The Warden did not set much store by feelings. Too often feelings were invoked as excuses for why work could not be done, or why crimes were committed. They were illusory justifications, imaginary succubi and incubi that led men and women off the right and true path.

  But once before, The Warden had known a great depression, a heaviness on his soul so profound that even he could not deny its reality. For three days he had lain in the black embrace of that eidolon until at last the crowing of a cockerel had roused him from the slumber of despair. He could not explain any of these things, they were not part of the ordered world he strove to build. He referred to the time only as the Dark Sleep.

  Those were black days.

  Shame and guilt had been the cause of his depression that day, shame and guilt that he had accomplished the dreadful task he had been set. This day he felt the shame and guilt of failure. Of the two, the latter was the more unpleasant; its bitterness was like the sourest grape, the most corrupted vintage.

  “Though Beltanus fell, he was not dead,” The Warden intoned softly. The lines had brought him comfort before, in dark hours. It was strange he should drawn strength from a tale about the gods when he did not believe in them, but stories, he supposed, were another way of organising the chaos of reality.

  The Daimomancer’s sensitivities had worn off. The trail had been lost. They had been close, so close, to capturing the prisoner, and yet he had eluded them a second time. Worse, he had made a fool of The Warden, had laughed openly as he unseated him from his horse. The Warden had found the proud destrier with a broken leg not long after. He had ended the beast’s misery.

  He now had few choices, and none of them he liked much. However, he must not allow his pride to allow Telos to escape a third time.

  “Grygory, send a message via dragonling to Captain Mordred of the City Watch of Gorgosa. Tell me him that a prisoner is headed his way by the name of Telos Daggeron. He is to be apprehended at all costs and handed over to me upon our arrival.”

  Grygory nodded. If he was alarmed by the instructions, or felt they cast any aspersions upon his master, he hid his feelings well. The guard turned and set off back to where they had tethered the remaining horses.

  The tavern-wench was an unreliable source of information, but he suspected that what she said about Telos’s plan was true. His best move was undoubtedly to seek an unscrupulous dragon-trainer who would obtain a flight for him into Aurelia, where Telos would be much harder to find, and where he would technically be beyond the Warden’s jurisdiction.

  But of course, the Warden would pursue him to the ends of Erethia if need be. He would invade Sumyr, venture across the uncharted wilderness of Memory, burn Qi’shath, scale the peak of Anpa; there was nothing he would not do. What burned now in the Warden’s heart was more than rage, more than hate, greater even than love. For Telos was the walking contradiction to everything the Warden had ever believed. He was a crack in the mirror of reality, a splinter in the brain of the dreamer.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself. He needed to focus on the now. Telos was likely headed to Gorgosa; that is where they would find him. Thus, the Captain of the City Watch had to be notified.

  The Warden sighed. He was loathe to involve anyone outside of the prison to the fact a prisoner had escaped, but it was better to suffer the slights of mockery and finally apprehend the fugitive than it was to fail. All must be sacrificed on the pyre of virtue. He made a mental note to write to include that line in one of his compositions, later.

  “Warden, but a moment of your time…”

  It was Kyrick, slinking out of the woods as though he were one of the forest animals. The Warden gritted his teeth.

  “Your magic left much to be desired, sorcerer.”

  “It is not my fault you let him slip away,” Kyrick said slyly. “You were caught unawares. My, it seems this one has the measure of you.”

  The Warden felt a muscle behind his eye twitch.

  “Is that so?”

  The Warden swung his mace. He had killed men in a single blow many times, but the force of his strike shattered Kyrick’s skull as though it were feeble pottery. No true head remained, just a ragged pile of flesh geysering blood. Fragments of skull and slops of brain spattered the forest floor. Kyrick tumbled, twitching and jerking.

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  “As promised, now you are free,” The Warden said, smiling.

  He was about to leave the corpse, when he remembered the sample Kyrick had taken. He stooped down, searched Kyrick’s robes, and found the transparent decanter. The sliver of Daimonic remains within still seemed to be moving. He stared in fascination until a voice broke him from his reverie.

