This wasn’t the first talisman Rojer had carried. For years, he had kept a puppet of wood and string topped with a lock of his master’s golden hair in a secret pocket in the waistband of his motley pants. Before that, it was a puppet of his mother, capped with a lock of her red.

But with the medallion, Rojer could feel both Arrick and his parents looking over him, and he spoke to them through the fiddle. He played his love and played his loneliness and regret. He told them all the things he had never been able to in life.

When he finally finished, Leesha and the others were staring at him, their eyes glazed like charmed corelings. It was only after a few moments of silence that they shook their heads and came back to themselves.

“Ent never heard anything beautiful as that,” Wonda said. Gared grunted, and Leesha produced a kerchief, dabbing at her eyes.

The rest of the journey to Deliverer’s Hollow was filled with music, with Rojer playing every minute his hands weren’t otherwise occupied. He knew they were returning to all the same problems they had left, but with the promise of aid to come from the duke and the Jongleurs’ Guild, as well as the comfort of the medallion around his neck, he held new hope that all their problems could be solved.

They were still a day from the Hollow when the way became choked with refugees, many of them with tents and warding circles pitched right in the road. Leesha knew them immediately as Laktonians, for as a whole they were stocky folk, short and round-faced, and they stood as those more used to walking on a boat’s deck than dry land.

“What’s happened?” Leesha demanded of the first person they came to, a young mother pacing to calm a crying infant. The woman looked at her with hollow, uncomprehending eyes as Leesha got down from the cart. Then she took note of Leesha’s pocketed apron and a light came back to her.

“Please,” she said, holding out the screaming child. “I think he’s sick.”

Leesha took the babe in her arms, running sensitive fingers over it to check pulse and temperature. After a moment, she simply sat it up in the crook of one arm and stuck a knuckle in its mouth. The child quieted immediately, sucking vigorously.

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” she said, “apart from sensing the stress of his mum.” The woman relaxed visibly, breathing a sigh of relief.

“What’s happened?” Leesha asked again.

“The Krasians,” the woman said.

“Creator, have they marched on Lakton so soon?” Leesha asked.

The woman shook her head. “They’ve spread out through Rizon’s hamlets, forcing the women to cover up, and dragging the men off to fight demons. They pick and choose Rizonan girls to take as wives like a rancher picking a chicken to slaughter, and march the boys to training camps where they’re taught to hate their own families.”

Leesha scowled.

“Hamlets ent safe anymore,” the woman said. “Those that could moved on to Lakton proper, and a few stayed to fight for their homes, but the rest of us went to the Hollow looking for the Deliverer. He wan’t there, but folk said he had gone on to Angiers, so that’s where we’re headed. He’ll put things right, you see if he doesn’t.”

“So we all hope,” Leesha sighed, though she had her doubts. She handed back the baby and climbed back into the cart.

“We need to get to the Hollow immediately,” she told the others. She looked at Gared.

“Clear the road!” the giant Cutter bellowed, a lion’s roar, and folk fell over themselves to move out of his path as he stomped his garron toward them. Tents, blankets, and wards were snatched quickly away. Leesha regretted the need, but the cart could not go off-road, and her children needed her.

They galloped the horses when they finally cleared the press of refugees, thousands in number, but they were still well short of the Hollow by nightfall. It only took a mild look from Leesha to make Rojer take up his fiddle, and they rode on through the darkness with only Leesha’s light staff to guide them and his music to keep the corelings at bay.

Leesha could see the demons at the edge of the light, swaying in time to the music as they ambled slowly after Rojer, mesmerized.

“I’d rather they were attacking,” Wonda said. She had her great bow strung and a warded arrow nocked and ready.

“Ent natural,” Gared agreed.

They made it to Leesha’s cottage on the outskirts of the Hollow by midnight, and paused only long enough for Leesha to store the most precious of their cargo before they pressed on through the darkness to the village proper.

If things had seemed cramped before, they were many times worse now. The refugees from Lakton came better equipped, with tents and warding circles and covered wagons laden with supply, but they spilled over the edges of the forbidding on almost every side, weakening the greatward.

Leesha turned to Gared and Wonda. “Find the other Cutters and make a sweep of the forbidding. Any tent or carriage within ten feet of the greatward needs to be moved, or we could have corelings in the streets.” The two nodded and moved off.

She turned to Rojer. “Find Smitt and Jona. I want a council meeting tonight; I don’t care who’s in bed.”

Rojer nodded. “I don’t have to ask where you’ll be, I suppose.” He hopped from the cart and pulled up the hood of his warded cloak as she turned the cart for the hospit.

Jardir looked up as Abban limped into the throne room. “You seem almost spry today, khaffit.”

Abban bowed. “The spring air gives me strength, Shar’Dama Ka.”

Ashan snorted at Jardir’s side. Jayan and Asome kept their distance, having learned not to antagonize Abban in their father’s presence.

“What do you know of the place called Deliverer’s Hollow?” Jardir asked, ignoring them.

“You seek the Painted Man?” Abban asked.

Ashan lunged at Abban, taking him by the throat. “Where did you hear that name, khaffit?!” he demanded. “If you’ve been bribing the nie’dama for information again, I’ll—”

“Ashan, enough!” Jardir shouted as Abban gasped and struggled weakly. When the Damaji did not comply fast enough, Jardir did not ask again, kicking him hard in the side. Ashan was knocked away and hit the polished stone floor hard.

“You would strike me, your loyal Damaji, over a pig-eating khaffit?” Ashan asked, incredulous, when he had found his breath again.

“I struck you for not attending my command,” Jardir corrected, and swept his gaze over the rest of those in the room. Aleverak and Maji, Jayan and Asome, Ashan, Hasik, even the door guards. Only Inevera, stretched out in her diaphanous robes on a bed of bright silk pillows beside his throne, escaped his gaze. “I tire of this game, so I say now for all to hear, I will kill the next person to strike someone in my presence when I have not given them leave to do so.”

Abban began to smirk, but Jardir whirled on him, glaring. “And you, khaffit,” he growled. “The next time you answer a question with a question, I will tear out your right eye and make you eat it.”

Abban paled as Jardir strode angrily to his throne, sitting down hard. “How did you learn of the one they call the Painted Man? The dama required intensive interrogation to pull his name from the chin Holy Men’s lips.”

Abban shook his head. “It’s all the chin talk about, Deliverer. I doubt the interrogations discovered anything a few crumbs of bread or words of kindness couldn’t have gathered freely on the street.”