Chapter 28
KAEDRIN
The south road out of Brindle Hollow runs past the lower pasture before it narrows toward the valley floor. I take it at a walk, my horse moving easy in the late afternoon light, and I read the road as I go.
The ground tells me things. Hoof prints in the soft shoulder, fresh enough to show clear edges — one horse, moving at a steady pace, not hurrying.
The prints cut off the main road onto the side track exactly where Fenwood's map indicated, which confirms the route.
I follow the side track until the pasture gives way to a stand of old timber and the road widens briefly into what was once a staging area.
Three wagons. Or what's left of them.
Two are partially dismantled — wheels pulled, boards stacked, the canvas covers stripped and bundled.
The third is further gone, its frame broken down to components and the pieces laid out like a carcass.
The work is recent. The cut wood is pale and clean at the edges, the sawdust not yet dampened by the evening air.
I tie my horse to a tree at the road's edge and walk the area slowly.
More crate impressions in the dirt, the same dusty metallic trace I've been following.
Whatever was stored here moved out recently, but not all of it went cleanly.
Two broken crate slats are half-buried near the tree line, and the residue on them is stronger than the surrounding ground — something was damaged or opened here, not just transported.
The sound of a tool against wood reaches me from behind the furthest wagon.
I go around the frame quietly.
A man, thirties, lean through the shoulders, kneeling beside an intact section of wagon bed and working a crowbar between the planks. He's focused on the wood and doesn't hear me until my shadow falls across him.
He goes still.
"Keep your hands where I can see them," I say. "Don't stand up yet."
He complies, crowbar resting on the ground, both hands visible. He's weighing his options — I can see it in the set of his shoulders — and reaching the conclusion that running has a poor outcome.
"Stand up slowly," I say. "Turn around."
He does. His face is weathered and unremarkable, tanned and worn from years on the road. He looks at my bounty seal and doesn't seem surprised by it.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
"Cleaning up." He says it flatly, like it's a job description.
"Whose instruction?"
He doesn't answer that.
I take the crowbar from the ground and set it out of his reach, then take his belt knife and put that out of reach too.
"I'll ask it differently. You're destroying evidence connected to a smuggling case currently under formal investigation by the dark elf courts.
That makes you an accessory after the fact at minimum.
Or you tell me what I need to know and I record your cooperation in my report. "
He chews the inside of his cheek. "What do you need to know?"
"Where is Fenwood."
"He circled back." He says it without visible reluctance, which means he's decided Fenwood isn't worth protecting. "Didn't take the south road after all. Or he took it and doubled back. Either way, he's in town."
That stops me. "Why?"
"There's a cache he couldn't move when things went wrong at the council. Small, hidden somewhere in the market district. He didn't want to leave without it."
"What's in it?"
The man shifts his weight. "Most of it's the usual stock.
Drain pieces, binding work." He pauses. "But there's one piece he's been carrying separately from everything else.
Never let it go in with the regular inventory.
Kept it wrapped, never talked about what it was.
" He eyes the broken wagons. "Whatever it is, he went back for it.
Wouldn't have risked returning otherwise. "
"Where in the market district?"
"I don't know. I was sent out here." He nods at the wagon remains. "To finish this."
The wagon dismantling needs to finish. If Fenwood has eyes anywhere in this town — and a man as careful as him usually does — an abandoned work site and a missing worker will signal that something went wrong.
That signal reaches Fenwood before I do, and a cornered man with access to dangerous artifacts is a more serious problem than the one I'm already managing.
I turn back.
"Changed your mind?" He asks.
"Finish the wagons," I say. "Exactly what you were sent to do. Then you leave town. Tonight, before dark."
His eyes follow me carefully. "And if I don't?"
"Then I file a full report that names you as an active participant in a court-prohibited smuggling ring, and I include today's evidence destruction in the charge.
" I let that settle. "Or you finish the work, you leave, and I record your cooperation.
Your choice, and you have about ten seconds to make it. "
He stands and picks up the crowbar without further discussion.
"The cache he came back for," I say. "The hidden one in town. Where is it?"
He shakes his head. "I don't know. I was never told about it. Fenwood ran the town storage himself — didn't use intermediaries for anything he considered high value." He sets the crowbar against the wagon frame. "If it exists, only he knows where it is."
"The artifact he kept separate. Do you know what it does?"
He's keeps quiet at first. "I know it made people nervous.
The ones who'd been around it. One of the men who handled it once said it felt wrong — not like the drain pieces, which you can sense but learn to ignore.
He said this one felt active even when it was wrapped and sealed.
" He starts working the crowbar between the planks. "That's all I know."
An artifact that reads as active even when contained. That narrows the category considerably and none of the options are good.
I watch him work for a moment, confirming the rhythm is genuine and not performance. He's methodical about it — pulling boards in the right sequence to break the frame apart efficiently. He's done this before.
"When you leave don't come back to this valley,” I say, “Not this season, not next. If I see your name connected to this caravan in any subsequent proceeding, the cooperation consideration disappears." I narrow my eyes and raise my chin. "Understood?"
"Understood," he says, without looking up from the wood.
I leave him to it and go to my horse.
The road back to town runs fast at a canter and I push her to it, watching the light change as the afternoon tips toward evening.
Fenwood circled back. He's inside Brindle Hollow right now, somewhere in the market district, retrieving an artifact he values above his own clean escape.
A man who takes that kind of risk doesn't do it for money.
He does it because the artifact itself represents power he's not willing to leave behind — either because of what it's worth, or because of what it can do.
An active artifact, concealed somewhere in a town that's already been destabilized by fear and suspicion.
I think about what an active artifact of unknown function could do in the hands of a man with nothing left to lose in Brindle Hollow, and I push my horse faster.
The town comes into view as the sun drops toward the ridge. The market square is settling into evening business — stalls closing, foot traffic thinning. Nothing looks wrong from the road. Nothing looks like a man conducting desperate business in the market district.
That doesn't mean he isn't there.
I stable my horse at the inn and go out on foot, moving through the square at a pace that reads as purposeful without looking urgent.
I take the market lane first, checking the gaps between buildings, the covered stalls, the loading areas behind the larger merchants.
Then the alley that runs parallel, then the lane behind the cooperage.
I'm two streets from the bakery when I stop, watching the building I'm passing.
The old storage house — the one I used as a temporary holding facility. The lock is as I left it. But there's a boot print in the dust near the door that wasn't there this morning. Fresh, pointing toward the entrance.
Someone has been here since I left.
I check the lock. Still secured. But the dust pattern around the frame has been disturbed, and there's a faint mark at the base of the door where someone knelt and examined the lock without forcing it.
Fenwood knows where his people are being held. He also knows that the man who put them there is the same man who has been dismantling him piece by piece. And he's already demonstrated he understands the value of removing witnesses.
I move faster toward the bakery.