Chapter One
“Werewolves?”
Xaverie Davaros raises her eyebrows at Sesum as she takes another thoughtful bite of her dry bread.
“A lot of them,” Sesum says, pressing his lips together. “More than usual, at any rate.”
Xaverie dips the bread into her soup, swirling it once before taking another bite. She takes her time to chew before she answers.
“And you thought to come to me for help because...?”
The tavern is quiet at this time of night. Even regulars have long since gone home, leaving behind only a few blacked out drunkards sprawled face down on their tables and a single bartender cleaning up while sending furtive looks at those remaining. It’s the time of night Xaverie likes best — soft, quiet, with few ears around to listen. It makes even a rundown bar like this one feel peaceful.
“The Harpers have offered you several favors as of late,” Sesum reminds her, breaking that nice, peaceful silence again. “We need all the hands we can muster.”
“Favors I’ve more than paid for,” she reminds him back.
Sesum is a tall man, though not quite as tall as Xaverie herself. He’s been on the road for a while, judging by the mud staining his boots and the hem of his heavy brown cloak, and the faint sunburn that darkens his already tanned skin, though he’s managed to keep his dark beard trimmed neatly enough. He’s antsy, too, constantly flicking his eyes across the tavern, shifting his feet beneath the table. His fingers keep drumming along his thigh, near the barely visible hilt of a dagger beneath his cloak.
Xaverie lifts her bowl to her lips, taking a long drink of the warm, watery soup. It’s not bad. Warm, salty, and with just the right amount of vegetable chunks. The chunks themselves are a little wilty, but who wouldn’t be in this weather, anyway?
esum seems to realize he’s losing her. He leans across the table.
“There are children involved, Davaros,” Sesum says. He places his elbows on either side of his untouched meal, hands nearly close enough to grip Xaverie’s. He doesn’t, though. He knows better than to grab hold of her without permission. They aren’t that kind of acquaintances.
Xaverie sets down her empty bowl. She tears what’s left of her bread in half, popping one half into her mouth and squishing the other between her fingers. That there are children being taken is concerning, and it does make her chest tighten. But if they’ve already been taken...well, including her travel time, there’s no way she’d be able to reach them quickly enough. She’ll be the first to admit that her heart bleeds easily, but she’s had to learn to be practical, too — even when it twists her stomach.
“I don’t know what you expect from me,” she says finally. “You know I’m not a fighter. I’m not even a real Harper.”
She waves a hand at the fiddle case that she’s laid onto the empty seat beside her, and then gestures at herself in full. She might be taller than Sesum, but she’s thin, and lanky. There’s not much in the way of muscle about her, and though there’s a longsword tied to her belt, her hands look soft, as though they’ve rarely lifted it — and she’s as pale as a noblewoman who hasn’t seen the sun in decades, almost sickly to the casual viewer.
She reaches up to take off her glasses momentarily, wiping them off on the hem of her soft linen shirt, before pushing them back up onto the bridge of her nose in front of her deep brown eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” she says. She reaches back behind her head, undoing the tie that holds up her cinnamon brown hair, just to have something to do with her hands. Some strands slide past her pointed ears while she regathers up the ponytail and reties it. “But this is Harper business. Surely you have people more qualified — closer to Daggerford, perhaps, who can respond quicker. Even if I started now, it would be a day’s ride — if I even had a horse.”
“I’m not asking you to go fight the entire pack on your own,” Sesum says, grimacing. “I’m asking you for recon. Support. Information gathering. Your specialty.”
He says the last bit with raised eyebrows, as though emphasizing it — as though saying “yes, Xaverie, I did in fact think about this in some detail before coming to you.” Xaverie shrugs, not quite chagrined enough to apologize. She still thinks Sesum, with all his Harper contacts, ought to have better options than her for this scenario. He knows just enough about her to know that her focuses are elsewhere. Perhaps she’s gotten too involved. Alanis always warned her about that. She’d never worked with the factions — but without her, Xaverie had had to find other ways of gaining information on her own.
“I think it’s more than fair, after what the Harpers have done for you, and what we will continue to offer you, even though you are not one of our number. Your expertise on the occult can’t be understated. We need your help.”
