“Tell me, Milosz… what really happened to the village of Oakhaven?”
Milosz’s smile, already fragile, crumbled. The air in the cramped common room of the Starlight Respite grew still, cut only by the dry clatter of an iron spoon against stoneware. Across the gouged oak table, Irina did not blink. Her grey irises locked onto his, flat and analytical.
He forced a shaky laugh. “Oakhaven? Is that what this is about? A fishing hamlet known for its particularly stubborn eels? Honestly, Irina, you’ve put more research into my sleepy hometown than the Royal Cartographic Society ever did.” He leaned back, affecting an exaggerated yawn. “It was… quiet. Then it wasn’t. You know, Chimera attacks. Happens all the time in the Lesser Reach. Nothing special.”
Irina didn't flinch. “Chimera attacks leave traces, Milosz. Scorched earth, distorted starlight signatures, survivor testimonies. Oakhaven left a void. A clean slate. And the Valerov reclamation teams were the first responders, a full two days before any other Constellar units arrived.” Her voice was low, devoid of its usual sharpness, making it all the more menacing. “Curious, isn’t it? Almost as if they were… expecting it.”
Milosz slipped his fingers beneath the table edge, pressing his knuckles flat against the raw timber to steady them. He recalculated his margins. She had crumbs, not documents. He slumped his shoulders forward, letting his posture dissolve into the soft, unthreatening slouch of a bumbling field medic.
“Expecting what, exactly? A particularly aggressive school of eels?” He grinned, trying to inject genuine mirth into his voice. “Look, I was a kid. My memory’s fuzzy. Maybe they were just… efficient. Or had better horses.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Speaking of efficiency, I need fresh poultices, and Damian used his last tin of salve after that skirmish yesterday. Duty calls, scholar. Stick to the arithmetic and let the vanguard sweat over the beasts.”
He offered a wide, disarming smile, the kind that usually made people drop their guard, or at least roll their eyes. Irina merely watched him go, her expression unreadable. But as he turned to leave, her voice, soft as a rustle of old parchment, followed him. “The archives of the Aethelgard Bastion are vast, Milosz. And I am very, very patient.”
Milosz pushed out through the tavern door into the cold avenue. Irina was trailing his steps too closely. The leisurely pace he had planned for the season would have to break.
He needed concrete ledger entries to pin down the house's supply routes. Noble houses bled fastest when their supply lines snapped.
He made his way through the bustling avenues of the Aethelgard Bastion, past trainee Constellars sparring in sun-drenched courtyards and vendors hawking shimmering Arcane Cores. The supply depot for House Valerov’s expeditions, the Vault Annex, sat in a quiet alley along the eastern ramparts where overland shipments arrived. It was late afternoon, the hour when most personnel were either training or preparing for the evening patrol rosters.
He reached the building, a thick granite storehouse fitted with banded iron doors. A sentry with poorly fitted shoulder guards stood beside the post. Milosz dragged his left heel slightly in the dust, clutching an empty bottle. “Pardon, brother! Milosz Vodya, support unit for Lord Damian. Our satchel is bone-dry of mending salts. Damian will string me up by my boots if we ride out tomorrow without them!”
The guard, Private Jenik, eyed him suspiciously. “Depot is shut for inventory,” the boy said, blocking the latch. “Come back at dawn.”
“Dawn? The detachment marches at first bell, and Damian burns through vigor like dry pine when he unleashes that blade.” Milosz pitched his tone down to an intimate murmur. “You know his temper when an attendant forgets his kit. Two pinch-jars of sulfur salts from the side rack and I'm gone. Half a minute.”
Jenik shifted his weight, clearly weighing the house scion's temper against warehouse protocol. “Five minutes. Touch only the open bins.” He hauled back the iron bar.
Milosz offered a dazzling smile. “You’re a lifesaver, Private Jenik! A true Constellar hero!”
Inside, cedar shelving rose toward rafters strung with dried valerian and bitter-root. Iron-banded casks and grain sacks lined the flagstones. Milosz shuffled past the marked bins, sweeping his gaze across joints, floorboards, and seams. His Edict, The Weaver's Thread, stirred like a plucked wire behind his ribs, tracing structural irregularities in the timber.
He skirted the central gangway, slipping behind three pallets of saltpeter toward a clerk's station. A lamp crusted with dried whale oil sat beside a cracked mug. Milosz slid his fingers under the lip of the writing board until wood gave way beneath his fingernail. A false bottom slid free with a dry friction rub.
Tucked between two brass weights lay a calfskin register, its corners unembossed.
He pulled it into the dim spill of lantern light. The parchment was lined with crisp, angular ink: rosters matched to numerical tithes, caravan timestamps, and coordinating sectors along the perimeter. Three entries carried black wax pips: Deepwood Outpost, Ashfall Mine, and lower on the folio, Sector Gamma-Seven, marked with his home parish's pre-war survey stamp.
Not an accidental raid. A scheduled requisition.
He could not lift the booklet; its disappearance would summon inquisitors within an hour. Instead, he let his Edict trace the ink strokes across the vellum, locking the coordinates, sequence numbers, and dates into his own memory.
Boot nails ground against the outer threshold. Jenik’s voice wavered, answered by a heavier stride. Milosz slipped the volume back into its recess, slid the board flush, and stepped behind a pyramid of salt pork barrels. From the nearby shelf he snatched two small vials of restorative powder.
The door creaked open. “Anything of note, Jenik?” a gruff voice demanded. It was Sergeant Roric, Valerov’s personal quartermaster, a man known for his meticulousness and his unwavering loyalty to the House.
“Just that support recruit, Milosz,” Jenik said. “Said he needed materials for Lord Damian.”
Roric grunted. “The lord has his private armory chest. Unranked personnel have no business back here. Where did he go?”
Milosz pressed his back against the timber staves, the glass phials silenced between his fingers. Roric was sweeping the rows systematically, the leather of his scabbard slapping his thigh. Milosz flicked a thumb. A dry grain of resin flicked across the gap, striking an open basket of dried puffball spores atop the upper rack.
A thread of Milosz's starlight snagged the brittle skins. An emerald fog puffed out over the aisle, blinding and sharp. Roric sneezed, spitting curses into his sleeve. “Rot take it! Seal the outer latch! Spore breach!”
Milosz ducked around the cloud, quiet as an owl, and hit the low square of an intake grate near the floor. He kicked the loose iron grille out, wedged his shoulders through the sheet-metal flue, and squirmed into the drain run behind the masonry.
He dropped into the alley muck behind the armory wall, wiping brick grit from his palms. The night air was damp, smelling of river silt and horse manure. He had the names and the dates.
He was about to step out into the main thoroughfare when a towering figure blocked his path. The silhouette was unmistakable, broad shoulders, head nearly grazing the alley’s low roof. Gavrila. The party’s stoic shield-bearer. In his scarred palm, Gavrila turned over a shattered glass stopper—the spare cap Milosz had knocked free near the duct. The shield-bearer looked down without a hint of his usual dull compliance. “What were you hunting for in there, Milosz?”