"He's your godson?"

I stared at the sleeping mercenary, soaking in that revelation. To the elves, that kind of obligation was next to holy. They did not follow the teachings of our Church or consider the God-Queen and Her Choir to be absolute authorities, but some things were truly sacrosanct to them. Guest right, the obligations of their lords and monarchs, and the bond formed between an elven patron and a chosen mortal.

Sometimes, I wondered how much of our traditions — those of the relationship between hearth and home, host and guest, lord and hall, came from the Sidhe rather than some higher source. After all, didn't most things grow up, not down?

Our history is full of stories of heroes and villains, and there's a reason that faerie godmothers and godfathers are so prevalent in them. Even Nath had taken on that tradition, as her patronage of the Briar in many ways made her as much fae as seraphim. She was Emma's godmother.

Jocelyn Ascalon, last scion of House Ascalon. I'd heard that fallen House's name, in passing. All I knew was that they'd ruled the small coastal realm of Ekarleon before the Lindenwurm destroyed it.

That was interesting, but not exactly a pressing concern to me. I wasn't there for the Ironleaf, though I knew many in the Accord would want me to take care of the problem right there.

But if Maerlys was truly the man's patron, his godmother, then she would not give him up. Not without blood.

She stood and moved to stand at my side. She was small, shorter and thinner than Tzanith, and even standing within arms reach her wounds made her look like a shadow-shape, almost skeletal.

"Do you intend to try to take my godson into Accord custody?" She asked in a quiet voice.

"No." I looked down at her. "That's not why I'm here."

"Good. I would have been less forgiving of a second attempt."

I frowned. "A second?"

In response, Maerlys turned and lifted a hand. The trees behind Jocelyn moved, branches creaking as they shifted, boughs parting to reveal a large opening between. Inside that hollow, his arms outstretched and wrapped in twining coils of wood that must have been strong as steel cable, was a figure surpassing nine feet in height and a thousand pounds of raw physical power. His skin was a sallow shade of red, like desert rock, his sloped pate hairless, his jaw heavy and sporting tusks. He wore elaborate armor fashioned to fit his frame, all bronze and iron inscribed with twisting patterns.

The ogre glared down at us with yellow eyes rimmed in red, like candle flames.

"Karog," I said in shock.

"He snuck into my refuge and tried to kill my ward." Maerlys stared at the captive war ogre with a sharp intensity. "If I am not mistaken, your Emperor knighted him after the tournament. That makes him a representative of the Accorded Realms."

She was right. Like Jocelyn, Karog was another ally — at least a dubious and occasional one — who'd participated in Markham's tournament. A former mercenary and chimeric soldier from the continent, we'd met as enemies only for him to go rogue when his employers tried to take his will away, forcing him to flee.

He'd wanted to become a knight, though his reasons for doing so seemed more calculated than idealistic. He'd entered the service of a dangerous sorcerer in the capital, who might still be his benefactor. However, it was the Ardent Round that dispatched him to hunt for Jocelyn.

Seems like he found him, I thought grimly as I worked to school my expression. Maerlys stepped forward to stand between me and the suspended prisoner, whose angry eyes shifted between us both.

"He can see us?" I asked.

"And hear us," Maerlys confirmed. "But I have taken his voice. He would not answer my questions, though I hardly needed him to. I may give his speech back if it pleases me. For now, he is leverage."

"He was sent to find Jocelyn because the man is believed to be a murderer on the run from justice," I told her.

"I know. And yet, as I have told you, I will not give my godson up. This creature entered my sanctums and murdered my subjects. He almost killed me… Now, his life is mine and I am owed my own retribution."

I stared at the mute ogre in silence, trying to think of the right thing to say, the correct approach. This had caught me by surprise, and all my arguments, the compromises and pleas to reason I'd worked through on my way here, they all became a jumble behind my teeth.

Which was no doubt what Maerlys expected, the reason she'd waited until this moment to reveal her prisoner and her connection to Jocelyn. Before, when I'd managed to overcome her power and diminish her status, I'd made it clear she couldn't control me with sheer strength, so she'd resorted to other tactics.

