It must have been an hour later when Ashley arrived.

  The door creaked open, and Dalliance looked up to see her silhouetted against the darkening sky, a bird on her shoulder. She scanned the room, clearly looking for someone. Her gaze landed on Jasmine, and she started forward.

  "There you are. I've been looking everywhere—" Ashley stopped short, her eyes catching on the covered body. Her expression shifted, sharpened. She moved closer, tilting her head.

  "Ashley?" Jasmine said uncertainly.

  Ashley didn't answer. She was staring at the body, her eyes narrowed in a way that Dalliance recognized from when she was working through a problem. She reached out, not quite touching the cloth, her hand hovering over it.

  “Good bones.”

  Dalliance's stomach churned.

  "Ashy?" Jasmine asked.

  "How’d he die?" Ashley glanced at Dalliance, her expression unreadable. "I saw the duel’s aftermath."

  The room felt too small suddenly. Too hot. Dalliance's candle wavered in his hand.

  "I—" he started, then stopped. His throat was closing up. "I didn't mean—"

  "Dalliance?" Jasmine turned to him, confused and worried.

  And then it all came spilling out.

  "He wasn't a good man," Dalliance said, his voice cracking. "He wasn't. But I—I killed him. I did this."

  "How?" Ashley asked. Clinical. Curious.

  "I distracted him. With a spell." The words were tumbling out now, too fast, too desperate. "I asked him. I whispered it, right to his ears. ‘Why won't you die?' And he heard me. He turned. He looked at me. And then—" His breath hitched. "And then he did. Die. Because I distracted him. On purpose."

  He was crying now. He hadn't realized he'd started, but his face was wet and his chest was heaving and he couldn't stop.

  "He was going to win," Dalliance said. "He was going to kill Pleasant and then he was going to know it was me who set it all up and he was going to—" He couldn't finish.

  Jasmine made a soft, distressed sound and put her hand on his arm.

  Ashley was quiet for a moment, studying the body. Then she sighed. "Well, you can't leave it like this."

  Dalliance looked up, blinking through tears. "What?"

  "The spell residue would prove foul play," Ashley said matter-of-factly. "If anyone examines this body properly—and they will, at the temple—they'll know the duel wasn't clean. They'll investigate. You'll be implicated." She paused. "Also, I could use it for parts."

  "Ashley!" Jasmine said, scandalized.

  "What? It's what I do." Ashley looked at Dalliance, her expression somewhere between exasperated and calculating. “How many people in town can detect magic?”

  “You just saw them carry him off on a stretcher. The one.”

  “Priests?”

  “One.”

  “Can he sense magic, or reveal classes?”

  Dalliance’s mind flashed back to his tier-up. “Yes. The second one, at least.”

  The bird on her shoulder stepped sideways and cocked its eye at Dalliance with uncanny focus.

  “Is he outside?”

  She made no movement towards the door, but glanced at it. Dalliance felt hugely put-upon but opened the door a crack. “No. It’s nearly dusk, there’s practically nobody.”

  “Alright. I'll take care of the cleanup. Jasmine, if you’d take him outside?”

  The bird on her shoulder shifted its weight.

  Dalliance preceded Jasmine outside.

  "You don't need to be alone right now anyway,” she told him.

  “I’m thirteen. I can take care of myself,” he said. It felt stupid on the way out.

  "I saw the way they were looking at you," Jasmine added. "You shouldn't stay here, either.”

  Not that he was going to.

  “I can find—” he began.

  “JAZZ!”

  The voice was from inside the granary. The volunteer on his stool looked interested, so Dalliance improvised: “She’s needy.”

  The man rolled his eyes, and Dalliance managed a credible synchronicity, for all that he was just repeating Uncle Impetuous.

  Inside, the trestle table was empty. The candles still flickered. Cadence Rather's body was gone.

  Dalliance stared at the empty table, his candle burning down in his shaking hand. It didn’t help. He couldn’t face going home to Galton. Couldn't face Whimsy right now. Couldn't face anyone who knew him, who'd look at him and see—what? A murderer? A kinslayer? He'd shut all the doors on his life, one by one, until there was nowhere left to go.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He wished his ma still liked him.

  "It's going to be okay," Jasmine said softly, wrapping her arms around him. “Things blow over.”

  "Death's a part of life. It happens."

  Over his head, Jasmine narrowed her eyes at Ashley in a look that promised a later conversation. Dalliance missed Ashley’s returned expression entirely, his face pressed against Jasmine's shoulder.

  "Come on," Ashley said, already moving toward the door. "We're leaving."

  Jasmine paused to grip his shoulder before following her friend out the door.

  They trooped out past the guard (just a dairyman volunteering for the night) who nodded at them without much interest. They walked through the darkening village to the wagoneer's yard, where Ashley hired a coach to Oakheart.

  "You might as well tag along," Jasmine suggested. "If you still want company."

  And, though torn, he did. Or perhaps he just didn't want to risk talking to Industry right now. And didn't really want to go back to his room, either.

  As Dalliance climbed into the coach, something occurred to him. Nobody's going to think we took the body. They saw us leave before it went missing

  Something had gone right, at least.

  The coach lurched into motion. For a while, nobody spoke. The rhythmic creaking of the wheels and the clip-clop of hooves filled the silence. Dalliance stared out the window at the darkness, watching Talbotton disappear behind them.

