By the time they passed through Kaethar’s southern gate, the sun had sunk low enough to catch along the city walls and turn every upper window to fire. The South Road stretched ahead beneath a pale autumn sky, broad, rutted, and busy enough near the gate that they had to keep to its shoulder while carts groaned past in both directions. 

They were walking.

The grathok remained in Malakar’s care. Varna’s butcher’s sledge was back in her shop with the two draft mules, which meant the party had recovered exactly none of the conveniences Zerai pyrrhically arranged before their first trip north. She made it perhaps half a mile before this occurred to her.

“Tako.”

The vaelin looked down at her. “Zerai.”

“I’ve been thinking about something.”

Thane groaned. “Don’t encourage her.”

“The horses,” Zerai continued. “You made us leave perfectly good horses in Dunmoor because horses are free and shouldn’t work for people.”

Tako nodded.

“But those mules dragged several hundred pounds of dead grathok through Kaethar, and you spent most of yesterday walking beside them like this was completely acceptable.”

Another nod.

Zerai waited. “I’m gonna need the missing piece.”

Tako’s brow furrowed. He seemed surprised that one existed.

“Horse smart,” he said at last. “Horse proud. Horse run because horse want run.”

“And the mules?”

“Ass dumb.” Tako shrugged. “Ass like work.”

Kal made a strangled sound beside Thane. Zerai stopped walking. Thane managed three more steps before realizing everyone behind him had fallen silent. He turned and found Kal staring at Tako with both lips pressed tightly together while Zerai’s face underwent a visible struggle between scholarship and catastrophe.

“Don’t,” Thane warned.

Kal lifted both hands. “I haven’t said anything.”

“Yer about to.”

Zerai pointed at Tako. “So you’re saying a working ass is a dumb ass.”

Tako nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

Kal folded at the waist. Even Lira’s mouth twitched. Thane rubbed both hands over his face. “We’ve been on the road for ten keshing minutes.”

“Oh, but it’s been an excellent ten minutes,” Kal managed through his tears.

Tako smiled, pleased that everyone finally understood.

The road widened once Kaethar fell behind them, its paving stones thinning by degrees until packed earth took over beneath their boots. Wagon wheels carved two dark grooves into the roadbed, hardened at the edges by weeks of dry weather, while hoofprints overlapped one another in the softer ground near the ditches. The traffic was still thick this close to the city. Merchants rattled north beneath canvas covers, farmers guided empty carts home, and a pair of drovers cursed steadily at a flock of sheep that seemed determined to occupy every useful stretch of road at once. 

Beyond them, the country opened into long folds of yellowing grass and harvested fields. Autumn had begun working its way through the landscape in earnest. The weeds along the roadside had gone brown at the tips, leaves collected against stone walls and fence posts, and the air carried the dry, earthy smell that came after the heat of summer had finally broken. Farther south, the road narrowed toward low hills and the darker seam of the country beyond them, where the canyon waited somewhere out of sight.

The sun began its slow descent behind their shoulders, throwing their shadows long across the road. Kaethar still caught the light behind them, its upper windows flashing gold between rooftops, but each mile made the city look smaller, and the open country ahead feel wider. Kal walked backward for several paces, watching the walls recede. “So how far is Dunmoor?”

“Six leagues,” Lira said.

“An egun,” Elora offered at nearly the same time.

Thane scratched at his beard. “Little over a thousand lines, depending how straight you’re measuring.”

Zerai shrugged. “Depends who’s ruling.”

Kal turned around before he walked into a ditch. “I asked how far it was, and somehow all four of you gave me different answers.”

“They’re all right,” Elora said.

“Ah.” He widened his eyes and mouthed I’m surrounded by crazy people to himself.

She smiled. “Egunbide mean a day’s road. Most people shorten it to egun. It’s roughly how far a traveler can reasonably cover between morning and wherever good sense tells them to stop.”

Kal glanced toward the sinking sun. “We appear to have misplaced the morning.”

“That was deliberate,” Lira said.

Thane pointed south. “Leagues are better if you want the road on a map. Lines are better if you want to build the skarning thing.”

“And reaches are better if you care where the land actually takes you,” Lira added.

Kal looked at Zerai. “And what about you? Any made-up gnomish words to heap on the pile?”

