That girl really don’t like pests, Filch thought. No wonder she can’t stand me.

Filch didn’t let flies bother him. It wasn’t as though these colder countrysides could claim the most flies in Crown’s Reach, anyway. He wondered how Chayand would react to summer weather on the Mud. If she thinks this is bad…. He silently hedged a bet she’d willingly drown herself on the Argot, just to escape the bugs.

Filch had seen more than his share of flies in his scant eleven years. Flies were a part of everyday life down south, as were gnats, peskies, pincher bugs, fleas, pillow mites, lice, finch-hoppers, and every sort of creepy-crawly, grain-sized pest imaginable. Mudtown had bugs that would invade your bed, infest your clothes, and drop their little bug larvae in your hair to birth little bug colonies on your scalp, which usually required a razor-shaved head shortly after. So, in the grand scheme of things, flies were nothing to a Mudtown kid. Anyone who lived north of Granger Street had their fill of flies; anyone south of it had more than their fill, mostly on account of Barbol’s Butchery and the stockyard.

Chayand was apparently a girl who had, up ‘til a month ago, lived a life that did not include a lot of bugs. At one point she completely lost it, screeching and flailing in her little corner of the roller just to get the flies to stop landing on her. It worked for all of five heartbeats—she killed exactly zero—and then they were back, buzzing around her hair and crawling on her skin again.

And it wasn’t like she was the most inviting place for insects to land; as interesting as she might be, the bulk of the flies were drawn to the roller’s piss corner, and after that to the little pools of blood Filch had spilled during his “conversation” with Moustache. After thoroughly inspecting those spots, the flies seemed most interested in the source of the blood: Filch himself.

She’s hardly got room to complain, he groused, ignoring a bug crawling up his arm. But there was no telling her that. There was no telling her anything. He knew that from experience, having shared the roller’s cramped interior with her and Vheret for days on end. It’s been a month, he realized. More than a month, actually. Crot…

It had taken half that time for Chayand to finally realize the bug fight was beyond her ability to win; she eventually just tucked her head between her knees, shivering, trying her best to pretend the flies weren’t there anymore. She still shivered, every now and again, whenever one buzzed close to her ear.

Filch shook his head, watching the twitching girl out of the corner of his still-swollen eye with a dark sort of bemusement. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her—in fact, he admired any girl with a spark to her. It was just that she was the sort of strong-headed kid who made pronouncements on things, blurting out whatever she assumed was true at any time, and then acting as though what she’d just said was proven fact. And that was grating—especially if the subject was him.

But she didn’t know him at all. Filch had nine or ten choice remarks he could have made during all the flailing, but…

Why bother?

Filch was still coming to terms with the fact that his usual desire to spar with anyone and everything had been completely taken from him—and not by the beatings, which even he had to admit he kind of invited. No, the fight had all gone out of him with that one long, slow push of Threll’s knife. “Just a poke…”

Someday he was gonna give the mercenary a poke of his own, he swore, even if he didn’t really believe he’d ever have the chance. It was just a way of trying to get past it all. Though Filch still couldn’t get the boy’s face out of his head.

His name was Marelo. Filch had learned it that very night when Mara, curled into a grief-wracked ball, sobbed her brother’s name, over and over again. Mara didn’t blame Filch with her words, or even her eyes. She wouldn’t even look at him. He kind of wished she would, just to get the accusatory thing done and over with. Marelo hadn’t done anything wrong. He did what he was told. The kid shouldn’t have died. Filch cursed himself for not being able to think past an opening. He hadn’t thought it through; he’d just acted on instinct, and hey, wasn’t that a common theme in his life?

Would you have preferred to die yourself? He’d asked himself that question, angrily, more than a few times. Dead was dead and gone, and Filch still had a lot of things to steal from life before it was time to kick with the fishes. But he also knew that if he could have done even one thing to save that poor kid…

Muff had called it his weak spot: an overprotective streak toward younger kids that often interfered with his (rare) better sense. Never mind that Muff had the same weak spot. Whenever she accused him of having it, it was always with a hint of understanding, and maybe even pity. She loved her brats. Filch knew Madame Marfluen was a good woman, despite all her obvious…Muff-ness.

