THE QUESTERS, PART IV

"Jonah!" Faye yelled just before she yanked me off my feet and wrapped me a hug worthy of a grizzly bear.

"What are you doing here?" we both asked at the same time. Well... she asked while I squeaked. Faye hastily loosened her hold on me.

"I'm working with the Sword Priestess Militant," I told Faye once I recovered my breath. "She asked me to take a look at what was going on here and maybe help. I heard there was a fight with the Hand just the other night?"

Faye set me down with a teeth-rattling thump. My mostly-healed foot yelped in pain, but I managed not to howl.

"I'm here with a Seeker!" Faye told me excitedly. There was a huge grin on her face.

That wasn't exactly a surprise. I knew Seeker Rahne had been seen in Nyack. And it was well known that she had two dangerous companions - a Wilder of the lineage of Lehnsherr, and an unusually strong Green woman. And it was Uncle Ben himself who told me that the Green woman in question was Aunt Faye.

Faye continued eagerly, words tumbling out of her. "We helped during a fight with the Hand and now we're going to piss off every Blood in the entire world! You must have been sent by the Old One to help!"

I think I blinked in surprise.

"What?" I asked.

Faye introduced me to the mistress of her pack.

Rahne the Seeker is young. Younger than me, as a matter of fact. She has curly red hair, a spray of freckles across her face, and bright green eyes. And, of course, she's a Blood. Actually, she's beautiful - and I immediately shut that thought down. It wouldn't be wise to think of her in that way.

As far as I know, Rahne is the only woman Seeker. Perhaps the only one ever.

The role of 'Seeker' is difficult to describe. The Old One is the great ancestor-spirit of the Blood, and a Seeker's role is to find and serve the will of the Old One. They're touched or blessed by the Old One in a way most non-Blood can't quite understand. Blood seem to sense when one of their kind is a Seeker, and it's apparently impossible to fake. That's why a woman Seeker, something unheard of until Rahne, has been so quickly accepted by the Blood. Yes, there was some confusion and controversy at first, but... well... as an acquaintance once mentioned to me, she smelled right.

Many non-Blood mistakenly think of Seekers as members of some sort of priesthood. That's wrong. Actually, a Seeker is closer to what scholars would call a shaman. They don't worship gods, they communicate with spirits. The Old One is, from their point of view, simply the most important of the spirits.

So the Old One is not a god and a good way to irritate a Blood is to describe him that way. Like the First Spider, he is a being who is beyond mortality but is tightly tied to a specific people. The Old One's importance in Blood society is difficult to understate. He is their all-father, their great ancestral warrior, their source of strength, and their cantankerous font of wisdom.

The First Spider occupies a similar role among the Spider-Folk, but we do not have Seekers. Instead, the First Spider has priestesses - in much the same way as the three goddesses of the Blood.

Yes, that's confusing and perhaps contradictory. No, I don't claim to understand all of it. There are learned men and women who debate the details, and they've been arguing over them for centuries. However, I do know this: Seekers aren't considered infallible. And they can sometimes trespass against the sensibilities of the Blood. I suspected Rahne was doing just that.

"Mercy for the half-Creed?" I asked slowly. I was having a problem with even hearing that concept from a Blood.

Rahne nodded seriously. "It's possible to interpret Paul's words otherwise, but I believe that's what he was trying to say."

I asked the obvious and perhaps impertinent question. "Have you seen a sign? Do you know the Old One's intentions?"

Rahne looked at me with her startlingly clear and untroubled eyes. "I'm not sure."

I really couldn't think of a response to that. Rahne was taking a big risk based on the words of a dying and almost certainly disoriented Blood. And even she admitted that those words were less than clear.

"The Old One will let me know if I'm wrong," Rahne told me.

For a long moment, I just stared at her. Rahne was running an incredible risk. Frankly, it struck me that her chances of living out the year were low. And yet, she seemed so sure of her course.

"I hope you survive the experience," I told her slowly.

Rahne suddenly cocked her head at me. Her eyes were suddenly meeting mine in a way that was piercing and unnerving.

"What?" I asked warily, not sure if I'd say something wrong.

