The rain was cold and steadily worsening by the time the two wagons stopped for the night. Piper blinked, having dozed a bit during the ride, then watched from the back of her wagon as they set up two very nice camping tents. Then, all four humans and nine elves gathered in the back of the wagon. It was very crowded, especially with Miss Diavla and Miss Sheema injured and lying down in the middle.

  Piper stayed quiet and out of the way, hoping that she would be allowed to sleep in one of the wagons, since she didn't take up much room. She wasn't sure whether she was expected to fend for herself, or what. It was her first time on the road, so this was all new to her.

  She didn't have any possessions beyond the clothes she wore and the thirteen silver the adults had paid her over the past couple of days. It was a small fortune to her, enough to live well on for weeks, but she hadn't had time to spend any of it before they rushed out of town early that morning. Miss Summer had promised her ten more silver if she came along on this trip, and she couldn't afford to turn down that much money, though it made her nervous to be away from Oak Mill even briefly.

  After all, Ma might come back. Piper had promised herself that she would be there when her mother returned. Ma had left without saying that she was going, but it was really Piper's fault that she hadn't left her a note, because Piper couldn't read.

  Ma had left her all their money and a smiling face drawn on a slate. That meant she had to be happy with Piper, right? Someday, when she could, maybe when she'd made lots of money, Ma would come back from traveling with the acting troop she'd left with.

  Piper just hoped that Ma wouldn't show up this week while she was away. Miss Summer promised that she had told all her people to keep a look out for Jenna, and Miss Summer knew a lot of people. The lady tavern owner had given Piper a bunch of odd jobs over the past few years, and called her clever and reliable.

  She drew her soul back to the present when Mr. Walker started speaking, and the rest of them quieted down to listen, pulling out their water skins. He was a big man, young, with thick black hair, blue eyes like hers, and lots of muscles. First, he thanked everyone, and said how glad he was that the injured would recover. Miss Eubexa translated his words into Elvish.

  “I am grateful that we all made it out of Oak Mill alive. We still have our freedom...to travel,” he amended, after glancing at the pile of slave collars. Any elves that might be seen on the road had kept theirs on during the day, but Mr. Walker had removed those as soon as they made camp, after swearing Mr. Daly to secrecy.

  “We have our gear, our clothes, our armor and weapons, most of our gold, and our trade stock in hides and salt. We have wagons and oxen to move them,” he continued.

  “And above all...we killed a demon.” Mr. Walker looked around at all of them for a moment.

  “We killed a demon!” he repeated, sounding incredulous. “I never thought that I'd be a demon slayer. But it was all of us, working together, who beat Quazulin. We are stronger together. We are better together. We are more together. I count myself very fortunate to have met every single one of you.”

  He took a deep breath. “I never wanted demon wars to happen in my lifetime, but the gods willed them to be now, and they gave us the strength to pull through. So, if wars there will be, then I say, one down!”

  “One down!” everyone chorused, and most of them drank. They kept fairly quiet. It was unlikely that anyone would be looking for them in the cold, rain, and the dark, but they were cautious after everything that had happened recently.

  Even without a fire, Mr. Orvan handed out rolls that had been stuffed with...something, and Piper wasn't sure whether it was by accident or not but they gave her a roll, too. It was really tasty. It kind of tickled her nose. She ate the whole thing, and then licked her fingers like usual to get any crumbs. Apparently, everybody else liked Mr. Orvan's cooking, too, judging by the happy noises they made.

  Mr. Orvan said, “Sanala fo gava ithilvan e gohbar.” Piper didn't know what it meant yet, but the gray-haired elf was smiling at her as he said it. She tucked the words into her soul for later with all the rest. Her head was starting to feel full again, but every time she figured out what things meant, it sort of made the fullness smaller. Everyone else was still eating, but Mr. Orvan started handing out more rolls.

  Mr. Walker took two more, which made sense because he was big and he was the leader. Miss Sheema and Miss Eubexa shared a second one. Rillik took one and broke it in half, making kind of a mess. Then, he held out a big piece to Piper. She blinked, but when he wiggled his hand at her impatiently, she reached out and took it.

  The elf boy looked at her a moment, then grunted, “dazi.” He pointed at his part. Pointing was for a thing word, and a waving hand was for a doing word. If the elf speaking did neither, Piper called it a thinking word, because it was harder to figure out.

  Piper pointed at her piece. “Dazi?”

  “Yes. Dazi and dazi cova one.”

  “Oh. Half and half make one. Half and half make one.”

  “Half?”

  “Half,” Piper confirmed.

  “Half,” the boy repeated to himself quietly. Piper had noticed that people did that, saying things again to themselves to help them not forget. She wondered sometimes if everybody did that but her.

  “Eubexa, does dazi mean 'half'?” Mr. Walker asked the elf in the veil sitting near him. He was sort of talking with his mouth full; he was almost done with his second roll already.

  “Yes, Tom.”

