Kythorn, the Time of Flowers. 1359 DR. Damara.

Kovacs woke to an unfamiliar ceiling. It was vaulted a great distance above, far higher than any hall or church he'd ever seen. The walls were lined with shelves at all heights, the things upon them shrouded by shadow and distance. He was sprawled on a carved wooden chair. He recognised the tall silver-haired lady, standing at a desk in the same room, her back turned to him. He got up and walked forward, then caught on something.

A barrier he couldn't see stopped him from going further. He tested, prodded in a circle around the chair. The enchantment felt like a mass of sticky toffee. He could start to stick an arm through it, but as soon as his body went beyond a certain point he was forced backward. The silver-haired elf turned her head. She was chilly but dazzling, intimidating and frightening.

"Fortunately for you, I don't eat children," she said. Her voice was sharp and melodic, like a song of icicles striking glass. "Not that your father knows that. I have two things he wants. We will bargain and he will lose, but I'm a peaceable sort. I'll have your father surrender to the local authorities - and you too, I suppose. I apologise, but I can't let a nest of ex-Bhaalite villains go free."

"Don't assume I want my father to win," Kovacs said. "I want you to win. I hope you kill him. I even hope it hurts."

The silver lady's face twisted in disgust, as if she'd just stepped in horse feces in a high street. "Demirci's bastard. Like father, like son," she said. "The same murderous branch from a murderous tree. The viper's son is a viper himself. Be quiet and stay there."

She raised her hands and quickly altered the barrier. Everything went quiet for Kovacs. He could still see, but he couldn't hear any noises outside his prison. He shouted, but she didn't seem to hear anything he said or did as she turned back to her desk. He stood on the chair and tested the barrier for height, but it was closed off above his head as well.

The hamster moved inside Kovacs' shirt. They hadn't taken her from him; hadn't noticed her. He cupped his hand around the small moving body. He'd only had a familiar for less than a day. He was still trying to figure out what she meant to him. He could feel her, a bond, as if they were part of each other. He knew his father couldn't drown this animal without harming Kovacs more than he meant to. She was a small prey animal and he'd hoped for something dangerous or useful, but he didn't have to be alone any more.

He saw the silver lady tidy her desk and leave. He waited in case she'd come back again, but in a while he decided she'd gone.

So her barrier worked by sensing if he was too far out of it, and constricted back when he walked too far. Kovacs put the hamster on the chair. "Stay," he said, feeling silly to say what you would to a dog, but she curled up and lay there.

Then he stepped forward. Part of him was still in the centre, so the barrier stretched with him. He wandered around the shelves, at least those parts of them that he could see at his height. A miscellany of magical objects, hardly any familiar to him: crystal balls and amulets and daggers and rods, sculpted figurines, chalky masks, candlesticks made out of bone. A reflection on the edge of a glass case caught his attention. The case contained what looked like fossilised beehives, but next to it was a hand chained to a wood backing. The hand was a little too large to be human, and had been flensed and preserved, muscles and tendons exposed, nails black. The chain was thick enough to hold a horse in place, and made it look like someone was afraid the hand would come to life again.

He knew what his father was looking for. The Claw of Kazgoroth, a severed body part of one of the god Bhaal's avatars.

Kovacs slid the wrist out of the chain, damaging the mummified tendons a little. He felt a dizzying nausea and confusion wash over him. Of course the wizard had set protections on the things she thought belonged to her; he guessed her imprisonment spell shielded him from the worst of it, but he still felt a horrible vertigo.

He felt the need to cover up his theft, the claw nestled under his shirt. He saw a large steel box coated with artificial frost, a spell. Anything you needed to keep that cold had to be quite dangerous in warmth. Kovacs pried open the case and took out the bottles in it, hoar-frost over flagons of marbled stone. He recognised just enough of the alchemy shorthand painted on them for what he planned to do. He laid a delayed-trap, setting bottles at different heights and arranging trails to set them off. Fire ran along a sheet of paper closer and closer to the mixtures.