"His attempt on my servant's life is tantamount to an act of war," she said to me after letting me absorb the situation. "You believe that my attack on the Empress is the same, but I can claim justification."

"Blackmail, is it?" I asked. "Yet, I know Jocelyn is in your custody, so I've got my own mud to throw."

"True. And yet, it is you who cares so much about this confederation's unity, while my people have outlived a thousand empires and will survive the death of this one. We are the land."

I made a fist in frustration. Why did the Sidhe — and every other preternatural being — have to be so goddamn stubborn? It was like they could not imagine a world where they were not our superiors.

Perhaps that was exactly it. After all, that balance of power had changed only recently. Was this denial?

"Maybe so…" I felt an odd calm come over me. "But the land is sick, Your Majesty. More war and more fracture isn't going to help it heal. You say you're patient? That you'll outlive all of us and all of this? Will you outlive Ager Roth?"

The trees seemed to shiver and the lights dim. Maerlys went perfectly still and spoke in a low hiss. "Do not speak that name in my presence, mortal."

"It's spoken," I said. "And you know I'm right. We already have one Dark Lord to contend with. Can't you wait until another century to play the villain?"

It was dangerous to talk to her this way, I knew. This wasn't Rosanna. Arguing with a faerie monarch could prove lethal, and they did not forget slights. I hid my tension by keeping my fist beneath my cloak, forcing my voice to remain steady.

The elf stared at me with a deadly intensity, and the trees at her back almost seemed to bend inward like reaching fingers.

"…Perhaps you have a point," Maerlys said at last, and the air of threat vanished. "And yet, blood has been spilled. What does your Empress wish of me, to avoid further unpleasantness?"

I let out a breath, hoping my relief wasn't too obvious. "Reparations, for starters, for the people who were killed in that attack. It was already a pain to convince her to accept that much."

Maerlys nodded. "Very well. Weregild for the families of those who died, and a gift to the Silver Queen from my own hoard. Anything else?"

I hadn't even expected that much, and her pleasant tone made me suspicious. This felt too easy.

Thinking it over, I said, "You've already vowed not to attack House Silvering again, so that should help. I'll let you and the Empress work it out. Send her a messenger. She'll be reasonable, but try not to abuse her pride."

"Did you tell her I can help her son?" Maerlys asked.

I hesitated before answering. "I did."

"And?" The elf asked.

My answer came after another pause. "And I think that she might accept that, and it would go a long way to mending this thing between you two… But it needs to be on her terms."

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Maerlys started walking away from the sleeping Jocelyn. I turned and followed her, keeping a short distance back as she paced to the far side of the glade. I felt Karog's angry eyes on the back of my head.

At another corner of the hidden sanctum, obscured within the overgrown roots and boughs of the forest where I hadn't noticed it before, was some kind of shrine. A plinth of dark stone supported what I could only describe as a bird's nest, twigs and other oddities packed together into a little bed.

There was nothing else in the nest, but above it stood a strange and uncanny effigy. An owl with three faces — four eyes, three beaks — set side by side so it stared in three directions. It was made of twigs and bones woven together into an intricate structure, plucked feathers forming its wings. It perched on several branches that grew entwined together.

Something about it unsettled me, but I couldn't say why or name the feeling it caused to form in the pit of my stomach. "What is that?" I asked.

Maerlys placed something in the nest, what looked like a bit of powder she pinched between her fingers. "The fact you must ask makes me feel old, mortal."

It looked like some kind of pagan rendition of one of the Choir, though I couldn't say who. Many of them took on strange forms, from beasts to more abstract shapes. None I knew looked like a three-faced owl, though.

"There are powers older than your Heir," Maerlys said as I stared at it. "But we are not here to discuss the past, and have lingered in it too long already. You wish to know about Rysanthe Miresgal?"

I glanced back at Karog and Jocelyn. Maerlys tutted.

"Come now, Headsman! You are pulled in too many directions. Do your seraphim wish you to find their missing reaper, or do they not?"

I returned my attention to the Elf Queen. My jaw was clenched in frustration and my voice tight, but I said, "Fine. Tell me what you know."

