Chapter 4: Ch4: Finding A Guide
The bar fell quiet in the way alleys go quiet before a knife fight. Every stool stopped creaking. The dice froze mid-roll. Even the keg behind the counter seemed to hold its breath as all eyes fixed on the woman in battered armor at the threshold.
Liliana Fiorie drew in a slow breath, then another, her helm tucked beneath one arm, red hair damp with road dust and sweat. When she finally spoke, her voice carried.
"Your gate guard said there’s someone here who can guide us," she said. "Into the Envelon Forest."
The room inhaled as one.
A dozen whispers flared at once, snapping like sparks across dry kindling.
"The Envelon?"
"The land of the dead"
"No one comes back"
"Forget coins; they’ll be paying in funerals."
A guard leaned toward Liliana’s ear, his voice tight with caution and contempt. "My lady, it’s a bar full of peasants and drunkards. The gate guard lied. We should"
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze kept moving... counting exits, measuring people the way a fencer measures distance. Then her eyes settled, pinning the single person who very much did not want to be pinned.
Me.
I kept my face blank. Don’t recognize me. Don’t recognize me. You were half dead six years ago; you couldn’t have seen anything clearly. Just turn around and ask the next poor idiot.
But the story was wrong already. In the book, Liliana took a party of veterans into Envelon and returned with a relic. an old sword, a legend polished clean by rumor. That victory made her the first ever female knight to receive a noble title in our kingdom. The book called the sword "Pale-Edge," though most taverns just called it "the Queenmaker." Because of what happened after.
And also in the book, Duke Aithur Rian, lightning scarred, smiling like sin, entered the forest from the north at roughly the same time, not for glory but for an herb: Nightfrost Bloom, a plant that only grows where the fog never lifts. It’s used to treat mana-storm fever, a sickness that chews through border soldiers during spring squalls. The Duke was supposed to be there too—hunting a cure while Liliana hunted a myth.
But none of this _this_ was meant to start in Jobin’s bar.
Jobin, for his part, didn’t like the way the crowd’s whispers sharpened into knives. He wiped his palms on his apron, squared his wide shoulders, and walked closer to the counter with the cautious confidence of a man used to stopping brawls with his voice.
"Officers," he said, mild as milk. "If you’re looking for a guide to Envelon, you won’t find one breathing. Best let that talk die where it stands."
No one laughed. Four Royal Guards in black and silver stood at the door like they’d been nailed there. The tallest of them let a hand fall to his sword hilt. The room’s temperature dropped.
Liliana stepped forward. And then forward again. Until she was right at the counter, right in front of me. I could feel every eye in the place slide between our faces like a blade across a whetstone.
I folded a bar towel, kept my hands visible, and tried very hard to look like an unremarkable fifteen year old who collected debts and kept a bar ledger tidy.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" I asked, aiming for bored and hitting only halfway.
Her eyes drifted to my left ear.
She lifted a finger. Pointed. "That earring. A crystal."
Damn it, the ear cuff. I’d forgotten to tuck my hair over it after running down two idiots who thought "pay later" meant "pay never." The little gray shard winked back at her from its metal clasp. nothing fancy, just a thumbnail of smokestone.
I forced a shrug. "Cheaper than soap," I said. "It dampens barrel rot. Old brewer’s trick."
Her frown deepened. "Cheaper than soap," she repeated, unimpressed, scanning my boots, coat, and the way I’d stashed my weight off my right foot, habits picked up in alleys. "You’re a commoner. Crystals don’t come cheap to commoners."
"Except when they’re scrap," I said, tapping the cuff. "Smokestone. Worth less than the spoon you’re eyeing for throwing."
She moved back, clean, quick, and steel sang as she drew. The sword’s tip stopped six inches from my chest. Half the bar stood at once; the other half reached for whatever could pass for a weapon.
"Unless you stole it," Liliana said. Her voice cut through the room like sleet. "Thief."