"What you just said..." Rahne began, "do you know how ancient that phrase is?"

I had no idea what she was talking about. "No," I replied hesitantly.

Then Faye grinned and slapped me on the shoulder. "Congratulations, Jonah. You're a sign."

I hesitated, not sure what to make of that. Rahne smiled and I carefully looked away. There was the sense of a great presence all around me. The First Spider whispered on the edge of my awareness, but it wasn't the usual. He wasn't warning me of danger. Rather, something else had attracted his interest.

All in all, It was an unsettling experience. Reaching a hand into my pocket, I touched my spider amulet for reassurance. And suddenly, I found myself once again praying for the soul of my great-great-grandfather.

If my count was right, it was for the nine-hundredth and ninety-seventh time.

There was a small tavern on the shoreward edge of the village. I ended up sharing a table with Rahne and her pack as we talked about the recent battle with the Hand. I wanted to get an outsider's idea of what was happening before I talked to the Temple's high-priestess.

Through the open door of the tavern, we had a good view of the Temple. It looked quaint and oddly peaceful.

"Any idea what the Hand was after?" I asked.

Faye and Rahne simultaneously shook their heads. Rose just shrugged.

Yes, in addition to drinking with Faye and Rahne, I was also in the company of the famous Rose herself. It was turning into one hell of a day.

Rose Lehnsherr is widely respected as a champion of the defenseless. Even the Blood - who don't really quite understand the concept of 'defenseless' like other people do - seem to admire her. She's tall, with a rectangular face, and shoulders that are broad for a woman. Actually, while her appearance is rather unremarkable, she's not unattractive. According to the story-tellers' tales, she wears leather armor in an odd shade of dark red and has a helmet with a peculiar 'Y'-shaped opening. Apparently those days had passed, or perhaps she didn't see any use for such garb at the moment. As we talked, she was wearing an ordinary-looking set of woman's travel clothes.

"It looked like they just wanted to kill everyone," Rose said to me.

"That sure didn't work," Faye observed wryly as she drained her cup and poured more from a beaker.

"So the Hand just attacked the Temple?" I asked. "They didn't attack the village?"

"Just the Temple," Faye confirmed. "Maybe they planned on hitting the village later, but that wouldn't have been easy given that almost everyone there is a Blood."

I looked at Rahne. "Are you here to fight the Hand? Or are you here because of what that visionist told you?"

Rahne tried not to smile. "Both, I think."

It occurred to me that Rahne had an insane job, but I kept my mouth shut.

"How many Hand were there?" I asked.

"Twenty-three," Rose told me. "None of them got away. Five were undead, but the rest were living. Priestess Kathryn had the bodies burned. Any way you look at it, that battle was a defeat for the Hand."

I considered what Rose had said. "That's maybe enough swordsmen to destroy an under-strength Temple of this size, but it's not a given."

Faye nodded. "Another half-dozen ninja - or if the Fisher-militia had been slower to gather - and they might have pulled it off."

"But if you hadn't been here, the Hand would probably have been successful," I pointed out.

I glanced out the door again. The rising sun was washing away the last of the morning shadows from the temple. It occurred to me that if the Hand had won last night's fight, I'd be looking at ashes and smoking rubble.

"You said you're working for the Sword Priestess Militant?" Faye asked curiously.

I nodded.

Faye frowned thoughtfully. "Isn't she an old girlfriend of yours?"

Both Rahne and Rose raised their eyebrows.

"We were together once," I answered carefully.

"And now she's your boss?"

"Yes."

"Is she being a bitch about it?" Faye asked curiously.

I considered that. "No. Why do you ask?"

"I'm trying to decide if she sent you here to get killed."

That made me smile. "You don't know Dee. If she wanted me dead, she'd just do it herself."

After saying goodbye to Rahne and her band, I visited the temple. The mail I was carrying (yes, there was real mail) established who I was.

"You're it?" the high-priestess - who was really young for that position - asked skeptically. "You're the reinforcements?"

"Yes, honored lady," I replied. I had a feeling the meeting wasn't going to go well.

"A single Spider swordsman with a limp? You're my reinforcements?"

