As I was about to wake Madi, Pachi suddenly lifted her head, her golden eyes taking me in. Hana, I smell smoke! Wake the others. She stood up and nipped at Tejón’s leg.
I kicked Madi and crossed over to gently shake Alysand. His hand darted out like a viper and gripped my hand. “What is it? It isn’t time for my watch yet.”
I started at my wrist until he noticed and dropped it. Then I explained, “Pachi smelled smoke. Something is wrong.”
No sooner had I finished than the breathy sigh of flames could be heard. Out the side window of the barn, an orange glow blossomed.
Alysand hissed, “Fire! Everyone outside and prepare for an ambush.” He pulled his pistols free and pushed at the back door of the barn. It wouldn’t budge.
The man raced to open the door leading into the house but winced as he touched the doorknob. The fire had already taken the house, it seemed.
We all had weapons in our hands at this point, and Madi was about to hack into the barn door with her axe when Alysand held up a hand. “Wait—strike here instead,” he said, pointing to a support beam on the wall. “Someone has bolstered the doors, but this is old lumber. It shouldn’t take much.”
Madi lifted her axe, and sure enough, in a single strike, she cut through the beam. She followed it with a kick, and the side wall buckled outward, a gust of cold night air filling the room.
Alysand ducked out quickly, and as we were grabbing our gear to follow, three shots rang out.
It took another few kicks to make a hole wide enough for Tejón to follow, but in under a minute, we were standing in the street watching Alysand’s home burn to the ground. Three bodies lay crumpled, one still holding the torch he must have used to light the fire.
Remembering the driftwood roof, I realized how easily the house must have caught fire.
We checked for any other enemies but found none. The men had all been carrying crude rifles. Alysand retrieved and stowed them in his satchel of holding, and we mounted up.
He stood up and ordered, “Follow me and follow closely. Hana, keep your bow ready. If we meet any resistance, fire away, but do not stop.” Then the man wheeled on his horse and galloped away. Pachi and Tejón took off after him.
The streets of Gilsby blurred past us, haunted in the dark.
As we turned a corner, our party startled a group of men holding torches and more rifles.
Alysand’s pistols barked out in challenge and the men in the front slumped to the street, dead on the spot.
Three men remained, one already lifting the long barrel of his gun to fire at Alysand’s back. I launched an arrow at him, piercing his neck from the side. He dropped next to his unwieldy weapon and it discharged, sending sparks across the cobbled street.
I drew and fired another at the man next to him, taking him in the chest. The final man had just enough time to scream as Madi fed him the blade of her axe.
There were no other interruptions, and soon enough, I realized we were headed back to the lighthouse.
I dismounted from Pachi’s back as we stopped at last and watched as Alysand entered the base of the tower and started the walk up the steps. Madi looked at me with a grim expression, and I just shook my head. It was embarrassing and terrible to have been there to witness the gunsinger as he lost every lovely thing in his life.
As we made a pile of our gear and found a place to rest, all that I could hope for was that we would be there when he gained just a little bit of it back.
4: “Madness, as you know, is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.”
— Matilda, the Clown
ALYSAND
The weaponsmith was the first place I planned on stopping by that morning, but when I got there, I saw that the door was locked, and a small closed sign hung up. Yet another of my contacts had been ruined, then. How many of my old friends had died or run away recently?
I walked to the chapel, which was nearby. I wanted at least one more account of this Sheriff Embers before I confronted the man. Information was the sharpest weapon, Corbrae used to say.
As I walked, I passed a little girl walking with her mother. Both had the deep brown eyes that were unique to this part of the world. Not any brown, but one filled with copper threads that went from a sullen dark hue to majestic with a single mote of sunlight. Eyes like Delilah’s.
My chest began to constrict again, so I pushed the thought away. I pressed it back like the guilt that coiled there, a snake that was stronger than I was. It writhed in a mass of questions. What if I hadn’t left to take my last commission? Had she thought of my actions as betrayal? And of course, what had they done to her before ending her life?
Hana and Madi walked behind me. They knew I was a broken thing now and seemed to walk around me like they were halfway across a frozen lake when the ice began to buckle. I couldn’t blame them.
The church’s doors were open. That at least hadn’t changed. Inside the muted harmony of an organ filled the main room. How sound could be so tangible had always been outside my reckoning.
A familiar voice called out, and I turned to see the face of Pastor Hendrick. “Mr. Deschaney, is that you?”
“In the flesh,” I replied and shook his hand. The man was astute as ever. Without asking, he knew that I had heard of Delilah’s end, and had the good taste not to point it out. He simply gripped my hand in his a moment before pressing on.
“We haven’t seen you
