Decoded by Lord Everwinter using the Dex’at cipher:

  

  Dear Lord Everwinter,

  I am glad to hear you have arrived in your lands. I suspect them to be in even worse shape than the previous lord reported before his demise. I entrusted the title to you as the only one I trust to manage this border province without prejudice or greed blinding you from the needs of the people. We’ll need to show strength to prevent our coup from turning into a bloodbath, and I have it on good authority the other Royals from our neighbors to the west are biding their time to strike.

  I grant you full permission to do as you see fit. Should any of those title holders under your command take issue, you have my permission to do away with them as needed. Those who need the outlet can address their concerns to me directly but know they will receive the response that my trust is in you.

  We knew this would be a difficult road going into our choice. I can only pray to the gods above that it was the right one.

  Be well,

  Queen Annabelle

  Squirt had always thought Stalf’s voice was gruff and irritating—he’d smoked fey tobacco for too long, or maybe he just gargled every night with shards of glass. She certainly wished that fate on him now.

  “You’re going, and that’s final.”

  Hating the glimmer of amusement in his dark eyes, she glared at them. It was difficult to do for two reasons. The first being the height difference. He was seated, sure, but pixies were usually only around four feet tall to begin with, and she was small even for a pixie, meaning the angle made it difficult with how he leaned back, his arms crossed. The second reason was that his eyes were almost entirely hidden by the layers of wrinkles denoting his age. It was, after all, why he was in this backwater, nameless village to begin with—a soldier so advanced in age he was sent off to a farm for retirement. She knew from experience to not judge the fey by his age, of course. He could, and regularly did, whip her butt in the practice yard.

  He nonchalantly used his pinky finger to dig the wax out of his ear. “It was either you or Havort, and that fey having a new babe on the way meant it was you.”

  “If you wanted me dead—”

  “I don’t want you dead, lass.” He shrugged from his seat at the table in the guardhouse, his aching knee set up on the pillow she had made for him last year after getting fed up with all of his griping about it. Like most things this far north, the thing was made almost entirely of scraps of furs from the end bits and animal legs that didn’t make good gowns or cloaks for the titled fey of better means. Still, unlike its misshapen appearance, it had to be comfortable since he never sat down without it anymore.

  Tall enough to still stare down at her despite being seated, he droned on. “New lord, new orders. Every able-bodied trainee in the territory to his lordship’s house, and you’re a trainee until I say you aren’t. If I don’t send someone, it’ll be my neck on the line.”

  “Gee, thanks. You’re just risking mine now. And I’m a hunter, not a guard.”

  He shrugged. “Same title up here.”

  Her eyebrow twitched in annoyance. Technically, this place didn’t have an official hunter. Technically, she was a member of the Guard. And technically, she had never been promoted from trainee, since that would require Stalf retiring. “Sacrificing me over your retirement, I see?”

  He snorted and chuckled. “Nah. Relax, kid. He’s gonna take one look at your scrawny ass and send you right back with all the other rejects. Them noble lot do this after a power change. A way to establish new guards and soldiers without loyalty to their old masters.”

  She muttered, “Like they’d even let peasants like us lick their cobbler-made boots.”

  He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her. “I’d start working at reining in that tongue of yours, lass.”

  “I’m weak, not stupid.”

  He gave her an odd look then; one she swore held a bit of warmth. “Aye. You’re not that.”

  Unsettled by his attitude change, she eyed him warily. “Slip the laughers in your tea, again, elder?”

  The look was gone as he cleared his throat and leaned forward, rubbing his knee with a groan. “Ah. Would you mind doing the rounds today, lass? This knee and all…”

  Damn old fart. She glared at him before snapping. “Fine. But only because I need to stock up on supplies before you send me off to die.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Always were the dramatic.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and stalked out the door, shutting it gingerly behind her even if she wanted to slam it shut. Since she slept in the guardhouse during the winters, she found it best not to risk cracking the door, no matter how irritated she was.

  Unfortunate.

  Muttering to herself and rubbing her hands together to ward off the chill of early spring, she paused long enough to string her small bow, grabbing a quiver from the small storage shed as she went. She fell quiet, but no less irritated, as she trotted silently into the forest, focusing instead on crafting a mental list of what she’d need. He’d told her he was shipping her out in a damn carriage with the caravan tomorrow, which would severely limit her options.

