My first encounter with the common folk had been controlled. I was bundled up and dirtied as a beggar. My hair frustrated my teacher, and she shoved a hood over my head. The irony stings sometimes, but I have learned at least some of her lessons fairly well.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  A ragged shriek tore from the woman’s throat. “Nerostit?!”

  She bent and swept her child up, wrenched the door open, and ran, her skirts flapping. As she fled, she did not stop screaming that cursed word, her shrill voice echoing off stone and shutters.

  Dragos turned to the apothecary and, with a sour growl, said, “Next time.”

  He snatched the bucket and his box in a single motion, spun, and ran for the door, kicking it open before it finished falling shut. The sky had brightened while he’d been in the shop, noted when he burst out into the street. The clouds had separated and paled, fading towards the high-soaring white of fine days.

  People stared as he barreled away from the apothecary’s shop, weaving between carts and pedestrians. The box strap he held rattled against the wood, feet pounding the still-soft ground, cloak flapping like great bat wings behind him.

  Zgavra curled along behind him like a smoky, menacing banner, laughing.

  Dragos spared the baby a glance, but her eyes were on the sky as she slumped, askew in the bucket, sucking on her clumsy little fingers. He shot the zmeu a scathing glare, which did nothing besides boost the dragon’s ego.

  Behind him, he heard voices. Notes of alarm. Yelling. It was the sound of panic catching like wildfire in dry brush. He sprinted until the corner, boots skidding through the sticky blend of mud and dung. The inn was not far. That was a problem within a small town like Plansura. Not many true strangers came and went. Fewer still like him.

  Dragos grasped the door like a man with nothing to hide and stepped in. He gulped in air, slung a strap of his peddler’s box over a shoulder, and glanced around the room.

  The common room was busier than he expected. It was still early in the day, but a good dozen men sat at tables, eating and drinking. The old widow—whose name he never bothered to learn—looked up from pouring a tankard of ale. The door fell shut behind him with a condemning thunk.

  “I think they know,” Zgavra whispered in his ear.

  Dragos smiled thinly at the room and hissed softly through his teeth, “Shut. Up.”

  He walked to the bar with measured steps and leaned casually there, gently swinging the bucket. Mirel looked up at him from it and sucked her fingers with a wet slurp. His expression eased into something more gentle.

  “You’ve brought me such adventure, little girl,” he cooed at her. He couldn’t be angry at an innocent. At the zmeu, yes. Shame he was surrounded by potential enemies, or he’d have had more words for the Unspoken.

  The widow approached and peeked down into the bucket, wiggling fingers over the child, then up at Dragos’ face. Her hand paused as her gaze locked with his. Briskly, she straightened and brushed her palms over her apron.

  “Need anything, sir?” she asked.

  He caught a sharpness in her voice that hadn’t been there before. The hood he wore to hide his cursed hair and pale eyes drew nearly as much suspicion as the damning features themselves. His heart quickened.

  “Milk, please. For Mirel.” He pulled out his pouch.

  Dragos slid two thaler toward the woman, who snapped them up and disappeared into the back. He set the bucket down and adjusted the straps of his box, then flattened his hand on the bar to still any nervous twitches. He avoided looking at the others in the room and counted the seconds as they passed.

  Beyond the door, he heard voices. Still distant, but drawing closer with every thump of his heating pulse. The widow reappeared from the kitchen when the sound of an angry crowd hit its peak. He bent to pick the bucket up.

  The door burst open.

  “Is it in here?” someone shouted.

  Heads turned. Some of the patrons jolted enough to spill their drinks. The man who thrust his head in scanned the room, then his eyes widened and he raised a shaking hand at Dragos.

  Dragos didn’t wait for the shout, though he heard it. He dashed around the counter, snatching the bladder from the woman’s hand. “Thanks,” he murmured as he raced by, through the kitchen, past a bubbling pot of stew, and out the back door.

  “Nerostit?!”

  Footsteps clamored behind him. The tavern yard was little more than a strip of mud and weeds. He slammed into the high iron gate shoulder-first, raising the bucket to keep the child from taking much impact. It swung wildly. Mirel whimpered a confused half-cry. His heart clenched. She didn’t deserve any of this, but it was the way of things.

  He grabbed the latch, threw the gate wide, and ran.

  Dragos flew out of the alley and nearly into another crowd of people. Hands lashed out in his direction—grabbing, pointing, accusing—he veered for the outskirts, dodging them. He could outrun them. Experience had taught him that he was faster than most. A lifetime of fleeing had taught him how.

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  He pulled the bucket close and sprinted.

  As if a man could run from what he was.

  A clattering behind him sank his hope. Hooves. He counted three separate horses by their rattling gait. Tack jangled, marking the distance closed.

  He’d never reach the forest before they caught him.

  “Zgavra!” He gasped, legs burning from the wild race.

  The thick plume of scale and mane surged up beside him, easily keeping pace. The zmeu couldn’t smile, but there was something about its expression that suggested it was enjoying the turn of events.

  Dragos glanced over just as the wind caught his hood. It flew back, revealing his cursed hair. It hardly mattered. The townsfolk would kill him based on a child’s word and their own fear, regardless of any proof. His lips peeled back in a snarl. “Stop them. Don’t kill them.”

  Orange eyes flashed, and Zgavra vanished from his side. A gasp later, horses screamed. Dragos risked a glance back to see the saddled beasts reared up, hooves lashing at the zmeu. In this shape, Zgavra was more shadow than flesh, larger than any one of them. The men on their frightened mounts shouted with surprise, jabbing spears at the black warp of air.

  Dragos put all his focus toward the forest. The thick, deep wood that pushed up against civilization, reclaiming what was abandoned. It swallowed whole towns and castles alike if left uncared for too long. P?durea Manc?toare, the Devouring Forest. He looked for a deer path, something that would lead him through the thicket and into its depths.