"Yes, honored lady," I repeated. Really, until I proved otherwise, there wasn't a lot else to say.

"The Sword Priestess Militant wants to know why the Hand have been attacking you," I added.

"So you're here as an investigator, not a warrior," Priestess Kathryn said coldly.

"I'm both, ma'am."

Kathryn stared up at the ceiling for a while. Then she finally shrugged and looked at me again.

"Thanks to the Seeker and her friends, we wiped out our most recent attackers," she said. "Maybe we even destroyed the local Hand cell. We should have some breathing room."

"So go ahead and conduct your 'investigation'," she added - and I could hear the quotes. "Talk to the guard-captain and let him know if you need anything. Oh, and try to die usefully if the Hand shows up again."

"Yes, honored lady," I said. Then I bowed and left.

The Captain was a dangerous-looking character named Demetrios. Like Kathryn, he was really young for his position. The Temple had obviously been under pressure for quite a while.

"You're the reinforcements?" he asked in disbelief.

I was sensing a theme in my conversations with Temple personnel.

"That's me, Captain," I said respectfully.

Demetrios shook his head. "I'm not going to second-guess the Sword Priestess Militant. What do you have for us?"

I managed to stop myself from shrugging. It wouldn't do to look unsure. "She wants to know why the Hand is so interested in a small temple on the north shore of nowhere. No offense."

Demetrios actually smiled. "No offense taken. Part of my job is to be realistic."

We were in a small room that Demetrios used as an office. We were sitting in rickety chairs at an old wooden table. Reaching over his shoulder, Demetrios pulled a journal out of the shelf behind him, put it on the table between us, and opened it at a marked page.

"The Hand and the Temple have been fighting for the last thirty-or-so years in a region the stretches from Nyack to Richma. We're not even sure what started it. This temple wasn't really a part of that war until just a few years ago. Then the Hand showed up around here."

The journal was open about halfway. Some crabbed handwriting filled almost the entire page.

"This describes an incident where a merchant-ship spotted a small-craft just off the coast. It seemed to be abandoned and looked like it had been drifting for quite some time. The crew of the merchant-ship boarded the boat. There were three dead sailors aboard, but the merchant crew couldn't tell what had killed them. So the ship took the boat in tow, intending to take it into port as salvage."

Demetrios paused before continuing.

"And then one of the dead sailors got up and started fighting."

"By the time it was over, the merchant ship had lost five men, but they managed to chop the undead to pieces and throw those pieces into the sea. The creature had a short katana and the sailors from the merchant-ship eventually found a cache of Hand clothing and equipment hidden in the boat."

"That was the start of the trouble in these parts. We began noticing things after that. Missing boats. Missing people and sometimes just-plain-dead people. Reports of small parties moving about at night. Strangers asking strange questions. Occasional fights between Blood and those mysterious strangers. When the Blood won those fights, the losers turned out to be Hand. Then the raids began. The first one wiped out a holding south of here. The next one hit the Temple. It's been a struggle ever since. The problem is that we're always on the defense. We don't know where the Hand are coming from. They just appear and attack."

"But it sounds like they're looking for something," I said thoughtfully.

Demetrios nodded. "Remember what I said about those odd people with odd questions? They're usually asking about shipwrecks - specifically foreign vessels from the far side of the Lant ocean. They're careful not to give too much away. We've put out the word to the local Lords to bring in anyone asking about that sort of thing, but all we've got from that so far are dead ninja and dead samurai. The Hand don't let themselves be captured."

"Any shipwrecks that fit what they're asking about?" I asked.

Demetrios shook his head. "Not really. We've double-checked with the Lords all up and down the coast. The last real shipwreck was five years back. It was a vessel called the 'Norther' out of Bost. The locals rescued as many of the passengers and crew as they could and then salvaged what was left of the cargo. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary. In terms of foreign shipwrecks on this coast, you have to go back over ten years. That was a Scanda two-master carrying a cargo of manufactured goods. The ship went astray in a storm and broke apart on some rocks. Eyewitnesses said it was gone within a matter of minutes. There were no survivors."

I considered that for a moment. "Could you make an estimate of how many Hand have been killed in the fighting around here?"