  After all, it was early spring, which meant her personal stash of supplies was quite low.

  Gods damn it, she knew she should have stocked up before this. She shouldn’t have waited for the snow to finish melting.

  The guardhouse was set slightly away from the rest of the village, right on the edge of the Wylds, created by the Hunt herself when she escaped her father. The very air was saturated with magic, rich with crisp earthy scent that invigorated her on each inhale. This was her haven. The haven she’d discovered twenty years ago.

  Her true home.

  Here, amid trees that could sometimes rise a hundred feet in the air or more, light was sparce. Despite the shade, there was a rich variety of verdant vegetation, all tangled together in a tapestry of life that centered around the trees that dominated the landscape.

  Some of the trees were ancient, their trunks stretching a dozen feet across. Others were several trunks packed together in a twisting maze-like structure, or clusters of thin shoots striking up from the ground towards the sky. While there were some that stopped only a few feet up, others stretched to fill the space between the forest floor and the canopy, their disparate limbs weaving together and creating a natural highway for the adventurous.

  Or the stupid.

  Through the maze of roots and greenery, Squirt kept low and used her diminutive size to her advantage, avoiding the occasional patch of snow. She duck and wove her way through the treacherous terrain with practiced ease.

  The forest floor was no different in the richness of its foliage. Ferns and bushes and flowers all competed for any scrap of light they could reach, tucked between large roots that rose above the mossy ground, most of it taller than she was. Squirt slipped between leaves, bushes, and branches silently as she trotted along, bow strung and at the ready should she come into contact with the feybeasts she needed to hunt.

  This far out, hunting feybeasts was most of the Guard’s job. In more populated districts, hunters and guards were both members of the Royal Guard, but different jobs. One hunted feybeasts in the forests, while the other protected city walls. Here, the roles were one and the same.

  Every spring, the cycle of magic brought life to feybeasts. They started small and relatively simple to manage. As the seasons passed, they grew increasingly more powerful by eating other feybeasts to gain their strength, before naturally dying out in the winter. Then the cycle started again.

  Feybeasts were unlike the regular beasts of the forest. They were not born, they simply appeared. Then they would simply die.

  Luckily, once they got to the larger, dangerous sizes in winter, they rarely ever lingered in an area this devoid of fey. There were less than a hundred residents in this district, and all of them were of a weaker variety. Powerful feybeasts hungered for powerful meals.

  It was over an hour of sneaking through the forest before she finally found one—a riiset, a feybeast the size of a large rat, only with glittery butterfly wings attached to its furred body and venomous fangs instead of sharp teeth.

  Perfect.

  She shot it, pinning it to the tree trunk it had been resting on. It screeched and squirmed as she ran over, covering her face with a handkerchief she had enchanted for just this purpose. She quickly pulled out a small sheet on the ground and carefully cut off the powdery wings. The creature died as she did, and she managed one last quick swipe to get the venomous fangs at its head before there was a small poof of an indigo cloud, and it dropped to the ground as a feystone.

  She collected that too, tossing it up and catching it as she did. Despite the small size, riisets had a decently sized stone, about the size of her thumbnail. Perfect for small, one-time enchantments.

  Once she finished gathering up every bit of the venom and powder and had them safely stashed away in her pouch, she notched another arrow and continued, seeing what else she could bag.

  As she traveled in the long, slow loop in the forests around their village, she checked on the traps she had laid out for wild surges—where feybeasts ran rampant due to fluctuations in the ambient magic. Everyone’s magic was stronger during a surge, and the beasts tended to charge anything with magic. It was why everyone lived within the compact confines of their small village and tended to the fields outside and around the walls. Those walls were the titled fey’s duty to enchant, meaning they were supposed to be safe.

  Supposed to, anyway.

  At each trap, she started by killing and collecting parts from any feybeasts, or freeing the occasional non-magical forest beast that got caught up in the mechanisms. Once done, she would note any issues or repairs that would need to be made for the other two. Both Havort and Stalf knew how to maintain the traps even if they couldn’t make them from scratch. She had to make all the individual building blocks that would fit together to catch the feybeasts alive—a necessity, as otherwise their stones were eaten by other beasts, defeating the point of hunting entirely.

