Lake Stillmere did not move unless compelled.
It lay beyond the western edge of Dillaclor, tucked behind thinning woodland and crumbling boundary stones no one maintained anymore. The road that once led to it had surrendered to moss and neglect. Even the wind seemed to pause at its banks, as if uncertain whether it was welcome.
Sir. Wilkinson preferred places that did not listen.
Roald preferred places that did not feel like they were waiting.
Stillmere was doing both.
Roald kicked a pebble into the water. The reflection of the sky fractured and then smoothed itself out again, as though nothing had happened.
"Well," he said lightly, "if we're murdered, at least it'll be scenic."
Sir. Wilkinson did not respond.
"We speak plainly here," he said instead. "No raised voices. No repetition."
Roald clasped his hands behind his back in exaggerated imitation. "Yes, sir. Whispered revolution only."
They walked along the bank.
"So," Roald began, "what's the plan? We expose him? Storm the palace? Dramatic reveal? Hidden documents fluttering in the wind?"
"No."
"Good," Roald said. "Because I forgot to bring the fluttering documents."
Sir. Wilkinson stopped near the inlet where reeds grew thick and the water darkened.
"Nux controls perception," he said. "The man on the throne is reinforcement, not authority."
"The actor," Roald muttered.
"Yes."
"So we don't attack the actor," Roald said. "We attack the stage."
Sir. Wilkinson glanced at him.
Roald shrugged faintly. "I listen."
Silence gathered again.
Roald rocked back on his heels.
"There is one efficient solution," he said.
Sir. Wilkinson did not ask.
"We kidnap him."
Silence.
"Nux," Roald clarified. "We grab him at night, tie him to the tallest mast we can find, and send him drifting down the like unwanted cargo."
Sir. Wilkinson closed his eyes briefly.
"We could attach a note," Roald continued. "'Return to sender.'"
"That would destabilize nothing."
"It would make me feel better."
"You are not required to feel better."
Roald exhaled through his nose. "Unfortunate."
The joke did what it was meant to do. It made the air breathable.
Until it changed.
Roald sniffed once.
Then again.
"…That's not marsh."
Sir. Wilkinson continued walking.
"No," Roald said more firmly. "Marsh is… thinner."
The air near the inlet felt heavier.
Sweet.
Wrong.
Flies hovered low over the water.
The reeds bent inward as if something had forced its way through them and never settled again.
Roald slowed.
"Tell me that's a deer."
Sir. Wilkinson did not answer.
A rope trailed from a half-submerged stone.
The knot was uneven.
Poor.
The water shifted.
A pale shape rolled slightly upward.
A shoulder.
Bloated. Water-distended. Cloth clinging to it.
Not peasant wool.
Not traveler's linen.
Roald stopped.
"No."
The smell reached them fully now.
Rot. Sweet and invasive.
Sir. Wilkinson stepped forward into the reeds.
"Stay back."
Roald did not.
He edged closer, hands stiff at his sides.
The body had been weighted — but badly. One stone had slipped, allowing the upper half to rise.
The face was turned partially away.
Recent.
Too recent.
Sir. Wilkinson crouched.
And then he saw the collar.
Embroidery surfaced beneath the water.
Subtle. Refined. Not theatrical.
He knew that stitching.
He had studied it once in lamplight — not as a court observer, but as a craftsman. The precision. The restraint. The deliberate absence of excess.
The former ruler of Dillaclor had not loved spectacle.
He had loved craft.
Sir. Wilkinson's breath changed.
He reached carefully and turned the body just enough.
The clasp at the collarbone gleamed faintly beneath the water.
His work.
Not directly — but inspired by it. Commissioned through the royal workshops. Approved personally.
Approved by a man who had once spent an entire afternoon discussing joint tension in ship ribs.
A man who believed that governance and craftsmanship were siblings — both requiring precision, patience, and truth.
Most importantly, truth.
The right hand drifted upward with the current.
The signet ring caught the light.
Heavy. Authentic. Unmistakable.
Sir. Wilkinson did not speak for several seconds.
He had stood in that man's study.
He had been told — quietly, without fanfare — that within days he would be named Royal Craftsman.
Not for loyalty.
For merit.
For ingenuity.
For refusing to cut corners even when it cost him contracts.
"You build honestly," the ruler had said.
And he had meant it.
It was that same man who had sent him beyond the city walls.