“I suppose it all boils down to who’s ruling when you ask.” Zerai stepped onto the low stone edging that ran beside the road and began walking along it with her arms out for balance, avoiding a stretch of mud churned black by wagon wheels. “Official distances use the regnal stride. Every five years, a new ruler takes power, walks the ceremonial course, surveyors measure the steps, average them, and there ya go. New standard.”

Kal stared at her long enough that his boot caught the edge of the same mud she avoided. He recovered without falling, though the splash reached halfway up his trouser leg. “You change the unit of measurement every time you change rulers?”

“Of course.” Zerai hopped neatly over a missing stone. “Otherwise you’d be measuring the kingdom by a dead gnome.”

“That would be ridiculous,” Elora said, and Kal looked at her sharply before realizing she was smiling.

A freight wagon came rattling up behind them, its driver shouting for room before the horses had entirely decided whether they intended to provide any. Lira moved onto the shoulder first and caught Zerai by the back of her coat as the gnome wobbled on the wall. Tako stepped off the road altogether, giving the team such a wide berth that one of the horses turned its head to watch him pass. They waited through the clatter of wheels, dust, and a tarp snapping violently over whatever smelled of onions underneath it.

Kal watched the wagon disappear north. “All right. So your maps become obsolete every five years?”

“Technically, they become historical.” Zerai dropped from the wall and brushed grit from her palms. “And rulers don’t necessarily change every five years. The Ring is held every five years.”

“The Ring?”

“Battle royale.”

Kal stopped walking.

Thane nearly walked into him. “Move it.”

Kal moved, though he twisted around to stare at Zerai. “Your government is chosen by a fist fight?”

“Well, it was.”

“You just said it still happens.”

“It does.”

“Ok, you’re losing me here.”

Zerai made a small, impatient circle with one hand. “Because nobody actually fights anymore. Well, almost nobody. The fighting is antiquated.”

Kal’s face tightened. “You hold a battle royale where nobody battles.”

“Tradition,” Thane chuckled. “Ain’t no sense in trying to make logic with a gnome.”

Kal side-eyed Thane. “Tradition, huh? That word is doing criminal amounts of work.”

They reached a shallow wash where recent rain had eaten a crooked groove through the road. Lira crossed first, choosing two exposed stones without breaking stride. Elora followed more carefully. Thane simply stepped through it. Kal jumped the narrowest section, landed cleanly, then turned to find Zerai still on the opposite bank with her hands on her hips.

“The real contest happens beforehand,” she said. “Months of negotiations. Families, guilds, city-states, military houses. Everybody wants something. Trade rights. Offices. Contracts. Somebody wants a road. Somebody wants their idiot nephew promoted. Somebody’s grandmother still wants an apology for something another family’s grandmother said at a funeral eighty years ago. Long lifespans are a blessing and a curse.” Elora offered Zerai her hand across the wash. Zerai ignored it and jumped, coming up short enough that Kal caught her by one forearm and hauled her onto dry ground. She gave him a suspicious look, as though assistance might come with contractual obligations. After a quick pat-down to ensure nothing was missing from her person, she continued. “Marriages, too. Lots of marriages.”

“So everybody bargains until one candidate has enough support to win?”

“To rule,” Zerai corrected. “Winning is the ceremonial part.”

Kal brushed mud from his sleeve. “Which consists of simply walking into a ring.”

“Yep.”

“And waiting to see whether anybody else walks in.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“I absolutely am not getting it.”

Elora snort-laughed and did her best to hide it. Even Lira glanced back with the beginnings of a smile. Zerai continued down the road. “Most of the time, nobody challenges. By then, everybody with sense has already gotten whatever they negotiated for, or enough of it that upsetting the arrangement would cost more than accepting it.”

Kal’s confusion began to give way, slowly, to interest. “And if someone decided the old rules still count?”

“Oh, they still count.” Zerai’s grin returned. “That’s the problem.”

Thane gave a low chuckle. “Here we go.”

“Every few cycles, some young idiot spends two years training, reads the oldest version of the law he can find, and decides the rest of gnomekind has grown soft. Usually after discovering muscles.” Zerai puffed out her chest and adopted a heroic stride that carried her directly towards a pile of horse droppings. Lira caught her shoulder and redirected her without comment. “He announces that he’ll enter the Ring, defeat the chosen ruler, restore honor, usher in a new age, et cetera.”

“And then?” Kal asked.

“His family stops him.”

“Politically?”

“Sometimes.”

Thane grinned. “Tell him the other way.”

