As Jan watched the wax drip through the keyhole into the wine glass he'd half filled with water, he heard her voice cackling at him out of the depths of his memory.

A maiden's trick! Foolishness! They're the fools, Jasiek. You'll see. The shadows will speak all the future to us, the ones who know.

Old Zofia's so-called wisdom had failed him at every turn. But still, every time he felt uncertain, felt bored and restless and full of spite at whatever trap he'd fallen into, Jan dripped wax through a keyhole.

That time, it was plain yellow-white beeswax from one of the abbey's hives. One of the kitchen candles. As Jan made note of the shape the wax cooled into at the bottom of the wine glass, he wondered if it being beeswax made any difference. It was all superstition, of course, but Jan had seen superstition come snarling to life more times than he could count. Something in his gut told him that fate would be reluctant to give up its secrets without a proper sacrifice of life from a tallow candle.

The shape Jan saw through the water, through the keyhole, only confirmed his hunch. No skull, no serpent, no phoenix or lamb or chalice. Just a blob without any remarkable features gathered up in the well of the glass. Maybe the shadows it cast would be more promising. Setting aside the key and the candle, Jan dipped his fingers into the glass.

Just in time to receive a sharp rap on his shoulder, one that jostled him badly enough to send the glass flying.

"Neglecting your duties for this nonsense again, Father?"

Cringing, scrambling to right the glass and slapping a sheepish smile on his face, Jan swiveled on his stool to face the cold, accusing voice from behind him. And ducked his head, piously, as a man of God rightly should in the presence of as august a personage as the Abbess of Saint-Martin.

"My apologies, Reverend Mother," Jan murmured, eyes cast down. But just for a second. It was never a good idea to take your eyes off the Abbess for more than a few seconds, not if one wanted to escape her wrath without suffering a back full of bruises.

She was scowling at him, her habit pulled down low over her forehead in a severe slate gray line. But Jan's attention was more focused on the crozier she'd already rapped him once with. Technically something she should have only been carrying on official occasions, but the Abbess wasn't the sort of woman who liked to go about unarmed. Jan could respect her for that much, at least.

"Oblate d'Avignon was to be at his Latin lessons fifteen minutes ago. I'd assumed you'd gotten him involved in some uncouth business. But it's worse than that, apparently," she added, frowning at the hardened lump of wax and puddle of water on the kitchen table.

"Just trying to keep myself busy, Reverend Mother," Jan said. Cheeks hurting from the embarrassed front he was putting on, he cursed himself for having forgotten the d'Avignon boy's schedule once again. He wasn't some kind of nursemaid. But all strategies came with their corresponding cost. "A bit of foolishness from back home. I'll clean it up before fetching him. Out in the garden, probably."

The Abbess's eyes narrowed further as she contemplatively tapped a slow, deliberate rhythm against the kitchen flagstones with the butt of her crozier. Jan would have been worried about it being the prelude to some kind of spell, had he not been extremely familiar with the Abbess's magic. She never wasted her time on indirect methods. With her, it was always straight for the throat. "From home. Interesting."

Jan waved her off and got to his feet, swiping his sleeve over the damp tabletop and palming the lump of wax with the same gesture. "Peasant superstition. I wouldn't expect someone like you to know anything about it, Reverend Mother."

With a final rap of her crozier, the Abbess turned on her heel and swept out of the kitchen. Pocketing the wine glass as well as the wax for later, Jan slipped out the back door of the kitchen and into the vegetable garden in search of his charge.

He'd chosen the wrong time of year to consult the wax, even if Zofia was insistent on it being unimportant. It wasn't a bleak, frigid November afternoon, the first drifts of winter already threatening at the door. Not that it ever got that cold in France. It was early summer, already too balmy for Jan's tastes, the long rows of vegetables planted by the brothers and sisters well-established and hemmed in by hedgerows that came to Jan's shoulders.

Jan peaked over them, searching the greenery for the d'Avignon boy. He was always scrambling about down on his knees, whether he was chasing after some bug that'd escaped him during Matins in the abbey chapel or peeking under leaves for the first signs of cucumbers and melons. Not an auspicious character trait for a young lordling, but Jan thought there was potential there. It'd take less work to teach him how to conceal his intentions if his base instinct was to be groveling and meek.

Jan spotted movement at the edge of the vegetable garden through the gap in the hedges that led over into the wild, less formal pleasure garden. There was a pond in it that connected, through a narrow, stagnant stream, to one of the minor tributaries of the Loire. Fiddling with the lump of wax in his pocket, Jan headed over. It wasn't the d'Avignon boy peeking out at him. But it was his handiwork nevertheless.

It had been a perfectly ordinary pond turtle, once upon a time. But then Mirk had decided to get himself involved. The thing's shell had been pockmarked all over with leeches, and though Jan had told him again and again that the turtle couldn't feel a thing, Mirk had been despondent. The boy had sat with his feet in the stream and the turtle in his lap for a full hour, somehow managing to talk the leeches into letting go and depositing them one by one back into the water. The leeches were the first sign that the boy's magic was breaking through the binding spell Jan had put on him as an infant. The second was the turtle itself.