I felt the heat rise in my neck, more humiliation than fear. I have been many things, I thought. Hungry. Angry. A professional runner of other people’s errands. A reluctant collector of unpaid tabs. But I hadn’t stolen this.
I opened my mouth. "I didn’t steal—"
"Enough," a guard snapped, shoving past a table; the legs screeched.
Which was, apparently, the exact wrong sound to make.
Metal clinked all around us—small, telling sounds: belt knives freed halfway from leather, chair legs placed for leverage, and the hinge of the back door easing as Mari peered out with a tray she forgot she was holding. Her eyes moved to me, then to Liliana, then to Jobin. In that look: Don’t. Move.
"This is foolish," Jobin said in a tone he used on men about to swing, palms out. "No one with sense goes into Envelon. The fog eats the sun. The paths change under your feet. The will-o’-wakes sing you the wrong way just to hear you scream. If you want a guide, go buy a priest and a coffin."
Liliana didn’t so much as flick her gaze toward him. She stared at me harder, and something tightened in her face—not anger, not exactly. Recognition? A shadow of a memory? She’d been half-conscious six years ago when the alley glowed and the wind lifted like prayer. She’d seen something. Maybe only color. Maybe only a shape. But something.
Her eyes darted to the counter’s edge, where a stub of chalk sat by the slate. She reached out, flipped the chalk with a fingertip—once, twice—then let it fall. A test. Watching my hand. Watching if I tracked it like a brawler or like something else.
"I need a guide," she said, as much to the room as to me. "Orders from the Capital. We’re to retrieve a relic believed to be buried in Envelon. A sword."
A ripple of unease went through the drinkers. Someone muttered, "Pale-Edge," like it was a prayer or a dare.
"And," Liliana added, voice cooling further, "reports say Duke Aithur Rian has already entered from the north. He’s after Nightfrost Bloom—for mana-storm fever on the border. He won’t slow if we fail."
Duke, not Crown Prince. Lightning on the tongue of the kingdom. A man who smiled as he kicked, if you asked his enemies.
So, then, the story was converging whether I liked it or not.
"Even if you find a guide," I said carefully, "Envelon eats parties, not just men. You can’t see ten paces in front of you. The fog makes echoes lie. The moss points no direction because there is no direction. Better to hunt a rumor in the market."
She tilted her head just a fraction. "You sound like someone who’s walked fog."
"I collect debts from men who think fog makes them invisible," I said. "That’s different."
A few of the regulars chuckled, nervous, grateful for any sound that wasn’t steel. Mari finally exhaled across the room. Betty—Betty of the unerring spoon—lifted her weapon again when her husband’s hand inched toward the mead.
Liliana’s blade didn’t waver. "I don’t have time to argue with a boy wearing a crystal he can’t explain," she said. "We’re here for a guide. Point me to him before I assume the gate guard meant you."
Every word pushed the room closer to breaking. The guards at the door spread to either side, closing the exits with their bodies. Four sets of boots ground sawdust into the boards. Someone at the back whispered, "If they grab the kid, Jobin’s going to—"
"—do nothing stupid," Jobin cut in, eyes on me now, voice warning. He had that look that said, "Let me talk," the one that had kept this bar intact through three different tax collectors and one oven fire.
"Sir Knight," Jobin said, leveling the atmosphere with sheer stubborn kindness, "if you listen long enough, every drunk here will swear he knows a path through Envelon. What we don’t have, truly, is a guide. Whoever your gate guard heard about, he heard wrong." He lifted his big hands. "So how about you sheathe that blade and we pour you a bowl? Warm food helps clean thinking."
Liliana’s jaw flexed. Her eyes never left mine.
"You," she said softly. "Step around the counter."
"No," Mari said from behind me, just as soft, tray set down, hands empty now in a very deliberate way. "He’s a worker. You want trouble, you pick on someone who can sign their own writ."
One of the guards snorted. "That’s how it is here? Tavern wench tells Royal Patrol where to point swords?"