"Find me someone who builds like you do," he had instructed. "Someone unafraid to question."
That journey had led him to Roald.
To chaos. To risk. To a life far larger than he had expected.
Had he arrived earlier in Dillaclor, he thought, he would have stood in the throne hall next week.
He would have knelt.
He would have risen Royal Craftsman.
Instead—
He was kneeling in reeds.
And the man who believed in truth lay rotting in lake water.
For a moment he did not look at the body.
He looked at the water instead — at the distortion, at the way the lake refused to hold a face clearly.
A tight pressure gathered behind his eyes.
Unbidden.
Unwelcome.
He blinked once, sharp and deliberate.
It did not obey him.
A single tear slipped free, silent and without ceremony, and disappeared into the reeds before it could reach his jaw.
He straightened.
When he opened his eyes fully, whatever had broken was sealed again.
Roald's voice broke the silence.
"He was at the square yesterday."
Sir. Wilkinson did not answer.
Roald's breathing grew uneven.
"I saw him."
He had.
He had stood in the crowd.
Watched the execution.
Watched the ruler raise his hand with steady authority.
Watched a man condemn another to death.
The same crest.
The same posture.
The same voice carrying across stone.
Roald stared at the corpse.
"That's him," he whispered.
But it wasn't.
And that was worse.
Sir. Wilkinson's voice, when it came, was steady — but lower.
"The knots are wrong."
Roald blinked at him.
"This was done in haste. By someone afraid."
Roald looked at the rope again.
Uneven.
Sloppy.
Not the work of a strategist.
Delegated.
"He killed him," Roald said.
Not a question.
Sir. Wilkinson rose slowly.
"Yes."
The lake remained still.
Unmoved.
A man who revered truth.
A man who would have raised him to honor.
A man who believed craft was sacred.
Dead.
And somewhere in the city, an actor wore his crest and performed justice.
Roald swallowed hard.
"The city's clapping for a corpse."
Sir. Wilkinson looked at the water one last time.
"No."
His voice carried something colder now.
"They are clapping for a lie."
The wind finally crossed Stillmere.
The surface fractured into ripples.
Reflection disturbed.
Nothing else moved.
—------------------------------------------------------
The reeds shifted.
Not with the wind.
With steps.
Light. Measured. Unhurried.
Neither man had heard her approach.
"So," a voice said evenly from behind them, "you did survive the river. How lucky."
Sir. Wilkinson jolted.
It was not dramatic — but it was real.
His shoulder snapped back as though struck, heel slipping against the damp stone at the lake's edge. For one sharp second, his balance wavered dangerously close to the dark water.
He caught himself.
Breath shallow.
Turned.
Roald reacted differently.
He froze first.
Then his eyes widened.
Recognition did not creep in — it bloomed.
Bright. Immediate.
"Y—"
He stopped himself only because his grin broke the rest of the word apart.
"You're back!"
He moved without hesitation.
Not reckless. Not frantic.
Certain.
The distance between them disappeared in a handful of strides, and he wrapped his arms around her as though this was simply the natural order of things — as though rivers and disappearances had been temporary inconveniences at best.
The contact startled her.
Just enough that her posture stiffened for half a breath.
Then her hand rose.
She patted his head once.
Light. Brief. Familiar.
Roald pulled back, hands dropping to his sides as if he'd suddenly remembered himself.
He had to tilt his head up to meet her eyes.
"You're not dead," he said, like he'd been holding that verdict hostage.
"No," she replied.
Her voice was level.
Untouched by spectacle.
Her hand lingered at the back of his head for one second longer before lowering.
Then her gaze lifted.
Past him.
To Sir. Wilkinson.
He had steadied himself.
But he had not fully recovered.
There was something unsettled in the way he stood — not fear, not quite grief.
Something caught between.
"You're early," he said.
"You're late," she returned.
Roald looked between them, baffled and amused all at once.
"I nearly drowned once and you two start talking like traveling poets again."
For the faintest moment, the corner of Isobel's mouth shifted.
Barely.
Then it was gone.
The air shifted again.
Not because of her.
Because of the lake.
And what lay within it.
She looked at Sir. Wilkinson once more.
This time, more carefully.
"What happened?" she asked.
Sir. Wilkinson did not answer.
Not immediately.
Not at all.
His jaw tightened — not in refusal, but in restraint.
His gaze shifted away from her.
Toward the water.
Isobel followed the movement.