Zerai sighed. “Sometimes his mother just sits on him until the Ring closes.”

Kal walked several more paces in silence, then he looked at Zerai. “So the battle royale survived because nobody wants to abolish it, the winner is usually determined months beforehand, and the only person who actually tries to fight gets tackled by his own relatives?”

“Approximately.”

His smile came back slowly. “That’s beautiful.”

Thane looked across at him. “Course you’d think so.”

Kal spread his hands. “Six months of leverage, favors, debts, promises, and quiet threats, all so one person can stand alone in a circle for five minutes and pretend the whole thing was decided there?”

Zerai clapped her hands. “See? Now you understand!”

Thane’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. He understands it way too well.”

Kal smiled at him. “I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.”

“Beginning?”

“That hurts.”

“Good.”

The last of the easy country narrowed around them as evening came on. Low pasture walls gave way to broken shelves of stone, and the South Road began twisting between scrub-covered rises where thornbushes clung to the rock in black knots. Ahead, the canyon cut across the fading sky like a wound, its walls already blue with shadow while the higher ridges still held a little copper light. Lira slowed without announcing it. Her eyes went first to the western rim, then the eastern, following ledges and shelves where a bowman could lie flat and disappear. Thane noticed. His hand drifted toward the haft of his hammer.

Elora looked up at the narrowing road. “We could stop here.” She pointed toward a patch of level ground beyond a stand of scrub oak, far enough from the road to keep them out of passing traffic. “We have enough light to make camp properly, and I’d rather not discover halfway through there that someone else remembers how useful this canyon is.” 

Kal glanced toward the heights, then at the others. Zerai had stopped talking entirely, which seemed to concern him more than the canyon. Thane squinted south through the gap. There’s an egunbide house on the other side. Hour past the mouth, give or take. Beds, hot food, walls thicker than this lot deserves.”

Zerai turned on him. “There’s an inn on the other side of the canyon?”

Thane’s shoulders rose. “Egunbide house.”

“There was a building with snacks and drinks an hour before we got to the canyon, and you made me walk into an ambush on an empty stomach?!”

“We were already hours behind because a certain giant bastard decided the horses had labor rights. By the time we got through here, stopping for stew and ale would’ve meant never reaching the mountain before dark.”

Tako considered this, then nodded. “Horse free.”

“Yeah,” Thane said. “I remember the speech.”

Kal looked from one to the other. “I’m beginning to understand why traveling with you people takes so long.”

They entered the canyon anyway. Conversation thinned as the walls rose around them and the evening light vanished faster than it had any right to. Lira moved several paces ahead, bow loose in one hand, checking the ridgeline whenever the road bent. Thane kept glancing toward a shelf of pale stone halfway up the western wall, then toward a split in the rocks farther ahead.

Zerai stayed near Elora. Tako walked with his head slightly lowered, breathing through his nose, while Kal watched the rest of them more than he watched the canyon. Once, pebbles rattled somewhere above, and Thane spun toward the sound so quickly his hammer was halfway free before a thin gray lizard skittered across the ledge and vanished into a crack.

Kal let out the breath he had been holding. “Terrifying.”

“Laugh it up,” Thane muttered.

The road bent again. Nothing waited there. No bowstring snapped from the heights or boots scraped against stone. They passed the place where the bandits had stepped into the road on the journey north, then the rocks where two more had hidden above them, and still the canyon offered only wind sliding through dry grass and the hollow clack of loose stone under their boots.

By the time the walls finally began to fall away, the quiet had become its own kind of pressure. Lira looked back once at the dark cut behind them before turning south again. Thane settled his hammer against his shoulder. “House is about an hour.”

Kal glanced back at the empty canyon. “I think I preferred it when something was trying to rob you.”

“So did I,” Thane said.

***

The egunbide house announced itself first by smell. Woodsmoke drifted across the road long before the building came into view, carrying the earthy sweetness of roasting root vegetables, wet wool, horse sweat, and something rich enough with fat that Zerai quickened her pace without pretending otherwise. A lantern burned over the door beneath a steep roof darkened by generations of weather, and another hung from a post beside a broad stable yard where wagons stood wheel to wheel. The place looked less like an inn built beside the road than a piece of the road that had learned to put up walls.

Thane pointed toward the low stone building as they approached. “Been here longer than half the villages between Kaethar and Dunmooor. Used to be these houses marked an egun proper. You left one at first light, reached the next before dark, and if you didn’t, either the road was bad, or you were.”