"Get out of here," Jan growled at it, nudging its head with the toe of his boot. The turtle, now up to Jan's knees and as big across as he was tall, turned one watery, baleful eye in his direction. But it didn't stop nosing through the fresh heads of cabbage at the edge of the vegetable garden. "Stop it, or else I'll let them make you into soup this fall."

It was an empty threat and both of them knew it. Jan sighed, his hands on his hips as he watched the turtle munch away. Friedrich, the boy said the turtle was called. Not Frédéric. He'd been adamant about that. How a Prussian turtle had ended up in the Loire, Jan hadn't a clue. "Where is he? You could at least be that useful."

The boy liked to do his lessons sunning himself on the turtle's back. But there was no sign of him there that day, nor was there any trace of him on the banks of the pond or up in the oak trees that ringed it. Jan was certain Mirk had to be outside somewhere; the instant the ice cleared off the pond in the spring, it was impossible to keep the child indoors. Maybe he was back in the stables, tending to the rest of the menagerie the Abbess indulged him in.

A muffled shriek pierced the pastoral stillness of the abbey's gardens. Jan cocked his head to one side to listen, flicking his hands in his pockets, loosening his rings. The road that ran up to the abbey, back near the stables. It had to be.

Jan ran for the stables, keeping his hands jammed in his pockets, the rings loose enough around his fingers for him to cast out his magical senses. There was a twinge of something up ahead, though it was too faint for Jan to make out what it was. Something yellow-green and growing ever warmer. Building up to something. Jan ran faster.

He arrived at the road just in time to feel the magic spike, flaring with a spark of life-giving potential that made Jan cringe and jam his rings back on his fingers. The shrieking separated out into words, stammered out through sobs, as Jan approached the gate standing half-open at the far side of the stables.

"I told you not to go by the road, Madame! Danger! Danger! Madame, please, Madame, wake up..."

The scene out in the road was less gruesome than Jan had been expecting. A cart laden with wine barrels, driven by a befuddled brother who was wringing his hat in his hands, had pulled over to the side of the road. Mirk was in the center of it, something white and feathery cradled in his arms.

"Mirk! What happened?" Jan called out to him, though he kept his distance. That magic had been strong. Too strong to be coming from a pudgy, mud-streaked, untrained child.

The boy didn't seem to hear him. But his hellhound did. The creature was crouched beside the boy, sniffing at his hair, sparks racing down its back as it flicked its tail back and forth in consternation. The thing bared its teeth at Jan, daring him to come closer.

"Madame, wake up, please..."

"I'm so sorry, Father," the monk called out from his perch atop his wagon. Jan couldn't help but notice that the man didn't have the nerve to hop down and help the boy. It made Jan wonder if the brother could feel the same magic at work he had. "I didn't see it..."

The boy's shrieking rose to a higher, demanding pitch, as he buried his face in the white thing cradled in his arms. "Madame! You can't die!"

That time the magic was so strong it sent Jan reeling backwards into the gate. It left a smell of mingled iron and cut grass in the air, along with a wiff of sulfur from the hellhound, which went skittering away from its master with a yelp. A second later, there was a frantic honking, accompanied by the flapping of wings.

The white thing struggled out of Mirk's arms, revealing itself to be the head of the abbey's mob of ill-tempered geese. The ones Brother Jacques had purchased three years ago with the intention of force feeding for pâté. Mirk had ordered that they be left alone. The boy swiped at his eyes with the sleeves of his robes, laughing through the last of his tears as the goose straightened its feathers and glared around at all of them. Its neck was still streaked with blood.

"Madame...Madame, you need to be more careful..."

Cautiously, giving the boy and his two companions a wide berth, Jan drew closer. "Mirk? What's wrong?"

Abruptly, the boy straightened up, doing his best to bow to Jan while still on his knees. There was blood all over the front of his robes too. "Father Jean! I'm so sorry! I know I had Latin lessons with Brother Martin, but Madame..."

The goose turned and hissed at Mirk, but it let him stroke its back nevertheless. Mirk insisted on calling the creature Madame Niege, like it was a member of some kind of stiff-necked goose nobility. Considering the turtle with an emperor's name back in the garden, Jan was almost inclined to give the boy the benefit of the doubt.

"Tell me what happened, my boy," Jan said, trying to cobble together his own mask, that of the wise, even-tempered man of God. Not at all a man who'd been on the brink of punching the soul out of whoever had tried to take the boy he'd spent the last four years cultivating from him.

"I told Madame that it wasn't safe to go out in the road. But she never listens! She...she was...hurt. I think. But I must have been mistaken. Maybe some wine spilled?" Mirk hazarded, running his fingers through the blood on the goose's neck and chest.

"I'm sure that must be it, Oblate d'Avignon," the brother who'd been driving the cart that had nearly done the goose in said, finally hopping down out of the seat to check on his casks. "But did you give me a fright! I thought I'd run you over."