  The baby was crying again. Its sobs had blended with the rhythm of his feet, and he had ignored it until he was trying to listen for pursuers. It cut through his focus, setting his teeth on edge.

  Almost there. A furlong and he would make the deerpath. There, an opening in the thorns, half-swallowed by honeysuckle, and he veered for it. It promised uncertain sanctuary, but a chance at survival. He’d take it.

  His breakneck race across the field got him close.

  Until his foot dropped, and the earth betrayed him. His leg dipped, and he fell hard, twisting into the depression made by a ground squirrel burrow. A lance of pure agony shot across his knee, but that didn’t matter. The bucket flew from his hand. It tumbled in the air as he watched it go, thumping down a few feet away. Mirel rolled out. The baby shrieked, high and raw, a sound he’d never heard before. It made his blood turn to ice.

  “Mirel!” He shouted, dragging himself from where he’d fallen.

  His leg refused to support any weight, so he crawled toward her. He forced his uninjured knee under himself and stumbled, crumpled, and got up again. She was screaming as if she were being skinned alive. It narrowed the world and everything else to that. Her pain.

  Dragos dragged himself to the baby. She’d rolled into a furrow face up, tiny limbs twitching under the muddied blanket. A thin cut from some treacherous stone marked her cheek, where blood beaded.

  Rage and despair hit the wanderer like an avalanche. He scooped the child up to his chest and glared up at the town with a burning hatred he thought he’d buried. Not since he learned to be useful, avoid notice, and vanish quickly.

  In that moment, he wanted to set the whole town on fire and listen to their screams.

  The horsemen lay scattered, thrown from their mounts. The mob behind them hesitated as the horses tore back towards the town, frothing with terror. Dragos pushed himself up, but his leg wouldn’t hold. He bore all his weight on one and called out to the zmeu.

  “Zgavra!”

  A shadow streaked toward him from where it had harried the horses. Asking for help from it twisted his stomach, but he did it. “Help me into the forest.”

  The shadow form condensed into a man-like draconic figure. It offered its arm to him. Dragos grabbed the offered arm, leaning heavily on the dry scales, and hobbled for the gap. Mirel’s shrieks calmed into a steady sobbing against his chest. Together, they crossed the last few feet and pressed into the woods, concealed from the eyes of men.

  “They may follow,” Zgavra commented, its tone quite pleased.

  Dragos sneered at the zmeu but bit back any comment.

  He hobbled in silence, occasionally testing his leg. His knee throbbed, hot and swollen to twice its size. Dragos pushed on until the sun sank low on the horizon. Only when the trees turned gold with sunset did they find the ruins of some old forgotten place.

  Stone walls rose like broken teeth between tall, ancient trees. Wind whistled through the gaps, and the deepening sky leaned in from above, but the crumbling stone would hide their campfire from the townsfolk.

  Dragos eased down into a crook made between a tree trunk and what was left of a wall. Mirel had calmed. Her large blue eyes stared up at him with a curious intensity. A bruise had formed around the tiny cut. Dragos brushed a dirty thumb just below it and smiled with a weariness that delved deeper than marrow.

  “Would have burned that whole town over a little scratch,” he chuckled to himself.

  “There might be something likable about you, after all,” Zgavra said from where it rummaged for kindling.

  Dragos shot it a glare. “Just gather wood.”

  “Am I your servant now?” Zgavra growled, flinging the armload of wood it had already gathered to the ground.

  The wanderer’s brow rose. “No. I told you before. Go whenever you want.”

  To solidify his irritation, he turned his attention to his box. He had theriac from ?oloman??. It was more precious than gold, but it helped healing. Without the recipe or the equipment, he'd never be able to make more.

  “Good,” it said, and its form unraveled into the shadow. Serpentine, it flowed over the ground, no longer bound to it.

  “And you still can’t eat the baby,” Dragos said flatly. In that moment, he decided he wouldn't sip from the precious bottle. He'd leave the wax sealed. He was far from death. It was just pain.

  Zgavra said nothing. It slithered between trees to become one with the growing dark. Dragos sighed and watched it go.

  He slid the box from his shoulders, folded his cloak, and settled the baby on it. It would be a long night.

  The wanderer limped through the rubble of what used to be a house, or a barn, or perhaps a manor, and with some difficulty kindled a low blaze. He rummaged in his box for something to dull his pain. It was easy enough, but he didn’t dare take too much. He couldn’t afford to go into a trance. Teeth clenched against the pain, he bound straight lengths of branches to his leg to keep it straight. Dragos didn’t believe it was broken, but he’d twisted it with enough force to do an injury somewhere deep within.

  Zgavra said they might follow.

  When the baby woke, he looked for the milk bladder and found it gone. He searched the ground, the box, and his shirt, but it had vanished. Mirel keened and shoved dirty fingers in her mouth, but he had nothing to give her.

  It must have fallen in the field. Of course it had. The bucket had been left behind, forgotten.

  Rage and helplessness surged up like bile. Through gritted teeth, he roared with barely controlled frustration, fists clenched, knuckles cracking. He couldn’t even pace off his anger, stuck hobbling like a fool because of a ground squirrel burrow. Mirel huffed and suckled on her fist, but that wouldn’t soothe her empty belly. Or his, for that matter. He was in no shape to forage. Less to fight.

  A hound’s bay split the dusk.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken.

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo): a form of dragon. A shapeshifter that travels between the world of the living and other realms. They are known to steal fair maids to be their wives. Suffers great hubris. Very powerful monster given to chaos, born of the Umbregrin. Solomonari wizards ride them when controlling weather patterns.

  Plansura (PLUN-soo-rah) [rolled r]: Town name.