She did not repeat the question.
Something in his expression — stripped of its usual composure — warned her away from it.
This was not deflection.
This was containment.
The reeds near the bank bent strangely.
Not with the wind.
With weight.
A shape disrupted the reflection of the sky.
Dark fabric.
Pale suggestion beneath.
Isobel stepped sideways for a clearer angle.
And then she saw it.
The body lay half-caught in the shallows, one arm surrendered to the water, coat heavy and dark with it. The surface trembled faintly around him, as though the lake had not yet decided whether to release or reclaim.
Recognition did not strike all at once.
It crept.
Then settled.
The smell reached her a breath later.
Sweet.
Wrong.
Inevitable.
She stopped walking.
Not recoiling.
Not gasping.
Just still.
Her hand lifted — not to her mouth, but to steady the air in front of her, as if the world had shifted slightly off its axis.
Behind her, Roald shifted too.
He had not yet seen clearly.
He only sensed the change.
Isobel inhaled once through her nose.
Regretted it.
Exhaled slowly.
When she moved again, it was deliberate.
Measured.
She stepped toward the water.
Past Sir. Wilkinson.
Close enough now that the details refused mercy.
Waterlogged fabric clung to a frame she knew.
A face turned partially toward the sky.
Familiar.
Unmistakably.
She stopped at the edge.
The lake lapped once against the corpse's shoulder.
Then stilled.
She did not speak.
Neither did Sir. Wilkinson.
The wind moved through the reeds again.
And this time, it sounded like breath leaving a body that would never take another.
—------------------------------------------------------
The water shifted against his cheek.
The movement revealed more of his face.
And there it was.
Unmistakable.
Even altered by the lake.
Even emptied.
Isobel did not breathe in.
She remembered sunlight.
—
It had been late afternoon then.
The kind of gold that stretched long shadows across stone.
She had been sitting on the edge of a narrow street, back pressed to a wall too warm from the day. Her knees were pulled to her chest. Her shoes were dusted white from walking without direction.
She had stopped crying minutes ago.
Not because the grief had ended.
Because her throat had.
People passed.
They looked.
They did not stop.
A pair of polished boots paused in front of her.
Not abruptly.
Just… paused.
She did not look up immediately.
She had already learned that looking up invited things.
The boots did not move closer.
After a moment, the owner of them stepped aside and lowered himself onto the stone a short distance away — far enough that their shoulders would not touch even if she leaned.
He did not speak at once.
The silence he offered was not heavy.
It was waiting.
"I used to sit here when I wished the day would hurry along," he said at last, as though commenting on the weather.
His voice was calm.
Unhurried.
Not soft in the way adults used when they pretended not to frighten children.
Just even.
She looked at him then.
He was not dressed plainly — but neither was he ostentatious. His coat was well-made. His posture upright even at rest. There were lines at the corners of his eyes that suggested frequent thought rather than frequent laughter.
He did not reach toward her.
He did not ask her name.
"What happened?" he asked, after a while.
Not sharply.
Not urgently.
As though he would accept any answer.
Or none.
She studied him.
Six years old.
Already measuring risk.
"My parents are dead," she said.
The words came flat.
Practiced in the span of a single day.
He did not flinch.
Did not offer pity.
That, more than anything, made her look at him more closely.
"That is a terrible thing," he said.
Not exaggerated.
Not dramatic.
Just true.
A cart rattled past them.
A woman argued with a vendor across the street.
Life continued.
He tilted his head slightly.
"When my mother died," he said, "I believed the city had gone quiet. It hadn't. I simply could not hear it."
She frowned at him.
He gestured lightly toward the market noise.
"It returns," he said. "The sound."
He let that sit.
After a moment, he reached into his coat — slowly enough that she could see every movement — and withdrew a small wrapped sweet.
He placed it on the stone between them.
Not in her hand.
Not close enough to startle.
Just there.
"For later," he said.
She did not take it immediately.
He did not tell her to.
They sat in companionable stillness.
Eventually, he rose.
"If you are hungry," he said, "the palace kitchens are generous at this hour. You would not be the only guest. The cooks are offended when food goes uneaten."
He almost smiled.
"It is an invitation," he added. "Not an order."
She stared at him.
Palace.
She knew the word.
Everyone did.
He did not extend his hand.
Did not step closer.
"If you prefer not," he said easily, "that is also acceptable."
And he inclined his head to her.