Mirk laughed again as the goose let out an indignant honk and gave up on all of them, waddling off toward the gate it'd ran out of. The boy always insisted on covering his mouth with his fingers every time he giggled. A bad habit Jan had been trying to talk the child out of for as long as he'd known him. "I'm not a silly goose, not like Madame. But everyone's fine now! Everything's fine!"

Though Jan put on a show of laughing along with the boy, with the brother as he checked through his casks, all Jan felt was a sinking ache in the pit of his stomach. Nothing was fine, not at all. Things were advancing far more rapidly than Jan had expected. And, from the looks of things, that time he'd chosen to meddle with something larger than he'd expected.

That time, it'd just been a goose the boy had brought back to life with his magic. Who knew what he'd be capable of once the bindings keeping it in check had fully gone?

As soon as the boy was sent off to his lessons, Jan knew that he had to go talk to Senkov. Whether he wanted to deal with that headache or not.

- - -

The tannery skulked on the outskirts of Nantes, crouched near the Loire like a black, festering boil at the end of an elegant lady's fingertip. Jan had been able to smell it on the wind from over two miles away. There was a Guild teleportation portal in town he could have used, but he thought it best not to chance it. The d'Avignon's coastal estate was half a day's coach ride away, but the boy's mother was an irrepressible socialite. And there was no telling what church steeple Mikael had decided to glower down upon the mortals from that day.

As he approached the tannery, Jan drew a scarf out of the pocket of his cassock, wrapping it around his neck and over his mouth and nose before pulling up the hood of his cloak. It was less a defense against the smell and more an effort to look properly disreputable. He made sure all the marks of his supposed religious order were covered, both with the scarf and the cloak, before knocking at the tannery's rear door.

Jan heard a curse from beyond the door, followed by stomping. The shutter over the door's narrow window flew back.

"I told you, we're all full up on piss today, you...oh."

Jan nodded in acknowledgement, only slightly.

"Well?"

His English was rusty after so many decades among the French. "No chains to bind us."

At least the response was equally slurred, full of throaty rs and raspy vowels. "No masters to serve."

Then the tanner switched back to French, cracking the door but not waiting for Jan to come inside. "Fucking English! Day, night, afternoon, it's never a good time! Leave the coin on the stove and lock the door after you!"

Jan crept in past the threshold and did as he was told. At least he didn't have to slog through all the tannery's vats of lye and piss to get to the passage. It was only a few steps from the stove, near the cloakroom, marked by a black pentagram scrawled on the wall with a bit of charcoal. Jan shoved back his sleeve, pressed the black acorn tattooed near his elbow to the pentagram, and slipped through the wall, into the Abyss.

He'd always hated Abyssal teleportation portals. They always yanked on his magic no matter how many rings he wore and put him in a bloody mood. When the Watch idiot on the other side of the portal threw out an arm to check him, Jan swiftly twisted it aside and stamped hard on the man's instep.

"Oi! Who's that then?"

Before Jan could answer the barkeep, before he could get his bearings and take stock of how the Black Hare's interior had changed over the last five years, someone else answered for him.

"You can't be serious, Giles! How could you not remember him?" That same someone, someone much faster than the guard and who had the benefit of not having just been teleported, grabbed hold of Jan's wrist before he could yank down his sleeve He flashed the acorn tattoo proudly at the bartender. Like a badge of honor. "Watch your women and purses, comrades! The Black Bastard of Breslau walks among us once more!"

The bartender — the same miserable, hunched-over, one armed man who'd been there ever since the City had made the jump across the Channel — shook the fig at Jan's captor and went back to pouring pints. Gritting his teeth, Jan yanked his wrist out of his grasp and turned to face him.

"It's Wrocław, and you know it."

Senkov returned his scowl with a grin, taking Jan's face in his hands and giving him a firm smack of a kiss on both cheeks before he could duck away. Thankfully, the scarf saved him from the worst of it. "Jan! My dear, sweet, murdering Jasiek! Come, I've saved us both a seat by the fire. The weather's terrible, as always. Looks like you remembered."

"I didn't," Jan grumbled, pulling the scarf down off his face but not drawing back his hood. It was cold in there, the light filtering through the pub's one, grimy window a sullen gray. Despite everything, it brightened some part of Jan's heart that always wilted in the effervescent French sunshine. "I had to look the part. That damn tanner never lets anyone in who doesn't look like they're after your purse."

"Up to no good, then? The usual?" Senkov refused to keep his hands off him. He led Jan by the elbow toward the fire and the two chairs that'd been pulled up beside it. The fact that no one in the Black Hare had dared to steal either of them the moment Senkov had gotten up was proof enough for Jan that Senkov hadn't lost his touch.

"The usual." Jan flopped into the one facing the pub's door, just in case. The chairs weren't the only business Senkov had been up to while he'd been waiting. On a stool between them, a bottle of clear liquor and two glasses stood guard over a pair of meat pies Jan knew would still be gritty and miserable, five years since he'd last sampled them. Jan poured himself a glass and took up one of the pies nevertheless. Just as he wearied of France's good cheer, he also found the divine skills of Brother Benoit in the abbey's kitchen oddly grating. After several mortal lifetimes spent scraping by on the worst the world had to offer, being showered with unrelenting goodness always made Jan feel as if the other shoe was about to drop.

