They came for her at night.

There was a knock on the door, slow and deliberate. It wasn’t hurried, wasn’t violent, just loud enough to carry through the wood walls and the cold silence of the dark.

Tamasin was already awake. She’d never been a deep sleeper, and the wind was whistling far too loud for her to sleep anyway. Just as soon as she heard the first knock, three more came, and this time, they were insistent.

She sat up and listened intently. A fourth knock, followed by a creak from the other room.

“Go back to bed,” she called out softly, swinging her legs off the cot. “I’ll get it.”

There was a pause, then the sound of shuffling– a pair of slow, stubborn steps dragging their way back toward the hearth.

Tamasin made her way out the room, catching a glimpse of her father’s receding back.

Her father had never been a small man. Even now, long past his prime, he still filled a room with his figure. His chest was as round and solid as a barrel, and his knotted hair was long, silver, and glorious. But the years had stooped him. One of his shoulders rested lower than the other, and his hands had a light tremble that only stopped when he clenched them. These days he leaned on a wooden cane, one that he’d carved himself. It had careful ridges spiraling down the shaft and a grip smoothed out by frequent use. His sleeping tunic, made from patched brown wool that hung to his knees, was clean but old, worn to a thin sheen in the elbows and collar.

Tamasin moved through the rest of the cottage quietly. It was hardly even a cottage really, only two rooms (not counting the lean-to they used for storage). She passed the hearth, watching her father settle back down in the armchair at the corner of it. His breath wheezed slightly as he sat, and his eyes flickered shut gently.

“It’s just boys,” she murmured to him, but he’d already drifted back to sleep.

She’d seen them before. Not always the same ones, but always playing the same games– creeping up to the door at night, throwing rotten fruit or digging holes for them to trip in, then running off before anyone could catch them. The first few years had been the worst. Back then, they’d come in the daylight too, brazen as could be. These days though, they had gotten rarer. It had been so many years since her father had moved them out of the village proper, so much so that most of the village got rather comfortable pretending they didn’t exist.

Her father had been stronger back then, back when he’d built the house. It had been cut right into the edge of the ridge where the goat paths ran, and he’d built it by hand, since no one else in the village had dared help him, and Tamasin had been too small. He’d used the birch logs from the grove and stone from the riverbed. Her father always claimed that he’d moved them out because the quiet would do them both good, but even as a child Tamasin knew the real reason.

He’d been right, of course. The whispers hardly reached them now, and though people still flinched when they saw her eyes, living this far out meant it was easy to avoid them.

Tamasin reached the door, unlatched it, and cracked it open.

It was not boys.

Standing in the moonlight yard were four men, their robes heavy and gray in the dark. Three of them she didn’t recognize. But the one in the front– thin, bent, narrow-headed and sharp shouldered– was the village’s smoke sage.

His name was Mered, but no one called him that. Most just said “Sage”, or “Enlightened Father” if they were trying to flatter him. He’d lived in the village for almost twenty years, though his long tenure hadn’t won him any love with the villagers. His body had a hook to it, as if something in his spine had caved in long ago. Thin patches of hair clung to the back of his skull in gray wisps. His face was sunken and hollow, with a thin, needly nose.

Behind Mered stood three more sages, all strangers. They were wrapped in the same ceremonial grays, and their robes were lined with a faint orange embroidery, patterns of rising smoke curling up from stitched firepits at their hems. All had necklaces with golden disc pendants– sun sigils.

The first was tall and thin, almost painfully so. He could’ve been seven feet, maybe more, and he had an angular face with thick brows. His skin was dark, papery brown, from the deep south of the empire for sure. His eyes were close set, and he had a long beard and longer staff.

The second was broad and thick, both in stature and in features, yet still shorter than the thin sage. He had a blunt, rounded nose, and each of his stubby fingers was capped with gold rings. His robes stretched taut across his muscly chest, where a second sun sigil had been sewn in gleaming thread.

The third was squat and round, with a thick jaw and thin brow. He was bald, and unashamedly so, not a hair on his shiny scalp. A mess of wiry stubble clung to his chin, mostly gray with whispers of black. The belt of his robes was lined with small, faintly clinking pouches.

None of them spoke.

Tamasin stood there for a second, letting the cool night’s wind wash over her. She hadn’t put her boots on, so her toes felt cold against the packed earth. Something was twisting in her stomach. This wasn’t a preaching call. It wasn’t a summons for alms. Smoke sages, especially ones with sun sigils, didn’t come to cottages in the hills to do the lowly work of priestlings.

The tall one’s gaze met hers. It betrayed nothing, except for maybe the mildest hint of anger.

And every bone in Tamasin’s body told her it would be a mistake to make this man angry.

Tamasin swallowed and stepped aside.