Xaverie looses a low sigh. There’s an earnestness to Sesum’s tone, just the hint of desperation that he seems loathe to express. But, well, there are children involved, and she understands the frustration.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to help. It’s only she’s been chasing a particularly important lead in this town, and she’s unwilling to let go of it before it disappears. And while she does owe the Harpers something, she’s not sure it’s ‘go hunt a pack of werewolves for us’ something. As much as it pains her to think it, the children who have been taken are almost certainly already too far gone to save. The Harpers can handle this one on their own and prevent any further loss of life. That’s what they do best, it’s what they’ve trained for, and Xaverie hasn’t. It’s not something that Xaverie’s presence would substantially alter —
“I’ve also heard reports the mists are lingering much longer in Daggerford,” Sesum says in a lower voice. “And not in the seasons that they should be.”
Xaverie’s hands freeze on their way back down from fixing her hair. Her eyes flicker up to Sesum’s as her jaw tightens involuntarily.
She reaches for her fiddle and stands up.
“Why didn’t you start with that?” she says. “You have a spare horse, I hope?”
“I know we ask a lot of you, Leilrir.”
Leilrir Sunstruck doesn’t respond, walking down the wall of weapons with his eyes flicking from one to the next. He pulls a polearm down from the wall, testing its heft.
Larral Sunstruck stands at the other end of the armory, outlined by the light of the door. Her hands are clasped behind her back. A pale woman, she’s broad shouldered and stands naturally with her back perfectly straight. Her white-blond locks are pulled back into such a severe bun that it pinches her already severe face. Some uncles have joked that she came out of their mother’s womb already standing at attention, and she often responds to such jibes with a withering look that could freeze anyone into parade rest.
Leilrir puts the polearm back and moves to the other side of the room, where he pulls down a flail, feeling the weight of its ball and chain against his palm.
Larral watches him inspect the weapons for a moment. Her pale blue eyes flicker towards the hall. Then she steps inside, and closes the door quietly behind her. Only then does Leilrir look up, raising an eyebrow. It’s not like the commander of the Order of the Gauntlet to be so coy about starting a private meeting. It’s certainly not like his older sister, either.
“Leilrir. Are you positive that you want to take on this assignment?”
Her voice is serious, even for her, and he raises his eyebrows.
“You’ve never asked me that before,” he says. “What’s different about this one?”
Larral, hands still clasped behind her back, considers him. She’s a good two inches taller than he is, and broader. She takes after their mother, all hard edges and sharp golds and whites, and he their father, softer, slighter and made of pale silvers. He’s been told by aunts and grandmothers since he was a child that his features are as elegant as a royal’s, that his pale violet eyes are so mature and thoughtful, that his lightly tanned skin is like the sun had been woven into it at his birth, while his hair had been knit from the silver of moon’s rays. His family has always been strangely poetic for a long line of warriors.
After the siblings hold gazes for a moment, Larral sighs, the first to look away.
“It’s not about the mission itself,” she says.
“Then what is it about?”
He suspects he already knows the answer. But he wants to hear her say it.
“I don’t say this as your commander. I say this as your older sister,” she says. “I’m worried about you.”
He presses his lips together in a thin line.
“I don’t want to talk about this again,” Leilrir says, turning back towards the armory.
“You’ve comported yourself admirably, brother. You’re a testament to the family name and to the Order.”
“Then I don’t know what conversation we even need to be having.”
He puts the flail back and draws a longsword instead. He turns it over in one hand to find its balancing point. He’s never preferred swords, but perhaps a piercing weapon would be more apt for a werewolf hunt.
Larral steps towards him, tense. It makes him tense, too. It is getting harder to ignore her, to pretend not to hear all she’s not saying.
“I know you’ve heard what people are saying about it. You’re not so adverse to gossip as you like to pretend,” she says. “You have a bright future in the Order. Do not throw that away by allowing this...attachment to become so important to you. You have done enough. You do not need to go the extra mile for...it.”
He clenches his jaw. It takes some doing to bite back the “she’s not an it.” Engaging with his sister on this only leads to anger. He doesn’t even need to acknowledge such a statement.
Leilrir replaces the longsword. Too light, after all. Nothing compared to the perfect heft of his own morningstar. Pretending not to hear her, though, does little to dissuade his sister. She steps up beside him.
