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confirm where exactly they were, a woman materialized from the shadows. “Setia, meet Draken.”
    She stood only to the middle of Draken’s chest. Silver locks blended into her curly hair, lending age her face didn’t carry. She shrank back when he looked into her face.
    Draken realized with a start that the stippling he’d attributed to the tree-filtered sunlight was part of her coloring. Pale dapples covered her skin. They disappeared down her neck under the edge of her clothing and reappeared on her hands.
    At last his manners caught up to his surprise. “Lady,” he said, bowing over her hand. “It is my honor.”
    She turned to Osias and spoke to him in another language. Osias responded in the same language, reaching out to rub her arm. He nodded to Draken. “We should move, lest the Moonlings think we brought the bane here.”
    “Moonlings?” Draken asked, surprised to hear the word again.
    “Aye. Setia is a Moonling half and they appreciate mixed blood less than most,” Osias said. “Come. We’ll arrive at Auwaer before evening and get some food into you before we see the Queen.”
    “This isn’t a good idea,” Draken said aloud, while internally he tried to calculate his location. He had been put ashore near Khein, just as he had suspected. It’d be a day’s walk or so to Auwaer, if the confiscated maps he’d seen were to scale.
    Osias fixed him with his clear-eyed stare again. “This isn’t a request, friend.”
    A chill spread from the top of Draken’s head to his toes. Fabric sprang to life around him, and his cloak fluttered around his boots… boots? He looked down. His rags were gone. He wore new clothes; a clean black cloak covered his shoulders, a black tunic bared his throat and half his chest, tight leather trousers tucked into boots to the knee. They felt stiff and new. Real. The stolen knife rested in a new sheath on a belt.
    “What is this? What did you do to me?”
    “I clad you properly, in the colors of Brîn, your principality.”
    “Change me back, sorcerer.”
    “You call me sorcerer as if it’s an insult when I only mean to see you fed and treated well at Auwaer.” Osias looked at him pointedly. “In return, you must only report to the Queen about the bane.”
    “If I go before this Queen, she will recognize me for what I am and have me killed.”
    “If you stay here, the Moonlings will condemn you more surely. I believe they’re following you and I don’t expect they mean well.” Osias gestured to toward the tree and fashioned a cold smile. “Come, Draken. I’m asking for a simple exchange of favors.”
    “An exchange which could cost me my life.”
    Osias darkened, his skin taking on the hue of tarnished moonwrought. “No. An exchange which will save it.” Ropes snaked around Draken’s body like creeping snakes, squeezing tightly and holding his hand in place before he could reach for his knife. “I am not asking. Come as my friend, or as my prisoner. That is your choice. But you are coming to Auwaer and you are going before the Queen.”
    Draken struggled against the ropes while Osias and Setia watched silently. At last he clenched his jaw and looked away. A feeling of hopelessness overcame him. “All right. I’ll go. I put my life in your hands. But I don’t have to like it.”
    The ropes snaked away and sizzled to dust at his feet.
    Before long, Draken’s initial anger turned to maddening frustration. Given his hunger and exhaustion, the effort of dragging the reluctant mare through the thick woods seemed an endless battle. He hoped a real meal might be in his future, though he was skeptical one would be presented to him upon his arrival in the capital.
    While Setia scouted ahead, Osias passed him back a water-skin. Draken drank, staring at the patches of sky visible through the heavy canopy. The morning had brightened into full day, bringing with it a damp heat. He offered Osias the stolen flask in return and slung the glamoured cloak across the