A gesture of respect.
To a child.
Then he stepped back onto the street and continued walking.
No guards descended. No one surrounded her.
The city did not change.
The sweet remained between them.
She looked down at it.
Then up at his retreating figure.
She did not follow.
—
The lake returned.
Cold.
Still.
Isobel stood at the edge of the water, staring at the face that had once sat beside her on warm stone and spoken to her as though she were already whole.
Her hand lowered slowly to her side.
No one else knew.
What he had offered.
And what she had refused.
—------------------------------------------------------
The water lapped in slow, patient circles around the body.
Roald noticed the change in Isobel before he understood why.
It wasn't in her steps — those remained steady — but in her face as she drew nearer to the waterline. Sir. Wilkinson saw it too. They had both learned, in different ways, to read the minute shifts she allowed through.
She crouched beside the corpse.
From where they stood, they could not clearly see the dead man's features.
So they watched hers.
At first there was only stillness — that familiar composure she wore like armor. Then something beneath it moved.
A tightening under her eyes.
The faintest tremor at the edge of her mouth before she pressed it flat.
Not shock.
Not revulsion.
Recognition.
Roald felt the chill crawl up his spine.
She knows him.
Sir. Wilkinson saw something else layered there — something softer, far more dangerous in its restraint. A fleeting shadow of grief. It did not bloom. She did not permit it to. But it was there, quiet and controlled.
Her gaze lingered longer than it needed to.
Not clinically.
Personally.
The lake made a soft sound against the shore. None of them spoke.
When she finally rose, the sadness had already begun folding inward, sealed behind something sharper. Her eyes lifted — not to the corpse, not even to them — but toward the distant outline of Dillaclor.
She was measuring it.
Weighing it.
The heaviness in her expression did not vanish. It settled, disciplined into clarity.
She turned to them.
"This is no time to mourn."
Roald's throat tightened.
She had watched it happen.
The execution.
Whatever questions she carried, whatever hurt pressed at her ribs, she was placing it aside. Not because it did not matter.
Because something else mattered more.
The wind shifted across the lake.
She lowered her voice — not out of fear of the water, but because the unease she felt did not belong to this shoreline.
"You felt it."
Pause.
"We lived it."
The words were quiet, but they carried weight — not recent discovery, but endurance. Whatever wrongness she sensed in the air had not arrived with her return.
It had already settled.
Beside him, Roald said nothing.
His eyes dropped to the rippling surface of the lake. The memory rose unbidden — the shouting in the square, the silence that followed, the way the city's sound had changed afterward. He remembered how it had pressed against his chest, how he had pretended it hadn't.
His hands curled briefly at his sides before he stilled t^hem.
He had lived it too.
But he was not ready to name what it had done to him.
Isobel noticed.
Of course she did.
Her gaze flickered to him only for a breath — just long enough to register the silence, the weight behind it. She did not press. Not here. Not now.
The unfamiliarity she had felt since stepping back into Dillaclor sharpened in her mind. The streets were the same. The stone unchanged. Yet something beneath it had shifted. The pauses between conversations were too long. The guards too attentive. The city did not breathe the way she remembered from childhood.
It felt watched.
It felt tightened.
She drew a slow breath.
"We shouldn't stay here."
It was not a request.
Regroup.
Speak elsewhere.
Explain.
The lake moved again behind them, nudging gently at the shore.
None of them looked back at the body.
The understanding had already settled between them:
Whatever had placed Dillaclor's heart in the water was not an isolated cruelty.
It was a symptom.
And Dillaclor was no longer the city she had left behind.
—------------------------------------------------------
They did not speak as they left Lake Stillmere.
The reeds closed behind them.
The path reclaimed their footprints almost immediately.
Roald walked half a step behind Isobel, watching the line of her shoulders as if it might reveal direction. She had not told them where they were going. She had not needed to.
She was moving west.
Not toward the city.
Not toward the road.
Into older ground.
He tried to map it in his head. Thinning woodland. Split stone. A bend in the river. He searched his memory for landmarks that matched her pace.
Regroup, she had said.
But where?
Sir. Wilkinson walked on her other side, quieter than usual. The lake had not left him. It moved with him. In the set of his jaw. In the absence of commentary.
He catalogued instead.
Execution staged.
Body disposed poorly.
Actor installed.
City complicit — or blind.