The sages crossed the threshold, one by one, their robes whispering in the night’s wind. Mered came first, his shoulders hunched beneath the weight of the night and his eyes glinting with a strange, eager brightness.

“Pretty girl,” he leered as his passed her, not quite softly enough. His lips parted in a wet little smile, and he licked them once, the pink of his tongue darting across yellowed teeth.

Tamasin hardly flinched. There wasn’t a girl in the village Mered wouldn’t prey on, even a girl as reviled as her. It was kept quiet, of course. Those kinds of accusations against a smoke sage didn’t get very far. But everyone noticed. It was hard to miss the way he watched the older girls when they came to temple, finding reasons to keep them behind and in his clutches. And since there was no hope of stopping it, most just looked the other way.

The three sages at the doorstep didn’t though. The broad one gave him a disgusted glance, and the squat one a reproving look. “I wonder, priestling, what the Doctrine of Ash says of holy ones who keep ambitions on the young. Do you remember, sage Karthorne?”

The tall sage grunted. “Death by a thousand flaming coals, if I recall.”

That shut Mered up.

Tamasin shut the door behind them, and when she turned back, she found the tall sage already watching her.

Karthorne, the squat one had called him. His presence stretched out like an evening shadow, rigid face, clenched jaw, and a mouth that was as thin as could be.

His eyes narrowed as they met hers. “Clear.” His voice cut through the silence like a knife. “Her eyes are clear.”

Tamasin blinked, confused. Her first guess had been they’d come for her because of the eyes, and what they entailed, but it appeared not.

The squat sage ran his hand along the edge of his belt, fingers tracing each pouch as though counting them. “How unusual.”

Karthorne didn’t answer at first, still staring at Tamasin. He turned back to Mered, his voice cold. “You said she was a match.”

“She is,” Mered said quickly. He hadn’t taken a seat yet, opting instead to linger beside the hearth like a servant uncertain of his place. “The eyes– well, yes, but everything else– she’s close. Close enough.”


“The eyes can be worked around,” the squat one said. His voice was quieter than when he’d spoken to Mered. “We’ll pass through Ashura. They have indigo and aikari to stain the irises.”

The tall one said nothing, his eyes hard.

Mered pressed on. “You said yourself you needed a highlander. The skin, the hair, the face– all of it matches. She’s strong too. Doesn’t get sick. Good lungs. She hunts daily. Climbs.”

The squat sage had plopped down onto the bench by the wall and was unfastening a small satchel. “If the rest of it fits, the eyes are manageable.”

“Other than the eyes, she’s perfect,” Mered insisted.

Karthorne grunted. “So then she isn’t perfect.”

The third sage, the massive one, hadn’t spoken at all. He stood by the far wall, arms folded, glowering like he was mad at the world for existing. There was something still and almost statuesque about him, not in elegance, but in size. That, and the fact that he hardly seemed to move.

Tamasin watched him closely. There was a calm to his stillness, but not a peaceful one. More like a storm being held at bay, waiting to be unleashed.

Karthorne sat down across from the squat one, his knees high and angular beneath his robes, and Mered followed, leaving only her and the quiet one standing.

Tamasin leaned against the far wall and said nothing. Years of living alone with no friends or family but her father had taught her to be very good at watching and listening. So these three weren’t here for her eyes.
Karthorne, the leader, obviously, had some sort of cold anger about him. He was disappointed, obviously, angry even, but his face betrayed no clue as to why. The squat one was more interesting. His fingers were always fidgeting with some small object– a buckle, a seam, a clasp. His eyes shifted around the room, studying everything, most importantly her.

“It will work,” said the squat one slowly. “I think so.”

“The nose is too narrow.”

“She’s Doshari,” said Mered quickly. “You won’t find a better bridge.”

“She’s leaner than expected.”

“She’s sixteen. She’ll fill out.”

“The hair? The skin?”

The squat sage spoke here. “Both can be darkened.”

Karthorne stared into the depths of the floor. “Need I remind you the consequences of failure, Sajar–”

“Failure would be bringing none back at all.”

Karthorne looked over at Tamasin. “And what of the voice?”

Sajar shrugged. “I’m certain it’ll be close.”

Karthorne waved a finger at her without looking. “Speak, girl.”

“Uhh… I don’t—”

Karthorne waved her back into silence. “That’ll do.”

“The height is good too,” Mered persisted loudly. “Exactly what you asked for.”

Tamasin glanced back at her father at the heath. Still asleep, bless him. Good. No need to trouble him with whatever the hell this was.

Sajar had produced a folded scrap of parchment from one of his pouches and was unfolding it slowly. He held it close to his chest, angling it so only he and Karthorne could see. Tamasin caught a flash of ink–lines and figures and maybe the edge of a woman’s face– but not enough to make sense of it.