Several men stood as if tugged by a string. The guard who’d spoken realized too late the floor had shifted; even drunks have lines you don’t cross, and insulting Mari was walking face-first over one. His fingers twitched toward his hilt again.
I felt the moment wobble.
If I move, we all bleed, I thought. If I don’t, they drag me, and we still bleed, only slower.
I raised my hands, palms up, and showed them empty. "I didn’t steal the crystal," I said, keeping my voice flat. "It’s smokestone. Jobin paid for it to test casks. You can take it if it makes you feel less heroic threatening bar help."
Liliana’s gaze flicked to the ear cuff again. Something about that gray sliver itched at her—maybe the way it sat, maybe the fact that crystals on commoners usually meant trouble. She inhaled to speak.
I never found out what she meant to say.
Because a voice cracked across the room like lightning hitting a bell.
"HOW. DARE THEM."
It wasn’t loud. It was big. It crawled up the walls and rattled the windows in their frames. Every head turned toward the door on instinct.
The double doors exploded inward. Not splintered—ripped—as if a wind put both hands on them and shoved. The four guards fled. One hit the left wall; two crashed backward into tables, wood shattering like kindling; the tallest struck a barrel and left a man-shaped dent.
The shock wave hit my chest a heartbeat later. Papers leapt, tankards toppled, and sawdust rose in a small storm and settled again.
Liliana spun, sword already up, posture snapping from accusation to defense in a single breath. Her eyes narrowed against the grit.
And through the open doorway, framed in the last bruised purple of evening, a figure stepped.
She could have been Mari’s mirror if the glass had been forged for war—same bone structure, same ice-blue eyes, but older, harder, the mouth set in a line that had learned how to refuse men twice her size. Her dark hair was tied, then spiked upward in stiff, rune-bound strands that sparked faintly where the light caught them. A shawl of stitched leathers fluttered behind her, sigils burned into the hems.
Mana rolled off her like heat from a kiln. The kind that makes windows hum.
She took in the room once—me, Liliana, and the wrecked guards—and her expression went from cold to volcanic.
Her voice didn’t need volume to reach the farthest stool.
"Who," she asked, each word a hammer, "dared draw steel... on my apprentice?"
Half the room’s breath left in a single stunned sound.
My pulse jumped into my throat. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. Jobin had teased me earlier—someone else paying you better than me, didn’t I take you to her?—and here she was, burning like a storm.
Liliana’s stance widened by instinct; she didn’t lower her blade. "Name yourself," she said, too seasoned to show the tremor that should have been there.
The woman’s eyes didn’t leave me. She smiled—and it wasn’t friendly.
"Later," she told Liliana without looking at her. "After I’m done teaching the room the difference between a thief..."
Her hand rose; the air crackled. Every candle flame bowed toward her as if in prayer.
"...and a boy I chose."
The wind hit again—harder.
Chairs skidded. The dented barrel split. Somewhere behind me, Betty grabbed her husband by the collar and yanked him bodily beneath the table as if a storm were tearing the roof off—and maybe it was.
"Master—" I started, uselessly, because stopping her once she decided to be furious was like negotiating with weather.
"Stay back, Luther," she said, not unkindly. Then, to the room: "You want Envelon? You want fog and ghosts and roads that move under your feet? You don’t get to point at the first boy with steady hands and call him a thief because it makes your fear feel noble."
She lifted her other hand.
Liliana’s eyes narrowed further, evaluating, calculating—if the woman used a crystal, where was it? What kind? What shape? The spiked hair shivered like grass in a storm. Sigils glowed faintly beneath leather. No visible gem. Whatkind of mage didn’t carry a focus—
"Stop," Jobin said hoarsely, because his bar was about to become a story people told for all the wrong reasons. "Please. Don’t—"
Too late.
The newcomer’s fingers snapped.
The doorframes sang.
And the last thing the room heard before the lights went sideways was the woman’s snarl, bright and razor-sharp:
"Touch him again—any of you—and I’ll teach you what the wind knows."
The world inhaled.
Then it hit.