Chapter 3
A Bit Like Looking at Hamal
The king had told Cale to bring anyone he wanted. So Cale did.
Lord Rhyan was a flamemaker—a bored flamemaker, Cale told Hamal in private, though why that was important for this venture Hamal didn’t know. They were going to arrest a bad man who could kill flamemakers with fire, but even after the situation was thoroughly explained to him, Lord Rhyan eagerly accepted the chance to be a member of Cale’s team.
Chestirad and Ermond were flamemakers too, but they also happened to be something Rhyan was not: seasoned soldiers. Every night around the campfire, Chestirad polished his sword and what seemed to be a dozen knives he carried somewhere on his person. The only time Hamal saw the knives was at night around the campfire.
Ermond, meanwhile, was a brooding sort of fellow who liked poetry and smoked a long, thin pipe called a ballister. Apparently, it was something rich people liked to do in Dasken. Just a few days into their journey, Hamal knew more than he wished about Ermond and a woman named Nallia who, by all accounts, seemed to like men who read poetry and smoked skinny pipes.
Will Chiodo was a charter. This meant he could read the earth the way Hamal could read a person’s bones. Will had brought his dog with him—a surprisingly large, sandy-colored wolf pup whose fangs were visible even when her mouth was closed. Hamal, who liked dogs, thought it was funny how most of the men in their party pretended the wolf wasn’t there and became very quiet whenever she got up and moved around.
“It’s a sand wolf,” Cale explained to Lord Rhyan one night beneath the stars.
“By the gods, how did a charter acquire a sand wolf?” Rhyan exclaimed.
“Cale gave her to him,” Hamal replied. “When we were in the East Territory a few weeks ago, he found the puppy in the ravine and gave her to Will as a present.”
Rhyan’s brows lifted, and he made a strange noise in the back of his throat. Staring at Cale, he said, “You found a wolf on a piece of land commonly believed to be haunted, and you took the wolf and gave it to someone? As a gift?”
“The wolf is a girl,” Hamal said. “Her name is Mercy.” Will had given her a feeler name.
“Yes,” Cale answered. “I did give the wolf as a gift.”
He looked at Rhyan, who cleared his throat and eventually said, “Ah,” then directed the conversation along a different route.
Gregory Almes was a reader and official recorder for the king. The throne required a reader to document their journey; this was standard practice when the king’s business took place outside the city. Gregory spent most of his days with a pencil and a notebook in his hands. Even in the saddle, he was constantly writing. The king would receive Gregory’s report when they returned to the city.
Hainn and Vincent were weathermakers. Hainn was quiet, barely saying a word unless he was asked a direct question, while Vincent loved water. Something about him was a little different, and Hamal couldn’t tell what it was. The way he moved? The way he watched the land around him? Hamal didn’t know, but after a while, he noticed that Vincent constantly had a waterskin in his hands. All the time. He drank more water than anyone else in their party. As the days passed, Hamal began to wonder if Vincent needed someone to heal him—it was a lot of water. The man seemed to have trouble sleeping. He was awake every time Hamal opened his eyes at night, except for the night they made camp next to a stream. That night, Vincent slept like a toddler who had done nothing that day but run.
Gild, a healer, had four sons and three daughters with his weathermaker wife.
Kolling was an archer. She journeyed by herself during the day and, every night, appeared at sunset with dinner hanging off her saddle.
And the last member of their party was Masly Hawl. The seer who had kidnapped the king’s brother.
“Anyone I want,” Cale said.
The king had recently allowed Masly to move back to his house under careful guard. Masly lived there with a handful of the king’s soldiers and a court-assigned servant named Reckoning, a feeler who didn’t smile very much.
When Cale told the king he wanted Masly to accompany them, the king had stared down his long nose at Cale and eventually said, “Very well. I don’t make a habit of arguing with seers.”
Which Hamal didn’t understand at all, because Cedrick argued with Cale all the time. Sometimes they even bickered back and forth like brothers who had very good manners.
So, Masly went with them.
It was an interesting mix of people, to be sure.
Toward the end of their eighth day on the road, they came to a small town called Redsprin.
Even before they passed through the gate, Hamal began to suspect this town didn’t have any feelers. He was a healer, but even he could sense that something wasn’t right about this place. There weren’t any streets—just muddy tracks that tried to swallow wagon wheels and people’s boots. Residents waded through the muck as if they didn’t see it anymore, and no one was wearing clean clothes. Everyone Hamal saw, even the handful of children he spotted playing in a questionable alley, had an obvious weapon strapped somewhere on their body.
As Cale’s party traveled deeper into the dirty little town, it was like somebody had blown a trumpet. Everything stopped. People turned and stared. And then they started frowning, especially at Cale and Masly.
Hamal leaned sideways in the saddle and, in as quiet a voice as possible, whispered to Cale, “Why are we staying here again?”
“Thieves,” Cale replied, also quiet. “This area of the country is notorious for theft. Highwaymen, mostly. Or armed men hiding in the trees. I would not typically wish to travel through this land, but it is the most direct route to our destination. The town, at least, offers a small amount of protection against external forces.” His eyes narrowed as he scanned the area. “A small amount of protection.”
Hamal suspected he knew what Cale was sensing—a town without feelers. When a town did not have feelers, it felt different than other places. If feelers couldn’t live there, something inside the town needed to be healed—and as quickly as possible, because it was sick.