“She’ll need to be eased in,” Sajar said, studying the parchment. “Limit exposure. Let familiarity do the work.”

“And the mannerisms?” Karthorne asked.

“Trainable.”

They went on like that, ticking through her traits like boxes on a form. They didn’t seem in any great rush to explain to her who they were, and after asking her to speak, they didn’t bother with any other questions either.

Tamasin just kept staring.

After a few minutes of this, the conversation drifted to routes and supplies, with much bustling of maps and pointing. Finally, the tall one pushed back from the table. “It’ll work.”

Mered heaved a poorly hidden sigh of relief. “Good. Very good.”

There was a grinding of chairs, and all three of them got up.

At that moment, her father stirred. “What’s happening?” he asked roughly, blinking his eyes open. “Who’s there?”

Just when they were leaving too. “Go back to sleep, Pa,” Tamasin whispered. “It’s nothing.”

But the old man got up anyway, his eyes blinking open warily. He looked around the room, leaning heavily on his cane, then spotted the only face other than Tamasin’s he recognized. “Mered,” he began uncomfortably. Like any self-respecting father in the village, he didn’t like the sage, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to insult him directly. “What’s all this?”

Sajar and Karthorne ignored him, but Mered twitched shiftily. “None of your concern, old man. Go back to bed.”

Her father stared around blankly, and Tamasin gave him a pleading look. Let these strange men leave…

But Sajar’s voice stopped her father before he could sit back in his chair. “You lie to the father’s face, priestling?”

His voice was quiet, no more than a whisper, but every person in the room heard it.

Mered, if possible, turned even twitchier. “I only meant–”

Sajar glanced over her father. “We’ve come for your daughter, son of smoke. She’s needed in Ashvyn.”

Tamasin blinked. “W-what? The capitol?”

Sajar was apologetic. “I’m sorry, dear. Your presence is greatly needed.”

Tamasin backed up a little. “I don’t– I can’t–”

Karthorne snorted impatiently. “Enough of this. Come, girl, and come quietly.”

“W-why?”

Karthorne narrowed his eyes. “Because I’ve said so.”

Her father was a strong man, but even his voice had begun to tremble now. He put his hand protectively in front of his daughter. “She’s a child. Barely sixteen. Please, whatever the temple needs, I’m happy to provide–”

Karthorne turned his head slightly towards him. “The temple needs her, old man.”

“But why?” Tamasin asked again, ducking a little behind her father.

Karthorne’s jaw flexed. “You can come willingly,” he said, voice smooth as oil. “Or I can kill your father and carry you over his body.”

The words were calm, without an ounce of emotion. As if he were speaking of the weather.

Her father’s eyes were angry. “Enlightened Father, I have no qualms against the temple. But–”

The quiet sage, the one whose name Tamasin didn’t know, stepped forward with a grunt. He wasn’t armed, but Tamasin didn’t doubt he could take every person in the room if he truly wanted to.

Tamasin’s eyes darted around, from the indifferent Karthorne to the sympathetic Sajar and the gleeful Mered. There was no way out of this one. “Pa,” she said quietly. “It’s all right.”

Her father was unmoved. “Tamasin–”

“The capitol’s a month away by horse. I’ll go there, do whatever they ask, then be back by winter.” She looked at Karthorne. “Is that all right?”

Karthorne didn’t even grace her with a look.

Tamasin took that as a maybe, which was the best she could hope for, and stepped out from behind her father. “It’s all right, pa. I’ll be back by winter.”

Her father stared between her and the sages desperately. “But–”

“I’ll be back by winter,” Tamasin repeated quietly. “I promise.”

The old man wrapped her in a hug and she hugged him right back. But no sooner had she done that than she found herself being pulled away by the quiet one.

“Come,” said Karthorne as the big one dragged Tamasin away from her father. He was examining his fingertips disinterestedly. “We’ve bled enough time as it is, and I have no use for the whinging of brats.”

Before Tamasin could protest, the four sages had shunted her out the door, and Sajar had closed it behind them.

“Wait, hold on–”

Karthorne crouched down to her level, a snarl on his face. “I thought I made myself clear, girl. You can either come quietly, or come grieving.”

And so as the big one began pushing her past the garden into the surrounding woods, Tamasin shut up.

As the five of them walked, Tamasin heard something from her house, hacking and bare. For a second she wondered what it was, then the cold realization hit her.
Her great big father, strong as a boar in his prime, was sobbing.

Tamasin waited before they were a good distance from the house before turning to be Karthorne. “I’ll be back by winter. Right?”

Mered cackled. “If you mean winter in fifty years, girl, then perhaps.”

Tamasin looked desperately at Sajar, the only one who seemed to have any real sympathy for her. “Please–”

“I’m sorry, dear.” Sajar’s voice was soft. “The priestling is right. In all likelihood, that was the last time you saw your father.”