The problem was, that kind of reflexive crot often surfaced at exactly the wrong time, and had bitten him in the arse more than once. He’d gotten in deep just covering for any one of Gabrol’s muddles, or taking the blame for one of Swoozie’s destructive rampages, with rarely a thank-you-very-much in return. Filch swore to himself, time and again, that he’d only look out for himself. But then something would happen, some kid would get in a pickle, and wham. There he was, sticking his neck out again.

It usually got him in trouble, sure, but he was usually the only one who paid the consequences. Marelo’s murder had left Filch teetering on the edge of despair. He didn’t like thinking of himself as beaten, but…

Their captors were a different level of criminal. They were brutal, and worse, they were professionals about it. He didn’t have what Threll had, couldn’t do what he did. Filch had broken more laws in Mudtown than he could count, partly on account of not actually knowing what most of the laws were. (He was pretty sure most were made up on the spot by the crooked town watch, anyway.) And despite his loud public protests to the contrary, he was actually rather proud of his reputation as a local rogue and ne’er-do-well. His name was probably etched on the Mudtown scroll of permanent probable suspects, if one of those existed. How many could boast that at the age of eleven?

And yeah, life was hard. Filch had grown up amidst hardship peppered with cautionary tales of even greater misfortune. Some of Muff’s girls came with stories of lives filled with indebted servitude, forced labor, even slavery. Bony Beres had lived a nightmare life in which she had been forced to toil in a Burgund silver mine for three years; she said not many people made it out alive, even after just one year. “They just got worked to death,” she would say. It was the kind of place where people would work, and work, and work, and then fall over dead. Beres had escaped that fate, was thankful for it, and now relished her job as one of Muff’s girls. And no wonder, coming from a death trap. Whoring probably wasn’t the best way to live one’s life, but…

Better than dying in some mine. He was beginning to think some fates might be worse than death, however. They were all in for some serious stink, and it was probably going to get worse before it got better.

The roller bumped along, well into its fifteenth day following Filch’s ill-advised escape attempt. He had no idea where they were—couldn’t even really make sense of their bizarre traveling pattern, though he was weirdly thankful they weren’t adhering to a nighttime schedule anymore. Traveling at night was fine by him—but trying to sleep in a sweltering, stinking, fly-filled box with the sun heating everything within like an oven…that wasn’t for him. Or anyone.

The red-haired girl with the shoulders, Roen, remained as quiet as ever, though hers was a different kind of quiet than the sort he’d expect to find in most shy girls. If he hadn’t already tried to engineer an escape, Roen seemed like the sort of girl who might have tried herself, eventually. She just had that look. She probably would have done it smarter too, Filch thought grudgingly. But it didn’t matter. The roller was locked tight, and they were guarded—heavily—any time they were let out. Roen could have been Pallas Valoria herself, straight out of the stories, and they still wouldn’t have been able to make an escape.

The others were just as quiet, save for Chayand’s occasional raspy mutters. Vheret stared at the wall, and Mara stared at nothing. Filch closed his eyes and stared at Marelo’s dead face.

Late in the afternoon, the caravan stopped at a crossroads and made camp just off the road. Instead of being immediately let out and staked to the ground, however, they sat unmoving in that spot for what seemed hours. Filch peered out the window and noticed several of the riders had ridden on ahead…but no one moved to do anything with the roller. It sat for a long time, as dusk became night.

Filch looked at Chayand and cut off her burgeoning thought before she spoke it. “If we don’t get a meal this time, it ain’t my fault.”

Chayand snorted and looked off. But at least she didn’t pronounce anything. The flies had calmed with the cool of night.