"It's the same here," Senkov said, pouring himself a glass but ignoring the remaining pie. "The boys have all but declared war on our newest Comrade. I'll be lucky if they don't all get themselves killed within the fortnight."

"I told you they were more trouble than they were worth." Jan took a bite of the pie, grimacing first at the sour notes of bad turnip, then at the acrid sting of the gin he washed them away with. He'd always hated gin.

Senkov snorted, crossing his legs at the knee and flicking his long, curling ponytail back over his shoulder with a pointed gesture at Jan. "Since you've come to see me, dear Jasiek, your own little scheme can't be faring much better."

"That's half your fault. Your pet monster's spell is falling apart."

"As is only inevitable. I told you from the start, the boy's incorruptable, for a monster. I'm amazed it's lasted more than ten years."

Jan ate his way through the rest of the pie, the already cold gravy sticking in his throat, forcing him to refill his glass. And Senkov sat silent across the fire from him, idly swirling his own drink rather than sipping at it, waiting for Jan to crack. Telling himself that he was only giving in because the Abbess expected him back as soon as possible, Jan gave it up with a sigh. "He brought a goose back to life yesterday."

Senkov cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him. "A goose? I suppose it could be worse..."

"The goose is just the beginning, no doubt. I managed to hide that one from the Abbess, but there's no hiding that damn turtle."

"Another thrall of his?"

"He didn't resurrect that one. But it's grown to the size of a pony. Friedrich," Jan muttered under his breath, thinking for a moment of what culinary wonders Brother Benoit could accomplish with the creature.

"Friedrich?"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jan shrugged. "I'm sure it's nothing."

"K'aekniv knocked the head clean off a Friedrich last spring..."

"We've got to do something with the boy," Jan said. "As soon as the Abbess puts it all together, she'll write to the boy's family. And there's no telling what they'll do with him then."

"No chance of them leaving him with the god botherers?" Senkov asked, finally deigning to take a sip of his gin at the thought of it.

Spinning the largest of his rings, an ugly but effective silver band set with a hunk of unpolished obsidian, around his thumb, Jan considered the options. "That's a possibility. But they'll start training him for a bishopric and he'll be out of reach. I can lie my way into the abbey, but doing that in Rome would be..."

"Dreadful," Senkov finished for him, with a firm shake of his head. "What else?"

"Once they know he's a mage, he becomes much more marriageable. But that would mean packing him off to a guild for finishing." Jan squinted into the fire as he tried to scrape his foggy knowledge of the boy's family tree into order. "Hard to say which one, since we don't know how the magic will manifest, not exactly. Earth magic, of course. Healing, probably, considering that stunt with the goose. But no one else in his clan is a healer, so they'd have to stretch to find their opening."

"You'd pass for a healer even less than you pass for a priest."

"I'm doing a fine enough job passing for a priest," Jan shot back crossly, giving up on his glass and reaching for the bottle of gin. "But you're right. We have to keep him out of the guilds and away from the Vatican if we want to keep a hold on him."

"And how would one accomplish that with a noble brat?"

After sucking down a finger or two, Jan tucked the bottle of gin under his arm and leaned forward to pick up the second pie left on the stool beside the fire. As he spoke, he tore chunks of crust off its edges, arranging them to keep his mental map of the boy's relations fixed in his mind. "His mother is the oldest. And though she married into power, she didn't marry into court influence. The mages don't give a damn about the Empire, at least not yet. Two sisters next, one married some upstart fire mage, the other some artificer. Nothing remarkable. Which leaves..."

Jan frowned down at the crumb he'd set off to one side, thinking.

"Which leaves?" Senkov prompted. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the shadow of his tall, lanky form hunching closer. The fact that Jan had his undivided interest was more worrisome than reassuring.

"The youngest. Marc, his namesake. Unmarried."

"And why is that?"

"Because he's a useless rake." Jan said, repeating the same words he'd so often heard the Abbess grumble to herself when contemplating letters from the boy's mother. "So useless that no one will touch him, even though he stands to inherit the fortune."

"And the staff," Senkov added, breaking off a crumb of his own and placing it at the head of all the ones Jan had meticulously arranged across the stool. "That's the ticket. Whatever idiot ends up holding it holds all the cards. We need that staff. If the uncle's a useless rake, then he's perfect for the K'maneda. Won't get along with my boys, but we can work around that. Give up on the boy and go after the uncle. I'm sure you'll make a much better rake than you do a priest."

Jan squinted down at the crumbs, shaking his head. "It won't work. I'm sure of it."

"Whyever not? Don't tell me you're actually starting to believe any of that religious rubbish..."

"I touched that staff once. It turned my hair white and I couldn't stand up for three weeks. Whatever magic's in it, it won't listen to just anyone."

Senkov snorted, his shadow shifting back away from the stool. "If the thing goes for morals, then I'll grant that it wouldn't listen to you. But that's what makes you fun."

