Dearest Zann,

I lay with my head on Ellewen’s stomach. The lemon-coloured mists of the afternoon were all around us, but left a clearing of courtesy around Ellewen. “I still have to find Wande, you know,” I said.

“Of course,” he answered, playing with my hair. “It’s why we’re here.”

“But, I mean…”

“I know what you mean. It’s all right.”

Was it really all right? I was curst sure Wande wouldn’t think so. What Jhus would think didn’t even bear considering.

“We need food,” I announced. “Food, and some plan of where to go next.”

“I will get the food,” Ellewen said, snapping pieces off of a fallen willow twig. He handed it to me. “You, use this twig to draw a crossroads in the earth. Make it as delicate a drawing as you can.”

I sat up and took the twig. “Is it magic?”

Ellewen stretched and stood. “I’ll only be a short time,” he said, and by the time I finished listening to him, he had sidled into the trees and was gone.

There was a clear area of ground where we had been lying. I made some marks in it with the twig. A crossroads. Well, it could have a bridge here, and a tree on this side, I thought, and spent some minutes adding more details to the scene as best I could.

“That’s enough,” Ellewen said. “I recognize it.”

He had’t made a sound returning, and was now sitting under our tree. Next to him was somebody else’s hat, full of bread and cheese and honey and fruit. “You do?”

“I was hoping you would draw somewhere I knew. It’s not near here, but we should have no trouble finding our way.”

I looked down at my drawing. “I don’t know this place.”

“Some part of you must,” Ellewen said. “It may not be the crossroads we want, but I think it’s worth going to look at. Of course, we should be on our guard.”

“Why is that?”

He pointed. “Because of the murderer hiding behind the tree.”

There was a murderer hiding behind the tree in my drawing. When did I draw that?

Love,

Ybel

Beloved Zann,

I woke slowly, midmorning, with sun on my face. Ellewen sat next to me, looking very much like he belonged among the trees and branches that surrounded us. “You slept well,” he said.

I had. It was the most peaceful sleep I could remember. I closed my eyes again and nodded.

“I wish you could see yourself as I see you,” he said.

“Nnn?”

“Nn,” he agreed, and tickled my chin with a blade of grass. “We of the green have more senses than your people do. I know things about you that you yourself don’t know.”

I rubbed my face and sat up. “I know you do.”

Ellewen smiled. “I mean, I can see things of you that you don’t have words for, that if I explained them you wouldn’t understand. Your people are fascinating, unknowable because you cannot know yourselves, and indomitable in spite of it. There’s a nobility in that, that most of my people don’t appreciate. Too many of us think that your folk can’t truly be people, persons, any more than butterflies or chipmunks can. But I think that it makes you persons more, because it is so difficult for you.” He shrugged, a flutter of his slim shoulders. “It’s easy to be a person for the greenkind. I think we often take it for granted.”

“Is this about Lord Clear?”

“It is about you, Ybel. The stripes of sound and the textures of scent that your waerd has flavoured you with. The wonderful past you are fleeing and the terrible future you are pursuing so avidly. And the virtue that you believe in less and less as you cling to it more and more. I don’t believe I can speak with authority about the best of humanity. But you are my favourite.”

I didn’t say anything, and he kissed my tears away, and I kissed him back, and we ended up not choosing a crossroads that day.

Love,

Ybel

Dearest Zann,

The growling noises became louder. They were accompanied by bursts of rustling branches, as though creatures in the trees were leaping closer to me. I skulked away from nearby trees, as quietly as I could. I don’t know if it helped. But the growling paused, and then receded, as I heard a new sound: soft footsteps.

Someone was here in the woods.

Following me?

I listened.

“Ybel?” a voice said, in a normal speaking tone. “I suspect you’ve lost your path.”

It was Ellewen.

I breathed out.

“Ellewen?” I said, standing up. “What–How did you get here?”

There he was, with a cloak and walking stick, unhooded, calm. Some nearby branches glowed white, shining on our faces. “I hope you’re not in any distress,” Ellewen said. “It seemed to me that I might place myself here to forestall such.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you.”

