Now Maertyn saw faces in his nightmares. The nine mages who stood around him had never looked clearer in his mind than in the dream. Maertyn saw more little details he didn`t know that he remembered. The shape of a nose, the curve of a lip, beards, moles. The last mage to stand before him had long golden curls. Maertyn remembered it now, because in his nightmare, the curls turned red when her blood ran down her face.

　　 So much blood. It tickled his ribs as it ran down his sides. Pooled under his knees where he knelt on the cold marble floor. It mingled with the blood of all the others carved up under the great Dome of Nynomath while the stars wheeled overhead.

　　What did I ever do that was so bad? He wanted to scream at them. I missed my wife. That was all.

　　Your star is dark, was the reply. No light can come near it. You bring only misery and woe.

　　Maertyn rolled over and vomited, only half aware that he was awake and alive—and not under the Dome. His head reeled and his vision blurred with each throb of his head. When it steadied, he was relieved to see the floor underneath his vomit was made of wood, not marble. He`d just missed the brass basin on the floor.

　　Maertyn lifted his head slowly. More of the room swam into his vision: plush red curtains, white morning sunlight, brick fireplaces. He was somewhere even finer than Amwarren, with polished pretty things on every surface instead of books.

　　Anryn sat on a chair beside the bed, just out of range of his filth. Her sword was across her knees with a purple silk sheet across her chest. She slept with her face propped against one hand. The other she kept wrapped around the hilt of her blade.

　　It was as if she guarded his sleep, Maertyn thought. It should have been the other way around.

　　Maertyn looked around the room again, with the Sight turned onto every detail. For the first time, he saw the seams in the walls where secret doors would open and shut. One was open now, to let a little man into the room carrying firewood in a flat basket. Two more servants followed, unobtrusively collecting discarded clothes and empty bottles. One eyed the puddle of vomit by the bed and glanced at Maertyn, uncertain whether or not to begin cleaning it.

　　Self-conscious, Maertyn got out of the bed and stepped around his mess. He picked Anryn up out of the chair, sword and all, and replaced her in the bed where he`d been sleeping. When he stepped back, the servants swept in to take off the prince`s shoes and gently pry her fingers off of her sword.

　　They would not hurt her, Maertyn understood. These were men who lived and died by order and routine. Their prince was one more point by which they oriented themselves. Anryn herself had said it: no one would touch her when she was King. Ammar depended on the order royalty brought to its people.

　　At a loss for what to do, or how to help, Maertyn left the prince`s bedroom via the servants` hall. He used the Sight to guide him through its sharp angles and blind corners. He led himself down and out into a kitchen courtyard where the morning routine was already underway.

　　Here, Maertyn felt more at home. There was a little garden like the one at his house. The smells of bread, salt, and beer blanketed the air, covering the stench of the city surrounding the palace. Servants were already at work here, too, collecting kitchen herbs and hauling water. Hopeful for a bath, Maertyn followed the trail of servants and was shocked to find an indoor well, an entire house built over the top of it.

　　Mahaut was unlike any place Maertyn had ever been, even Nynomath. The buildings pressed in close all around him, blotting out the sky. The streets were full of people, some of whom were even taller than him. No one looked twice at him when he walked up and down with Anryn the day before.

　　 Maertyn sipped the cool, metallic water from the well and tried to remember more from his dream. He hoped to recall something that would help him hunt the mages now stalking Anryn. Maertyn was sure that they would come, if they were not already there.

　　The question was how to find them. Maertyn`s Sight only extended as far as what was in front of him. He looked around the courtyard and only Saw the servants of the palace, coming and going as their day began. Outside the high wall of the kitchen garden, Maertyn thought he might find more to See. He set off into Mahaut, leaving through the side gate.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

　　The sun lit up the streets of the city as Maertyn walked. Long shadows stretched from clumps of men and women sleeping rough in the streets. He looked at the huddles of them, saw the slack and peaceful faces. He knew that they were sleeping, but the Sight made it seem to him, with a trick of the light, like they lay there dead.

　　Maertyn hurried past to where the market was already humming with the chatter of merchants setting up their stalls for the day. Carts rolled down the streets, all piled high with lumber. The leather purse Anryn had gave him the day before rattled in his pocket. He used the coins to buy himself a cup of apple beer. The fizz of it cleared his head of unwanted Sight.

