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. . and he might have listened. The kingdom was shot through with rot. Everyone knew it, though no one said so aloud.
    But Takis had made a mistake when she told him about the fortress where the refugees were housed. The deepest rot in the kingdom was among its insipid women, those who whispered to one another of sisters and daughters who’d made a new life in the north. Such women were like sheep. If one wandered, another would follow without thought, and another after her, and so it was that many hundreds had disappeared into the Puzzle Lands where, no doubt, they warmed the beds and kept the kitchens of Koráyos masters.
    The exodus must stop. The Lutawan Kingdom depended on both the labor and the wombs of such women. Nedgalvin was determined to end the whispers. He would take Fort Veshitan and slaughter the refugees he found within its walls. It was the right and proper thing to do.
    Beneath the trees, the setting moon did little to show the way, but as they left the trees and entered a narrow canyon, the moon’s feeble light was extinguished altogether by the high walls. After that Nedgalvin rode with his lantern in hand. Its faint beam picked out the trail. Several minutes passed. Then suddenly his horse snorted, sashaying to the side, its tail whisking the air in irritation. Nedgalvin raised his lantern to see what lay ahead, but his light didn’t reach more than a few feet. He urged his horse on, but it refused, so he dismounted. Behind him, other animals were stopping—champing, stamping, blowing—while farther back in the dark came the clip-clop of more hooves. Wind soughed through tree branches, and a tiny stream trickled beside the trail.
    Cautiously, he moved forward on foot. Soon the beam of his light picked out a tumble of stones across the trail, and a few feet farther on, a cliff wall studded with sparse brush and stunted trees. He frowned. Had he missed a turning in the trail? He cast his light to the right, walking several paces, hoping to discover the proper way. Then he turned about and explored to the left.
    But there was no way forward.
    Suddenly, he understood. He spun around, bellowing to his men, “It’s a trap! Turn around. Retreat to the lowlands. All haste! Do not wait—”
    His last command was forever lost behind a great, thunderous concussion, as if God had driven an ax into the mountains above and split them wide. Then came a deafening roar that shook him, blood and bone, shook the very ground he stood on. His light went out as grit pummeled him from all sides and a wind blasted up the canyon. He screamed at his men to run, run! But he couldn’t hear himself. He couldn’t hear them. He could see nothing. But he knew where the cliff was. Ignoring his own orders, he began to climb.
    ~
    W hen Smoke was little he’d awake in nightmare, always the same one, a dream of being trapped in a crushing cage of blood and bone and no matter how he kicked and struggled he couldn’t free himself. Once he said to me, “My father wanted me to die in there,” which is of course the truth.
    My father calls Smoke his demon child, but if my brother is a demon it’s our father who made him so.

    Enchantment
    At first Ketty was afraid. Not of Smoke—not so much—but of the unseen perils of the Wild Wood: the wolves, the bears, the lions, the Hauntén, and the vast labyrinth of trees that held her isolated from any other human presence.
    She didn’t count Smoke as human. Not entirely, anyway.
    “Why do you live so deep in the Wild Wood?” Ketty asked him, on that first morning in the little round cottage.
    He was crouched at the hearth, frying fish he’d collected from a trap in the brook. “I can do what I want here. And my mind is quiet. I almost never hear voices.”
    “You heard mine.”
    He nodded, smiling to himself. “And for that I’ll always be grateful.”
    Ketty thought it odd that such sweet words could be spoken by a murderer, but really, it was better not to think too much about