Zukida had not been having a good time, so Amos declared the next day a holiday. He figured that they could both use time to recuperate. Much to his disgruntlement, she protested, and went off to town on her own in a huff.

“I’ll see you at dinner!” Amos shouted after her retreating back. Either she was too far away to hear him, or she was pretending she hadn’t heard. Amos shrugged and adjusted his nightgown. The priestess was such a bore. Though, he conceded, she had rather striking features, and would look smashing in yellow. A rare find indeed was a woman who looked good in yellow.

Once he had shut the door to their suite, Amos decided to spend his time alone at the inn invading his companion’s privacy by going through her personal belongings. She only had one pack, a fact Amos frankly found completely absurd. In it, he soon discovered that she kept several changes of clothing, a wooden comb, three spare hair ties, a new pair of sandals and a pair of winter boots, and a woolen coat. Amos was disappointed by the lack of personal possessions, until he remembered to check the pockets in the sleeves of the shirts.

In the coat’s left pocket sleeve, he found a bone fragment. It looked to be the end of an ulna or radius; the two thin bones in the human forearm. The bottom of the bone was in good condition; however, as it lengthened, the bone became increasingly corroded, and it broke off entirely after roughly four inches.

Amos was about to take off his gloves, about to touch the mysterious bone and discover just what had damaged it; but something made him hesitate.

Sometimes, things were kept hidden for good reasons.

Very good reasons.

Zukida was headed to the town well, having reasoned that, since the town servants wouldn’t be muted, she could get some worthwhile gossip. It was only five in the morning. Surely they would show up at a usual hour and exchange words with friends serving at different houses.

She took a perch beneath the shade of a beautifully gnarled oak a few meters away from the well; the well was in the center of the town common, and a few small children chased chickens in the longer patches of grass. It was a beautiful day; normally, Zukida would have slept outside in such lovely weather, but it was not the custom here. Still, she enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin, and the cool grass licked at her feet softly.

It was midmorning when the first gaggle of servants showed up. Zukida had gotten out her breakfast and her mouth was full of bread and cheese; she swallowed as quickly as she could, and strained her ears.

At first she thought that the servants were whispering quietly, because she could hear nothing from them. But when she watched their lips, looking closely, she discovered that their lips were pinched and white. But they were not muted – one of the halfwit girls, who couldn’t quite control her features, had licked her lips unconsciously while drawing water.

Zukida was bewildered. She had not seen much outside her own country, but in every town she had ever visited the servants talked.

She would have hypothesized that that group of servants were from a household that had just had a death or a sickness – if it had not been like that for the rest of the day.

In the end, Amos had amused himself by buying red and black ribbon from the general store and weaving it into an ornamental belt. It was quite simple – just a few knots, repeated over and over – but it was dreadfully boring. He kept expecting to hear Zukida open the door at any moment.

She didn’t until long after he had finished the belt.

“What did you find out?” Amos asked eagerly as he leapt up from the sofa, his fingers twitching visibly. He had been in a state of constant anticipation for hours.

Zukida smiled secretively, and tossed her long tail of hair over her shoulder. “Oh, it was nothing too important,” she said airily. Amos fidgeted. “I wear a notice-me-not, you see, it’s one of my amulets; so I took the silk off of it and followed a group of servants home. It was a long walk,” she added as her stomach growled. Amos frantically handed her a partially stale scone.

“Thank you. Anyway, I had noticed they were sticking quite close together when they were outside the house, and I needed to know what they were afraid of. Once they were within the grounds of the governor’s mansion, they started to talk a bit, to each other –“

“You snuck onto the governor’s estate?” Amos said, his voice catching in his throat. “My gods. You’re insane. You’re batty, you’re loopy, we’re going to get arrested –“

She frowned at him. “No. I’m resourceful. Now, if you’ll refrain from interrupting me, I’ll continue. Apparently a creature of some sort has been preying on the cattle for quite a while before we arrived – one of the boys among them had a brother in the country. Now it’s been sighted closer – the uncle of one of the serving-maids worked at the docks, and he saw it trying to destroy cargo crates.”

“Destroy? That seems ...unlikely, if it’s corporeal, but if it’s a manifestation, it could have happened.”

“Right, right. But I don’t think it was really trying to destroy anything; if anything, it was probably trying to find food. And I seriously doubt it could have been a demon or spirit. My instinct says it’s a creature of flesh and blood.”

Amos pondered that for a minute, tapping his chin with a gloved finger. “Yes. Indubitably, a manifestation would require a magic-user, and the only one for miles around seems to be the local doctor.” He frowned. “Whom we still have not met.”

Zukida stuck out her tongue at the thought, which made her look rather childish. “As if a country doctor could summon anything. Well, anything powerful. Personally I want to know what his involvement is with the church.” She picked up her comb and began to work it through the tail of her hair. Amos yawned, and Zukida raised an eyebrow at him. He winced.

“It’s been a perfectly exciting day, but I’m rather tired. The day after tomorrow I’ve been invited to Lillian’s garden party – picnic –thing – at the governor’s garden, where, presumably, we’ll be able to gather some more information on this whole ridiculous situation.”

