The road stretched on like a ribbon of dust and stubbornness. Banjo—smudged black and white, half-mule, half-nuisance—trotted with an awkward rhythm that seemed nervous, wildly uneven—more dictated by passing animals than by Lark’s reins.

  The saddle creaked as Lark leaned forward, eyes scanning the line of supply wagons moving east. He’d already checked three caravans and a handful of wandering traders. Nothing. Not a single warhorse with Gus’s dark sheen, her Romanesque jaw, her knowing, judgmental eyes.

  Lark bit back a curse and clicked his tongue. Banjo, true to form, halted mid-step and began inspecting a suspiciously shaped rock with the rapt attention of a toddler discovering fire.

  “Please,” Lark muttered, “for the love of all things sacred—just walk in a straight line.”

  The mule sneezed.

  A groan escaped him as he kicked gently at Banjo’s sides. “You are the dumbest thing I’ve ever had to rely on,” he grumbled, but with a worn smile. “But I’ll be damned if I’m walking all the way to Kelor’s Valley on foot again.”

  His eyes swept the fields beside the road. Late spring had brought golden grasses and the occasional blooming flower, but no sign of Gus. Not yet. The ache in his chest was old and steady. Four months was a long time, and he hadn’t exactly said goodbye the first time around.

  The saddlebags jangled with coin. He’d set aside enough—more than enough—to buy her back. If someone had her, they’d part with her. Money always talked, even when morals didn’t.

  Just past midday, the sun kissing the sky’s browning edge, a figure appeared up ahead. A woman, disheveled, sobbing, her dress torn at the hem, waving both arms as if to beckon the stars themselves. Lark tugged Banjo to a stop. The mule protested with a grunt and a sidestep toward a particularly interesting patch of grass.

  “Sir!” The woman’s voice cracked like dry wood, raw and frantic. “Please—help me. My husband, he’s sick—he’s back at our camp, barely breathing—I don’t have coin for medicine and we—”

  She stumbled into the path ahead of him, hair tangled, cheeks flushed from either heat or panic. Her clothes were thin, patched linen stained with road dust and desperation. Lark’s fingers tightened on Banjo’s reins, shoulders going stiff. He didn’t look at her at first. Just stared past her, eyes narrowing on nothing in particular.

  It was a sound he knew too well—that particular kind of pleading, hoarse from travel and grief. He’d heard it a hundred times before. In shattered towns with smoke still curling from the rooftops. In the rain-slick corners of alleys where children cried beside the still forms of their parents.

  She stepped closer, voice dropping, trembling. “I swear—I’m not lying. He’ll die if I don’t bring something back. Please. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Lark turned his gaze on her slowly. There was no cruelty in it—just the tired weight of someone who’d been in such a situation himself, the world was cruel. He held up a hand, stopping her words. “Alright,” he muttered.

  He slid a hand down to the saddlebag at his side, unclasping the pouch tucked beneath the flap. His fingers brushed past the small, reassuring heft of the coin he’d meant for Gus—meant for feed, repairs, and bribes if it came to that. He paused there a moment, the tension in his jaw tightening. A single coin could get her husband through the night. But silver had a habit of vanishing once it left your hand—and sick men rarely stayed saved.

  “How much?” he asked, voice flat.

  She blinked, startled by the question. “Anything. Twenty silver, even—twenty-five, if you can spare it—”

  With a quiet sigh that seemed to deflate his entire frame, Lark fished in the pouch and counted out the coins by touch. One, two, three… twenty-seven. He dropped them into her open palm without flourish, the clink of metal loud against the muted sounds of the road. Enough to buy medicine ten times over—or to vanish into a tavern, if that was the truth.

  Her hands trembled around the silver. She clutched it to her chest as if it might disappear. “Thank you,” she whispered, breath hitching as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh gods, thank you. Thank you—”

  He nodded once and nudged Banjo forward. The mule obeyed with a low grunt, though his long ears swiveled back toward the sobbing woman.

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  Lark didn’t look back.

  “No,” he said, half to Banjo, half to himself. “We’re not helping anyone else today. Just let me be a cold bastard for one hour. Please.”

  By dusk, the town of Kelor’s Valley rose ahead, all timber walls and watchtowers crested with royal blue banners. At its gates stood two guards in the muted bronze of Velmorien’s military, helmets shaped like eagle’s heads and halberds in hand. The line to enter was short, but slow. Too many faces were turned away.

  When it came Lark’s turn, one guard stepped forward, blocking Banjo’s path. “Fee for entry,” he barked.

  Lark narrowed his eyes. “Since when?”

  “Since rebels started blowing holes in our wagons,” the other one muttered.

  Lark faltered momentarily, his eyes swiftly scanning about. He then leaned forward on Banjo, voice casual. “Messenger,” he said. “King’s orders. I’m meant to track down the last supply commissioner. Discussing trade route revisions. Risky stuff. Gotta keep things moving smoothly.”

  “Got papers?”

  “Classified. Coded. And I’m disguised, obviously,” Lark added with a flourish of his cloak, letting the wind catch it like he knew what he was doing. “Can’t go looking like the real deal. I’m a target.”