  The big man swallowed. “Thank you, Eubexa. And thank you, Rillik and Piper.” Surprised to be addressed, Piper nodded. Seeing that nobody seemed mad, she screwed up her courage. Normally, she would ask Miss Summer, who was the only other person from Oak Mill in the group. But Miss Summer might leave big parts out, or not tell her anything. So, she decided to try.

  “Mr. Walker?”

  The big man looked at her, and his face wasn't angry at being bothered by a kid. “What is it, Piper?” He stuffed the last of his second roll in his mouth and wiped a few crumbs away.

  She took a deep breath. “Would you please tell me...who you really are? And what's happening? I mean, where you got these elves, and how did you get to Oak Mill, and how did you know so much magic stuff and could fight a demon?”

  Tom swallowed, took a drink from a waterskin, and looked at Eubexa. “I thought you said she spent Sevennight at the house. Did she ask you questions then?”

  “She got in so late, she was out the moment her head hit the pillow. And we've been a little busy since then.”

  Tom laughed. “Fair enough. All right, Piper, I'll tell you a story.” He actually looked as if he thought it would be fun.

  “I started out as a farm boy. I'm the oldest of twelve...probably a couple more than that now, I haven't been home in four years. Believe it or not, I was a very sick kid, and had trouble breathing when I tried to do hard work. So, instead I helped take care of my younger brothers and sisters. I told them lots of stories.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Piper had a hard time imagining the great big man as a kid, let along a weak or sick one. She nodded politely, figuring that he was lying about that. He was really good at telling a story, though. Piper listened raptly as he described leaving home after a bad harvest, and taking so many different jobs in different places that they called him Tom Walker.

  That was really interesting to hear, but then he got to the bit where he met the elves. He was a caravan guard, and the elves were in a cage, on their way to being sold somewhere. Bandits attacked and killed everybody. Mr. Walker looked quiet and sad when he talked about that, but put on a smile like Ma did on stage, and got back to the story.

  Mr. Walker had been hurt, but not killed. So, he went after the bandits and killed all the ones he could find, and then it was just him with all the wagons. He let the elves out of the cage so they wouldn't starve if he died.

  He didn't say so, but Piper guessed that he was hurt really bad if the bandits left him for dead. If he killed all the bandits left, by himself, when he was really hurt, he was a really good fighter. She wondered why he wasn't saying so. Some people loved to brag.

  The next part was strange. Mr. Walker said he didn't want to own the slaves, and thought having slaves at all was wrong and bad. But the king said that elves had to be slaves, so he agreed to pretend to be their owner.

  He said he wanted to bring the elves all the way home, which sounded completely fantastical to Piper. She had heard of the ocean, but it was a long, long, long way from Oak Mill. And then they would have to cross the ocean to get to the Elven Continent. Mr. Walker was pretty impressive, but she really thought he had to be lying or crazy, and he didn't seem like he was lying.

  Well, he's rich. Rich people are allowed to be crazy. Rich people can do almost anything.

  So, since Mr. Walker was the only human left, the caravan was kind of all his, including the elves. They helped him bring the wagons to Rivermarch, and he sold most of the goods for lots of gold. They got food and weapons and armor and clothing and stuff, and spent most of the gold left over to buy bags of salt to sell in Oak Mill. They also found Miss Eubexa in Rivermarch and Mr. Walker bought her because he could, and because she could talk to everybody.

  “But while we were there, I got in trouble in Rivermarch. See, one of the caravan wagons was carrying very dangerous magic crystals. I didn't know what they were, so I asked a mage to check, and it turned out that a long, long time ago, some very smart and crazy person managed to trap demons inside the crystals.”

  “And one of them got out?” Piper asked, excited to learn. “The one in Oak Mill?”

  “Yes. But actually, Piper, three demons escaped, not one.”

  Piper's eyes got round and she clutched her Amulet of Protection from Demons. It was hidden under her shirt, because she'd nicked it from the elves the other day. She looked around wildly at everyone, wondering if any of them were possessed, but then felt stupid. Everybody in their group wore amulets. Wherever those other demons were, they weren't here in this group.

  “We killed Quazulin yesterday. He had taken over Captain Forester, and he was a Hate demon. That's why everyone in town was getting so angry all the time.”

  “So, that's why you had to kill Captain Forester?”

  Mr. Walker looked a little sad, and nodded.

  “And why the town had to kill so many people? And why some of those people tried to burn Oak Mill down? Because the demon got them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. Quazulin got a lot of people before he was stopped. He almost got me, Piper. It was very, very scary. He infected me and then locked me up, to wait for me to give in and become a copy of him. That's where you found me. Thank you so much, Piper, for taking my belt and wand to the others, and thank you for running all those messages around town. You really helped a lot. You helped us win.”

  Piper didn't know what the wand was for, but she was pretty sure Mr. Walker's really heavy belt had a secret pocket where he kept something really, really important to the elves. Maybe the keys to their collars. She was very curious, but not stupid enough to try peeking.

  Piper tried to focus on the conversation. “I know you got better when you went to the Temple, but for a lot of people in town, it was too late?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was too late for Charlie's Pa, but Miss Sheema did something to save him anyway and that's why she's sick?”