Filch was awakened some time later by the roller door being unbarred and opened. Shaky-handed Hadrien peered in. “Out you go,” he said with his usual fake cheer. Hadrien was one of those men who led because the marks on his collar said he was supposed to, even though few of the men actually listened to him. “Two at a time. Mara, you can come first.” Hadrien smiled his smiley-smile and beckoned. The skinny girl teetered out obediently, and soon they all followed suit.

Filch was surprised to see another roller had joined the caravan. This new one wasn’t precisely like theirs; it was an actual cage on wheels, with iron bars in place of wooden walls. The children inside sat apart from one another, much like in their roller, save for two girls who stayed close. The children’s faces were mostly hidden by the nighttime darkness, but Filch was relatively certain there were two boys and three girls total. Just like ours, he thought. Filch wondered if they had lost their own Marelo too.

What drew his eye next—and kept it—was the hulking man who had accompanied this latest catch. Filch recognized his massive frame as soon as his eyes adjusted to the light of a nearby campfire; he didn’t even need to see the man’s greatsword, or his long, drooping, yellow moustaches.

It’s that fetid northman! Filch stared at the huge beast of a man who had tried to grab him in Mudtown. He followed me here? For a moment Filch thought he had come to barter for him, somehow. No, wait, he’s a part of this, Filch finally realized.

They were trying to nab me from the start. All of them.

It was all so mind-boggling. Filch could hardly get his head around how massive this insane undertaking had been, just in the amount of distance it covered. More than a march. More than five. It’s a bloody voyage. From his narrow escape in Mudtown, across the water, all the way up the Thormyr Strait with Zilwand and his Magic Wagon…to his eventual capture somebloodywhere in coastal Palador, outside of Vheret’s hovel of a home. And it sure as stink wasn’t because he was wanted for petty theft. The wheels behind this machine were huge.

But why me? Why any of us?

He wondered why they couldn’t just go burn down a town and take the women and children like normal brigands. This weird selectivity had him completely bewildered. If this were some sort of freaky faerie tale, it would soon be revealed he was actually the long-lost prince of some far-off nameless nation, and his insanely rich father had just died and had left all his lands and worldly possession to—

“Yorea’s out for blood now,” Filch heard a nearby guard mutter. The second guard nodded; they both looked worried. The men glanced at one another again…and quickly moved away, out beyond the firelight.

Filch realized there were very few guards around him now. Some of the men had gone to stand by the side of the northman—Yorea, he guessed—while others were only now approaching the massive man along with Threll. Actually, it felt more like the other men were hiding behind Threll while Threll did the approaching. The northman was not happy, and he seemed to be in charge.

No eyes were on Filch or any of the other kids, which was a first. If I had some fetid patience and waited ‘til tonight…. But he hadn’t. And now all the kids were staked down tight.

Yorea and Threll were arguing. From the distance, he couldn’t tell exactly what they were arguing about; Filch had some skill at lip-reading, but Threll’s turned back and Yorea’s thick moustaches made it difficult. Still, some of the sound drifted back. Occasional words like “disposal” and “failure” caught Filch’s ear, as Yorea gestured angrily at the roller. Filch hoped the northman wasn’t ordering Threll to dispose of them.

Yorea’s deep voice thundered, and Threll snarled back. By their posturing, it seemed like it could come to blows at any moment. Filch wasn’t the praying sort, but he considered starting, here and now. Towering Yorea should hardly break a sweat in dispensing with the hideous whip-wielder.

Yorea’s voice rose. “—with the crystal. The Master—” Filch heard before the northman’s words fell again.

Threll lashed back. “It’s no concern of mine who—”

“No excuses!” The northman’s voice cracked like thunder. “You had one task.”

“I got every single one’a those sodded brats,” Threll snarled, then spat in the dirt next to Yorea’s boot. “Let the Master sort ‘em out.”

Ohhhh, kill him, kill him, kill himmm, Filch silently pleaded. It was all he could do to not shout the thoughts as loud as his voice could carry them.