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  Once the trap was reset and cleared, she pulled out her notebook and meticulously checked it off, scribbling down anything important as she went. Squirt’s notebook was much like Stalf’s pillow—not made of parchment, but thin leather scraps light enough in color for her charcoal pen to write on. Anything important she would transfer to boards back at the guardhouse, and the rest she could erase as needed by washing the charcoal from the leather and leaving it to dry. The binding was ties, not glue, so she could add or remove the “pages” as needed.

  Some of the traps had caught feybeasts for her, so she managed to collect a good few items, thinking up the best uses for it all. Another riiset. Couple of flamesacs from the squirrel-like wa’vus. Then Squirt hit the jackpot with a ganok, a type of bee-like creature that would shoot a bunch of stingers out its abdomen, and her eyes gleamed as she considered the types of traps she could make with it.

  The route took her most of the day, so by the time the sun started going down, she knew she wouldn’t have much time left at all. Chewing on her lip, she abruptly trotted back into the forest, pulling special pendants out of her pocket and hanging them on her ears. They itched and were rather bulky, but they worked well enough.

  She had no idea what kind of challenges this new lord was going to put her through as part of this exercise. They could range anything from mundane archery competitions to mock battles, and if she ended up facing off against her fellow members of the Guard, she would need laughing mushrooms and blazing ants.

  Knowing her luck, she would be made to do whatever whole song and dance the new lord would be putting the entire damn territory through instead of being sent home immediately, and she would need every advantage she could get.

  Squirt pointed to the firing mechanisms. “You have thirty of these, so you should be fine until I get back. Remember to send Havort’s mates to get some more sand for the bait traps—”

  Stalf waved her off, “I promise we’re covered. We’ve yet to go through the entirety of one of your stashes in twenty years, pipsqueak.”

  Squirt muttered under her breath, “You haven’t run out because I’ve been restocking them.” She was severely limited in how often she could restock each mechanism or joint that made up the different traps, meaning most nights she spent enchanting or crafting in the guardhouse closet she called her own. Neither Stalf nor Havort could make the pieces, instead relying on her to supply them as they used them as building blocks, either repairing the broken traps or putting together new ones. As the seasons went on, the traps needed to be larger, after all, so the traps needed to be flexible enough to accommodate larger, more powerful feybeasts.

  Truthfully, if the need arose, Miles the blacksmith could craft most of the individual pieces in a pinch. That was just an expensive use of his limited time, particularly since his apprentice died during a surge last year when he couldn’t make it to shelter in time. Instead, she usually crafted them, as with the right materials she could use the small bit of magic she had to rearrange the molecules more reliably than the average smith.

  “You got everything, runt?”

  “Always,” she muttered. A habit long since ingrained, she carried everything she owned on her person at all times. She had even cleaned out the closet that had made up her bedroom as her first chore of the morning despite the exhaustion clinging to her.

  It had taken most of the night to finish making the blazing ant and laughing mushroom powder bombs, and there were still only so many she had managed to make. Even stretching what she had by making weaker varieties to use on fey and not beasts, she was still limited to only a handful. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to finish processing the riiset powder or poison into weapons, but those she would be able to do on the road when the caravans stopped for the night.

  At least, she hoped.

  Stalf, never one for emotional anything, merely grunted and led the way out of the small guardhouse they’d shared together for the last twenty years.

  Squirt hesitated at the door. Not long enough for Stalf to comment, just long enough for her to take one last glance over the familiar space. The pillow she had made for Stalf’s aching knee. The fireplace where he’d regaled her with stories of the Hunt. The oven they had built together when she had first appeared on his doorstep with nowhere else to go. She spared a thought for wondering if anyone else would do this man’s dishes or sew up the patches in his clothes with her gone.

  Just as quickly as the thought arose, she quashed it. No. She wasn’t needed here. Without her, he’d finally move back in with his daughter into the village proper, defended by the measly wooden walls and safer during the roughest months of late spring and early summer. With any luck, she’d be back by then. Back to continuing her way of life, eking out an existence on this side of the mountains, away from the archaic laws that forced her constant subservience, with only one crabby old man as company.

  She needed nothing more.