Demetrios nodded. "In terms of bodies we've actually recovered - sixty-seven dead Hand. Of course, the Hand have lost more - the local Lords are also taking a beating. And if they win, the Hand carries off the bodies of their dead. So we don't know the full number of their losses."

Then Demetrios sighed and leaned back into his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm thinking they've lost something like two hundred ninjas in the fighting around here. Actually, more have been killed, but that doesn't always take. If we can't control the battlefield and burn the corpses, they'll be raised and go right back to fighting."

I whistled. That was a lot of Hand. Too many for a part of the world that barely rated a dot on a map.

"But there's something even stranger," Demetrios added.

I gave him a surprised look. What was worse than an infestation of Hand?

"Every now and then, a vampire turns up," Demetrios told me. "All told maybe ten or twelve over the last century. Two months ago, one appeared on an island holding located just down the coast. A pack of samurai destroyed the vampire after it drained a couple of the local people. From what they told us, the vampire was weak-blooded - recently turned, savagely stupid, and not really come into its power."

I frowned. "That's bad, but maybe it's just a coincidence? I understand that vampires do turn up from time to time."

Demetrios smiled bitterly. "Not around here, Jonah. We don't have vampires, demons, and inter-dimensional trash popping up all over the place - or least we didn't use to."

"We've never found the vampire who's creating these weaker vampires - and the goddesses know that the regional Lords have been looking for years. Not even Blood rangers have been able to find anything. After that most recent vampire, the Hand became really active. That fight last night was the fourth and biggest raid on our temple. Two weeks ago, the Hand also slaughtered a farming village about ten miles east of here. In the process, they took a big chunk out of a local lord's samurai. That destabilized the local balance of power and the Blood lords out there have been brawling ever since."

I rubbed my chin. "So the Hand's looking for something, it involves a foreign ship that wrecked somewhere around here, and they're devoting lots of resources to the search. But we have nothing that matches up with what the Hand is looking for."

"That's about it," Demetrios said dryly. "Let me know if you come up with anything else."

I asked more questions but didn't get any answers that mattered. That was when Faye made one of her typically good suggestions. I have no idea why she considers herself simple-minded. Maybe that's a Green thing.

After sundown, Faye and I visited a local man - an older Blood fisherman named Reed. His home was a larger-than-usual stone hut located in the middle of what passed for the local village. Reed had two wives and a horde of half-feral children. Faye and I tried to time it so that we would show up well after dinner, but Reed's wives would have none of that. And it turned out they were pretty good cooks.

We all eventually ended up sitting outside Reed's home, enjoying the cool evening air. The wives put the younger children to bed and shooed the rest away so we could talk.

"You and Faye had an insult contest?" I asked curiously. It was the talk of the village.

Reed chuckled. "Combined with a drinking contest. The amount of ale we put down was considerable."

I glanced at Faye, "So that's why you looked so ragged this morning?"

Faye rolled her eyes. "I swear, the Blood lack of hangovers is such an unfair advantage. They can drink without a care in the world."

"We get hangovers," Reed protested. "They just go away quicker."

"Who won?" I asked.

"I did," Faye and Reed said simultaneously.

Reed's senior wife looked mildly disgusted. "The Seeker said you both won."

Then she paused. "Although Faye did score big when she showed everyone her boobs."

Faye winced and glanced guiltily in my direction. "It was a tactic," she assured me.

"It worked," Reed said judiciously. "I'll let others debate the fairness of such a deed."

"Hey! Nothing stopped you from lifting your shirt!" Faye protested.

"Our man has a wonderful chest," the younger wife told Faye with a smile, "but it's just not the show-stopper that yours is, Faye."

The conversation was actually pretty interesting, but I decided to shift the subject.

"I was hoping to ask you about the trouble with the Hand," I asked.

Reed and his wives all seemed interested.

"The bigger fight between the Temple and the Hand has been going on for decades, but mostly south of here," Reed told us. "For most of that time, we really weren't involved. But a few years back the Hand started prowling around here. There were fights and even a few massacres. Everyone thinks they're looking for something, but nobody knows what. And then, Old One knows why, they began attacking the Temple."