"Where to begin…" She tilted her burnt head from the shrine as she thought. "The Silberdaughter came to my court shortly after the onset of winter."

"Why?" I asked.

One gold-glass eye rotated in its lidless socket to stare at me. "Why? Why? Shall I tell you it is because we are old friends, Miresgal and I? That we were once like sisters? Like moon and sun, like night and day, shadow and flame, silver and gold? Shall I tell you we were lovers, or bitter rivals for the heart of the same mortal prince?"

"I wouldn't mind hearing the truth," I said dryly.

"We are immortal, little man. All things can be true for us, in their time. But I digress. In this case, the Faen of Draubard sought my council. She was given a most perilous task by the lords of the dead, to hunt and reap the soul of the Briar King."

I nodded. "Urawn Aarlu said as much."

Maerlys let out a soft hiss. "That is also a name I would prefer not buzz in my ears. Rysanthe is a potent warrior, and many mighty names have been swallowed by hers, yet the Lord of the Briar… That is no soft prey. She wanted my advice, and my help in locating her victim."

My brow furrowed. "Locating him? I would think that easy. The Briar King reigns in Briarland, in the south."

"Have you not heard the stories, Headsman?" Maerlys was running her hand along a shelf on the shrine's plinth, which I noted contained a number of small items. Shells, twigs, bundles of herb and odder things. She plucked something small and gleaming up and placed it in the nest.

I folded my arms as I worked through disconnected facts. The Briar King was a legend, but legends tend to be steeped in mystery and everyone has their own version of them. "I've heard all sorts of things. That he was the Archon's son, that he was spurned over some matter and turned bitter. I've also heard that Nath grew him out of a poisoned seed like a tree."

"He was human once," Maerlys said distractedly as she took a small pouch off the shrine and emptied its contents into the nest. "A mortal man, like yourself. His story, like many stories we remember, is sad and brutal. He was the first Brother of the Briar, the first human to fall to its influence and become a weapon for its keepers."

"…I didn't know," I said. "I always assumed he was an elf. Why would the Briarfae accept a mortal as their king?"

She tilted her head back to regard me. "He is not the only mortal to have become like us. It happens sometimes, and our own origins are hardly uniform. He was human, now he is not."

She grinned her terrible white grin. "Not unlike you…"

I hid my unease at that statement behind a glare. "Don't change the subject."

Maerlys turned back to her shrine. "You are not wholly wrong. In truth, the Knight of the Roses is king of Briarland in more of an… honorary fashion. It is a mantle and a burden. Only Thorned Nath can claim true authority over the elves of Briar and Bane. The King is their champion, and their plaything. He does not sit a throne or rule a court, and to find him is not so simple a matter as besieging a castle."

"I see…" I rubbed at my chin in thought. "But Rysanthe believed you could help her track him down?

Maerlys started to pace in front of her shrine. She took something off one of the trees, something like an acorn only… not. I only caught a glimpse of it, but I swore I saw a face. Above, the effigy of the owl stood in watchful silence. Its inner pair of eyes were shared by the two outer faces, forming something of an optical illusion. All four seemed to stare at me.

"The Briar King wanders here and there," Maerlys continued. "Often he walks the tangled paths of the Wend, but is known to make appearances in times of strife, of war, and of plague. He leads the Brothers of the Briar in raids and in ritual hunts, slaughtering unlucky heroes whose deeds offend him."

"So he moves around a lot," I summarized.

"Indeed," the elf agreed. "But there are patterns to his bloodlust. He appeared during the Fall, fighting for neither Bough nor Recusant, but in the years since has been strangely quiet. I have been listening and watching, studying the signs and waiting for him to appear. He is, after all, a Power of the land, as dangerous in his way as the demon king lurking in my father's realm."

She stopped her pacing and held up a finger. "I had little concrete evidence to provide the Lady Miresgal, but my people have heard strange rumors of a dark rider seen on the western moors, a rider crowned in thorns and riding a faerie steed."

"The western moors…" I muttered. "That doesn't narrow it down."