He waited under the chair. Perhaps the imprisonment spell would protect him; perhaps it wouldn't. He took a handful of iron filings out of the lining of his shirt and worked his own shield in the Weave. Each fragment of iron grew red hot and shrivelled in his hand, before melting away with a twang. His protections felt weak and feeble. Kovacs heard the first of the explosions go off. Maybe he'd done this out of defiance, or maybe it was the death wish that was still a part of him. He huddled over the hamster, fully covering her with his body. It was more destructive than he'd thought. Gouts of flame shot out around them and would have blinded him if he hadn't closed his eyes. He felt explosions shaking the entire area, smelt thick black smoke. It was hard to breathe. He felt distress from the hamster - she was after all just an animal, who didn't really understand. Kovacs tried to send his own bleak calm back at her. But she nuzzled her fur against his chin, and it felt like she wanted to comfort his despair.

He felt the silver lady's imprisonment spell tear and crumble under the force of the explosions. His own pitiful shield was next. There was nowhere to run to. Everything was alight and he barely knew which way was up in the smoke. Each moment seemed to have a new explosion, some powerful artefact on the shelves giving way to destruction. It was a funeral pyre.

Then out of the shadows and flame came a dark hulking figure, who picked him up like a puppy. "Only you," Tirzah muttered, "would blow up a bloody dragon's lair. Come on." She ran for the exit. They fell out in a dark passageway, the fire hot on their heels.

Kovacs' eyes adjusted to the darkness, lit only by scattered magical flares. He saw a silver dragon, then, the size of a small castle. Her scales glowed the exact same shade as the elven lady's hair. She roared at the destruction of her storeroom.

Her mouth was a maze of icy spears. Tirzah pushed Kovacs to the ground and lay over him, smothering and shielding. A blast of frozen air whirled past them. Looking back, a sheet of ice thick as a man's grave had formed over the entryway from where they'd come, isolating the flame.

Then the dragon's head lashed toward them. Kovacs wildly remembered what she'd said about eating children. He supposed that blowing up her lair made you no longer count as a child. He couldn't move away - his limbs were lead - but then the white teeth met Tirzah's sword. She'd placed herself in front of him, taking the blow in his place. It knocked her aside.

Magic flared about the dragon's head: a cloud of purple lightning searing her eyes, bouncing through her mouth. It was Kovacs' father. He called out spells with a strong clear voice, forcing the dragon back. He burned her scales with hails of fire and weighed her limbs down with reshaped stone.

Kovacs made his way to Tirzah. Her right arm, which bore a shield strapped to it, was broken in several places but she rose. She pushed him behind her. The dazzling silver claws struck, and struck again.

Kovacs' father worked the teleport spell that brought them out of the lair.

Tirzah sulkily rested up in her caravan. She felt the wheels spin quickly, jolting her at every moment, but it beat the alternative. After wounding an angry dragon, the best place to be was as far a distance as possible. The bone-setting leech had been allowed to do his worst, and he'd doled out plenty of healing tinctures to Tirzah that somehow all tasted like cat piss. Her arm was still bandaged and a wound in her side would open up if she moved too fast.

Her door opened. Kovacs let himself into the caravan, the hamster riding on his shoulder. He sat next to Tirzah without invitation.

"I retrieved the Claw before the fire. I couldn't have done it without help from Tirzah the Second," he explained. Seemed the small familiar had a use, then. "My father was pleased. He's already sold it. He must have had a good buyer in mind all along."

To do that to a sacred item was blasphemous. And yet a part of Tirzah had expected nothing more than that from Albescu. "Be proud of what you've done," she said.

"I'm weak, and yet you dragged me out of there and put yourself between me and an angry dragon. I think you violated your own moral principles to rescue me." The kid almost smirked. "Thank you."

He was a cocky kid with a tongue jointed at both ends. He was also a son of the god Bhaal. Tirzah had to see him in both lights, now, like an illusion hidden in a glass box you turned one way and then the other. He was the child she'd been ordered to train, and perhaps he was also the heir to the god she'd chosen to follow. She'd teach him well enough that someday he'd give commands in the heat of battle.

She'd protect him, not that she'd say anything so sentimental aloud.

Kovacs pulled a dog-eared set of cards out of his sleeve. "You up for a game? I warn you, I'm getting better at cheating," he said.

The time passed in a quiet, companionable silence. It was the start of a pattern that would last for many years.

—

Of all the clashing colours and tents in the streets on the Grand Duke's election day, the Hellebore-marked ones were the most numerous, and served the most free-flowing beer and beef and bread to voters. Livia won her victory in time to present her own fiancé with his medallion for saving the city from winter, standing as the representing Grand Duchess.