"No idea why?" I asked.

Reed shrugged helplessly. "No. And I swear sometimes it seems like it's the only thing we talk about. 'What does the Hand want?' 'Why did the ignore us for so long, but then start attacking us?'"

"What about the ship?" Faye asked. "They're supposed to be asking about a foreign ship that wrecked somewhere around here."

Reed shook his head firmly. "I know about every wreck that's happened in these waters for the last eighty years. We've had our share, but there was nothing odd about any of them."

"Any chance there could have been a wreck, but it was isolated enough that nobody noticed?" I asked.

"Not very likely," Reed replied. "There are people all over this coast nowadays."

Then Reed hesitated. It was as if something had suddenly occurred to him.

"Actually, there is a kind of wreck people might not know about," he said slowly. "But the last time anything like that happened around here was long ago."

Everyone looked at Reed.

"There's a thing called wrecking," Reed continued thoughtfully. "Ever hear of it?"

I nodded, but Faye shook her head.

Reed had the look on his face of a man remembering something ugly. "If the weather turns foul, the towns and villages along the coast put lanterns out at night. The lanterns warn ships caught in bad weather where the coastline is located."

Reed paused as if considering his thoughts.

"But there's an old and evil trick. You put lanterns further inland, on hilltops. You might even cut lanes in the woods so the lights are easier to see."

Faye nodded her head in sudden realization. "They sucker ships onto the shore."

Reed looked at Faye appreciatively. "You're a smart woman, Faye. Yeah, like I said, it's an old and evil trick. Not the least because you have to kill any surviving passengers and crew to keep it all secret. After the ship piles up on the shore, it's stripped of anything valuable. Then the ship is broken up and the pieces towed out to deeper water. The bodies are taken even farther out to sea and dropped into the great northern current. Any salvage is quietly sent to unscrupulous brokers in Nyack or some other city."

"How common is that sort of thing?" I asked.

Reed shook his head. "Not common at all, anymore. But when I was a boy, it happened. You see, for wrecking to work, you need long stretches of empty coastline. Otherwise, your neighbors will figure out what's going on. This part of the coast has been steadily filling up - new holdings and villages - for quite some time. The last wrecker crew was run by a local Blood lord named Moody. Eventually, the other Lords figured out what was going on and put Moody and his people down. Old-timers like me still call that the Wrecker War. That was over a century ago."

"Too long ago to matter," I said in disappointment.

"Is it?" Reed asked slowly. "I mean, yeah, it seems like a long time to you, Jonah. Maybe even to me. But the Hand has members who are undead. To them, a century might not seem like much time at all."

I thought about that. "Did anyone ever put together a list of the ships Moody and his people wrecked? Was that even possible?"

"No," Reed said with a regretful shake of his head. "My father fought against Moody and he told me they never figured out what ships - or even how many - Moody and his bunch were responsible for wrecking. He thought it might be as many as a dozen. That would have been a lot of innocent people."

"But there's more," Reed added. "Lord Moody and the Wrecker War wasn't exactly a secret, but it was something people didn't like to talk about. Some lords actually demanded it be kept secret, so as not to scare off commerce. If you ask people about shipwrecks - well, they might not even think about Moody and his dark deeds. Combine that with the fact that we just don't know much about the ships that Moody wrecked and that might explain why the Hand can't find the shipwreck they're looking for."

It was late when I reported to Kathryn and Demetrios. I was half-expecting to be told we were wrong, but they were actually interested.

"That's something of a longshot, but it's worth considering," Demetrios admitted. "The Wrecker War was so long ago that's it's half-forgotten now. I only know about it from a few passages in the Temple records. The High Priestess of the time worked hard to get every Lord in the area involved in putting Moody down. Then she said little about it afterward."

"Is anyone still here who was around back then?" I asked.

Kathryn shook her head. "Nobody, I can think of... wait."

Then she looked at Demetrios. "Is old Cross still alive?"

Demetrios answered quickly. "As of a year ago. I saw her boat on the docks around then."