His thoughts moved methodically, but beneath them something older stirred. The memory of a study lit by lamplight. A voice discussing craft as moral obligation.
He did not let it linger.
The path narrowed.
Branches brushed at their sleeves. The ground dipped toward the sound of moving water.
Isobel did not slow.
She was walking quickly — but not so quickly that she abandoned them. Every few paces she adjusted, unconsciously measuring the distance.
Sir. Wilkinson finally broke the silence.
"Where are we going?"
No dryness.
No inflection.
Just the question.
Isobel did not turn. "Somewhere secure."
"That is not a location."
"It will suffice."
Roald glanced between them. "If it's a cliff, I'd appreciate notice. I've already drowned once this week."
Neither responded.
The trees thinned abruptly.
A narrow river cut across their path, water moving faster than the lake had. And stretched across it —
A wooden bridge.
Hand-built.
Narrow planks. No railing. Rope supports that looked convincing from a distance and questionable up close.
Roald stopped dead.
"I think," he said carefully, "this is exactly where we die if we cross that bridge."
The wood creaked faintly in the wind.
Sir. Wilkinson examined the joints.
Hand-carved pegs. Tight lashings. Weight distributed deliberately across the center beam.
Not amateur work.
"That depends," Sir. Wilkinson said evenly, "on whether it was built by someone competent."
Roald eyed the sway of it. "It was built by someone enthusiastic."
Isobel stepped onto it without ceremony.
The bridge dipped slightly under her weight.
It held.
She crossed with steady balance, eyes forward, pace unchanged.
Roald swallowed.
Sir. Wilkinson gestured faintly. "After you."
"Why am I after me?"
"Because if it fails, I prefer advance warning."
Roald glared at him — then stepped onto the planks.
The bridge groaned.
He froze.
"It's making sounds."
"All structures make sounds."
"It's making ominous sounds."
Sir. Wilkinson followed.
The wood shifted under both their weights. The river rushed beneath, louder from above it. Halfway across, a plank gave a sharp crack.
Roald made a noise that was neither dignified nor quiet.
Isobel did not turn.
"Keep moving," she said.
They did.
When they stepped onto solid ground again, Roald exhaled like a man reprieved from execution.
Sir. Wilkinson, however, did not immediately relax.
He looked around.
The curve of the bank.
The slope of the rocks.
The particular way the trees opened toward a concealed rise.
Recognition pressed faintly at the edge of his mind.
I have stood here before.
Not recently.
But not long ago either.
He said nothing.
Isobel was already moving again, angling toward a rock face that, at first glance, offered nothing.
Roald squinted. "Are we about to scale a mountain?"
"No," she said.
She reached the stone wall and slipped between two jutting slabs so narrow Roald might have missed them entirely.
The concealment was deliberate.
Sir. Wilkinson felt the familiarity settle fully now.
Of course.
They followed.
The passage opened.
And there it was.
The cave.
Their once temporary shelter.
Shelving carved directly into stone. Mechanical components arranged with precision. Coiled wire. Calibrated springs. Polished fragments of brass and steel laid out in disciplined rows.
The strange whirring apparatus still clung to the rocky wall, its dim internal light humming faintly — as if time had paused rather than passed.
Roald stared.
"You kept it exactly the same."
Isobel did not answer.
Because she had stopped walking.
Just before the entrance.
Sir. Wilkinson saw it a second later.
Near the concealed threshold — scattered across the ground —
Food.
Dried grain crusts. Fruit rind. A torn strip of preserved meat.
Not old enough to be forgotten.
Not arranged.
Dropped.
Roald's humor evaporated.
"It looks fresh, recent. " he said quietly.
Isobel did not move.
Her posture did not change.
But something sharpened.
The cave behind her — once refuge — felt smaller now.
Sir. Wilkinson's voice lowered.
"You weren't expecting anyone."
It was not a question.
Isobel's gaze remained fixed on the ground.
"No."
The whirring device inside the cave continued its soft mechanical hum.
Steady.
Unaware.
The forest behind them rustled faintly.
No wind.
Roald swallowed.
"So," he murmured, "either someone's very bad at cleaning up after themselves…"
Silence stretched.
Isobel stepped forward slowly.
"And they're still close," Sir. Wilkinson finished.
The cave mouth waited.
Open.
No longer unquestionably theirs.
And for the first time since leaving the lake, none of them were thinking about the body in the water.
Because something alive had stepped into their absence.
And it had eaten.