The wedding was everything the Grand Duchess Livia had hoped it would be: opulent, faultlessly planned, and admired by almost all. Helm's temple was full to bursting with guests and sweet-scented flowering vines bloomed all across it. A fleet of twoscore ships flew Hellebore colours in the harbour. Largesse was scattered to an appreciative populace, creating the expected spontaneous parties in the street.

The bride wore scarlet Tethyrian silk and ribbons, sweeping a train twelve feet of Halruaan lace-work behind her. At least two out of her three handmaids served the role of being duly inferior in unflattering pink ruffles. Pherenike had committed a private, petty revenge that she would not even tell Kovacs: she visited her dressmaker one midnight to adjust the seams until the dress fit her neatly as a glove, trim the cut to flatter her, and tame the ruffles down from the look of severed pink tentacles still trying to go on the attack to a subdued fringe. Witnessing such a ceremony, Pherenike was pale and graceful and as serene as if she'd disappeared into a secret room inside herself and locked the door.

Madeline Castellas was alone and awkward in such a crowd of people, especially when they stared at her. Of course they were not really staring at her, Madeline reminded herself. It was the bride they were looking at, the one person that they ought to look at on this day. Livia was truly beautiful. Her cheeks glowed a soft red and her long auburn hair shone below a gossamer veil studded with blood-red ruby pins. She even wore an ioun stone to orbit her head and show her many magical accomplishments, a gift from her groom, dark red with a streak of black crossing its heart.

The groom was dignified and meticulous, his small beard and moustache neatly trimmed, using white and red as his colours to complement Livia. She prayed Albescu Demirci would be kind to his wife. They were not a uxorious couple, at least not in public, but they spoke to each other with respect and seemed to understand each other well. Madeline felt tremendously alone. She grieved for her childhood friend Conradin. She had upset Pherenike by her foolish, ludicrous words and behaviour; she knew full well there was no sight more ridiculous and unwieldy than a fat woman in distress. She wished she had something to say to Yarrow, grieving for her father and her lover, but she could not help her feeling that one of the most beautiful and blue-blooded women in Baldur's Gate saw Madeline as nothing but dirt. Plenty of times Yarrow had mocked her with Candle Balduran. So Madeline was alone and tongue-tied, regretful at her own incapacity.

Madeline's glance fell on Albescu Demirci's bodyguard Tirzah in the crowd of guests. Rising above seven feet tall with orange skin, Tirzah was always going to stand out. She'd left her greatsword behind for once, though she wasn't the sort of person to ever go entirely unarmed. Madeline found her oddly charming; Tirzah flirted outrageously with her and paid her ridiculous compliments as if she genuinely found someone who looked like Madeline attractive. It was all more or less a joke. Madeline's goddess stood for absolute pacifism though she respected that a warrior risked their own life to fight for others. Maybe Tirzah's master, in turn, was not all bad.

If you want a merciless killer, look no further than Livia's darling fiancé, said Pherenike. Albescu Demirci was the sort of man who'd cut down his own son. Pherenike had seen him do it, and loathed and distrusted him. Madeline had seen the two of them talk on one occasion. Pherenike was drooping after arranging Livia's wedding gifts, so it fell to Demirci to offer her wine as he had just done for Madeline. Pherenike took the glass as stiffly as if he'd handed her a snake, then poured it in the nearest plant pot as soon as she could. It was impossible that the wine was contaminated; it was more as if Pherenike felt everything with Albescu Demirci's touch to be contaminated. If I can and if it is needed, I will protect Livia from him, Madeline thought. That was a silly thought; Livia was an elected Grand Duchess, an accomplished mage in her own right, her career as brilliant as a comet crossing the sky. Madeline was grateful to Livia: grateful to receive a renewed childhood friendship, grateful to be chosen as a handmaid, grateful that Livia had broken off a dance for the sake of comforting her. Madeline stayed by Livia's side throughout the wedding and the well-appointed reception, helping her hold up her gown, fetching her watered wine and refreshments, bringing fresh flowers for her hair and bodice, rushing off on errand after errand to let her friend enjoy her ceremony.

From dawn to dusk and indeed far beyond nightfall, Livia was the cynosure of all eyes, the toast of the city, and by the depths of the night long since ready for bed.