　　Maertyn sat on the low step of a church and nursed the cup, watching more people come and go from the square. Now, he could tell apart the witches from the others. They wore the flower crowns, woven with bright white flowers for the wedding. It seemed to Maertyn that there were more than had come with Anryn to Mahaut. Their eyes darted all over the streets, on the lookout for any who would accuse them. They quivered in anticipation of a fight.

　　Idiots, Maertyn thought again.

　　Perhaps he was resentful. Never in his life had Maertyn Blackfire worn flowers on his head or foretold the future, but they still called him a witch and sent him away. These fools Maertyn now watched in Mahaut`s market square, singing and dancing, called attention to themselves. They handed out their flower crowns to passersby as favors and made up rhyming chants they claimed were fertility spells to bless the wedding. They wanted to be acknowledged as witches, even if none of them could so much as cheat at cards with the Sight.

　　They had no idea what could happen to them, if they truly were witches, Maertyn thought.

　　The square filled with people as he drank. Priests, jugglers, and singers joined the noise in the streets, all competing for attention. A minstrel stood near the steps Maertyn sat on, and sang a ballad with a clumsy melody. Something improvised and too loud for Maertyn.

　　And it was said,

　　As the mages fell down dead, that the Winze did appear&

　　Touched by neither shroud, nor spell,

　　He did save our Prince well, and dragged the mages straight to Hell!

　　Maertyn snorted. They were singing about him, now? As if the stick dolls weren`t enough. He glanced around, but no one who watched the singer looked at Maertyn. In a city of dozens of thousands, a drunk on the steps of a church was not a remarkable sight.

　　The song started over, this time with a whole verse dedicated to Maertyn`s heroic acts in saving the Prince of Ammar from the mages of Nynomath. Maertyn listened, amused and embarrassed. He finished his beer before the singer finished the song. He thought of getting another, but by now, there was a long line around the stall.

　　Just when he decided to get up from the steps and find another place to buy beer, a flash caught his eye. He looked up at a window with the Sight. He Saw a pale white flame flickering in a windowsill, brighter than any ordinary candle would have been.

　　Maertyn shivered. The marks on his back itched. A mage was up there. He was sure of it.

　　Maertyn pushed his way across the square. He found a door to a public house that he thought might lead to stairs that could get him to the second floor. He went inside, heedless of the bartenders scolding that the place was not open yet. He mounted the stairs, and started to open the doors on the second floor.

　　Every room was a mess of clothes and cups, and trash. The chaos of temporary lodging. Men and women—sleeping four to a bed in some rooms—squaked with indignation when he intruded. He had a few cups thrown at him.

　　"Oy!" the bartender yelled up the steps. "No breaking the glasses! I been telling ye for weeks!"

　　Finally, on the fourth door he tried, Maertyn found the mage`s room. It was clean and tidy. The blankets on the bed were folded. There were bundles of herbs arranged by size pinned to one wall. All across the floor, there were chalk white symbols scrawled into the floorboards. In the windowsill, facing the square, a single candle burned.

　　Maertyn went to the window and pinched the burning wick between his fingers. He picked up the taper, felt raised marks all across the length of it. The voices in his head were whispering, echoing the words written into the wax. He crushed the sorcerous candle between his fingers, grinding the spell to crumbs.

　　The mage was long gone. Maertyn looked out the open window. He didn`t realize that the roofs in Mahaut were made of slate, not thatch like the roofs in his village. He watched, amazed, as people clambered up to the roofs from windows all up and down the street. Little children hoisted each other up, and laughing men lifted ladies out and up onto the roofs.

　　They were hoping to catch a glimpse of the wedding, Maertyn realized. Shit, I am supposed to be there&

　　Somewhere, a bell began to toll. The crowd down in the market square surged, all moving in one direction, toward where they thought they would see the procession pass by. Maertyn came down the steps of the public house. When he got to the ground floor, someone pressed a cup into his hand, brimming with beer. The bartender was passing drinks out to everyone headed into the square.

　　"To the Prince and Princess!"

　　"For the Prince! Here`s to his honor—get on her and stay on her!"

　　They still make that joke? Maertyn thought. Perhaps he wasn`t as old as he thought. Maertyn drank down the beer in one long gulp, and joined the crowd in the street.