Tako looked at him. “Or horse free.”

Thane gave him a long look. “Yeah. Or that.”

Inside, warmth hit them hard enough to fog Kal’s breath against his own collar. The common room was crowded with teamsters, traders, two soldiers sharing a bowl of stew, and a family occupying enough bench space to suggest they had been traveling with every possession they owned. Damp cloaks steamed near the hearth. Someone had tracked mud across the floor in the shape of an argument, and copper pans hung above the bar, catching firelight whenever the flames shifted.

Thane went straight to the counter. The human woman behind it was broad through the shoulders and wore her gray hair in a knot so severe it seemed capable of enforcing rules without her assistance. She looked at him once and reached beneath the bar.

“Still drinking the brown?” she asked.

“Does the potiff shit in a funny hat?”

Elora rolled her eyes. “Blech. He could have simply said ‘yes.’”

The woman at the counter set down a clay mug before him. “Still complaining about it?”

“When I can.”

Kal slid onto the stool beside him. “You have a regular drink here?”

Thane took a swallow. “I’ve been here once or twice before.”

“I gathered as much. I’m trying to decide whether the shocking part is that people remember you fondly.”

“They don’t.”

The innkeeper glanced at Kal. “We remember him accurately.”

Kal smiled. “I think I like this place.”

“Don’t,” Thane said.

By the time the food arrived, the party had spread out at one end of a long, scarred table near the hearth. Elora wrapped both hands around a cup of mulled cider. Lira chose the seat with the clearest view of the door without appearing to choose it. Tako sat close enough to the fire that one sleeve began to steam. Zerai had acquired a heel of bread, half a meat pie, and something glazed in honey despite nobody remembering her ordering dessert.

Kal kept finding reasons to speak to Thane.

“So how often have you stayed here?”

“Enough.”

“Always alone?”

“Sometimes.”

“Friends?”

Thane looked over his mug. “You gathering information or trying to make me kill ya?”

Kal considered. “Can’t it be both?”

Thane muttered something into his ale that sounded like “skarn” with extra consonants. Kal leaned back, pleased with himself, then his eyes dropped to the front of Thane’s coat. Something square pressed against the fabric beneath it. Kal’s expression changed. “Is that a book?”

Thane’s hand went instinctively to the front of his coat. “No.”

Kal stared at the rectangular bulge beneath the wool, then lifted his eyes to Thane’s face. “That was remarkably quick for a lie this bad.”

“It’s mine. Leave it alone.”

“You can read? I didn’t think you could read!”

Thane lowered his mug with deliberate care. “Been able to read since before you were a stain in your father’s shorts.”

Kal’s eyebrows rose. Across the table, Zerai stopped chewing. Elora found sudden interest in her cider, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

“I apologize,” Kal said. “I didn’t realize literacy was such a sensitive subject.”

“It ain’t. But you’re about to become a sensitive subject.”

Kal let loose a chortle. What are you reading?”

“Nothin’.”

“Aw, is it a picture book?”

Thane’s stare hardened.

Kal leaned closer. “Oh. Pictures.”

“Keep reachin’, and you’re gonna find out how many teeth you can swallow.”

Kal’s face beamed with delight. ‘What kind of pictures does a man hide under his coat, though? Landscapes? Anatomical studies? Something with tasteful drapery?”

Thane’s chair legs scraped the hardwood as he shoved it back. “I don’t indulge in that slutch.”

“Everyone indulges in that slutch.”

“WELL. I. DON’T.”

“Everyone,” Kal repeated. “I knew a sustari who kept an entire collection. Very tasteful. Expensive bindings. His favorite was called Birch Without Bark.”

Elora leaned over to Zerai. “What’s a sustari?”

Zerai choked on her meat pit. “Tree people,” she choked out.

Kal continued while pounding her between the shoulders. “Although I always thought the medium was a little macabre. Sustari keeping erotic art printed on the processed flesh of his distant cousins. You’d think cloth would be more respectful.”

Thane reached the end of whatever patience the ale afforded him. He caught Kal by the wrist when the half-elf darted for his coat, but Kal twisted free, laughing and hooked two fingers behind the book’s spine. “Now I have to see it.”

“Give it back, you pointy-eared bastard.”

Lira shot him a dirty look. “Thane…” she warned.

“Kal!” Thane shouted.

“I promise to respect your privacy right after I’ve violated it.”