"Cross is a Blood who was a temple guard," Kathryn explained to me. "She left our service a long time ago - I'm not even sure how long, since her last days here were way before my time. According to the older Temple staff, she supposedly waited until she served a full one hundred years before quitting. If anyone around here knows anything about the Wrecker War, it would be her."

"Why did she leave the temple?" I asked.

Demetrios chuckled. "As I heard it, she said something about being sick and tired of being ordered around by children. She lives by herself on a mud-flat that she calls an island. Someday a storm will roll a big wave over her home and she'll drown."

"I think I should talk to her," I said.

Demetrios glanced at Kathryn. She nodded.

"Be here at first light," he told me. "I'll have one of our people sail you out to her island. It's not far from here."

"Get the fuck off my island!" the old woman barked at me.

One look at Cross, and you'd be willing to swear that she was older than the Towers of Nyack. Those were her first words after we tied off to the roughly lashed-together driftwood float that she called a pier.

Fortunately, I'd consulted with Reed on how to handle Cross. I held up a bottle of passable spirits. The tavern had charged me a ridiculous amount for it. It was imported, you see. Imported from right across the river.

"Why didn't you just say so?" Cross grumbled at me. "I'll fetch us some cups."

"The Wrecker War?" Cross said with a surprised frown. "You've come a long way to ask me about ancient history."

"We're wondering if there's a connection to the trouble with the Hand," I told her.

She gave me a dubious look. "Can't say I can think of any connection. But since you're buying the drinks, I'm willing to talk."

We were on a platform that was made up of worm-eaten ship's timbers. It jutted above the water and was festooned with fishing poles. Cross fished by sitting back, enjoying the sun, and watching bobbers to see if she had a bite.

"Did you fight in the war?" I asked.

Cross nodded. "Yeah, but back in those days, I hadn't yet entered into the service of the Bladed Lady. I was part of a pack of hot-headed broads who were mostly interested in booze, drugs, and dick. We'd hire our claws out to whoever was willing to pay."

Then a wry expression appeared on her face. "We didn't think much about right or wrong. If things had gone differently, we might have ended up fighting for Moody. Good thing that didn't happen! Once the local lords found out what Moody was up to, they weren't exactly interested in taking prisoners."

Seemingly lost in thought, she poured more whiskey into a cracked ceramic cup. "Lord Tran hired us, but he didn't really trust us. Which I guess means that Lord Tran was actually a fairly smart guy. Our job was simple, we were to block one of the side-routes leading out of Moody's holding. Tran and the other lords wanted to rip-out Moody's gang root and branch - no survivors. From our point of view, the job seemed like easy money. We'd sit on our asses while the samurai did the real fighting. Maybe we'd have to deal with a few stragglers."

"So naturally, it all went wrong. As soon as the real fighting started, a lot of Moody's so-called samurai ran. They were way outnumbered and knew it. A bunch ran right into our position and all I can say is thank the Old One they weren't organized into a real fighting formation! Some archers from Lord Kyle's forces were nearby and that was lucky. It turned into a running brawl scattered all over the headlands. We spent as much time chasing down Moody's pack as we did fighting them. Moody's people were desperate and when they finally did fight, it got ugly. My pack of upstarts and trouble-makers lost a lot of sisters. More than we'd ever lost before."

"That was all?" I asked.

Cross shrugged. "I don't know what else to tell you. We fought. We won. We got higher than the moon and had a wild time with Lord Kyle's archers. Then we got paid. That was more or less it."

"Do you know anything about what happened in the holding itself?"

"Not really. Sorry, but we were on the edge of the main battle - not in the middle of it. After it was over, we licked our wounds and held our position until Lord Tran released us from his service."

"You saw nothing unusual at all?"

Cross shook his head in exasperation. "It all happened a long time ago, boy!"

I waved a hand placatingly. "Sorry, didn't mean to nag you."

Downing her drink, Cross accepted my apology with reasonable grace. Then she frowned.

"You know, there was one odd thing," she mused.

"What?"