"I'm sure the grandfather is using it to stay alive, somehow. With his limited potential, he should have been dead two hundred years ago. He'll keep himself around until he finds someone fit to pass it on to. And I promise you, it won't be his son. Even Jean-Luc's not that reckless. Which means..."

"...which means we're waiting another thirty years for one of the other hellspawn to show promise. Do you like the Church that much, dear Jasiek? Or you could always just come home where you belong..."

Jan ignored the pleading lilt to Senkov's voice, spinning his ring again as he contemplated his options. Only one stood out to him. One that he knew was a gamble. One that he knew Senkov would love. Just thinking of it made Jan sigh and lean forward, holding out the bottle of gin. Senkov accepted the top off with a chuckle, after which Jan emptied the bottle himself. He brought it down hard atop the last of the crumbs marching across the top of the stool.

"Which means we need to make sure that Seigneur d'Avignon passes the staff to the right person. Soon. Uncle Marc the rake needs to go."

Senkov let out a delighted curse and clapped his hands. "There's my dear, lovely, murdering Jasiek! Freed from the shackles of the priesthood at last! Not that being a priest has ever kept anyone from murdering, really..."

Jan finally looked up at Senkov, returning his toothsome grin with a scowl. "Don't get so excited. It still might not work. There's another two or three grandsons floating around. None of them Earth mages, but if they show some other kind of acumen..."

"If I buy you another bottle, will you shut up and be fun again for once?"

Flopping back into his chair, Jan gave a weary nod of assent.

"Barmaid! Bring over another bottle of your finest! We've got a murder to plan!" Senkov crowed at the barmaid, who judiciously kept her distance. Not that Senkov had ever showed any interest in barmaids. But every barmaid who lasted more than three months at the Black Hare learned fast that Senkov was best avoided.

Senkov didn't have designs on anyone in the tavern, not that afternoon. Not when he was there for the first time in half a decade. Senkov's eyes, shimmering with that odd, golden magic of his, locked back on Jan as he emptied his own glass. "Now! About that murder. Surely you'll need a disguise to pull it off. What do you think of going red again?"

Jan glowered at him, crossing his legs and grimly staring back off into the fire as he awaited his second bottle. "I hate red. Black is easiest. Or brown."

"Come on, Jasiek...think of how well it went off that one time in Salzburg…"

"No red. That's final."

- - -

"I'm going to kill him next."

But not if the hangover Senkov had given him killed him first. Jan should have known better than to accept a second bottle of the Black Hare's worst. Or a third. After the fifth, everything became one stomach-churning, cackling blur that ended with Jan sprawled atop a bed he didn't recognize, tangled up in a heap of discarded dresses. For an instant, Jan had thought the last two decades of playing at celibacy had caught up to him. Then he'd realized he was stuffed in a dress himself. And that the mass of red curls on his pillow were his own.

Jan clawed the long, ruddy locks back out of his eyes, cursing himself and cursing the weather. The one day it would have paid for it to be sunny and peaceful in the valley of the Loire, the wind had to be howling, the oppressive flat gray of the clouds overhead reminding Jan of the oppressive gray line of the Abbess's habit across her forehead. He'd intended on making an appearance at Terce to better establish his alibi. But there'd be no hiding his hangover, not without the judicious use of magic.

Or those damnable red curls.

He'd abandoned the City for good reason. But somehow it always took something like this to make Jan remember why even the life of a priest was better than allowing himself to get wrapped back up in Senkov's scheming.

Jan pinched both his cheeks, hard, half to keep himself from slipping into his usual hungover brooding, half to make sure that they'd look as rosy and plump as possible. He'd never trusted his work to magic, to glamors and masks made out of the skin of some unfortunate creature or tramp. When he decided to commit to a ruse, he embodied his character fully, with his own flesh. And Marc Jean-Pierre Auguste d'Avignon wasn't going to stop on his way to his afternoon card game for just any tart who wandered into the woods that separated his familial estate from town.

At least the cold wind and the miserable drizzle gave Jan a fitting excuse to bundle up a bit. He hadn't even needed to dig his old prosthetics out of the trunk Senkov still had stashed in the closet of his quarters. A few sufficiently bulbous bottles served his purposes just fine underneath his sopping wet cloak and dress. An observant man would have been able to spot the unnatural rigidity in them easily, but if the letters from the d'Avignon boy's mother were anything to go by, Marc hadn't been sober in at least thirty years.

That aside, having to put some actual work into his ruse might finally help clear away the cobwebs of his own bender.

Jan paused at the crest of a hill, peering down into the wooded valley that lay between the Lis de la Rivière and the small provincial village that'd sprung up on the other side of it to service the Seigneur's fields and needs. From Annette d'Avignon's letters, Jan knew that the woods were stocked with various magical and mundane beasts to entertain the young heir's passion for the hunt. Mortal humans weren't forbidden from entering, but word got around fast in the village that those who entered Seigneur d'Avignon's forests usually paid a price that was far greater than the ones imposed by the Seigneur for poaching. No one but an outsider would be foolish enough to be caught wandering alone on its tracks.