Livia sat in her new boudoir, a bride on her wedding night. Her maid Margery rhythmically moved the brush through her mistress' long russet hair, a hundred smooth strokes on each thick waist-length tress. Livia's pink nightgown had the slightly uncomfortable feeling of crisp newness. She could almost have worn it as a dress in public, as it covered her from neck to ankle. It was a delicate shell-like colour, with filmy organdie sleeves and paler pink layers floating above and around the long skirt.

Livia's reflection in the bevelled mirror was chilly and a touch pale, but her lips were still cherry-red as if burnished by all the ritual courtesies she'd been obliged to voice today, and her skin was pure and clean and unlined. The broadsheets often called Livia one of the most beautiful maidens in Baldur's Gate and with Candle dead, Yarrow fallen, Pherenike tarnished, she ought to have risen proportionately in their listings. At least five of the social broadsheets had published the full details of her wedding gown, worked on by thirty seamstresses to accomplish in time. Not that such trivial things really mattered. Livia was a Grand Duchess, powerful, risen to the heights merited by her accomplishment and resolve.

Those heights now came with an encumbrance known as a husband, now. A Grand Duchess wedded a hero and all were duly impressed.

Livia was accomplished, beautiful, desired, and loved. Perhaps terms like renowed and obeyed suited her far more than desired or loved. She felt unsettled and nervous despite having no reason to be, her stomach buzzing as if it was empty. She wanted the benefits of a husband, a business arrangement with none of the ... physical drawbacks; she and Albescu were both quite clear on that. Livia was truly a maiden, preserving her virtue intact and untouched for many years, and she was sure it would feel diminishing and humiliating if she were to give that piece of herself away. Yet perversely she wondered why Albescu was the one to ask for a marriage of convenience. Did he not want her - even though so many people loved her? Surely he and his last wife had had a more or less conventional relationship. Margery's brush worked its repetitive way through her hair.

A knock on the door. Livia looked sharply up, and the intruder dared enter her chamber without permission.

Albescu appeared in a biscuit-coloured dressing gown in place of his wedding suit. An inch of black silk nightgown showed at his ankles, and he wore an old pair of comfortable slippers. He closed the door behind him.

Livia caught her maid's face in the glass. "Shall I leave you, your grace?" Margery said. Was that a faint smirk on Margery's face; was her maid daring to think you too are human, my fine lady, and subject to sweat and skin and stain and fluid like the rest of us uncouth masses? Margery's tone was proper and at least she had used Livia's appropriate title.

"Finish," Livia ordered Margery, not liking that slight hint. The three of them waited in silence but for the maid's labours, a strained and stretched moment that troubled Livia more for each instant it was drawn out. Margery tidied Livia's hair, leaving it loose and thick over her back. She gathered up her pins and pincushions and belongings with a shade too much clatter, and made her exit.

Livia was alone with her husband. She didn't move from the stool by her dressing table. He walked toward Livia's bed.

"I suppose I'll be the gentleman ... " Albescu said lightly. He used a spell on the bedsheets, halfway stripping the bed to tangle them up in each other. He held a small shining knife in his palm, a necromancer's scalpel. He pressed it into his palm and cut a red line across his skin. He touched Livia's fine white Thayvian linen and left a bloodstain blatantly in view. Livia grimaced, averting her eyes from the mess. "I realise it's a myth, but we should give the servants something to gossip about, should we not?" he said.

He sat down at a jade and walnut table, a solid and uncompromising thing. In theory, Livia owned this mansion, bought outright by Albescu and given to her as a wedding present; in reality, it was he who'd ordered and furnished it, and she had barely seen a single thing about it until now.

"Do you play checkers?" Albescu asked. He sat by an ordinary looking board with simple stone pieces, slightly battered as if he'd kept it for many years because he liked the game.

Livia had played her mother's sailors by the docks, and mostly won.

"I'm red," Livia said.

By dawn, Albescu was one game ahead, and soon to be caught in a draw. Livia talked easily and laughed, at ease with their meeting of minds.

—

Pherenike stepped out of the boat and into the old temple of Bhaal. Her satchel swung by her side. She sported no paint nor powder nor perfume, the dawn after the wedding; she wore a practical coat in navy blue serge with her hair tied back and tucked into her collar. Her own magelight spell, a cantrip she mostly used to read in the dark, glowed pale blue around her fingertips. It left her just enough light to climb the precarious steps and force open the door.