  Before Stalf could say anything to hurry her, she shut the door and trotted after him.

  Squirt followed along behind Stalf as they made their way to the edge of the village where the caravan carts and wagons were set up in their lines, ready to begin the long, meandering, two-week journey south towards Everwinter Keep. As usual around any fey that she didn’t know the temperament of, she stayed in his shadow, her eyes down in subservient deference. Already, she was dreading the next however long until she could return. The village fey tolerated her existence without adhering strictly to the ancient ways, and while Stalf never said it, she knew he was the reason she had not suffered a single beating over the last twenty years.

  Not that either of them would ever admit to it. Her to knowing, him to doing.

  Gods, gag her. She was going to miss the asshole.

  Stalf hailed the caravan leader, Vahn. Vahn had led the caravan to the more remote areas of Everwinter for the last two centuries after taking it over from his predecessor. He was an older, pudgy fey carrying his excess like a ring around his midsection, well-fed and rosy cheeked from the chilly air. He greeted Stalf with a tired warmth in the early morning light. “Well met, Guardsman, well met.”

  They shook hands with a familiarity of years between them.

  Vahn chuckled, his breath coming out in visible puffs in the early spring air. “Been a rough go so far. Always happy to come by up here where the Wylds are practically tame.”

  “Oh?”

  Vahn shook his head, making the sign against evil across his chest before leaning in to whisper, “The Wylds are in for a restless year. Can you believe a sarvoc actually attacked one of my watch members just last week?”

  Stalf rubbed his beard in thought. “This early? The beasties should be scared off by your muscle for at least another month.”

  “Especially with all the extra hands I have from the lord’s call.” The man rolled his eyes to the heavens, the single gesture encapsulating everything he thought of his “precious” cargo. “Speaking of which, where’s yours, hm?”

  Stalf chuckled, gesturing towards Squirt who had been standing right next to him for the entire exchange.

  Vahn blinked at the tiny pixie woman. Then he barked out a laugh. “Right, good one. Alright, where’s your real candidate?” His hands on his hips, he scanned around the crowd of fey seeing the caravan off. Some fey were having tearful goodbyes born from the simple fact that the caravan only appeared two, maybe three times in a year, and was their only source of interaction with the world beyond the village. More than a few lovers were in the mix, making Squirt’s eyebrow twitch in annoyance at their blatantly emotional parting words. For most, facing the Wylds alone without an escort was a suicide mission, meaning they would not meet again until the caravan returned in a few months’ time.

  She doubted that Stalf had announced her leaving to them, and she was not about to announce it, either. Likely, they wouldn’t notice for at least a week or two unless Stalf moved back in with his daughter before then.

  Stalf shrugged at Vahn, rubbing an old shoulder injury with a grimace of mild, irritating pain spurned by the chilly air. “This’s her. Take good care of her for me, mind. She’s small but scrappy.”

  As the humor slowly leeched from Vahn’s face and he realized that Stalf was indeed, not joking, his eyes traced back down to Squirt at his side. She kept her eyes down in deference, not allowing her irritation to show. She had not missed the ancient ways. Not all fey adhered to the rankings of decorum based entirely on magical strength, but she didn’t want to risk it.

  Shaking his head, he muttered to himself about what the world was coming to that a greenling, of all things, was being summoned by the lord as a member of the guard before waving her forward. “It’s her funeral. In the carriage you get, and no making a fuss.”

  She bowed politely, her posture perfectly demure, before trotting off to the carriage, a stone weight sinking into the pit of her stomach.

  Damnit. He might not be a strict follower, but he was definitely one that assigned worth based on magical power. With luck, he’d consider her a forgettable nuisance.

  Before her fingers touched the carriage door, Squirt hesitated once more. Already, the rest of the caravan had finished packing up their wares and were hopping into the wagons to head off.

  Turning back to scan the crowd, her eyes landed on the retreating back of Stalf. A pang went through her. For the briefest instant, she almost called out to him, wondering if he’d turn around and wave her off like the villagers were waving off the rest of the caravan. Her lips parted to speak before her voice caught in her throat, a lump there she wasn’t expecting, emotion she didn’t know how to voice.

  Instead, she let his back fade from view before reluctantly opening the carriage door and stepping in.