Before heading down into the wooded vale, Jan paused to check that all the parts of his ruse were in place. He slapped his hands against the pads belted to his hips, bit his lips a little to add to their color and fullness. He cleared his throat and ran his voice up and down the scales, lilting along in a pleasant French that was at least two octaves higher than his usual voice. And he did his best to beat his curls into some kind of order, leaving them hanging damp and limp around his face to frame it, to make it look softer. Then he descended into the valley, putting a deliberate sway in his step to keep himself in the right mindset. Even if there wasn't a soul to be seen out on the road on such a blustery, miserable morning.

Marguerite. He was Marguerite, and Marguerite was lost and cold and desperately afraid. Jan allowed his head to hang low and his shoulders to hunch as he trudged off into the woods.

A half hour later, he was in the thick of it. Two larger roads bisected the woods, one connecting the d'Avignon estate to the village, the other the one Jan had headed down from the main road that linked the two outposts of civilization to the royal road that connected Tours to Orléans and then on to Paris. When he reached the point where the two crossed, Jan stopped to listen.

The wind was still howling, knocking the branches of the grove against each other and flattening the grass that grew thick and lush in the ditches on either side of the road. But over it, very faintly, Jan could hear the drumming of hooves. Smiling to himself, he dumped the contents of the basket he had hooked in the crook of his arm into the ditch.

He was still trying to gather all the bottles and and bundles when the hoofbeats reached him, coming to a halt with a curse and the sharp crack of a riding crop. Jan didn't yet look up, keeping himself stooped over his fallen wares. A peasant, after all, was a small, worthless thing in the eyes of a highborn son. Something that wasn't supposed to speak unless spoken to.

Even a stranger to those woods would have known at a glance that the rider who'd come to a stop in the middle of the road was the kind of person a peasant didn't speak to first. Not unless they wanted to have that riding crop used on them, much more harshly than it was used on a prized thoroughbred.

Jan made a point to stick out his padded ass as far as he could while he kept stacking his things back in his basket. According to rumor, the heir to the d'Avignon fortune was fond of fine asses. Jan's own research, for once, not something gleaned from complaints to the Abbess.

"You there," a low voice, still phlegmy from a long night spent boozing, called out to Jan. "What are you doing here? This is d'Avignon property."

Jan cleared the hungover phlegm from his own throat with a frightened squeak before speaking up in that contrived, pleasant voice he'd been practicing all morning, dropping his basket once more in mock fright and curtseying low. "Beg pardon, milord, I didn't know! I'll leave right away! I didn't know..."

Jan heard Marc scoff and then spit. But he kept his smile shy, wide, and terrified instead of grimacing like he wanted to. "You're not from here?"

"Beg milord's pardon, no. I am from Rennes, milord. Looking to go to south for work. I didn't know I wasn't on the king's road anymore, honest, milord. I apologize."

He curtseyed again. But this time he raised his head a little, so that the lordling could get a look at his face, his hands clasped tightly at his waist, elbows pressing his bottle breasts closer together to make them more appealing. Jan made eye contact with Marc d'Avignon's horse rather than the man himself. A fine dappled gray stallion with fire in its eyes, a fire that the lord was keeping in check only with his knees at the moment rather than his riding crop. Jan doubted he needed the crop at all to control the animal. Marc was a fine horseman. He just relished a good beating, and if there wasn't a person around to bear the brunt of it, an animal would suffice.

Jan could feel the weight of Marc's stare. But he couldn't feel anything of his potential. He subtly slid the big chip of obsidian a hair off his thumb beneath the sopping sleeve of his dress, giving himself just enough room to sense the lordling but not create enough of a magical signature himself that the lordling could sense him. Not that it likely mattered. Marc's chaotic Earth magic was so addled by his hangover Jan doubted he could make much use of it. The smile on Jan's face grew a touch wider.

"These woods are dangerous. I'll escort you back to the king's road," Marc sniffed. And then, just as Jan had hoped, he heard the thump of two fine leather boots dropping onto the muck of the road as he slid off his stallion's back. "But I don't have time to waste walking. Get on."

Finally, Jan allowed himself to sneak a peak at Marc's face. There was only the faintest family resemblance between Mirk and his namesake. They had the same arching, expressive brows, but Marc's were pulled down in an appraising, critical sort of contempt, his tight-lipped smile almost a sneer. And the two of them shared the same full, round cheeks, though Marc's were blotchy and bloated from all his drinking. He'd be handsome enough if he ever managed to sober up for an afternoon, Jan supposed.

But no mundane or magical tonic against drink could cure poor manners. Marc didn't move to offer Jan a hand; he waved dismissively at the horse as he continued to contemplate Jan's padded ass and bottle breasts. It had started to rain properly again. Jan hoped it made his false ass look appealing enough to distract from how rigid his supposed breasts were.

"Milord," Jan protested, dipping into yet another curtsey, his basket forgotten in the ditch by the roadside. "I wouldn't dare impose. Just point the way, and I'll go at once, milord."

"Get on the horse," the lordling barked. "Or I'll make sure the gui...the things in the woods find you."