The smell hit her, repulsed her. Whisky and a strong brew at that, permeating every inch and corner of the room.

"You shouldn't have come here alone," Kovacs growled. "You could have been caught."

"But I wasn't."

"Don't. It's not safe."

"You're drunk," Pherenike accused.

"I'm not. It's not for want of trying, but the smell lasts much longer than the effect for me." Kovacs lit a lamp with a fire spell. The low light showed a set of empty bottles, some broken, edges and rounded glass glittering in the faint light. The other sparse furnishings looked similar to the last time Pherenike was here, except that it looked like something had been burnt on Kovacs' desk; a set of books were no longer there.

"What is it?" he said. Pherenike could smell the alcohol on his breath. He wore his normal face again. He looked sleepless and worn.

It occurred to her that this was Kovacs' reaction to his father's wedding night.

"Light all the lamps and candles you have. Make it the strongest light you can," Pherenike ordered.

He did it, with only a slight muttering under his breath, wax candles jammed into the necks of bottles to keep them upright, two lamps turned to a brilliant light.

"Then sit on your bedroll. I need you to take your shirt off," Pherenike said.

She saw the twist of reluctance in his face. It had always been dark when they'd made love. Baring his skin where someone else could see his markings was not something Kovacs wanted. But before she could say anything more to explain, he'd done it. He waited for her, the black lines cruelly circling across his arms and torso like open welts. Pherenike looked at the markings on his skin for the second time, reading and understanding the sigils that made him a slave.

"It's good that you don't ... do this a lot," Pherenike said, kneeling by his side. She covered one of his hands with her own. "The sigils are powerful, but they're not very subtle. They're tied to the caster, of course, letting him feel and transmit physical sensations to you, but they're also a general binding on you. If someone else knew about them, they could also use them against you."

"I know that," Kovacs said. He spoke, weighted with bitter memories. "I tried burning them off. That didn't work. Then I found someone who specialised in such things. He promised to remove them, but instead he took what I traded and kept me. Tirzah rescued me; my father found that cheaper than a ransom payment. What are you offering?"

Pherenike laid out her ink and brushes from the satchel in order, a large glass vial, a scroll of parchment for reference. She'd memorised what she would do but it always paid to be prepared.

Saving Rociard's grandaughters had given her the first idea; when she had painted and altered Durante's wardstone to give them a way through.

"I can't erase the markings, but I can change them," Pherenike said. "It's painful to you when you disobey, isn't it? I worked out a transference pattern, where you can direct that pain to someone else, so you don't have to do as he says. You could put it on someone you're fighting, or - "

"Or back on the caster," Kovacs said, catching on.

"I'll be using ink, not tattoos, so if something goes wrong you can wash it off with vinegar and alum." Pherenike lifted the glass vial with a pale mixture inside it. "You can still bathe in the normal way."

"Subtle hint?" He couldn't resist the quip, though his eyes still looked like those of a trapped animal.

"And I tested it on myself." Pherenike lifted her sleeve and showed the ink design on her wrist. "I know it does no harm, though I couldn't test whether it has the right effects. If we have to we can try again."

"I'm yours," Kovacs said.

Pherenike dipped her brush in the wet ink. She could see the old burn mark on his chest that she'd felt before, the cut of a long knife that had once scarred deeply into his back. There were other marks, strange looking dark red circles on his skin. "What are these?" she asked, too impulsively. "They look like sucker marks, like an octopus or jellyfish or ... "

"I've been purifying water. A transmutation to open the channel, and necromancy joins to make the water feel like an extension of my body, so my power works on it. We're all more than half made of water. It's really a very ingenious set of spells," Kovacs said. He did not say that the process was painful to him, but it had clearly taken its toll. Yet he'd not like to be pitied any further.

"So, what you're telling me is that I should not buy Demirci water under any circumstances," Pherenike said.

Kovacs let her hold his arm. Pherenike's brush spread the ink on his skin, making contact for the first time. His muscles were tense and knotted. The soft brush made a trail of black, extending up and out from the glyph, turning and altering the binding mark into something more. She felt the heat from his body, so close to her, saw his jaw clench. His eyes were dark as he made himself look down at what she wrote. The lamps made the air heavy and full, smelling of smoke and sandalwood oil. Beyond the open door lay only the deep blackness of the temple and the underground lake.