  Jasmine kept shooting pointed looks at Ashley, her glares becoming progressively more insistent.

  Jasmine broke the silence. “Ashley wants to know what’s wrong.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes! You do!”

  “Fine, do you want to talk about it?”

  He thought about it.

  “Well. I've probably burned a lot of bridges today. That’s a new one, on me."

  "Can't be that bad."

  "My uncle is my captain on the Wall. He probably thinks I did this." His voice cracked. "Everyone thinks I did this."

  "The wizard offered quarter," Jasmine pointed out firmly. "It's nobody's fault but his own that Cadence didn't take it."

  Ashley leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "That. But. Did you leave any evidence?"

  Other than the spell residue?

  "They saw him stare at me. Right before he died."

  "And then he died, 'cause he wasn't looking at what he was doing," Ashley said, her tone almost conversational. "Could say he put two and two together. Realized the [Wizard] was your father."

  Dalliance's head snapped up. "What?"

  "You look exactly the same, 'cept his eyes are closer together. Obvious." She shrugged. "So. Far as anyone knows, you're accused of . . . revealing that your mother was a skank."

  "Ashy!" Jasmine hissed.

  "What? It's true." Ashley looked at Dalliance. "Betting they'd know why you did it, right? That's what you're worried about."

  "Yes," Dalliance said miserably.

  "No. I'd have no idea why you did it. Nobody else will either." She leaned back, crossing her arms. "When you're not around, kid, people stop thinkin' about you. Nobody's puzzling this out. They've got their own lives, their own problems. You're just the gossip who started a scandal."

  "Except maybe Ma."

  "Maybe. So what? It was a stupid idea to duel. It'll sound stupid when she tells people about it. 'Oh, my husband was too stupid to live an' couldn't put his own life before his pride.' Real compelling story."

  "Ashy, you're being mean," Jasmine said quietly.

  Ashley rolled her eyes. "Anyway. Maybe some people figure it out. Maybe not everyone. Point is, they think you revealed a secret. Indecorous. You're a gossip. A tell-tale. And, because you were, someone died."

  She studied Dalliance's face. "But it's just an annoying trait people grow out of, most of them. Maybe your ma won't like you anymore."

  "Didn't anyway," Dalliance muttered.

  "Uh-huh. Well. I'm just saying it as I see it." Ashley tilted her head. "Actually, you probably opened a few doors. With the old man around, he might've interfered. Could have tried to rescind the disinheritance, regained authority over you at any time."

  Dalliance looked up sharply. "He could do that?"

  "'I leave you nothing. Nevermind, I leave you something again.' Not that complicated."

  He'd just have had to say it officially in front of a priest, Dalliance realized. It had never occurred to him. His father could have taken back the disinheritance whenever he wanted, reclaimed him, dragged him back home. "That's not fair!"

  "Consider," Ashley said, "that a bolt dodged."

  She leaned forward again. "You're a budding [Aeromancer]. That's not someone who's gonna be hemmed in by a farm an' a family name. What you need to do is get good at what you do, so nobody can take away your right to go where you want to go. Not everywhere is like Talbotton. Honestly, it's a bit . . . culty."

  "We worship the gods, the same as you!" Dalliance protested.

  "Eh. There's gods to go around. I'm looking for a word. . . ." She tapped her chin. "Insular. Know what it means? Everybody living in the same house, forever, in their own little box, hearing the same homilies from priest and parent and passing it along down with all the other garbage they believe. Get out there. Learn somethin' new. Talk to your faerie."

  "She doesn't want to influence me too much."

  "That's nonsense. Fine, talk to someone else. An' watch your faerie closely, because an immortal guiding a child can't help but influence them. That's just how it works." Ashley settled back in her seat. "He's dead. You're alive. Focus on the parts you can still change."

  The coach rolled on through the darkness. Dalliance sat in silence, his mind turning over Ashley's words. The parts he could still change.

  After a while, he found himself asking, "Why would someone risk it? Necromancy, I mean. It's illegal."

  Ashley glanced at him, surprised. "You really wanna know?"

  "I think so."

  “Because I’m good at it. It’s the only way I have to save my farm, and nothing is going to stop me from doing that. Not anyone living, nor dead. It’s what you should have done yourself—not necromancy, but your goals. If they get in your way, kill them. If they don’t, leave them alone. Besides, everything dies—might as well make it useful.”

  Dalliance thought about that. About his father's body, about the head in the dirt, about the empty table. "Does it bother you? Messing with people's remains?"

  "Does it bother a butcher any to carve a pig?" Ashley shrugged. "They're not people anymore."

  It wasn't entirely true: Dalliance could feel the slight evasion in her words and suspected she'd simplified something more complex, but he found himself accepting it anyway. The alternative was thinking too hard about where his father's body was right now, and he couldn't face that.

  "You can stay at my place tonight if you want," Ashley offered. "Got a spare room."

  "Thank you, but—" Dalliance hesitated. "I can head to the city if I need to. I just don't feel like it. Or anything, really."

  Jasmine shot Ashley a look, then reached over and squeezed Dalliance's hand. "We'll figure it out when we get to the farm."

  "What do you grow?"

  "Carrots."