Alas, violence did not erupt. Threll took four of the men loyal to him, as well as four horses, and stalked off into the woods. Yorea stared the ugly man down until he was out of sight, and then looked to Hadrien, who was practically pissing himself with fright. Yorea beckoned the leftenant over with a brusque gesture, and Hadrien went to him meekly. That conversation went quieter, and was a lot more one-sided.

Filch looked around. The new children in the wheeled cage had all retreated back into the shadows…all, save for one.

She was a small girl with messy hair, and skin lightly tanned from days in the sun. Her hair coloring was odd: honey blond, but streaked pink in places, with an even darker rose color that seemed to sprout at her roots. Filch had seen various girls at Muff’s color their hair with dyes, or bleached with lime—sometimes all of it, sometimes in streaks, or sometimes just a single small lock—but never quite like this. She looks like she’s trying to cover pink-colored hair with yellow bleach, he thought, though even that felt wrong. She didn’t look like the sort of kid who cared what color her hair was.

She was maybe only a year or so younger than Filch, but seemed childlike to the extreme, sitting but restless, her skinny legs sticking through the cage’s bars. The girl’s feet kicked cheerfully, in time to a song only she apparently heard. One of her knees was scraped, and her skirt was grass-stained and rumpled. He couldn’t tell by the shadows thrown, but Filch was reasonably certain a bloodstain marred the front of her blouse.

“You sure are a strange sort’a cheerful,” Filch said quietly. He doubted his voice carried; he didn’t raise it much, wary of being overheard.

The waifish girl seemed to hear, nonetheless. She looked at him. Her large eyes were a mahogany shade of brown, almost red in the reflected firelight. “We were saved,” she said simply. Her legs kicked idly.

“Off the hook, but into the pan,” Filch muttered.

The small girl tilted her head. “Huh?”

Filch waved it off—or tried to, seeing as his hands were bound and he couldn’t really wave. He leaned closer, though the stake prevented him from leaning too much. “Just saying. Sometimes it’s better not to be saved.” He thought of Zilwand, and egg-headed Ogre, and all that had happened since.

“It’s never better,” a second girl’s voice said. A face appeared next to the pink-haired girl’s—precisely identical to the first in every way, though more solemn. Unlike the first, her hair was completely blond, and not half as messy. Other than that…

Identical twins. Filch had known a pair of twins back in Mudtown. They used to trick people into believing one was the other, though only for jibes. Filch had long wished for a twin—he would make better use of it, that was for fine sure. I would have robbed half the town and had an alibi the whole time. He lamented he might never get to steal anything from a Mudtown mark ever again.

“We got to ride on a ship,” declared the girl with the pink in her hair. She looked like she had fond memories of that ship.

“Fun,” Filch replied, not knowing what else to say to that. Prior to his misadventures with Zilwand and his Magic Wagon, Filch had avoided ships, mostly on account of never having been given the chance to actually be on one. “It didn’t sink, I guess,” he said to the girl. He wondered if her ship was as fast as Vordeel.

“I don’t think it did,” the girl replied hesitantly, clearly trying to remember if they had ever submerged at any point.

“I think you’d remember if you had,” Filch said with a grin.

The second twin held a rather disapproving look as she eyed Filch. “Come, Vara, stay away from the bars,” she said in a quiet voice.

Vara didn’t budge from her seat. “I like it here.” Her strange brown eyes wandered from Filch to somewhere distant.

“Here, maybe,” Filch said. “But where we’re going? Get ready for the bad crot. They’re not taking us home, you know.”

“I know that,” Vara said quietly. She looked sad.

Her twin was more direct. “We’ve no home left. This is home for now.”

“For now,” Filch agreed. He watched the solemn twin coax her sister back into the shadowy depths of the cage. Strange kids, he thought.

A hard backhand connected with the side of his head.