Pherenike felt what she worked on the Weave and knew it to be true. Her patterns were not casting a magical spell, but something that went deeper and truer, simply speaking the same language. She took an ugly pattern and added a harmony. A new line swept over Kovacs' skin to turn grasping claws into a curve something like a segment of an orange, something like a crescent moon.

She reached his shoulders, angling her body so she'd not brush against the drying ink. Pherenike had noticed before that Kovacs had grown since the tattoos were applied, marking that he must have been a child at the time. Now she could see written on them exactly how he'd broadened and filled out over the years. That ought to have weakened and distorted the bindings forced over the skin. But she could now see something that struck her as still more horrifying: the hand that had done this had planned for that. He had known and predicted what would happen, and the physical changes had only strengthened the sigils' effects. The knowledge of anatomy and attention to detail required for that would have been admirable if it weren't so despicable.

"When did he do this?" Pherenike asked, half afraid of the answer.

"Almost a year after he - after your Night Stalker was dead," Kovacs said, talking carefully around the name, slipping through geases laid on his tongue. "After he knew there would be no return of power; knew that all he had was the remnant of a failed experiment, unprotected. My mother objected," he confessed. Pherenike couldn't see his face while she painted on his back; could only see clenched tendons around protruding shoulderblades, childhood scars and the newer sucker marks between the spiralling markings. She was silent, her brush dripping whorls of cold ink on his skin.

"She should have left him before. The first time he punished her instead of me, she should have run," Kovacs said. He spoke as if coolly reasoning out what ought to have happened. From his tone, there was a mixture of resignation and contempt for someone who'd made choices that ended badly, as if he were talking about a historical battle that had gone the wrong way. Written in the tense lines of his body was a rawer and far more dangerous emotion. "Likely he wouldn't have bothered to chase her. If she left without me, she would have been almost worthless to him. I could have found her later on."

Kovacs trusted Pherenike with his greatest vulnerability, and words and memories accompanying it spilt out of him as if he couldn't help it. "She didn't protect herself from him, so when she finally started objecting it was too late. She could have just turned her back on what he wanted to do to me, and left. She had a chance to go.

"Instead he killed her because she wouldn't leave it alone. Then he did it to me anyway," he said.

Pherenike had only known that she was dead. Perhaps My father killed her had always been there, implied, a black and bleak truth shimmering like peat smoke in the air. "He killed his last wife, and - "

"Such deeds are easier to accomplish in Sembia; a backward country, where women are all but sold as property. Only the music is moderately good," Kovacs said. "My mother played; she was teaching me her flute before she died. I told the Grand Duchess what he did, and I will not help her out of the bed she made for herself. My mother ignored what he was until it caught up to her. I suppose she was a stupid woman."

The atmosphere between them felt fragile as spun glass. The delicate lines of Pherenike's ink arched across skin, where one stroke too high or low could cause grievous harm, cruelly deepen the binding rather than open it; the unfolding of old wounds, seeping sores that had never healed.

She died trying to protect you, Pherenike thought. She must have done it because she loved you. She could almost envy that in him. The woman he called mother, who'd died for her nameless nephew; Tirzah, his blood-bonded and battle-forged companion, who saved walnuts for his familiar; Shalilah, for whom he grieved, and his other allies. Kovacs had more he cared for and who cared for him than Pherenike had ever known in her lonely household, in the books she'd studied or in her quondam friends. She'd no idea what her own mother would have been like, whether resenting or reaching out for her child before she died.

"You yourself know something of risking yourself for someone you care for," Pherenike said carefully, her fingers steady on a long graceful sweep of ink, from waist to clavicle. I've seen you mourn your friend. I bet you'd fight like that for Tirzah. Her breath laced against his neck as she leant close for some fine detail-work.

"Keep that bracelet with you," Kovacs said darkly. "I won't - I've lost enough people who were foolish enough to trust me."

Practicalities. She wore it even now: a carefully crafted gift, unremarkable and precious. I won't use it. You as good as said I can't use it to save anyone else; I would not leave you.

... I don't know that I wouldn't, but I will stand and make it so that day never comes, Pherenike thought.