“It’s not a hospitable copse, this. Shall we walk in this direction?” Some of the branches stopped glowing, and others glowed instead, lighting a path deep into the forested night.

“I’ll trust you,” I said as we started.

“As has been your habit.”

“I haven’t regretted it yet. Although I did wonder what you meant by telling me that I was safe with Lord Clear.”

“Yes. I was going to raise that topic. I’m sorry, Ybel. I didn’t understand Lord Clear. He had never revealed to me that side of his character, that is treating your city so unkindly.” He held a branch aside for me, and I stepped past it. “I was wrong, and you suffered. Like everyone else, I must strive to be less wrong in the future.”

“I accept your apology.” We now were on a forest path whose course was drawn on the earth in white light, and the branches were now dark around us.

“Thank you. What are you in quest of in these charming glades?”

“I’m not really sure. A wizard told me that I should find a crossroads that was significant to my family. I’m trying to find Wande and her daughter Jhusdhe.”

“And at the crossroads?” His fingers on my elbow guided me over a protruding tree root.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know which crossroads. I thought I’d try the Four Signs, but that’s just a guess.”

Ellewen nodded softly. “May I assist you, now that I am here with you? This errand is not a private one?”

“I would love it if you did. I feel like there’s been no-one I could count on. Except Ambe, but I only saw her for a minute.”

“The choice of a crossroads,” he continued, “is a delicate one, and best to be essayed in daylight. Many hours remain of the night. What saith you of the suggestion to get rest and sleep now, and search out family history in the morning?”

He had stopped and turned, and I met his gaze. “That makes sense.”

“Then this will do,” he said, and moved a couple of boughs aside, revealing a small hollow. “There is room here; if you will lie down beside me, I can assure that the night will pass safely and, in all other respects, contentedly.”

“I will,” I said.

Love,

Ybel

Most beloved Zann,

I didn’t know of a crossroads that had anything to do with my family.

I had begged the use of a room in the Wizards’ Hall building so that I could hide out until dark. Not only did I not want to walk the city in daylight without Sandavin’s charm, but that day’s mist was a black-streaked grey I had never seen before and I didn’t want it touching me.

The wizards didn’t have a map of the roads around Crideon. That might have been helpful. I could see if anything stirred my memory. Instead I rested and read a book someone had left lying around. Which family did they mean, anyway? Me, Wande, and Jhus? Or my parents and sisters, from up in the Boltmarch? Or…

Then I remembered that there was a famous crossroads to the east of the city, downstream, that they told folktales about. I couldn’t think of a connection to my family, but there might be one.

It’s called the Four Signs. Usually a crossroads will have one signpost with signs pointing where different places are, down this road or that one. But at this place, for whatever reason, two big roads crossed and each of the four different ways had its own sign. There was a song about a band of highwaymen being killed at Four Signs. “The Red Riders”. I had never been there, but it couldn’t be hard to find. Just follow the Mill Hill road.

The rest of the day was a series of almost doing things but then not doing them. I almost finished the book, but then I thought I should go down to the kitchen and see what was to eat. I had my hand on the kitchen door when there were some bangs and lightning cracks from above. A horrible smell seeped down. Not wanting to see what happened next, I left the building altogether.

Sunset had dispelled the grey mist, so that was good, but when I tried to follow the Mill Hill road out of the city, I ran into a battle between Lord Clear’s men and some other soldiers. I took the long way around to stay clear of the fires, and ended up leaving the city by some other road, anonymous in the night.

It couldn’t be too hard to find the Mill Hill road from here, I thought. Just take the first road north and I couldn’t miss it. Well, I tried that, after some hours walking, and the road took me into the middle of some woods, and by the time I realized it, I had lost the road in the dark.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t have bothered me very much. I might have been lost, but I wasn’t very lost, and I’ve slept outside in worse conditions than this. But something growled from up a nearby tree, and then some more things growled from some more trees.

Love,

Ybel

Dear Zann,

The next day I returned to the Wizards Council hall and presented Rheux and Sandavin with a sealed note from Ambe. They opened and read it, and put it away without reaction. Sandavin said, “I’m going to make preparations for Ambe. Can you deal with Ybel here?”

Rheux nodded. She was just a little bird, but I thought there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm in her nod.

“Deal with me?” I asked her. We were in the same bureau they had questioned me in before.

“We’ve been looking for this woman Wande,” she said. “Not that we’d never cheat anybody, but we don’t do so for no good reason. We have been looking.”

“And you haven’t found her.”

“No. Nor her daughter.”

“What does… Does that mean she’s dead? She and Jhus?”

“No. If they were merely dead, we would have discovered that. It means that there’s something confounding our magic. They could be on another plane of existence. They could have travelled a great distance from the city, farther than they could have had time to travel. Or, more likely, they’re in some relatively nearby place but some kind of other magic interferes with our spells.”

“Like if they’re prisoners of someone,” I suggested.

“That’s one possibility. But then, there are places where such spells are blocked and it has nothing to do with anyone who might be there. Some chambers of this building, for instance. Your people might be in such a place perfectly innocently.” There was a dish of seeds on the table and Rheux pecked at them.

“So what do we do next?”

“I don’t like to send you away unsatisfied,” Rheux said. “But Sandavin and I have done a lot of spellcasting looking for Wande and Jhusdhe. We tried all the conventional spells and then we tried some special magics that often help us scry people or things who are magically warded. I believe that’s a fair exchange for your delivery of two messages.”

I didn’t answer.

“I do have one last thing I can give you, though. We did a card reading for you, in case the gods and spirits had any advice for your search. Card readings are vulgar and unreliable, but at least they’re also difficult to interpret.”

“Thank you?”

“You are welcome. The substance of the card reading is this: that your path should lead you next out of the city, to a crossroads that has something to do with your family.” Rheux cocked her head to the side and looked at me.

“And what do I do there?”

“If I knew, I would already have told you. I wish you good fortune in your endeavours and I hope you find your missing people. We can do no more for you. Please return Sandavin’s charm before leaving us.”

Love,

Ybel

Dear Zann,

I thought of asking the wizards what had happened to Knarrett. Then I thought some more, and I thought about not asking the wizards what had happened to Knarrett, and I liked that better, so I kept my mouth shut.

Sandavin hung a charm around my neck, on the same thong that held my coin. It was made of some dull metal and looked a little like an anteater. I wondered if that was a coincidence. “None of these curst soldiers and brigands should look twice at you if you’re wearing this,” he told me. “You can wear it as long as you’re coming and going on our business, but when we’ve settled everything, I want it back. It’s a good one.”

They seemed ready for me to be on my way, so I yawned and relaxed. “Just one more thing to resolve,” I said. “You have to remove any magic you’re going to use to spy out where I go to talk to Ambe, and you have to bind your whole Council not to track me through magic or any other way.”

So that started a long and frustrating negotiation. More frustrating for them than for me, because my position was that I was always going to believe that they were trying to cheat me unless they somehow convinced me that they weren’t, and it did take us a while to get past that. Eventually I was satisfied, and left, with their sealed message for Ambe.

With the charm around my neck, it was easy to get myself cleaned and fed and some less disheveled clothes, and also some comfortable rest out of the afternoon mist. How I was going to travel all the way to the palace with no longcoaches running I hadn’t thought about, but then I realized I could probably stow away on a boat going upriver. After all my time both on the docks and at the palace, I knew I’d be able to pick one out going the right way.

That worked, and a few hours later I was back at the palace. Nobody looked at me as I stepped off the vegetable barge onto the palace wharf; I ignored all the Rosolla Guards around and went right to Ambe’s lair.

She met me at the door. “Where did you get that thing around your neck?” she said, with some anger.

I detached Sandavin’s charm. “Guess.”

“I don’t need to guess. What do you want?”

“The Council is helping me find Wande. In return I told them I’d bring you this.” And I held out the message.

Ambe opened up a fan and spat on it. Then she closed it again, shook it, opened it, and fanned air onto the message. Finally she smelled the message. “I guess it’s safe,” she said, and took it.

“Can I come in?” I said. “I don’t want to get caught up in any guard stuff here. I want to find Wande.”

She fanned me and the charm, and smelled us, and beckoned me inside her lair. “I don’t like this. Why didn’t you just come to me? I’d have been happy to find Wande for you. Now I have to deal with these pests.”

“It wasn’t by choice,” I said, and told her the story.

Ambe shook her head. “I had no idea it had gotten so bad in the city,” she said. “All right, you didn’t do too badly. Now let me see what they think they have to say to me,” and cracked open the seal on her message.

I couldn’t see the message from where I was, but after a few seconds of reading she raised her eyebrows, and kept them raised. “Well,” she said. “They’ve gotten creative. You met with Sandavin?”

“And Rheux.”

“Oh, her. Ay. Well, this is much to think on. This may be too good a bargain for me to tell them to splash in my piss. Listen, I have to go into my workroom and meditate on some lore. Do you want to rest here for a time? There’s bread and cheese in the next chamber.”

And that’s what I did. I went easy on the bread and cheese, though; I figured everything would be a little easier now and I’d be able to eat much more regularly. Why wouldn’t that be true?

Love,

Ybel

Dearest Zann,

A little green bird flew down and perched on my head. I felt my legs walk me out of the chamber, away from Fornan and the moderator. I tried to stop walking, and the bird said, “Stop that.” Then I tried reaching up to swat the bird away, and my arms wouldn’t move, and the bird said, “I will have obedience!”

With the bird on my head, I walked down some corridors and up a staircase. Eventually I was sitting down at a large table in a small bureau. The bird hopped off and flew to the stool opposite me.

“I am the wizard Rheux,” it said. “You are Ybel?”

“Ay.”

“And you know aught about the wizard Ambe?”

“She’s my friend.”

The bird snorted. “I didn’t know Ambe could make friends. I thought her acquaintances fell into two categories. ‘Annoyed’ and ‘Regretful’.”

“Why are you all so angry with her, anyway? Did she do something wrong?”

Rheux tilted its bird head. “Ambe doesn’t accept the Council’s authority over her. She’s a renegado. It’s a challenge to everything we’re trying to build here in Crideon.”

“And what will do you do with her if you find her?”

“That depends on her.”

I felt like I was in a fairly strong position. There was no way these wizards were going to send me back to Ladal. At the worst, they’d send me on my way without helping me. “Well. If Ambe doesn’t want you to find her, then I don’t want that either. I can take a message to her, perhaps. But I also need some help.”

The door opened and a stout, mustachioed man in well-cut merchant’s clothes entered. He drew a dagger and struck! it into the table before me. “Are you talking?” he demanded.

I picked myself up from the corner of the room, where I seemed to have dived.

“Really, Sandavin,” Rheux said. “That’s not necessary. Ybel here was just attempting to bargain with me.”

“Bargain? Bargain?” Sandavin said, turning my chair to face me and sitting down in it. “He’s no place to bargain with us. Produce Ambe! Then mayhap we’ll talk about other things.”

“I’m not a wizard. I don’t have to listen you anything you say.”

“Strange choice of last words,” he said, a green glow forming around his hands. “‘Sandavin,’ they’ll say, ‘did poor Ybel say anything before beginning his new life as a dungfly?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, he did mention something about not being a wizard, but it didn’t seem important’.”

“You’re bluffing,” I said. “A freelance wizard might do that, but not a Council wizard. Not one that believes in the Council so much that they still want to hunt Ambe down with the city burning up all around them.”

“Prepared to risk your life on that reasoning?”

“Do you want my help enough to help me with something?”

“Let’s hear him out,” Rheux said. “It might not be too bad.”

“I’m in the city looking for a woman named Wande. She has a half-lauran daughter named Jhusdhe. I went to our roost and they were gone. I want to know where they are and if they’re not safe then I want them to be safe. In return I will help you negotiate with Ambe.”

“No bargain,” Rheux said. “We don’t know that she didn’t leave you because you beat her or tried to swive the daughter.”

“Fair,” I said. “Then find them, make sure they’re safe, and take messages between us like I will with Ambe.”

Rheux and Sandavin glanced at each other. “What were you doing with Knarrett?” Rheux asked.

“Our roost is in Ladal’s territory. They caught me and wanted to ransom me to someone, and Knarrett stole me away to come here.”

“And what the golden piss is that coin around your neck?” Sandavin said.

“I don’t know. I found it. Ambe said it was very old and only a little magical.”

He came closer to get a better look at it. “Reminds me of something,” he said. “Something from… No, I can’t remember. But I’d take it off, if I were you.”

“I’m getting kind of attached to it,” I said. “Do we have a bargain?”

They shrugged and sighed. “Tell us about this Wande.”

Love,

Ybel

Dearest Zann,

The bald wizard–Knarrett called him Fornan–led us to a nearby door and said. “Wait here. Don’t come in until I bring you in, or I’ll set fire to your spleen.” Knarrett grinned and leaned against the wall.

Fornan bustled through the door. I couldn’t get much of a view of what was inside, but I heard a lot of voices. I heard Fornan say, “The wizard Knarrett, my notables, with a matter of some import,” in a commanding voice. Then there were more other voices that I couldn’t pick anything out of.

The door opened and Fornan beckoned us in. The room was a… small round theatre, with four rings of seats ascending around a central stage at the bottom, where we were entering. It smelled of old wood and old wax. About half the seats were empty, and the others were filled by a fascinating collection of people.

The wizards here were men and women and other things, with skin pale and dark and green and silver. Some were normal-looking townspeople and some could have been ambassadors from alien worlds. I saw one wizard who was a human-shaped cloud of black-burning candles, and another who looked like a column of ash covered with peacock-feather eyes. Half of them tried to hoot Knarrett down as we entered, and the other half were bored.

A moderator sat at a slowly revolving table in the centre, a man wearing a purple visor. He called out to the other wizards, “Recognize the wizard Knarrett!”

Other wizards yelled down, “Get him out of here!” “The wizard Knarrett can sniff my piss!” and “I only see a traitor to wizardkind!” The moderator made annoyed patting gestures in the air to try to calm them down. “Where’s that robber Ladal? Isn’t he holding your leash?” “Go back to your banditti! You stinking renunciate!”

Knarrett raised his voice to be heard above the shouts. “I never renounced this council! I was only trying to make a living, as is my right as a wizard of the third rank, and I came back here, didn’t I? With something you stupidheads want!”

“The only thing I want from you is the smoke from your remains!” “What do you know about what a wizard wants? You couldn’t even spell it!”

“Ambe!” Knarrett said.

I was watching the wizards’ reactions. Some of them leaned forward, interested. Others threw up their hands in exasperation.

One wizard, her red hair long enough to almost obscure her well-tailored green suit, said, “This council has more important things to worry about than Ambe. Frankly, we always did. But now, with the city in chaos? We need to concentrate on the problem of Lord Clear.”

“Not so!” said a pale-blue coconut crab. “We must always emphasize the unity of our community! I refer to the fool Knarrett as much as the intolerable Ambe.”

“Notables, please,” said a gilded clock. “You backward children are continuing in your usual patterns of flawed ideas. The great benefit of a council such as ours is that we have many minds, some of them almost sentient, that we can set to different problems. Surely there are some among our lot capable of independently interpreting Knarrett’s infantile babblings and discerning Ambe’s whereabouts from them.”

“An excellent suggestion,” said the moderator. “Notables Sandavin and Rheux? You’ve been pressing for us to do something about Ambe and some of our other renegades. Will you take this on?” I didn’t see which ones responded, but they must have agreed silently, because the moderator said, “Very good. Fornan, who is this other?”

“He’s mine,” Knarrett said. “He’s Ambe’s friend, and I found him.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, Knarrett,” the moderator said. “If we have him, do we need you?”

“Not at all,” I said.

Knarrett raised his hand to shut me up, and the moderator gestured. Knarrett disappeared soundlessly. A couple of wizards applauded.

“Your name, sir?” the moderator said.

“It’s Ybel.”

“Notable Rheux? Please escort Master Ybel from this chamber and begin your inquiries…”

Love,

Ybel

Dearest Zann,

Even though Ambe and I had been friends for some time, I had never seen her use magic the way Knarrett did. When Ambe cast a spell, it was in response to some problem that Candur or somebody had brought her. She’d think about it, and then do something to solve the problem. But Knarrett wasn’t in a situation where he thought he could be relaxed and reactive like that. Knarrett had urgent things to do and didn’t mind using magic to get them all done, so he was casting lots of spells and keeping them all going at the same time. It gave me a new appreciation for how dangerous wizards could be.

What he wanted to do was to take me across Crideon without anybody knowing about it. I didn’t know what he had in mind, and I wasn’t interested in helping him do anything to Ambe, but if he could get me away from Ladal I was happy to cooperate.

Knarrett already had a binding spell on me, and some kind of protective spell for both of us. Next he put on a ring, which gave a purple glow to his hand anytime he clenched his fist. Finally he… I don’t know how to describe it any better than this… he grabbed a sheet of air out of nothing and wrapped it around the two of us.

“What’s that?!” I said.

He grinned nervously. “Just a cheap trick,” he said. “It’ll make people not notice us. Basically it’s pretty good against most people but doesn’t do a curst thing against wizards. Good news is I don’t think we’ll have to trick any wizards right away. Still. Don’t talk and don’t piss around on the street. Keep your head down. No point having some pissard with a lot of willpower suddenly see us.”

And, just as easy as that, we walked quietly downstairs and out into the street. Ladal and some of his marauders were in the common room, but we went right past them. It didn’t seem like it ought to work–and Knarrett was just as nervous as I was–but it did.

Once we were well away from the tavern, Knarrett exhaled. “Hardest part’s over,” he murmured. “I don’t want to spend too long wandering around, though. Where’s–oh, I know what.” He turned to me and said, “Get down on your hands and knees.”

“Why?”

“So we can get out of here. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as being turned into a frog.”

I didn’t want to do it. “No way. I don’t trust whatever you’re going to do.”

“Can’t ever be easy,” he said, and pulled down, with his hand, on the empty air, and the symbol on my forehead hauled me down to a kneeling position. He pulled forward, and I lurched forward so that I was on all fours. Then he sat on my back.

There were other people around, and none of them were staring at us, but when Knarrett swung his leg over my back I thought I saw a couple of them frown slightly, as though they were trying to remember something. Then Knarrett took out a feather and touched my arms with it, and said some words that slipped through my ears without pausing to let me hear them.

And I felt some kind of shape form around us, something like a man on horseback, something like a bird, and we started moving. I wasn’t doing any of the work, and he wasn’t even putting much weight on me; there was just a magical phantom idea carrying us quickly through Crideon. Knarrett was sweating again, with all this magic. “I’ll sleep tonight,” he said.

We whipped through the centre of town. I could see burned buildings and corpses and different gangs everywhere. I had been hoping for a glimpse of Wande, somewhere, but my luck wasn’t in. Finally we turned a corner I could have sworn wasn’t there and stopped in front of a tall and handsome brown building. “You know some wizards here?” I asked.

“They don’t like me much,” he said. “But they’ll love you.” He looked around for threats, saw none, and let a couple of spells drop. We stood upright and noticeable, and Knarrett put his ring away. He led me through the front door and down a hallway. It smelled nice in here, like herbs and oils and wood and things.

We turned a corner, and a fellow in an open bureau there said, “You can’t–Knarrett! You can’t go in there! The Council is meeting!”

“I have business with the Council!”

He came out of the bureau. A bald man with a half dozen large wooden earrings. “No you don’t!”

“This fellow,” Knarrett said, slapping me on the arm, “knows where Ambe has been. He’s her friend.”

The bald man stared at me. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Well. Let me announce you, then.”

Love,

Ybel