“Ow!” Filch looked up and saw Gabil, the lame guard whose knee he had exploited in his escape attempt. The man still didn’t look happy with him. Filch couldn’t really blame the poor fool. Threll had apparently used the full extent of his “Lashmaster” title on him, after all was said and done, at least according to Chayand. Gabil, already hampered, could barely walk at all now.

“No talking,” Gabil said through clenched teeth. The former blacksmith’s apprentice had a bent horseshoe held up in a threatening manner.

But I got so many things to say, Filch thought, fighting back his usual reflexive grin. He had so much he wanted to say, beginning with, “Are ya sure you want to hit me with something that was responsible for getting you whipped? Won’t that remind you of how badly you made it? And if you hit me with it and it makes me lame, won’t the others laugh at you even more?”

But he couldn’t now. He’d learned his fetid lesson. Are you horse-sodders happy?

Gabil wasn’t happy. No one was. Threll and Yorea’s argument had left the men in camp nervous. And no wonder, with this lot. You never knew when one of these monsters were going to take his anger out on the closest person. Filch noticed Hadrien looking subdued as well, though unlike the others, he seemed to have been able to worm his way back into Yorea’s good graces—or at the very least was allowed to stay in the northman’s presence without the threat of a beheading.

They were all soon ushered back into the roller. Filch was the last to go, and as he shuffled back, he glanced one more time back at the other roller. The last face he saw inside the cage almost made him fall over.

“Randol…?!” He gaped, not believing his eyes at first. But sure as stink, Swoozie’s trollkisser-taunting boy-friend was there in the cage, grasping the bars and staring back at him, just as wide-eyed.

“Randol! Is Swoozie caught? Did she—” Filch tried to call out the question, but it was cut off by another cuff to the head by Gabil, who then shoved Filch unceremoniously toward the roller door, hissing for silence.

Randol just shook his head sadly. Filch had no idea what that meant. He tried to shout another question, but Gabil grabbed him by the neck, snarling “Silence!” again, and threw him backwards onto the roller ramp.

He wasn’t finished. Gabil’s face was red now. He limped up the ramp and raised the horseshoe over his head to strike down. Filch braced for what he hoped would not be a lethal amount of pain.

“This is quite enough!” Hadrien appeared around the corner, his affected look of sternness as unconvincing as his usual fake smiles. Gabil was easily cowed, however.

“H-He was…tryin’ to escape again…” Gabil stammered.

Filch’s eyes went wide. “You lying sack of—”

“That is disappointing,” Hadrien sighed, glancing at Filch. “I thought you had learned your lesson the other night.”

Filch’s blood went cold, and he froze. Who’s he gonna have killed now?

It must have shown on his face, for Hadrien couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “Worry not, my young scamp. I’ll not be telling the Lashmaster this time.” He reached down and picked Filch up, putting him back on his feet and dusting him off, though rather distastefully. “But you must promise to hold your tongue and behave.”

Filch should have been grateful, but for some reason felt even more uneasy. Hadrien made his hackles rise. But he held his tongue.

“Good.” Hadrien smiled. “Still, a little insurance won’t hurt. So then, neck irons for all of you, mm?” Gabil nodded in agreement and set to securing the children to the roller walls with short chains that looped through the thick leather collars around their necks.

That done, Hadrien gave a departing wave of his hand, as though he were some friendly neighbor and not the man who had just ordered them all chained to the wall by their throats. The roller door closed, and darkness closed in around them.

Filch could barely make out Chayand glaring at him in the dark. Vheret too.

“Yeah, I know,” Filch grumbled.

A long moment passed in the near dark before Filch asked, “So, who wants me to read the letter I just snitched from that knobby-kneed smiler?”

All eyes went to him, save for Mara’s. Her eyes never went to him.

“Are you serious?” asked Chayand. Her question seemed to suggest disbelief that he’d be dumb enough to steal anything from the one man in the entire caravan who at least pretended empathy.