She finished his back, painting a network of fine overlapping lines on a patch just below his neck. She blew on the ink to dry it. She needed every ounce of concentration in her, feeling light-headed from the smoke. She recited the verb tenses of the ancient sigils inside her mind, feeling the language melt and bend in response to her understanding of it. She made a line of dots that finished just above the dexter protrusion of bone on Kovacs' left wrist, overleaf from where his blood danced under his skin.

He leant back with his palms flat on the ground, stretching. Pherenike sat across his legs, touching his chest. Kovacs' breathing was regular, all too regular. She painted over the burn mark, studying and turning the scar to be part of her pattern. She reached his heart, the centre of the design. Pherenike closed her eyes for a moment, drawing the sigils in fiery trails over the blackness inside her head. She let out a long deep breath over his skin. She could feel Kovacs' pulse beat in his ribs, where she held herself upright by his strength. Her line was drawn true. It dipped and merged with the old binding, and soon something new glistened wetly over his body, over breastbone and beating heart.

She felt exhausted from the careful unbroken concentration, from the thin air and smoke that filled her lungs, but her voice was as steady as her mind and hand had been. "It's done," Pherenike said.

He couldn't touch her, not while the ink was drying. A grim smile hung in the corners of his mouth. He barely moved, leaning back with his palms flat on the ground.

Kovacs said the words of a casting, his voice low and rough. One by one, the candles and lamps blinked out under the force of his spell. First shadows crossed him and added weird hollows to his markings. Then all was dark.

—

Jacek's teeth chattered as he counted off, doing his regular round. Sunil. Owen. Finglas. Tabby. Ivar. It was always cool here, underground, moistness dripping from the walls. Scarcely any light reached this prison. The prisoners had chosen their own spaces within the sealed cavern, sometimes for a reason and sometimes for none at all, a small thing to call their own when they had nothing else. Jacek's foot fell on a chicken bone that crunched under his boot. Pavo snickered at him in the dark. This was his place, tucked in between two stalactites, a place only a skinny old man like Pavo could contort himself into.

Jacek bent down on his own knees and grubbed for Pavo's rubbish, which he tucked into his kerchief. It was a small thing, but they did not have to live in filth, though the smell of their improvised midden was so strong you could almost stand on top of it. Anyone else he would have asked to dispose of their own waste, but Pavo couldn't walk; both his legs were missing at the knees. He'd been a street beggar, taken for no reason he knew. His story was probably a sad one, but his gleeful cackles when Jacek cleaned up his mess or patiently carried him to the latrine made it difficult to feel generously toward him.

Jacek had been an apprentice blacksmith, once, in a sunlit world that seemed strange to remember now. His ma died when he'd been a babe, leaving him to his uncle and aunt. They had been neither kind nor cruel, 'prenticing him as soon as they could. His master Farmund was a good man, open-handed and generous, a friendly word to everyone who passed by. Jacek's master and his wife Feng treated the apprentices like their own kin, lodging them in their own house and feeding them plentifully at the same table. Jacek was the tallest and strongest of the four apprentices, far enough along in the craft that he helped the others. Farmund called him his right arm, sometimes. Now the strong muscle Jacek had built at the forge was used to keep order in a frightening cave, full of terrified people who seemed to fight each other at every chance.

Next Jacek came on the raised voices of two women, Lily and Griselda. "Your husband couldn't bear one more word from your corncrake voice," Lily said. "Bet he's drinking his health and paying a duke's ransom to keep you here - "

"You stole my blanket, you filthy common thief," Griselda snapped back. "My man's coming, I can tell you, he'll not be pleased that I let low-quality sluts like you talk back to me - "

"Fine Lady Muck the linen-draper you are!" Lily yelled. "Ye sound like - Me man's a rich commerical titan coining money outta his sweaty armpit hairs and you peasants will be sorry when he pulls the Flaming Fist out of his arse!" She mocked Griselda's tales of her draper husband, owner of a shop in Baker's Lane. Lily had been a laundress, before; the pair of them were about the same age. "I ought to scratch every last hair out of your scalp - "

"Slattern, I'll rip your eyes from your fat skull and - "

"That's enough." Jacek stepped in. "Griselda, do you still have your blanket?" The theft had been eight feedings ago and she'd been given it back. "Please, you'll frighten the children," he asked them, which was true for some of the children at least. "Could you wring out the water from the rags, Griselda - and can you do a digging shift, Lily?" he asked. He was pretty sure that their digging would get them nowhere, but it was better to hope than do nothing. The prisoners took turns at hollowing out the weakest part of the cave wall, but so far had only hit rock and more rock. The women listened to Jacek with grumbles, but did as he'd asked. Day by day it became more difficult for Jacek to talk to everyone and calm them down, give them something to do that wasn't to fight each other or let despair reign.