Jan pretended not to notice the harshness in Marc's voice. Or the fact that he'd nearly named the creatures his father had stocked the woods with for the lordling's hunt — guivres, giant snake-like reptiles that were as at home in the woods as they were in the Loire. Marc must not have been certain whether he was a hedge mage or a mortal. Jan let himself cast another shy glance at the lordling's face, batting his eyelashes and covering his mouth with one hand just like the man's nephew did to hide his giggles. "Begging your pardon, milord, but I don't know how to ride. My family's never been wealthy enough for a horse."

Finally, something approaching a genuine smile managed to make its way onto Marc's face as he held out his hand. "I'll ride behind you. Give me your hand and I'll boost you up."

Marc had made his choice, had decided groping at this wayward peasant woman on his way to cards would be a pleasant enough diversion. Jan let the grin fully emerge onto his face as he considered the lordling's outstretched hand, hoping it didn't come across too wolfish. "Milord, I don't deserve this kindness. But if you insist..."

"I do insist."

"Then I'll go with you, milord. Thank you so much for your kindness."

Dipping his head and curtseying again, Jan took Marc's hand in his right. And with a flick of his wrist, he shook the rings off his left hand and moved in for the kill.

It wasn't the fight Jan had hoped for. The lordling was as hungover as he appeared, and his attempts at groping for the sword at his waist were sloppy and slow. And Marc had no idea who he was dealing with. Not a wayward peasant woman, not even a bandit in disguise. The Black Bastard of Wrocław, or Breslau, depending on which language the person whispering about Jan over their pints cursed his name in. Jan's punch landed true, in the center of Marc's chest. With a shower of black sparks, it continued straight on through him.

As Marc's body fell into a lifeless heap at Jan's feet, he examined the soul clenched in his left hand. A truly pathetic sight. Even unburdened of his drink addled body, Marc didn't have the heart to resist Jan's will. His soul was a muddy, ugly dark green thing that wavered in Jan's grasp. As if the man couldn't decide whether passing on might just create more problems for him than haunting the woods alongside the creatures his noble father had snared. Scoffing, Jan flicked the rings off his right hand as well before reaching down the front of his dress for one of his bottle breasts.

"You really aren't worth keeping," Jan commented to the spirit wriggling despondently in his hand, pulling the cork out of the bottle with his teeth. "Poor color, no spark. But if your useless father decides to make up with Rouzet, I'll never hear the end of it."

Though at least that would be interesting. The whole miserable, damp affair out in Seigneur d'Avignon's woods had been a disappointment through and through. There'd been no fight to set Jan's blood pounding in his ears again; he hadn't needed to do much more than bat his eyelashes a few times to get Marc's guard down. Jan hadn't added a soul to his collection in nearly thirty years, and he hadn't cast off all his rings in at least five. It was a shame that he'd needed to break his spell of good behavior with something so disappointing. As he stuffed Marc's soul into the bottle, Jan watched the dead lordling's soul seethe and wriggle like a wayward bit of rancid smog against the glass.

"I'll put you at the bottom next to the baron. He liked cards too, you know. Maybe you'll come up with something to chat about."

Plugging the cork back in the bottle, Jan tucked it down the front of his dress, against his heart. Now that the dead lordling had begun to appreciate his predicament, he'd found enough spirit to flail against the glass wall of his eternal prison in a way that Jan found pleasing. It put a smile back on his face as he finished up the rest of his business. The stallion, much more clever than its rider, had bolted for home at the feel of Jan's unbound magic. Which left Jan with nothing to deal with but Marc's dead, soulless body.

For a moment, Jan considered the oversized emerald ring on the dead lordling's smallest finger. Tempting, but not worth the trouble of enchanting it and dealing with the aftermath, should any of Marc's relations be observant enough to put the pieces together. Instead, Jan drew a different bottle out from under his dress, that one full of bourbon. He dumped it out atop Marc's body, making sure to get some in his mouth that was still frozen agape in shock.

"It's all such a waste," Jan sighed, as he put the second bottle back. Then he knelt down beside the body, putting all his unspent spite and energy into breaking the corpse's neck. "Let's hope you at least lead to something more interesting in the long term."

In the more immediate future, however, Jan had much thornier problems to deal with than the former heir to the d'Avignon name. Namely, the dead lordling's nephew, the Abbess of Saint-Martin, and his accursed head full of red curls, in that order. Drawing the hood of his cloak up against the rain, Jan collected his rings from the muck of the road, put his basket full of provisions back in the crook of his elbow, and headed back toward town before Marc d'Avignon's retainers could ride out into the forest to find out what had become of their master.

- - -

"Your letters, Oblate d'Avignon."

The boy's eyes lit up with delight at the packet of correspondence the brother brought to him, almost forgetting to dip his head and chirp his thanks in his eagerness to paw through the stack of wax-sealed envelopes.