“Rumors are spreading. Not everyone knows exactly where it...” she takes note of the way his jaw clenches, and sighs as she amends, “where she came from, but — brother, even you must know how it looks. And then those who know the truth...the higher ups are watching you, brother. You’re on the cusp of taking your oaths.”
“I don’t see how any of these things are relevant to each other.”
“Leilrir, please,” she says. She puts her hand on his shoulder. “As your sister. Leave the...girl...here. She’ll be taken care of, I promise you. She can even continue to pursue her interest in the clergy — it will be better for her, even, to stay with the sisters.”
She squeezes his shoulder.
“But with the others seeing you grow so attached to such a...creature...”
Leilrir doesn’t even turn around. He clenches his fists open and closed a few times, letting the anger briefly surge, and then breathing it gently out of him. He manages to reach something of a monotone when next he speaks.
“Who am I meeting with when I get to Daggerford?” he asks.
Larral lets out a thin, whistling sigh.
“Brother...”
His eyes flick back across his shoulder at her.
“Commander.”
The siblings stare at each other for a long, long moment. Larral closes her eyes first, again. She lets her hand slide off his shoulder.
“Chevall Sunstruck,” she says, softly. Resignedly. “You’ll be touching base with Curnamil Nasterium when you arrive in Daggerford. He’ll give you all the information you need on the werewolf sightings.”
He turns to face her fully, nods once, and salutes. Then he slips around her and lets himself out of the armory, and back into the wide, marble halls of the Order of the Gauntlet’s main base.
Linla’s head darts up from her knees as soon as he exits the room. She has tucked herself against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees and bunching her white robes. A soft gasp puffs past her lips, and she scrambles up to her feet.
“Sorry that took so long,” he says.
She’s already closed the gap between them, and he opens his hand automatically. She latches onto him like a lifeline.
Linla is so much smaller than him. A young teenager in appearance, she’s a good foot and a half shorter than him, her tiny tan hands almost swallowed up in his own rough palm. He reaches down to push a lock of her silver hair, the same shade as his, behind one ear, and she blinks silently up at him with her huge, pale violet eyes, almost a mirror of his own.
“We’re going out again,” he says. “You up for another stint on the road, or do you want to stay here?”
She sucks in a tiny breath of agitation at the words “stay here,” and squeezes his hand even tighter.
“I figured as much. It’s not going to be all fun and games, you know. We’re hunting werewolves.”
She only stares up at him, silent. But her hand is still tight on his, as though she never has any intention of letting go. He can’t help but reach up to briefly pat her on the head.
“I know. You’re a tough one.”
Her eyes half close, and a rare, tiny smile lifts her lips. He feels his eyes soften. Some knot in his chest that always seems to tangle inside him when he talks to his sister begins to unfurl.
“All right. Let’s get ourselves packed up. We’ve got a long way to go to Daggerford.”
“I guess I don’t see what werewolves have to do with your line of work.”
Passion Iris chews on the end of her pencil stub, ignoring the lanky young man who perches on a nearby set of crates. He flips his knife up and down, up and down, the faint light through the thick cloud cover causing it to glimmer dully as it moves. The motion is somewhat sickening, making Passion’s headache feel even worse.
“You’re a...what do you call yourself? A detective? Not an adventurer,” he says again, pointedly. “So I don’t see where you get off on being so frustrated with me.”
“I asked you to tell me about anything strange going on,” Passion says, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. She fails. Her head is pounding. “An increase in werewolf activity is strange. Werewolves braving the city to kidnap kids is strange.”
Virran shrugs and rolls his eyes, and continues to flip the knife from hand to hand. He’s a scruffy young man, or at least, he appears young. It’s always hard to tell with elves. He’s got the youthful smirk of someone who’s not quite old enough to know how little he knows yet. On the other hand, the scar that mars his otherwise porcelain smooth, white face indicates that he’s at least had some experience — whether or not he’s learned anything from it is up for debate.
As someone passes by the alley the pair of them huddle in, he reaches up to flip his hood back over his mop of auburn brown hair. His sharp eyes dart out towards the bright world at the other end of the alley, where normal people are going about their daily business.