  This carriage was one of the cheaper models, meaning the lighting inside was dim enough that with her helm on her head, she might be able to avoid them noting the forest green of her hair or eyes. She quickly assessed the other five guard trainees within the carriage, all some manner of bored and yawning, before she tucked herself into a back corner. There was no window next to her seat, as the spot she took was likely meant for luggage.

  With luck, she could hide herself this way the whole way to Everwinter Keep.

  Her strategy worked for all of a day.

  By evening, they exited the carriage to help make camp, and she found Vahn the caravan leader waiting for her.

  He grunted. “Good. Come along, little greenie. We have chores for you.”

  Unable to respond without risking a beating, she simply bowed politely and trotted after him, ignoring the murmurs of those she had shared the carriage with that were realizing she was, indeed, green.

  Hair and eye colors tended to denote a fey’s strength, as their magic bled over into their bodies. Teals and silvers for winter wind, pinks and purples for spring earth, blues and yellows for summer water, and red and orange for autumn fire. There were more, of course—black and gray for shadow, gold and white for light, even brown meant some form of wild magic like beast taming or shifter magic.

  Green?

  Green was the base color. Green meant a fey had so little magic, it couldn’t alter that base. Green was weak.

  And there were none weaker than greenling pixies.

  “Here’s Helda, our cook. You’re her assistant for the duration of your ride, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered dutifully.

  With a grunt of acknowledgement, he scratched his oversized belly and tottered away, leaving Squirt in the hands of the brownie woman named Helda.

  Brownies were almost as small as pixies, being themselves on average of just over four feet tall. They were typically covered in soft fur over their skin, including their faces, with button, mouse-like noses, and either the more normal pointed ears like pixies, or catlike ears that could swivel independently.

  This Helda had the catlike ears of her kind, and had blue mixed in with the brown fur that covered her small body, along with the whiting of age. Her long fingers were tipped in black claws she was using to dexterously cut into pea pods and flick out the contents into a waiting bowl. With a sniff, she gave Squirt a dour look before returning her attention to her task. “Remove the helm. Ye look stupid playin’ dress-up.”

  She wasn’t playing dress-up, gods fucking damnit—

  Dutifully, she took off her helm and tucked it into her dimensional pouch.

  The woman nodded off towards the forest. “Ye’re on latrine duty. Come back, I’ll cleanse ye, and ye’ll do them dishes, ye hear? Do that, and I’ll keep them folk from botherin’ ye. Shovel’s over there.” She nodded once more to the other side of a large black cauldron bubbling with tonight’s stew over the cook fire. Leaned against a pack of pots and pans was a small spade that had seen better days.

  Small blessing, Squirt supposed, having at least one fey offering her protection. She grabbed the spade and then trotted off to the forest to begin doing the chores asked of her.

  The next morning, Squirt attempted to get into the carriage with the guards, only for one, a larger, muscular looking fey, probably a shifter from the looks of him. Shifters were fey that shared their bodies with an animal’s soul, meaning their behaviors tended to become muddled with their animal.

  This one had apparently decided on claiming the carriage as his territory, blocking her way with a derisive sneer. “The carriage’s for the Guard, greenie.”

  She was wearing the gods damned guard leathers—

  She bowed, unable to respond without a direct question, ignoring the snickers.

  So long as she obeyed all due decorum, she should—hopefully—avoid a beating since there was no real corner for aggressors to take her to. Someone usually objected to unjustified public beatings, after all.

  With another sniff of distain, the man who had blocked her shouldered his way into the carriage, likely annoyed she hadn’t fought him on it. The others chortled inside, and she caught snippets of their words.

  Huffing in annoyance, she straightened with a glare on the carriage only to be surprised when Helda approached her. Squirt cast a wary glance at the older fey.

  Helda sniffed, her hands on her hips—but her eyes were on the carriage and not Squirt. “Pissants,” she muttered. “Come along. Ye can help peel potatoes with me.”

  Not having much of a choice, Squirt reluctantly followed the brownie towards one of the older, rickety wagons housing food supplies, mentally cursing Stalf for forcing this on her to begin with. As soon as this new Lord Everwinter dismissed her, she was disappearing into the Wylds and finding her own damn way home rather than dealing with this bullshit ever again.

  Fucking titled fey.