The chair went over behind them. Thane lunged across the corner of the table; Kal ducked, and the book slipped halfway from his coat. Elora snatched her cider out of danger while Lira calmly relocated the plate of bread. Tako watched the struggle with deep interest, one hand still wrapped around a chicken leg. Kal got both hands on the book. Thane got both hands on Kal. For one brief, stupid moment, they remained locked there, Kal grinning through the dwarf’s forearm pressed across his chest while Thane tried to pry his fingers loose. Thane’s elbow struck the table, and the book shot from between them.

“My pie!” the wizard cried.

The book hit the floor open. The pages fluttered violently. A green hand slapped onto the boards. Kal stopped laughing. The goblin came out shoulder-first, wriggling through the book like a rat escaping a drainpipe. His second arm followed, then his head, ears unfolding with a snap. He sucked in a huge breath of common-room air and grinned. “Oh, this place smells wonderful!”

Thane closed his eyes. “Skarn me.”

Kal slowly turned toward him. “There was a goblin in your book.”

“Yeah.”

“There was a goblin. In your book.”

“I heard ya.”

“And you let me spend all that time making pornography jokes?”

“I don’t think I could have stopped ya if I tried.”

The goblin scrambled free and made it three strides before Tako caught him around the middle and lifted him off the floor. His legs continued running in the air.

“Put me down, you big… mountain… thing!”

“Tako not mountain.”

“Fine. Extremely ambitious hill.”

Zerai shoved back from the table. “Wait. I can fix this!”

Thane looked at her. “Last time I tried fixin’ it, everybody yelled at me.”

“Because you were beating him with the book!” Zerai shouted, gaining the attention of a pair of young elvish lovers canoodling in the corner.

Thane cleared his throat. “It almost worked.”

“I most certainly almost did not.” Zerai snatched up the volume, flipped through several pages, then crouched with her tongue pressed against one corner of her mouth. “I watched Malakar. Open to the right page, trace the binding, draw the pull, close the loop.”

Thane thrust a road-worn digit in the air at her. “You just made that up!”

“No, I watched him perform the ritual.”

Lira folded her arms. “You watched him once.”

“I watch very well.”

A pale line of light curled from Zerai’s fingers and hooked into the goblin’s ankles. He yelped as both feet vanished into the book. Then he grabbed a leg of the table. The pull continued. His legs stretched. Kal’s mouth fell open. The goblin’s torso remained where Tako held him while everything below his waist lengthened toward the floor in two green ropes disappearing into the pages.

“Zerai…” Elora said carefully.

“I know.”

“Do you?” 

“I know more than I did ten seconds ago.”

Zerai broke the sigil. The goblin snapped back to normal so quickly that his knees struck his chin. “Ow,” the goblin informed her.

“Again,” Zerai said.

The goblin tried to resist. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

Tako tightened his grip. “Again.”

The goblin twisted around to glare at the vaelin. “Betrayal!”

The second attempt got farther. His legs disappeared, then his hips, then most of his torso before the binding faltered. The book jerked sideways in Zearai’s hands. His body stretched with it, neck thinning and lengthening until his head hung several feet above the floor while the rest of him vanished into the pages. Kal backed away from the table, staring with open reverence. “I have never seen anything better than this.”

“You’re sick,” Thane said.

“I know!” the half-elf said with glee.

Zerai tried to correct the sigil. The book bucked free, sailed across the table, and snapped shut around the goblin’s stretched neck just below his chin. His head remained on one side. The rest of him was apparently somewhere else. He blinked. “Little help?”

Thane rubbed a hand over his face. “I hate this book.”

“C’mon, Thane,” Kal protested, “have you even taken the time to read it?” He burst into laughter, unable to contain himself through the end of his question.

While Zerai wrestled it upright again, Elora leaned closer to the glowing marks still hanging faintly in the air. Her brow furrowed. “Uh, Zerai? Why are you drawing that symbol in the air?”

“It’s part of the ritual.” She tried to refocus her attention on the process.

Elora hesitated. “Part of the ritual is drawing a symbol for… the… bodily evacuation of digested material?

Zerai glanced at her. “The what of the what now?”

“You know,” she continued, “when you do your business? In private?”

“Speak Common, lady!”

“Drop a drek?” the goblin asked.

Tako giggled. “Make boom boom.”

“Shit,” Thane declared.