Fine summer sunshine had returned to the valley of the Loire after that unseasonable spell of cloudy and rainy weather, and Mirk was taking full advantage of it. The only times Jan had seen him willingly go indoors over the last week had been for Mass and the celebration of the Hours. The boy took all his meals, did all his studies, and only accepted chores that kept him out in the garden or the stables, in the company of the plants and his menagerie. At present, he was seated crosslegged atop the shell of that damn giant turtle of his with the Prussian name, his bare toes wriggling with delight as he flicked through the letters.

Jan almost felt bad for him. Almost.

He kept his hands clasped behind his back as he stood off to one side, pretending to contemplate the abbey's burgeoning trellises of grean beans and peas as he watched Mirk sort his letters out of the corner of his eye. They'd been struggling through the boy's Latin for half the morning, but Jan had a reputation for being a mild-mannered tutor. Mirk had done enough work to merit a break to see who'd written to him.

"Oh! A letter from grand-père!" Mirk gasped, casting the rest of his letters aside in favor of the one with the large, drippy emerald wax seal on its back. "Usually he only ever writes at Christmas and Easter...I wonder what's happened?"

"Lord only knows," Jan murmured, fighting to keep the pleasant smile on his face as the boy pried up the seal and drew out the sheet of fine, creamy parchment inside. The script scrawled on both sides of it, full of blots and written on a severe slant, didn't match the quality of the paper. After nearly four hundred years among the nobility, the man still wrote like a peasant who'd just learned to read. It'd been the first curiosity that had brought Jean-Luc d'Avignon to Jan's attention as he'd wandered about France's salons and churchyards, looking for something — anything — worth wasting the dwindling years of his interminable life on.

The boy held the letter up close to his face as he tried to make sense of his grandfather's handwriting. "Maybe Uncle Marc is finally getting married? It's the best time of year for a wedding...I hope he remembers to invite me..."

"If you go as you are, they'll all think the Seigneur has invited a representative from the Porte," Jan joked. Even though the summer was just beginning, Mirk's limbs and face were as tanned as any peasant laborer's by the end of the season. It was a battle Jan had given up on fighting, even though he was scolded daily about it by the Abbess on behalf of the child's mother.

Mirk didn't hear him. As he read on, his usual delight faded, replaced first by a look of consternation, then one of shock. "It is uncle...but...no, it can't be..."

He threw aside the letter from his grandfather, searching for another in his pile. One in a bone white envelope, with a silver seal stamped with wings and lilies. Those came three times a week, but each was cherished just as much as the messy ones from his grandfather, saved and sorted in a trunk at the foot of the boy's bed. His mother's constant missives, reams of gossip and advice. Paying no heed to the envelope, Mirk ripped it open instead of carefully unsticking the seal. Annette d'Avignon's letter, unlike her father's, ran five immaculate pages.

A hush fell over the garden as the boy read through the letter, tears welling in his eyes. Jan drew as close as he dared, just near enough to save the Seigneur's letter from Friedrich's ravenous maw. The boy's hellhound was with him, as always, on the other side of the turtle. Though Mirk hadn't yet found words to express it, the hellhound could sense its master's unease. Its fur was standing on end and sparking, a low growl rumbling in its throat.

"Is something wrong, Mirk?" Jan asked, after another tense five minutes had passed. He was crying outright now, in silence, the pages of his mother's letter clenched in his dirt-streaked, trembling hands.

"It's...it's Uncle Marc..."

Jan drew in a deep breath, fixing a look of gentle sympathy on his face as he waited for the boy to spit out the results of all of Jan's meddling. He needed to close his eyes for a moment to manage to make it look genuine, needed to think back to another boy, his blackened feet dangling off the side of a bridge as he cried despondently into the Odra.

"Uncle Marc is dead," Mirk whispered, hugging the letter to his chest as he struggled to catch his breath. "Maman says I need to come home."

"I'm so sorry, Mirk," Jan said, one eye on the boy, the other on the hellhound, whose coat had caught fire at the note of distress in its master's voice.

Before Jan had a chance to move, to brace himself, the boy burst into sobs. He reached out to Jan and wrapped his arms tight around his legs, burying his face against his knees as he cried. "I don't want...I can't...it's finally summer...I have to stay...I have to..."

Jan couldn't think of any sage advice that time; couldn't manage to spit out any Godly platitudes about bearing up under hardship. He settled for patting the boy's head, both to soothe him and to check that all his rings were in place. There they were, ten stones gleaming in the afternoon sun, the clear ones flickering with shadows far in their depths. And yet...

...and yet, Mirk's anguish engulfed Jan, twisting tight around him just like his arms. Jan felt tears welling in his own eyes, unbidden, as the hellhound pointed its snout skyward and howled. It was the strongest empathic projection Jan had felt in over three hundred years.

"He can't, Father!" Mirk's voice was muffled by his cassock, but Jan swore he could hear the words inside his head as clear as he could his own thoughts. "He can't be dead! I'm supposed to stay here!"

Jan sighed.

"Providence makes no mistakes, Mirk," he said, as the boy continued to weep, inconsolable. "Be brave. Wherever you go, the Lord goes with you. And so will I."

The boy didn't say another word. But the fear and the anguish pulsing around Jan's mind, too strong to be warded off by the rings on his fingers, spoke for itself.

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