  The guards exchanged glances. The first scoffed. “You’re wearing torn garments and riding a mule.”

  “It’s called blending in.”

  He smiled, all charm, teeth slightly gritted. “You think rebels are going to suspect someone with a mule named Banjo?”

  The second guard sighed, glancing at his companion. That made Lark nervous.

  “I’m not lying,” Lark replied smoothly. “We’re on the clock, gentlemen. Unless you’d like your commander to find out a pair of gate guards let classified documents rot in the rain?”

  A long pause.

  “…Half fee,” the first guard muttered. “We’ll count it as a messengers’ rate.”

  “Pleasure doing business,” With clenched teeth and a very unfunny smile, Lark dug into his coin pouch again. The woman on the road was a phantom in his mind now. There went the rest of the Gus fund.

  He passed through the gates with Banjo clunking along behind him like an off-tune drum. The town itself was small, no more than a crescent of buildings tucked against a shallow ridge, what it lacked in size, it made up for in color and control. The banners of Velmorien were everywhere—long strips of royal blue fabric emblazoned with the silver double-crown, snapping from iron posts, window shutters, and the arms of every uniformed soldier that walked the streets. Even the crooked weather vane atop the baker’s shop had been replaced with a polished silver crown, glinting like a warning in the sun.

  The town square, once clearly a market hub, now felt like a parade ground. Market stalls stood half-used, many closed altogether, while crates of supplies were stacked in tidy rows beneath canvas awnings printed with the military’s seal. The old fountain in the center of the square had been drained and reinforced with sandbags—it served now as a checkpoint, manned by bored-looking soldiers whose hands never strayed far from their hilts. Even the scent of oil and polish overpowered the usual village smells of hay and fresh bread.

  Lark moved with care, cloak drawn close against the brightness of the banners. The soldiers here were clean-shaven and sharp-eyed, their steel-plated boots ringing off the stones as they patrolled in pairs. Most ignored him, but a few let their gazes linger—more out of habit than suspicion. He kept his head down, weaving through the crowd of uneasy townsfolk, many of whom wore expressions scrubbed raw by caution from the approaching war. Farmers spoke in low voices. Children stayed close to their mothers. Even the inn, a humble stone building with shuttered windows and a sagging roof, flew the blue flag from a bent pole above its door.

  He didn’t ask questions outright—just hinted, steered, listened. A mention of horses at the watering trough. A muttered complaint about large crates of missing grain. A stable boy who gestured northward with a furtive look. Piece by piece, Lark put it together: a supply caravan had passed through just yesterday, heavy with crates and iron-ringed barrels, bound for an outpost near the edge of the highlands.

  There was no time to linger. He slipped into a narrow shop pressed between the smithy and a shuttered home and bartered away what few coins he had left. Salted fish, hard bread, water in a dented tin flask. A half-roll of linen for the travel. When he stepped back into the square, the light had begun to shift—cooling, stretching, casting the flags into long, regal shadows that dragged across the cobbles like cloaks.

  If they left tonight—before the torches were lit and the curfews crept in—he might just catch the caravan at a rest stop.

  Lark took a few required hours to rest against a crumbling wall in the square’s alleyways, watching Banjo nibble half-heartedly at the grass growing from cracks in the cobbled road.

  The mule chewed slowly, ears flicking at every nearby sound—boots on stone, market bells, the distant clang of a blacksmith’s forge. At one point, a bird merely thinking of landing nearby was enough to send Banjo stumbling sideways in fright. Lark didn’t even flinch anymore, the colt must’ve been hardly used.

  “Right,” he muttered, “you’re a beast bred for war, surely.”

  He dug into his travel pouch and pulled free a slightly crumbled biscuit—honey oat, if his memory served. He sighed and extended it toward the mule.

  Banjo froze, sniffed it suspiciously, and then—after much internal deliberation—chomped it from Lark’s hand with a sudden thunk of teeth.

  “Easy, you toothy little bastard—” Lark winced, then chuckled under his breath.

  The bard—if you could even call him that anymore, leaned back against the wall again, shutting his eyes briefly.

  The woman’s voice still haunted the edge of his thoughts. Her desperation. Her trembling hands. It could’ve been a lie—hell, probably was. But in the moment, it hadn’t mattered. He still remembered Maravelle’s eyes, tired and wide, telling to him that night before her sentencing. Find my daughter.

  And now? He was broke, dirty, sore, one warhorse short and stuck with a mule who spooked at butterflies. But—he was also closer than he’d been in four months.

  He cracked one eye open and glanced toward the street outside the alley. Soldiers in navy tabards marched past in crisp lines, boots clapping stone in practiced rhythm. A merchant was haggling over carrot prices with a red-faced woman. A child tugged on his mother’s sleeve, pointing to a stray dog with delight.

  Lark exhaled, stretching his legs out across the uneven stones. He’d give it a few more minutes. Just a few. Then he’d get moving across town, across the damn continent if that’s what it took. And finally, start the journey he both yearned for and dreaded.