Zerai’s hands stopped. Thane turned toward Elora. Her face colored. “That is what it means,” she said.

“I’ll have you know that this is a binding sigil,” the wizard proclaimed. “Closest translation in the Common tongue is probably incarcerate.”

“Well, in the Celestial tongue, it means—”

“Scat.” Lira cut her off as she studied the goblin’s head protruding from the book.

“What?” Zerai asked.

“Animal droppings. The kind you find out in the wild.” Lira tipped her head toward the goblin. “Seems appropriate.”

The goblin considered that with surprising seriousness. His grin slowly returned. “Scat,” he said, testing the sound. “Sounds nicer than what my mother calls me.”

Elora leaned forward. “What does your mother call you?” Thane grabbed a fistful of pastry from Zerai’s plate and jammed it into the goblin’s open mouth. Zerai completed the sigil, and the book swallowed him in one violent tug and snapped shut against Thane’s palm.

Silence spread around their end of the table. A teamster nearby stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. The innkeeper stared from behind the counter with an exhausted expression. The young elves halted their enamored expressions, their lips connected by a sinking strand of saliva.

Kal slowly sat down. His eyes remained fixed on the book. “You’ve had that in your coat all day?”

The dwarf tucked it away again. “Leave it.”

Kal looked at Lira. “All of you knew?”

The group gave a collective amalgamation of “Yes.”

“And none of you thought to mention the goblin who lives in a book?”

“We had other concerns.” Zerai rolled her eyes and picked up her plate. With a frustrated glance at the pastry thief, she dragged one finger through the icing left on the plate, gathering the last traces of cinnamon, nutmeg, and oraska. She sucked the icing from her fingertip, savoring the warm spice until the sweetness faded and left her with an empty plate.

Kal stared at the gnome, then shifted his attention to Thane, and finally to the place where the goblin’s head had been. “That was the greatest thing I have ever seen.”

Thane picked up his ale. “You need a better life.”

Kal remained fixed on the coat where the book had disappeared. “I had a perfectly respectable life until five minutes ago. Now I know you’ve been walking around with a goblin tucked against your nipples, and frankly, everything before this feels wasted.”

“Keep talkin’ like that, and I’ll show ya what else I can fit in there.”

From the corner came the scrape of a chair. One of the young elves finally pulled his mouth away from his companion and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. His eyes never left Thane’s coat. “You said this place was quiet.”

The woman caught him by the collar and dragged him back toward her. “It was until you started watching other people.”

Thane raised his mug toward her. “Smart woman.”

The innkeeper arrived with a damp cloth over one shoulder and surveyed their end of the common room. An overturned chair lay against the table. Pastry crumbs covered enough floorboards to feed mice through winter, and the fading remains of Zerai’s working still shimmered faintly near the hearth. She looked at Thane. “Last time you were here, you broke a stool.”

“Stool started it.”

“This time there was a goblin.”

“Wasn’t mine.”

Kal leaned toward her. “It was absolutely his.”

Thane’s head turned slowly. “You wanna spend the night outside?”

“I’m merely helping your hostess establish liability.”

Zerai slid her empty plate protectively away from the innkeeper. “Technically, the goblin was already here. He was just… compressed.”

Elora gave her a look over the rim of her cider. “I don’t think that improves the explanation.”

The innkeeper rubbed at one of the fading marks with her cloth. Discovered it would not come off, and seemed to decide that tomorrow’s problems belonged to tomorrow. “Anything else planning to crawl out of your trousers tonight?”

Tako considered the question seriously.

Thane pointed at him. “Don’t.”

“We’ll be gone in the morning,” Lira said, rescuing the conversation before Tako could inventory himself.

The innkeeper straightened. “South?”

“Dunmoor.”

Something shifted in the woman’s face. Small enough that Kal missed it while reaching for the pitcher. Lira did not. “What?”

The innkeeper looked at her. “Man came through earlier asking after travelers out of Kaethar.”

Kal’s hand stopped halfway to the ale. “That sounds flattering already.”

“He described an elf, a dwarf, a gnome, a young woman in temple colors, and a fellow big enough to make doorframes nervous.” She glanced at Kal. “Said there might be a half-elf with them.”

Kal frowned. “That’s it?”

“That’s what?”

“No distinguishing features? Handsome? Well-dressed? Striking profile?”

Thane snorted into his mug. “Maybe he was tryin’ to be accurate.”