The town had two inns situated around the muddy center square, and after a quick conversation between Cale and Masly, they chose the inn on the right. It was called Mourning Dove, a name that seemed sadly fitting. The inside of the inn was cleaner than the outside, but the windows were small and there weren’t many lamps to keep out the night. At least the main room was warm. A fire spit and crackled on a hearth that was built like a large triangle in the corner.
Cale’s party took every available room on the inn’s second floor, and once that was done, they returned to the dining room for supper. Five of them—Hamal, Cale, Gregory the reader, Masly, and Lord Rhyan—sat together in a large booth in the back of the room. Hamal had learned that his friend Cale liked to watch things from the back, and he assumed Masly was the same way.
The venison stew was good, better than Hamal expected, given the state of the town. Some of the others seemed a bit hesitant, however. Lord Rhyan made a face and then ate only the bread, and Gregory pretended to eat but, in the end, only poked around the bowl with his spoon.
Hamal was halfway done with his meal when one of the customers dropped a dish. The plate hit the floor and shattered, pieces splintering. The other customers roared with laughter, and people lifted their drinks to cheer the chaos.
Before the broken pieces had stopped moving, a small dark form raced out of a corner and began throwing them in a bucket.
Hamal squinted, trying to see through the shadows. Was that a child?
The broken shards and chunks of food went into the bucket, and then the small form fled back to the corner, where it sat in the darkness opposite the fireplace and picked through the bucket, choosing bits of things that it shoved into its mouth.
It was a child. A girl, Hamal thought, but he couldn’t quite tell from where he was sitting. Was this her job—to clean the floor when someone dropped a dish? Frowning, he turned back to the table and discovered he was not the only one whose interest the child had captured. Cale and Masly both stared toward the corner where the little girl sat, nearly invisible in the shadows.
“I have no idea what that is,” Masly said, his soft, boyish voice barely audible above the noise of the dining room.
“Prophetic in nature,” Cale said.
It was like he and Masly had been having a private conversation and only now did they feel it necessary to speak out loud.
“In nature, yes,” Masly replied, “but not the prophetic gift itself. Obviously. Her eyes would give her away, and not even the master of this inn would dare treat a prophet-child in this fashion.” He frowned toward the innkeeper as the large man laughed uproariously at a nearby table.
Oh, Hamal realized. They’re talking about her gift. He watched them frown, and then he glanced over at Gregory, who was writing things down again, and Lord Rhyan, who was twisting around on the bench and trying to see what everyone was talking about.
Masly slowly said, “Whatever her gift is, it’s a bit like looking at Hamal for the first time.”
Cale chuckled as if Masly had told a joke.
“Looking at me? What does that mean?” Hamal asked. He was a healer, not a prophet.
Neither seer seemed to hear him.
The innkeeper walked by, and Lord Rhyan reached out and snagged a corner of his sleeve. The man was as tall and wide as a dining table set on end.
“Your pardon,” Rhyan said politely. He nodded toward the child. “Who is that little boy in the corner?”
The innkeeper followed his look. “Oh, that? That’s Rose. That’s what we call her. The little thing doesn’t speak. A thiever dropped her off here last year and left some coin for her, but then he never come back, and coin run out, and she’s been sickly ever since.”
“Don’t you have healers in Redsprin, sir?” Hamal asked.
The innkeeper’s dark gaze turned to him. “The coin run out,” he repeated. “Healers don’t work for no coin.”
“Some of them do,” Hamal said.
“What is her gift?” Masly asked.
The innkeeper shrugged and looked toward another table whose occupants were laughing. “Don’t rightly know. The child is odd.” He tapped his forehead. “Up here. She hasn’t shown no signs of a gift since she came. Naturally, that was one of the first questions I asked that thiever, but he didn’t know either. Said he found her out on the road.” The innkeeper harrumphed. “Of course he did. Thievers is always honest, you know.” He laughed loudly.
“Didn’t you ask her what her gift was?” Hamal asked.
The large man growled, “She don’t talk. Not a word.”
After the innkeeper had stomped away, Rhyan lowered his voice and said to the rest of them, “I daresay we might get a better night’s sleep out in the woods, despite the threat of thieves.”
“Might be true,” Masly muttered.
But he and Cale looked back to the child in the corner.
“What do you see?” Hamal asked, bumping Cale’s arm with his shoulder.
“She’s peculiar,” Cale replied.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure I could describe it to you. It is more of a sense than a sight. I can see nothing about this child clearly.”
Masly agreed with a nod. “Yes, and that’s strange too. I should be able to see something, but her gift hides her. Whatever it is.”
Gregory’s pencil scratched the page. He made notes as quickly as he could.
Blowing out his breath in a hot sigh, Rhyan rolled his eyes and straightened up on the bench. “Gentlemen, if there is one thing I cannot abide, it is indecision.”
Hamal believed it. Rhyan was a flamemaker.
As they all knew he was a flamemaker, perhaps they should have been expecting it, but they still jumped as Rhyan took hold of Hamal’s bowl and threw it on the floor. The porcelain shattered, the pieces bouncing everywhere. Just as they had the first time, other customers laughed, glasses raised.
“If we are all so curious,” Rhyan said, “let’s meet her, shall we?”
– H –
Author’s note: We just got back from housesitting for my parents. While at their house, my nearly 2-year-old discovered that playing in toilets is a load of fun and so is stripping off his diaper and peeing on the kitchen floor as close to Mommy’s leg as possible. We had…an adventure. 😅
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.