guard.”
I nodded, returning to my page.
This group should not be trusted with anything sharper than a scone, I wrote in the margin.
Din sat, scanning the group in what I can only assume was a mixture of bewilderment, wonder, and regret. I joined him in wordless agreement.
They’d set a master assassin loose in the city, nearly set a public square on fire, incapacitated several civilians, and gotten one of their own stabbed.
And somehow, in their heads, this counted as a successful reconnaissance.
“Turns out,” Trunch said, leaning forward, “Yun’s more than just an herbalist.”
“They were part of the last group to return from Castle Ieyoch,” Yak added. “A little over a year ago.”
I blinked. “You’re sure?”
“According to Tufulla. And Yun,” Trunch said, eyes on me. “Yun opened up once Tufulla was there. You didn’t know about this?”
“No,” I said. “He never said anything.” I began to wonder what else he wasn’t telling me.
“Interesting,” Trunch muttered, leaning back. “Apparently, they were scouting—sent by the White Ravens to verify reports of renewed activity around the castle.”
“But they were captured,” Umberto snorted. “Amateurs. Got themselves tortured. For months.”
“There were five in the group,” Day said. “They named the others; Travok, Svaang, Hothar. A dwarf, a goblin, a firbolg. All of them are on the target list.”
“Along with Tufulla and Brenne,” Din added, his voice quiet.
“Yak got that much out of Naida,” Carrie said. “Before the stabbing.”
I did a quick bit of mental arithmetic then used my fingers to double check. “Travok, Svaang, Hothar, and Yun. That’s only four. You said there were five in the group.”
“Only four made it back.” Wikis said. “Yun wouldn’t speak about the one that didn’t. We only knew because Tufulla mentioned there were originally five.”
I frowned. “And no one remembers who the fifth was?”
“Apparently not,” Trunch said. “Yun didn’t mention her. Neither did the others.”
“Tufulla said they’ve all got memory gaps,” Day added. “Like something’s been… scrubbed.”
“Which is exactly why they’re being hunted,” Carrie muttered.
“Naida’s orders were clear,” Yak nodded. “Kill Yun. Dominic was sent after Tufulla. Erik went to the Briars to get Svaang. Then they’d regroup to take out Travok and Hothar together.”
“So the man you saw at Brenne’s house—”
“Could’ve been either Dominic or Erik,” Trunch said.
“Tufulla guessed Brenne was on the list as a way for the Court to tie up loose ends,” Day said. “He said she’s too young to know much about her parents’ involvement with the Court—but they obviously needed to be sure. Yak probably saw them trying to find out what she knew.”
“So we decided to find the others,” Wikis said, her tone sharpening. “Assuming they’re still alive.”
“Brenne’s not that important anyway,” Umberto muttered. “I still don’t think she was completely honest with us. No loss if they get her.”
Trunch shot him a look. “Tufulla’s sending a group of guards to bring her safely to Dawnsheart. Yun volunteered to go with them.”
“So we don’t need to worry about her,” Carrie said. “Just the others.”
“You want to find them?” I asked. “Why?”
“Knowledge,” Day replied. “Survivors of Castle Ieyoch. They’ve seen what the Court was capable of. They may know something.”
I set my quill down. Raised my hands. “Hold on. If the White Ravens sent Yun’s group to scout, wouldn’t they have been debriefed when they got back?”
“Apparently they were,” Day said. “Yun told us they gave the Ravens everything they could remember.”
Trunch took a sip of his ale. His eyes flicked to the shattered windows. His voice dropped. “Each of them had memory gaps. Foggy spots. The White Ravens kept asking about the fifth member of their group—but none of them could remember what happened to her.”
“You think the Court messed with their memories?” I asked. “That’s why they’re targets?”
The group nodded.
“The Ravens called it trauma. Collective PTSD,” Carrie whispered. “But I think something happened at that castle. Something the Dan’del’ion Court doesn’t want remembered.”
I picked up my quill and started scribbling.
“Okay, but what about Tufulla? Why is he on the list?”
“Position,” Trunch said, without hesitation. “The church. The White Ravens. Access to power and records. He’s a threat in a different way.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“We find the others,” Din said. “Warn them. Protect them.”
I looked around the table. “So… you brought me here to tell me all this. In case you don’t come back?”
“No,” Yak grinned.
“You’re coming with us.” Day said almost tauntingly. “Tufulla told us to fill you in. Said we’d need your expertise—your knowledge of the valley and the people.”
I looked up at their faces. Their infuriating, unpredictable, entirely lovable faces. Then sighed.
“Of course he did. Can’t have me getting comfortable in my dorm, can we?”
“That’s the spirit,” Carrie said, slapping me on the back.
“Welcome back, chronicler!” Umberto slid a fresh mug across the table. The ale sloshed and left a foamy puddle.
I smiled, uncapped my inkwell, and dipped my quill.
Here we go again.
The Chronicles of Klept 