Kasimir left them at the edge of the woods. They had found the weapon his sister pointed him to, and it was in better hands than his. He had hoped her return meant she had found a way to redeem herself. Deep down, he said, he had always known she hadn’t.
A raven brought a scroll before they had gone ten steps: the Keepers of the Feather, asking them to the Blue Water Inn.
The Morning Gate
The gate stayed shut. A woman on the wall called down that the Burgomistress, Lady Fiona Wachter, had ordered the company refused. Aleksander asked whether she really wanted to call her archers that quickly. Then he told her something important was happening two streets over, and the whole gate detail ran off to see. The company let themselves in.
Vallaki had never been lively. Now people walked straight to wherever they were going, and some of them scurried away when they saw who was in the street.
The Blue Water Inn
The inn was closed by order, for harbouring traitors. “Well, that’s true,” said Freyja. Danika put soup on and told them the rest. Three days of edicts sealed with the authority of Castle Ravenloft. Father Lucian in a cell. Guards who went to Wachterhaus to protest and never came back. Bats at the Arasek Stockyard, flooding the streets each night and driving the ravens away. And Baba Lysaga, who had come for the Wizard of Wines on top of her hut and taken the family. Only Claudiu had escaped.
Claudiu’s first question was whether they could kill her. He showed them his raven shape and a sword he could not balance, and Freyja agreed he could come, on terms: he fights in his hybrid form, and he runs the moment he is told. But not yet. There were errands to run first.
Urwin had news of his own. Berez was swallowed by a hedge of thorns hundreds of feet high, and no raven could see inside. And a cloaked stranger had been seen leaving Wachterhaus by the back door. Freyja told him his family’s rescue hung on something stranger: one day he would have to make peace with his father.
Danika brought out the Huntress’s emerald, the winery’s last gem. Victor slipped in through the front door, desperate for Stella. Lady Wachter was basically a swamp witch, he said. The company showed him a sketch of Baba Lysaga, and he took the point.
St. Andral’s
A woman in grey preached from the church steps about Ezra, She Who Dwells in the Mists, and about bending with the wind instead of hoping for a golden dawn. Behind her, the company’s faces looked out from a wanted poster. “I do not wear earrings,” said Freyja.
The camp that flinched
At the Luna River crossroads the Vistani closed their curtains. In Luvash’s tent, the steward Escher was delivering his master’s demand: a fugitive, Arturi Radanavich, must be returned to Castle Ravenloft. Escher left with some dignity, until Altair lifted his shield in the doorway and the steward and his spawn bolted.
Arturi was hidden in a treasure wagon, bandaged, hunted every night for eighteen years by the dead. He was searching for one man. The company knew where that man was, and walked him three wagons over.
“Undead take you as you have taken my son.”Arturi Radanavich
Rictavio took off his hat and was Rudolph van Richten. Arturi gave his name, and the doctor went white. Each man’s family had cursed the other’s. Both had come ready to kill. Ezmerelda heard all of it, and slipped away.
Freyja knew the vision. The old fox drives off the rats and becomes a sparrow himself: Van Richten must be taken into the Vistani by blood. Neither man would hear it, until she asked Arturi how old he had been, and what he had ever been paid. Five or six. Nothing but the curse. “I can’t blame a child for the sins of his parents,” said Van Richten.
The rite asks for blood, and for the past to be burned. The caravan where it all happened is not far.