Zukida tucked her feet up beneath her in her chair, and bit her lower lip in thought. “What do you want to do tomorrow? Do we have time to visit the doctor and the priest both, or should we split up and do one each?”

Amos’ brow furrowed. On the one hand, they would cover more ground if he went to the priest and she to the doctor, but on the other hand, he had no idea whether Zukida required his protection as a member of the aristocracy, and as a gentleman. The priest was less likely to get physically violent than the doctor, but you never knew. And what if both of them were extremely crafty people? Zukida was not an especially adept diplomat – too much of a temper. In Amos’ experience, at least, doctors tended to be clueless, and absorbed by their profession and their cause, while priests tended to prattle on endlessly about their philosophy and leave unnoticed subtext that required reading between the lines to translate into motives and information. So, ideally, he would go to the priest and she to the doctor. That left only two questions. He looked back at Zukida, who was waiting expectantly.

“Firstly: Can you act the part of a silly, empty-headed country girl?” he asked. She tilted her head and frowned.

“Probably. Tittering and asking naive questions, ones that make me look uneducated, right? I can do that.”

Amos smiled. “All right. Secondly, can you defend yourself against a man? Or more than one man?”

To his surprise, Zukida burst into loud laughter, dropping her comb. It took her some time to recover from her giggles, which left him quite confused. He had no idea what he’d said that was so funny.

“Sorry,” she wheezed, clapping him on the shoulder in a friendly way and rattling his teeth. “Ah, me. I forgot. You had no idea, right? Before I was taken into the fold, I was an extremely dangerous child. In fact, if the head monk hadn’t found me, I would probably be a professional assassin by now.”

Amos blinked, and edged closer to the edge of his seat, fascinated. “Really? That’s so unusual. Why? Were you in a gang? Were you poor?”

Zukida gave him a ferocious scowl. “That is certainly none of your business,” she said curtly, picking her comb back up and putting it in her sleeve pocket. She stood up, and walked over to her side of the room stiffly, pulling the curtain partition shut behind her. Amos sighed to himself. Apparently he had crossed the line again. And they had been doing so well, too!

“Kida-bun!” he called loudly. She poked her head back through, the same scowl on her face. He winced. She was tragically unfeminine. “Tomorrow, you take the doctor, and I’ll take the priest. Try to act guileless and stupid if he doesn’t want to open up; you’ll probably get him to slip up more that way,” he added, in what he hoped was a helpful manner.

“Thank you,” she said, in a voice that seemed to say that she wanted to be left alone for the next twelve hours and if Amos knew what was good for him he would find something else to do for that block of time. “If you will excuse me, master Amos, I am going to be meditating, so I would appreciate complete silence for the next half hour.”

“Good night!” he called after he cheerfully, and, grabbing a purse, went off to find the baths and a meal. He had waited for her for hours; if she wasn’t going to have dinner now, she would have to have it alone. Serve her right, too.

Zukida heard him leave, and stretched her arms wearily in relief. It had been a long, tiring day, and apart from that morning, she had not eaten. Purposeful malnutrition was quite routine in her life; any excess of food would lead to an excess of energy, and excess energy tended to leak out in rather unfortunate ways. She was proud of herself; looking back, there were times before the meditation when she had been unable to eat for days at a time, screaming herself hoarse. Things were better, now. She had made progress. The strict routine of meditation – on waking, before meals, and immediately before sleeping – was at times daunting. There were times when she woke up in the morning and felt like taking the day off.

That, she told herself sternly, is why I carry my reminder. Stay focused, Zukida. Routines are important. Don’t want to get out of control.

Tiredly, she settled her body into the lotus position, brushing off the thoughts that flew through her mind like flies. They buzzed and muttered, distracting; eventually, the wind of her concentration blew them away, and there was a nothingness.

The pulse of her blood carried little currents and eddies of magic with it, creeping below that surface of her skin. Through sheer force of ingrained will, they curled back before leaving her flesh. It was only at times like these that Zukida dared to allow the magic out of her bones. It screamed for release; the meditation tamed it, the movement through her bloodstream let it play and dance and tire itself.

Enough. I’m hungry.

Reluctant but obedient, the magic sunk back down through layers of muscle and cartilage and skin, until it was coiled dormant and secure around her skeleton. Zukida opened her eyes, blinking in the light, unfolding her legs with a soft groan. She had been in the full lotus for half an hour.

Amos had not returned from wherever he had gone; she supposed her annoying companion was off eating dinner. Really, apart from his brief episode of levity in the carriage ride – when he had taken off his gloves, touching the objects he’d gotten from Lillian – Amos seemed totally and utterly useless. The High Priest had assured her, three weeks ago, before he had sent them off – he had promised that Amos was indeed one of the Chosen, that he was like her, that he had the magic in him. But Amos was a dolt, a frivolous dolt. He thought Zukida was boring and life was a carnival to be danced lightly through. He lived for the shallow and insipid. Sometimes it took great effort to avoid smacking him about the head for sheer stupidity.

Her stomach growled.

I shouldn’t stew over it, she decided. Thinking of him will spoil my meal.

A/n: Oh my freaking GOD. It has been forever and a long time since I updated this story. I’m so sorry.