  “We think so.” Mr. Walker looked down at the exhausted woman, who was listening to the translations. “Maybe he was just close to giving in. Hopefully, she will feel better soon. She's a healer, so maybe she will be able to heal herself. If not, we'll just have to wait for her to get better naturally.”

  Piper felt a little stab of jealousy that Charlie the Demon Poop got to have both of his parents get better, while Piper didn't. She forced her soul away from that and back to what she had just learned. She re-said some of the words in her soul, not to remember them but to think about them, then asked, “And now you're trying to hurry away because the nobles and rich people will all want to take Miss Sheema?”

  “Yes. Because she's an elven healer, which is very, very rare in human lands. And apparently, a very powerful one. And also, because she is very pretty.”

  “And probably because each of her boobs is a lot bigger than her head,” Piper observed thoughtfully.

  Mr. Walker snorted and looked like he was trying hard not to laugh. “Yes,” he said after clearing his throat. “Probably that, too.” Miss Summer put a hand over her mouth but her eyes twinkled. The elves reacted similarly a few seconds later, once Miss Eubexa translated.

  On the floor, Miss Sheema shrugged, smiled, and squeezed her boobs together for a second. Piper thought that was kind of bragging. Got to watch out for the bragging ones, she reminded herself.

  “Are you going to go kill the other two demons?”

  Mr. Walker lost his smile. “I'd like to, but my first priority is getting the elves to the coast and safely aboard a ship to take them home. I need to focus on that. Of course, if we come across another demon, we'll have to fight them. And once the elves go home, I'll probably join the armies that will be fighting the demons.”

  “Why didn't we need an army to kill Quazulin?”

  “Because we got him before he had time to finish building an army of his own.”

  “Oh.” That made sense. “And where are the other two demons now?”

  Mr. Walker raised his hands helplessly. “We'll ask for news when we get to Middleton. It could be that one of the demons tried to take over Rivermarch, but they should be on alert for that, since they were the ones who figured out the crystals in the first place. If I were freed on that road, I'd either follow it north to Rivermarch or south to Middleton. But Quazulin went east, for some reason, through the forest, and ended up in Oak Mill. Maybe he was using a wolf as a host or something.”

  “And demons are hard to kill because they jump from one host to another?”

  “That's right.”

  “And they make other people turn into...workers for the demon?” Piper guessed.

  “Pretty much. They actually become copies of the demon.”

  Piper's eyes got wide as she imagined one demon, then two, then four, then eight! And it wouldn't stop! “But if demons make more demons, and those demons make more demons, then—”

  “Fortunately, copies cannot make copies.”

  “Like when playing Signal Towers?”

  “No. It's not that they do it badly. It's that they can't do it at all. So every person infected had to be touched by Captain Forester himself.”

  “Oh.” Piper breathed a sigh of relief. “That's not so bad, then.”

  “I think we've just seen that a demon is bad enough already, Piper. They almost burned the town down!” Summer exclaimed.

  Piper couldn't think of the words to explain to the grownups that yes, the way a demon worked was bad; but two, then four, then eight, and so on was really scary. She only dimly grasped it, but her soul said it was much worse. This was the kind of thing that people thought was weird about her, though, so she didn't try to say better what she meant.

  She tried to wrap up what she'd learned in her soul. “So, one of the demons is probably going the same way you are? South?” She thought about it some more. “Are we gonna see another demon trying to take over Middleton when we get there?”

  “I surely hope not. Messengers were sent out from Rivermarch as soon as they found out about the demons, so they should have known for a while now.”

  “Why not use the signal stones? Isn't that what they're for?”

  “Yes, but if someone who works at the signal stone panicked, and told their friends...”

  “Ohhhhhhh...” Piper got it. “So they wanna only tell the Temple and the city Lord until they're ready.”

  Mr. Walker turned to Miss Summer. “She's very quick.”

  “She is,” Miss Summer agreed. “If she were a little older, I might hire her full time.”

  Piper blinked. This was the first time she'd said something like that. She straightened up and tried to look responsible. “I can be older!”

  But instead of taking her seriously, everybody laughed at her, even the elves a few moments later. “You can indeed,” Miss Summer said. “Just don't die, and you'll get older someday.”

  All right, I guess that was a stupid way to say it. But now I want to be older as soon as I can, Piper thought.

  Mr. Walker seemed to be done with his story, so a lot of people got out of the wagon, and went into the tents and the other wagon. Miss Summer asked Mr. Kervan if she could speak with him privately. Miss Varga told Mr. Walker that she would be waiting for him in a tent. That was a relief, because there wasn't a whole lot of room in the back of the wagon, even with most of the men gone. Mr. Daly lay down next to Miss Sheema, and Mr. Walker kissed Miss Diavla for a little bit and then left. Miss Eubexa was still sitting in a corner, and Piper was in the one opposite.

  Miss Sheema looked around, and then fixed her gaze on Piper. Oh, no, she's going to tell me to leave and I'll have to find somewhere else...to...sleep... Piper saw her violet eyes sort of looming over her and covering her like a blanket, and that was the last thing she was aware of until morning.