Fragmentary Record · Rebuilt from Recovered Documents
The cure, the confession of an Inquisitor with hooves, a road that should not be trusted, and three goodbyes of very different weights.
The rescue succeeded and Emilio Crespo was dying anyway: a slow poison out of Kemet, past every doctor and past Hexen craft. The company went to the one soul in San Cristóbal a bear had ever refused to stop staring at: Inquisitor Cardenal Modesto Mejía de Sandoval, found packing his rooms for Aldana.
He denied it first ("I've worn this robe longer than any of you have held a sword") and then, hands shaking, stopped denying:
"I did not mean to become this. I was playing at faith… and it took me. Now I'm trapped in a mask I dared to love… There are hooves beneath this robe, friends. Be kind."
"Emilio is a good man. One of the few I would call friend in this pit of vipers… If he dies, and I could have stopped it — then what good are these stolen vestments?"
The cure was the Flor de Medianoche, a root that blooms at midnight in a ring of fae-carved stones east of Masaril, the place locals call the Dead Man's Wheel. Its one law: "It will only let itself be taken by one who has never borne false witness. It doesn't sense magic — it's older. It simply knows."
The stones were guarded by things of living rock that could not be shot, burned, bribed, or argued with, only answered: a painful truth confessed aloud, a blow taken for another, ground held against terror. The company answered. Under the full moon of that expedition the curse pushed at Axel, and Otto held him through it in the open dark, hour after hour, as he had done before and never once called remarkable. Grigori, who has never lied, took the root at midnight, and Ruprett hated every second of it: "What if you lied once… and forgot? Wouldn't that be delicious?"
Modesto boiled the root over a copper brazier, praying in a dialect half Old Théan and half something greener. Crespo breathed the smoke and lived. "This was a miracle. It cannot be repeated. Please — don't let them see me." Then he was gone into the night, whistling, leaving his Inquisitor's robes folded on the bed.
Somewhere in these travels (the season's papers do not fix the day) the company rounded a bend into the smell of iron and rot: a prison wagon on its side, its welded cage battered open from within, four stripped corpses in the road, one with the Inquisition's service brand on his forearm. A child's torn shoe in the cage. No prisoners anywhere.
Hours later, a campfire: a soft-spoken "pilgrim" family offering soup. The children did not smile. When it turned, and it turned, the little girl's grin was full of blackened, rotten teeth, and her parting words followed the company up the road: "He sees you. Master sees everything. Your souls already marked. Feast of darkness come soon." Ruprett studied her a long moment and said, mostly to himself: "There is something very familiar about that one… we may see that grin again."
Yvette left in the ambassador's carriage, composed and quieter than usual. To Grigori: "Be careful who you trust — especially when they sound certain." To Axel: "You carry more than you admit. Do not let it carry you instead." To all of them: "Montaigne will not change on its own. Someone must be there to… encourage it." Lord Brousseau waited behind her, powdered and patient, smiling. Always smiling.
Kharkov found Grigori alone that evening and did not soften it: "I am leaving. This place… wrong. Too many lies. Too many smells I don't trust." He went north, the bear beside his horse, back to where the snow makes sense.
And on the evening Modesto said his farewells, a voice caught the company in the corridor: the Countess, radiant in black velvet, windows of her suite blacked out, bed immaculate and unused, pouring a wine so dark it drank the light. Her business was with Axel, alone, and it survives in one line and a parting:
"Did you think I would not recognize you for what you are? The wolf beneath the flesh… I have no quarrel with your kind. In truth, I respect what you are. You endure. Like me."
"Sleep well, Eisenwolf. The sun rises fast in Castille."
What Followed