"Perhaps this will," Maerlys continued. "One of my chieftains was walking the countryside when he came upon a rural church, a monastery. He took refuge there in the guise of a beggar, and from the monks heard an odd tale — of a thorned knight who also visited them some days before and defied hallowed ground."

"The Briar King?" I asked. "Or just one of his Brothers?"

"Difficult to say, but the Brothers of the Briar are by and large hollow things who do little without the leadership of their masters. No, this visitor was said to be eloquent and fey. He took communion and gave confession like any pilgrim, yet made quite a fuss, ranting and raving for hours before leaving the monastery without explanation. The cloister was quite shaken by the event."

She plucked a leaf then and placed it in the nest. I felt a shift in the air, a sense of pressure. I recognized it, and in a flash of insight realized what I was staring at. It was cruder than others I'd seen, almost eldritch despite — or perhaps because of — our natural environs.

The shrine… this whole grove… was a laboratory. She's an alchemist.

"Where is this monastery?" I asked aloud.

"To the west and south of the Emperor's city," Maerlys told me. "In the country known as the Banner."

I must have shown my reaction on my face, because Maerlys paused her pacing. "You look troubled at this news."

There's been problems with the Bannerlands," I explained. "Messengers the Ardent Round sends in tend to disappear, and there have been rumors of attacked villages and unsafe roads since last summer. One of the knights who participated in the Emperor's tournament was a noble from the Banner, Evangeline Ark. The same day the Vykes tried to take the Fulgurkeep, she was turned into a vampire and murdered one of her countrymen, a lord she'd been competing with for her realm's throne. She's been missing since, but might be hiding in her home territory."

"And now there are rumors of the Briar King wandering that same country…" Maerlys's cracked lips parted in thought. "Curious."

"It's a place to start. If Rysanthe was hunting the Knight of the Roses, then I'll trace her steps. Do you know the name of this monastery? Where I can find it?"

"Not far from where the Cairnhurst borders that country. The convent sits upon a high hill at the edge of the grasslands, near a village called Fife."

That was enough. I turned toward the exit of the glade, but paused and glanced to where Karog was suspended in the trees.

"You should let him go," I said. "He was here on orders."

Maerlys looked to her captive. "He is an intruder and an assassin."

Inspiration struck me then. Karog might have been knighted, but the Ardent Round basically just gave him the only job they had on hand to send him from the court. I doubted anyone knew what to do with the mercenary, or cared about his fate.

He was adrift. Catrin had said it once, sympathized with him. Hell, I sympathized with him. And I owed him.

"Take him into your service," I suggested. "He doesn't have a master, and you're an official member of the Accord. No one can complain, and he's capable."

Maerlys's baleful stare turned thoughtful. "And he will agree?"

Karog was watching me. Listening. His expression looked frustrated, but also curious.

Evangeline was turned into a vampire that night. One of the Vykes monsters might have done it, but it might have also been that count, or someone from the Backroad. But why would the Keeper want that? Laertes was my pick for a culprit, but I didn't understand what he had to gain. Karog acted as his champion in the tournament, but how deep did that relationship go?

Better to keep him under watch. I owed the mercenary a favor, since he'd helped me kill Issachar that night and save Rosanna's children. But I'd pushed Maerlys's indulgence, and had more than enough to deal with already.

And I didn't trust Karog. Perhaps that was a poor reward for his help in the past, but it was true. I had a feeling he'd get himself out of this, one way or another.

"He has a sense of honor," I told the Elf Queen. "And he's loyal, so long as you don't try to take his will away from him. He also stood up for the changelings in Garihelm, protected them from the Inquisition and from the demon, Yith Golonac."

"Did he now?" Maerlys asked. "Interesting."

"Up to you. And Karog!"

The ogre shifted his glower to me as I called out. I met that stare levelly. "Now we're even. Do you have any message you want me to pass along? Through the inn, maybe?"

He stared at me in unreadable silence for a moment, then gave a small shake of his head. I turned toward the glade's entrance, bowed to the Queen of the Elves, and took my leave.

The Bannerlands. That was a dangerous country, probably as much so as Osheim. Monsters dwelt there.

Good. I was tired of facing monsters I couldn't slay.

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