Filch had to secretly agree. It was, yet again, not his brightest move. But the letter had been right there, available for the taking! And Filch was nothing if not opportunistic. “Take what you can get” was one of Muff’s favorite proverbs.

He played it off though, opening the letter with a flourish. He held it up, squinting at it in the faint trace of light that eked in through the roller window.

“That—that’s my letter!” Roen suddenly blurted.

Filch looked at her. “You’re writing letters to Shaky the Clown?”

Roen tried to rise but was caught and held down by the chain affixing her to the wall. “No, it—it’s from my brother Andric. They took it from me!”

Filch eyed Roen in the dark. Up until now, the red-haired girl had been mostly silent, almost stoic, though with a lingering sadness in her gray eyes. Now those eyes looked desperate.

“Fine,” Filch sighed. He wasn’t going to mess with some kid’s personal letters. At least not while they were looking. He flipped the letter expertly to her. It landed at her feet, and she grabbed it.

After turning it over in her hand for what seemed a lifetime, trying to squint at it in the darkness, she finally gave up. Her laugh was both rueful and bitter. “Yet again,” she said with a sigh.

“Yet again what?” Chayand asked. She seemed as curious about it as he was.

Roen shook her head. “I have been given this letter three times now. And I have never been able to read it.”

“Reading’s not that hard,” Filch said with a wave. He and Swoozie had learned by stealing some of Muff’s letters and reading them aloud, amusing themselves by mimicking the voices. Swooz didn’t have the best reading skills, but her Muff impression was second to none. “If it’s in the custom tongue, there’s not too many letters,” he added. “Some people just have shite handwriting.”

“It is not that,” Roen said quietly. “There has just…never been a chance. My eldest brother took it from me, and then I was either on the run, or with…with Talcey, or…or…” Her voice wavered.

Is she crying? Filch hated it when kids cried, girls especially, strong girls double especially. He would usually do anything he could to get Swoozie to stop crying, because it was so rare. Rude faces one of his “I once knew a whore—” jokes usually worked. Swooz wasn’t one for crying for long, anyway. He didn’t know if any of the stuff that made her laugh would work on Roen, though.

He fervently hoped they didn’t get Swooz. He’d kill Randol for letting her get caught. She wasn’t in the other roller, though.

I gotta stop thinking about her, he thought to himself darkly. No amount of thinking would bring Swooz to him—and he didn’t even want that! She certainly deserved better than this.

(Though he was also pretty sure he didn’t deserve what he was getting now!)

(Randol probably did.)

“So…go ahead. Read it,” Chayand urged Roen gently.

“She can’t,” Filch said with a sigh. “It’s too dark.” Roen nodded. We could switch places and she could read it under the roller window, he thought. That is, if I hadn’t gotten us put in neck chains first.

“I can read it to you,” he finally said.

“Filch…” Chayand’s voice was reproving.

“What, I can,” he protested. “I got light here, right through the window. I can read it. So at least she’ll soddin’ know what’s in it.”

A moment of silence passed. Roen slid the note back to Filch with her foot.

Filch opened the letter and cleared his throat. “Roen,” he began. “I’ve got a story, and it’s almost finished…”

He read Andric’s letter quietly, but with a flourish. He didn’t use any of the funny voices that used to amuse Pigeon. This letter was a private thing. He just tried to sound like the boy who wrote it. The story told itself.

Roen and the others listened, silent as a summer’s breeze as Filch recounted her brother’s tale: a young man forced into a military academy against his wishes; cruel cadets and even crueler instructors; sleep deprivation, hunger, cold, and the prevailing fear that he would never truly become what everyone expected him to be—as well as the admission that he never wanted it for himself anyway.

Andric’s letter described a pact made between he and two of his fellow academy cadets. A signature was forged, and the young cadets, led by Roen’s brother, used a training patrol to flee the Zhadran academy, its grounds, and its cruel instructors.

The letter ended with: