2.

They called Enscommon a rocky shire. Its southern and east borders were crooked, formed from two meandering rivers. And from these shot out a vast arrangement of sinuous, achromatic streams. Few trees grew, and those that did were pines with ponderous, venose boughs. Mist and fog were atmospheric staples. Nitten pulled Vier's hood above his mop of sandy locks, to protect him. But if he were going to catch the illness, surely he would've shown signs by then…

'This is where I stop knowing the way so well,' Nitten explained her lacking awareness. 'It always looks different, whenever I'm here. And that's funny: A place like this doesn't have seasons. Its only ever a season of rain, rain and that numbing chill.'

'It's quiet, isn't it?' Vier gaped at the tall trees on either side of the sorry road. Once, this road had been paved with red clay bricks, but it had fallen into disrepair in the annuals beyond the reign of the House of Pastoria. Vier's toe kicked a crumbled piece. The ping and clunk made a welcome noise.

Soon, they passed beyond the trees and into the hilly, feral region of the Enscommon Moors. The brick road continued to hug the side of the cliff, and below them ran one of the river's estuaries. The basin was flat, surrounded by high, golden grass and, here and there, a splash of purple that was wild heather. Hawks hovered aloft, hardly visible against the pearls of a sagging, leaded sky. The estuary calmly danced away, but not before they saw, in the sprawling dish below, several pale squares, unnatural against the land.

'What are those?' Vier squinted to better see against the afternoon glare. No sun in Enscommon, not often, but the glare against a bleak place, made of grey rocks and colourless tumbles of meadows and streams, was hard on the eyes after hours and hours.

'It's an encampment,' began Nitten. She wrapped her shawl tighter and started away. 'That's all.'

Zero fixed the encampment in his mind's eye, and thereafter pondered it as a spectral presence. First the plague, and then the unrest. And rumours, rampant, venomous rumours, about the Queen. He urged Vier on, a boy smitten with the thought of guns and armies and grand, bloody battles. War isn't elegant, Zero tried to tell his little brother, as his father had tried to tell him—and grandfather—and, perhaps, Uncle. The only member of the clan who'd ever been in the army. And had been for annuals. Since, Zero glanced at his sister, the age of seventeen.

Vier glanced at the encampment once more. 'Zero, what if Uncle's there? What if we get to Gatehill and he's gone? What will we do?'

'Then we'll find him. If we have to.' He grabbed a spherical pome in his satchel, shined it, and gave it to Vier. 'But we'll worry about that later, all right?'

Vier bit into the apple. For a moment, the fear of reaching Gatehill was defeated. Doubt made their strides longer. Anxiety tried to speed up time, but time was capricious: she slowed them down over the extensive climb of moor hills.

-x-

The moors relinquished themselves at the duke's estate. The house was visible from the road, and long did they ogle over it. Nitten had seen it once, annuals before, when she'd travelled to the north to spend the summer with Uncle. It remained unchanged from the picture sculpted in memory. And yet it was bleaker, darker, the carious shadows awaiting.

'They say the duke's gone to Central City,' Zero informed them. He'd spent many hours loitering around Liddell, listening to the talk of the porch-dwellers, listening to the ramblings of bored old laundry matrons. 'He fears for the welfare of himself and his family. He has two daughters.'

'I think they were sent to Chaplet,' added Nitten. 'The Academy of Realm Sciences is one of the safest places. Always has been. Never mind that the duchesses have no interest in becoming members of the Stellate or ceremony leaders. Look at this.'

She stopped before a post, tall, narrow, with decaying boards stuck to it. Weather, wind and suns had done their deed, and the writing was barely visible. Zero tried to make it legible.

'It's a marker. A directional marker. I think it's telling us that Gatehill is that way.' He pointed to the east. And, he'd no sooner said it than the sign pivoted, post and all, and then told them Gatehill was to the west. He huffed. Vier giggled. Nitten found it worth a smile herself.

'Never mind, we don't need it.' She waved at the post. 'Thanks, anyway.'

The next markers they came to were of brick and stone. 'These mark the edges of the duke's land,' Zero said.

His head shot up at the uncanny, startling rattle of a carriage and horse team. A whip lashed and cracked. Zero pulled Vier to the verge, Nitten to the opposite side, just as the Brougham thundered dangerously close. Zero had a short chance to check the coat of arms upon the carriage door.

'Was that the duke?' Nitten gazed after the fanciful Brougham, ideas of court members playing havoc with her sensibility.

'It was of his house, I think,' Zero responded, less enthused about royalty flying about. The upper classes concerned him so little—as little as the lower classes concerned the upper. All the same, royalty was to be revered, respected, if only for one reason. 'But I think it was the Marquess. He protects the duke's land.'

'Protects it from what?'

'Everyone else.'

-x-

Gatehill-on-Cleg was a thriving community that had triumphed over the plague some months previous. The cemetery outside of town had doubled its size, and no undertaker, no groundskeeper, was able to keep up with the responsibility. It was a mess of mass burials. And a long, descending hill to a woods was a cascade of rows and rows of stakes. Zero gripped Vier's hand automatically, an inherent desire to be comforted by the living while passing the dead.

The streets of the village were narrow, circular, hardly following the straight avenues of the newer regions in the north-west. Gatehill was one of the O.Z.'s oldest inhabitations. Shops were street-level, with residences of storekeepers above. All were huddled side-by-side. Pitched roofs were steep, chimneys frequently covered in elegant little caps, and all facades were ivory or white or pale yellow, half-timbered, with little windows sparkling clean from all the rain. Here, villagers smiled and had kind manners. In spite of the common gloom, they were happy, but Zero sensed the same instability felt in Liddell. Something eagerly awaited its chance. A serpent, a dragon, a beast that would come and make true all their fears. The world knew its destiny, and all it could do was accept it, the way burghers of Gatehill accepted the weather, accepted the plague, and continued a proud march of normalcy.

'Excuse me.' Zero stopped and gave this greeting a kind intonation. The woman he judged to be of the same working class as his family, and this was done intentionally. He rarely spoke to upper classes. He wanted no condescension. 'Could you tell us if Captain Dertien remains in town?'

She balanced a market basket on one hip, skeins of freshly-dyed wool bundles in the other. 'Captain Dertien? He is, lad, he is. Not been shipped out like the others just yet. Heard a telling that he might be soon. You his kin? Look like him. Got the same eyes as ye, lad. Yeah, he be at home still. Tell him Sally wishes him a pleasant day, if you'd be that kind.' She sauntered off, across the street. A stray dog waddled behind at her boot heels, a yellow feather stuck to one muddy paw.

'I hope Uncle has something good to eat,' Vier said. 'I feel like we haven't eaten for days. Do you think it might be true that Mam and Dad are better, and we'll be sent home?'

To this, Zero had no answer. Hope was incogitable. Dreams were vague. And truth was a mere phantom.

-x-

Uncle owned a cottage, the place, Zero had once heard tell, that belonged to uncle's wife, dead since before Zero was born. Built of greyed blue clapboards, a roof of wooden shingles done in a faded rust hue, a cosy nook for a front door between flowering dwarf trees, Zero tried to fix it with the place he had seen when he'd been just younger than Vier's annuals. He had been smaller then, and the house bigger. And now it was reversed: The house was small, and he was bigger.

Signs of life filled them with optimism. The golden front door rested ajar. A white cat searched in vain for a sunny spot on the step. White linens ruffled like square apparitions along a laundry line in the back garden. The cottage was preened, clean, inhabited.

The three siblings exchanged smiles and gladness, and, fuelled by relief, dashed towards the open door. Grass whipped against their ankles. Vier was the fastest, despite his smallness, and pushed in the golden portal. The cat accompanied them inside, a leisure stroll, a fluffy tail, a bend around a corner.

'Uncle?' Zero shouted. The foyer wound upward, open, to a balcony of the second storey, a candle chandelier of brass unlit in an alcove of dark gradients. 'Uncle? Are you here? It's Zero.'

As he spoke, the three of them separated, curiosity and nervousness moving them to find Uncle quicker.

A thud from somewhere. The back of the house. Zero's feet careered him around corners unfamiliar, through a sitting room, a dinning room, a kitchen, and—

'Uncle!'

Nitten came behind him. Vier, the last to arrive, gave momentary pause before throwing himself around Uncle's lean girth.

'I thought you would get here soon,' he said, heartily sighing. Lowered to Vier's height, he kissed the boy on each cheek, his pleasant hazel eyes filled with cheer. A good-natured man, affable, jolly, and hardly ever out of uniform. Vier had a difficult time looking away from the shine of buttons and medals and ribbons and such adornments on a wool coat of dark apricot.

'You're all looking well, and aren't Uncle Pip's eyes glad to see you! Zero, my gods, boy, you're getting tall! And Nitten, lovely as ever.' He held them close, the three of them at once, and bound them together beneath the stress of uncertainty, the unravelling of the comfort they had always known. 'I'm so glad you arrived here safely. Though I had it on good authority you would. Come in to the kitchen, and I'll fix you up with some stew.'

A big pot was pulled from the ice box, and set to rest on the iron stove. Uncle Pip set Zero on the task of stoking the fire. No one knew fire better than Zero, and this belief had been a part of the Dertien clan since the boy was a toddler. As predicted, Zero had the stove heated in a wink. Uncle Pip went to the back door, off the little mudroom and supply pantry, and gave a hearty shout to the garden.

'Caroline! Caroline!'

At the call, in came a cat, cream and orange and white, a patch of black on her left ear. And then the other cat, from the porch at their arrival, swooped in. Vier, delighted by animals, and Nitten, delighted to see Uncle Pip in high spirits, caring for creatures the way he cared for them, watched as the two felines were fed, scratched, softly spoken to. And then he grabbed a half-loaf of bread. It was set at the table along with him.

'Stew will be up in a minute. Was your journey arduous? Did you come the Brick Route?'

'The red one,' responded Nitten, muffled by a chunk of crust in her mouth.

'Uncle Pip!' cried Vier, suddenly remembering what he'd witnessed. 'Uncle, we saw an encampment of soldiers! Little tents out in a field! We thought you might be there.'

'No,' laughed Uncle, 'not for a few weeks yet. But I know what company you speak of. They are on their way to the north. The far north. A legion sent to protect the Northern Island. But never mind that, never mind that.'

While Zero was interested in hearing about the nearing influences of a thorough occupation of military throughout the realms, more pressing questions burned. 'How'd you know we were coming? We thought maybe Mam and Dad sent you a telegram.'

'Ah,' drawled Uncle Pip. 'No, afraid they didn't. All the same, I know how sick they are.'

'How? And how'd you know? We found out from the guard at the Rip. He said he was expecting us.'

Uncle Pip curled and twirled the end of his greying moustache. His topaz gaze flickered about, as a gem in the suns. 'Well, that takes some explaining, you see. You see, er, there's a mystic about in Gatehill.'

Nitten gaped. 'A mystic!'

'Indeed, indeed. He came by and told me that your mother and father were ill, and that I was to prepare my home for visitors. He called you—what was it he called you? Passengers? Members? Flowers? Well,' he waved an impatient hand, frustrated at his lacking memory, 'it was something unusual. He was here three days before.'

Zero sank into the chair. 'Three days ago is when Mam and Dad got sick. Could be a coincidence. I have never seen a mystic.'

'There's old Mrs. Hagglethorne,' Nitten began speculatively, 'who lives near the Liddell marshes. But she's not really a mystic. An old crone with some folk magic, knowledge of herbs. She is a bit batty.'

'All mystics are a few bats short of a full belfry, my dear Nitten.' Uncle Pip assured her that the mystic in question was, also, a bit batty. 'He's a peculiar sort, and if you have never met a mystic before, he will not be easily forgot. Afraid he's become a bit of an anchorite in Gatehill. Lives in the back of a tea shop. Rarely has company. And is often seen wandering about, rain or shine. And everyone always knows where he's been.'

'How so?' asked Zero.

'Well, it's the most curious thing—but he leaves behind a trail of feathers. Bright yellow feathers, more often than not. That's how he got his name, I suppose.'

'His name?'

'They call him the Yellow Finch.'