Cross refilled her cup, then rubbed the side of her neck. "It was right after nightfall. The fighting was over, but we were still blocking that side-route that led out of Moody's holding. Some bottles were being passed around, we were downing a big bag of really good mushrooms, and some of the girls had already started dragging archers off into the bushes. Then this guy - a Folk or Wilder - came walking down the trail towards us just as pretty as you please. He was dressed well, but his clothes had the look of having been soaked and then dried out while being worn. He didn't have any armor or weapons, but he acted like someone who didn't think he was in any kind of danger. And that was kinda weird since an ugly battle had just been fought and he was surrounded by a bunch of mean bitches with bad attitudes."

Then Cross smiled. "Oh, and he was a handsome fellow. At the time, I was young enough to notice something like that. Dark hair and eyes, a touch of gray on his temples, and pale skin. He was a little bedraggled, but he carried himself the way noble-folk do. Either he was important or he was pretty good at making people think he was important. He was older than me, but that made him seem... what's the word? Distinguished?"

I nodded but said nothing. Cross was still rubbing her neck - actually, by then she was scratching it, her hand shifting from one side of her neck to the other.

Cross went on. "I was in charge of the lead section of our pack, so I had to be an adult while the rest of the girls were being hallucinatory trollops. And my orders didn't give me much lee-way - I was supposed to kill anyone coming out the holding. But I figured it would be smart to get some information. So I walked up to tall, dark, and handsome and asked him what the weaponex he thought he was doing. He told me he'd escaped from Moody's gang. He said he was from Erup. He was on a ship that wrecked and he ended up washing ashore. Moody's people supposedly picked him up and decided to see if he was worth a ransom."

"He had an odd accent, so I figured he really was from the other side of the Lant. But the rest of his story didn't sound right to me. Everything we'd heard said that Moody didn't take prisoners or deal in ransoms. And his scent was off - he didn't have one."

Cross put down her cup and began scratching her neck with both hands. Blood appeared on one side of her neck. I tried not to stare at the injury Cross had - apparently without realizing it - inflicting on herself.

"What do you mean, no scent?" I asked carefully. That really didn't sound right.

Cross looked disgruntled. "Just what I said. I got a snoot-full of him and it was like I wasn't talking to anyone at all. I figured that for some kind of Wilder or Scatter power."

Then Cross made a helpless-looking gesture with the hand that was holding her cup. She'd stopped scratching her throat, but there were runnels of blood descending down to her shoulders. Behind me, I could sense my temple guard companion stirring uneasily.

The deep scratches on Cross' throat began to heal almost immediately. But the blood she'd drawn was soaking into the collar and shoulder of her tunic, staining it brown. She seemed to be unaware of what she'd done to herself.

It occurred to me that Mistress Cross wasn't entirely sane.

"Still, the guy wasn't resisting or fighting or even arguing," Cross continued. "Hell, he was just standing there, dead calm and backlit by the flames of Moody's holding, answering any question I asked him. Looking into his eyes was strange. They were so... deep. And it just didn't seem right to kill him, so I told him to wait until Lord Tran, or one of his samurai showed up to question him."

I nodded, encouraging Cross to continue.

Then Cross sighed. "Okay, okay, I wasn't obeying orders and that was kinda weird. Yeah, I was thinking about maybe banging the guy, but it wasn't just about being horny. I was... I guess I was curious. There was something different about him. Something strange."

Glancing down, Cross noticed the blood on her hands and under her nails. She didn't react.

"And then he vanished," Cross said as she continued to off-handedly examine her hands. A baffled look appeared on her face. However, she kept talking.

"I swear, one minute he was standing just a few yards from me, with two of my more sober pack-mates keeping an eye on him. And then he was gone and the two ronin who'd been guarding him were asleep on the ground, cuddled up in each other's arms. I was woozy and felt like I'd dozed off for a few seconds."

Cross frowned. "That had to be a Wilder or Scatter mind-trick, but I honestly couldn't blame him. There was a lot of blood in the air. And maybe he didn't like the way I was looking at him. I wasn't exactly subtle in those days."

I nodded slowly, trying to visualize a younger and even more direct Cross.

"Did he ever tell you his name?" I asked.

"Yeah," Cross replied immediately. By then she was absent-mindedly licking the blood from her fingers. "It was an odd name. Not from around here. Even after all this time, it's still stuck in my head."

"He said his name was Dracula."