Passion ignores him and looks back down at her notepad. Her handwriting is inscrutable to anyone aside from her, so there’s no reason to write it in code — but she does anyway. Most people in this town can’t read Infernal to begin with, but better safe than sorry, in her experience. She’s so used to her cipher by now that she can read it as easily as breathing.
She goes over the notes again. Mists growing thicker in Daggerford and the surrounding townships. Werewolf sightings increased + children taken? Appearance of Vistani caravans, but with no record of them showing up at any other towns or routes on the way. As though manifested out of thin air.
She fingers the edge of paper that sticks out slightly from deeper in the notebook, the most important part of her notebook by far. The torn piece of paper, which she’s copied out three times in different parts of the notebook so as never to lose it — a piece of a map, depicting the edge of a woods with a single labeled dot that reads Barovia. And more importantly, or perhaps it is, she doesn’t know yet — the name written on the back of the paper and underlined three times: Davaros.
“You know, if you’re planning on tangling with werewolves, don’t you think you ought to hire someone? Someone with weapons, perhaps? You’re not going to be able to leverage your ‘scary looks’ on werewolves.”
Virran glances her up and down, and she continues to ignore him.
It’s true that to a casual glance, she doesn’t look like the type to get into scraps. She’s on the chubby side, round-faced and without much visible muscle, even if she weren’t dressed in a heavy black coat. Her jet black hair is a little too long, bunched up into messy pigtails that are in turn stuffed into her hat, seemingly all too easy to grab hold of in a fight. Her vest, dress shirt, and long slacks looks like she’s more suited to a town hall meeting than a schlep through the woods.
In the city, she can often rely on her bright yellow eyes, her jet-blue-black skin, and the equally dark colored horns that curl back from the sides of her head to put at least most townsfolk on the back foot. But she knows a werewolf isn’t as discriminating against a tiefling as a human is.
“I may not look it, but I can take care of myself, thanks,” she says, tucking her pencil nub inside of the notebook and snapping it shut. “Besides, I think your rates are a little rich for me.”
“Oh come on,” Virran laughs. “I’ve never overcharged you once, have I?”
“Keep telling jokes, and you might find you have a better career as a bard,” she says flatly. “I’m off. Thanks for the information, even if it was late.”
She tucks the notebook into her inside jacket pocket, and realigns the lapels over her shoulders. With some reluctance, she flips a single silver coin onto a nearby crate for Virran. She’s mad at him, but they have a deal when it comes to information. She’s not going to be the one to break it.
She tugs the brim of her hat down a bit lower — it’s not going to hide her face or horns, but at the very least, it might make people’s eyes slide over her before they notice the details. Though she resists the urge, she can’t help but rub her temple for a moment in the same motion
“Oh, you ought to be careful, by the way,” Virran calls after her. He’s already picked up the coin, and is making it dance over his knuckles and between his fingers in obnoxious showmanship. “You’re not the only one looking into the werewolf situation.”
Passion doesn’t turn around, but she does pause.
“I’ll throw this in for free, just to prove to you how good hearted I am,” he continues. “Word has it that the Order of the Gauntlet’s sent an agent to look into things. Plus, there’s been movement from the Harpers.”
Ugh. Both a pain, Passion thinks. Though on the other hand, it could be a boon — other agents looking into things could make eyes slide off her, as the more well known figures made ripples in the gossip vine.
“Thanks for the tip,” she says. “I’ll see you.”
“If you don’t get eaten, that is,” he quips at her back.
She stuffs her hands into her pockets, keeps her head low, and makes her slow, steady way back towards her inn. Virran didn’t give her much. But the werewolves, that’s worth looking into. And if it’s drawing in the Harpers and the Gauntlet, that could mean something, too. Maybe she can even find an informant who knows a few things — she doesn’t like to work with faction agents, but Harpers tend to hear things, and their sappy oaths usually make them straightforward. It’s an extra option, at the very least.
She presses her lips together as her headache presses against the inside of her head. It’s particularly bad today — and with a two-year spanning headache, that was saying something.
Two years of constant pain. Ever since she walked out of the woods with no memory of the six months before it — one would think she’d get used to it. But the pressure is high today, worse than usual. Though she has no reason to think so, she wants to believe that it means she’s on the right track.
“Don’t worry, Natlia,” she murmurs, grinding her palm into her forehead. “I’m not giving up. Not yet.”