There were near thirty prisoners in the cave. None of them had any decent idea of why they'd been taken. Perhaps it was the slave trade - illegal in Baldur's Gate - or something worse, something terrible enough that Jacek could not even conceive it. Most were young. Jacek was seventeen, and there was a contingent of children no more than nine, but Owen was a half-elf who said he was sixty-odd. Most were poor, people who by and large wouldn't be missed, but some like Griselda had families and at least a little coin. Jacek hoped that his master Farmund missed him and wouldn't believe for a moment that he'd run away of his own will. Most were orphans like Jacek, another sign that meant they wouldn't be much missed, but some had father and mother and siblings to boot. Perhaps there was no commonality at all and they had only been stolen because they could get away with it.

The 'they' who had taken them, too, were utterly unknown. Most had similar stories of capture: a stranger wandering the streets, sometimes asking for directions or starting gossip, and then the snatching, when they were alone and unprotected. Daily the guards brought food and water to the prisoners, but daily the guards' faces were new and different. The captives had tried and failed to ambush the guards. Their captors might be a vast and powerful network - and hysteria also spread of a mighty illusion wizard or shapeshifting monstrosities. It seemed more likely day by day there was truth to such tales.

Jacek's ears cocked in the dark. He heard rushing footsteps, then a clenched hand poked in the direction of his arm. "Tell me how many pebbles for a bite of bread's stake, Jacek!"

"Elly? And Puppy," Jacek said, sensing the other child's far softer tread. Elly was a newer prisoner, a sharp servant-girl from one of the small-noble families in the Grand Dukes' district. She'd immediately taken the Puppy under her wing, a tiny gnome boy who seemed to be able to make no sounds but barking and so was known only by a nickname. Likely he had been a beggar like Pavo, a discarded child who ate their prison fare as if it were a feast. "Four pebbles," Jacek guessed.

"Wrong! Three," Elly told him. "That's one bite of your bread, next time we get bread." The food their guards brought was odd: occasionally fresh bread, rather a lot of raw fish, sometimes chicken or preserved pickles or even dried pudding. The prisoners did not perish of starvation but neither did they thrive. Elly opened her hand and pressed her three pebbles into Jacek's palm to show she'd won the guessing game. "It won't matter," she added. "The outlaw Kovacs is going to rescue me. He gave me my dog Spider. He does magic tricks and he's got a sword. He gruesomely murdered two Flaming Fists 'cause they looked at his mistress funny. Aunt Sarah didn't let me read the broadsheets but I snuck them from under the egg-cases. I'm not good at reading but it said he stabbed the big one thirty times and it was bloody and fiendish."

A prisoner captured after Elly, a boy who sold broadsheets on the street, said the outlaw she boasted about was beheaded in the town square. And while Jacek wouldn't say it to Elly's face, he couldn't believe that an outlaw would help in the first place. Better to hope for rescue from the Flaming Fist, from those few who still waited for them on the outside.

The familiar noise sounded at the thick door to their prison. Jacek went up to play his role, to see that new face of the day and get the food and water their prison guards gave them. It was the only time he got to see light these days.

Three refilled waterskins, a barrel of dried apples, and a sack of rolls filled with a soft paste. Jacek was the one to distribute the food and drink, as he was trusted by the other prisoners to do it fairly. He ripped each roll in two so all could have a share. When only he and Elly were left with one roll to go, he paid his bet by giving it all to her.

"Cream buns," Elly whispered, with a strange intense excitement that Jacek had never heard from her before. She wolfed it down in a moment, not even leaving a crumb.

—

Wishing all a happy holidays. Story updates from me will start again in February next year.

Thank you so much for the amazing feedback and reviews. This site hasn't been delivering email notifications of private messages, so if you've reviewed but haven't received a reply from me, that is likely the cause. I am more grateful for feedback than I can say, and it greatly inspires me to write on.