Kal turned toward him. “You’re remarkably confident for a man whose beard appears to have lost a knife fight.”

“Both of you,” Lira snapped.

They stopped. Thane because she asked. Kal because he was interested in what happened next. Lira looked back to the innkeeper. “What did he look like?”

“Human. Brown coat. Travel boots. Beard needed trimming. Mid-thirties, maybe older. Didn’t talk like a merchant, didn’t carry himself like a soldier. Ate stew, drank one ale, paid exactly what he owed.”

Zerai propped her chin on her fist. “That’s suspicious.”

Elora glanced at her. “Paying his bill?”

“Exactly what he owed. No tip, no argument, no ‘keep the change,’ no trying to trade a button because his cousin swears it belonged to a duke. That’s a person who wants to be forgotten.”

Kal’s eyes flicked toward her, his amusement thinning. “Now that I believe.”

“When did he leave?” Lira asked.

“Couple hours before you arrived. Wanted more road behind him before he stopped.”

Elora’s cider lowered slowly. “Did he continue south?”

The innkeeper nodded. Tako turned toward the black windows. His nostrils flared once, though there was nothing beyond the glass but their reflections and the lanterns burning in the yard. “Pack sends one ahead. One finds trail. Pack follows.”

Thane set his mug down. “Or one goes ahead and tells the pack where the trail ends.”

Zerai sat back. “Great. So while we were creeping through that canyon waiting for someone to drop a rock on our heads, this bastard may have been halfway to Dunmoor arranging the rocks.”

Kal rubbed a thumb along the edge of the table. “If he’s going to Dunmoor. Could be he only wanted to know which road we took.”

Lira’s gaze settled on him. “You think that’s better?”

“No.” A faint smile touched his mouth, though there was nothing playful in it now. “I think it gives us more ways to be screwed.”

Elora folded her hands around her cup. “Then we warn them. Boran first, and anyone responsible for keeping watch. If someone reaches Dunmoor before us, I don’t want the village learning there’s danger when it walks through somebody’s door.”

Kal tipped his head toward her. “And if whoever’s involved is already in Dunmoor?”

“Then protecting people still matters.”

“It does.” He tapped one finger against the tabletop. “So does finding them before they know we’re looking.”

Thane shifted in his chair, broad shoulders tightening beneath his coat. “I hate to say it, but the man with the baby-pointy ears has a point.”

Kal looked delighted. “Say it again.”

“Skarn yourself.”

Lira leaned forward before the argument could find another life. “We decide before we reach Dunmoor. We either warn the village and accept that whoever’s watching will know we’ve caught on, or we walk in quietly and see who moves when they think we still know nothing.”

Zerai straightened. “What about the rootnet?”

Thane looked at her. “Here?”

“Maybe. Egunbide houses move travelers, freight, news. Wouldn’t be insane if some of them had a relay.”

Thane glanced around the room. “This place has three kinds of ale, one privy, and a roof that leaks over the stable. I wouldn’t bet on sanctioned fungus.

“Even if they did,” Elora said, “Would Dunmoor even have something to receive it?” 

“Could send it somewhere nearby and have somebody carry the rest,” Zerai pushed further.

“Which would give us another stranger carrying word toward Dunmoor.” Lira closed her eyes and shook her head. “We don’t know who we trust yet.”

“Man,” Zerai whined, “I was really hoping for a decent night’s sleep tonight!”

In the corner, one of the young elves murmured something into the other’s ear and earned a muffled laugh against his shoulder. Their evening had already returned to normal. Lira watched them for a moment, then looked back at the people around her table. Dunmoor had no idea their normal evening might already be ending.

---

Do They Warn Dunmoor?

Someone has already traveled ahead of them, asking about the party. By the time they reach Dunmoor, whoever is watching may already be there.

They can return openly and prepare the village for trouble, or preserve the appearance that they still do not understand what they are walking into.

Polls close at 12:00 p.M. CST on September 21, 2026

• Raise the Alarm
  • Warn Dunmoor as soon as they arrive. Protect Tomas and Niko, organize watches, and make sure people know something may be coming. It makes the village harder to surprise, but anyone involved in the conspiracy will immediately know the party has followed the trail home.
• Keep it Quiet
  • Tell only the people who absolutely need to know and allow Dunmoor to continue behaving normally. That may give the party a chance to see who reacts to their return or exposes themselves, but innocent people remain unaware if the danger strikes before the party identifies it.

Which path would you take?

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