  “S-sir…”

  The Warden looked up sharply. He slipped the sample into his pocket. The guard before him was young, anxious. Tor, I think his name is.

  “What is it?”

  Tor hesitated, clearly considering whether he should speak. “Well, it’s only… it’s bad luck to kill a Daimomancer, they say.”

  The Warden snarled. He half-admired the guard’s courage to say it, though he was evidently witless. As a calming measure, he touched the talisman of Koronzon about his neck. A feeling of black stillness enveloped him, almost as though he had withdrawn to some dark, silent womb. Too many men had died, today. He need not kill another.

  “There is no such thing as luck,” he snapped.

  He walked past the guard, and was about to see to the horses, when something in his periphery caught his attention. A tree branch that was not a tree branch. He frowned, changing direction and moving towards it.

  There was a pit in the ground, recently disturbed. It looked to him like the home of a Tunnel Hunter. His nose wrinkled at the smell of mouldering earth, Daimonsblood, and something unidentifiable save as the vague stink of insect.

  But what had caught his eye was not the pit but one of the trees overlooking it, which had an arrow imbedded in its trunk. The arrow was fletched with a raven’s feather.

  His heart thundered in his chest. His mouth went dry.

  He had known many archers in his time, and trained some too. But there was only one who fletched their arrows with raven feathers…

  It could not possibly be him, and yet, the Warden knew in his deep heart he had not killed them all. Some of them must have survived. He had never seen The Ghost’s corpse with his own eyes.

  Could it be?

  His hand trembled as he pulled the arrow out of the tree, looked at the beautifully made tip, barbed so as to hook into the flesh of whatever animal it struck, and thus weaken them with bloodloss. The archer whom the Warden remembered, however, had no need of such a strategy: their arrows always found their mark and killed instantly.

  A shiver passed through him. The forest seemed suddenly vaster than before, and full of shadows, silent like an assassin holding their breath. The Warden feared no man in face to face combat, but he feared an arrow that moved at the speed of light, that snatched away life in the blink of an eye, with no chance of defence.

  “What is it, Warden?” Tor asked.

  “Our escaped prisoner may have an ally,” the Warden said. “Be on your guard.”

  Tor looked nervously around, but there was nothing save for trees and undergrowth for what seemed like miles. Crows and ravens cawed overheard, a mockery that seemed to awaken a toothache the Warden had previously been unaware of.

  “Jubal…” The Warden whispered. “Jubal, my Ghost. Are you here, then?”

  He circumambulated the pit and eventually found what he was looking for, what he knew—with some intuition more like a beast’s instincts than any human mode of thought—that he would find.

  Two sets of footprints fled away from the hole in the earth. The tracks were fresh indeed, although such was the vitality of the forest that plants and worms were already beginning to rove over and erase the tracks. One set of footprints were small and light-footed—he knew these must be Telos’s prints. The others were much larger, and belonged to someone who did not wear shoes.

  The Warden trembled. Then, he stood and rounded up the four remaining guards: there was Tor, the young and impertinent questioner; an older guard whom everyone called Eyepatch, but whose real name was Janus; and then two others, Wylf and Warrick, twin brothers who had joined the Warden’s service the day they turned eighteen.

  “We follow these tracks,” he said. “From now on, do not speak unless it is beyond necessary. We are tracking not just a prisoner, but also a ranger of the forest, someone who knows this land like the back of his hand. He is armed with a bow and he knows how to use it, so proceed with great caution.”

  “Should we not call for reinforcements, Warden?” Janus asked, levelly.

  “By the time they arrive, our quarry will be long gone. We must make the attempt. One final push is all I ask of you. If we lose his trail, then we shall simply revert to the original plan and intercept him at Gorgosa. Now, no more delays.”

  The guards exchanged uncertain looks, but they did not argue. The Warden turned and set off into the forest, following the tracks deeper and deeper into Yestermere.

  Flies began to buzz about Kyrick’s corpse.