Draft 3 – Updated 3 APRIL 2026 (C006/D003)
The first thing LT became aware of as he surfaced from his dry, dreamless slumber was the scratchy hiss of a barn owl. The second was acrid smoke. What jolted him awake and forced him to action, though, was an unusually powerful urge to urinate.
Scrambling to his feet, he glanced around his stall, grabbed his scabbard, and dashed out to the tall grass to answer nature’s call. As he gathered his bearings under the stars, it occurred to him that the barn in which he had awakened seemed suspiciously vacant.
Strapping on his swordbelt, he returned to a darkened building weakly lit by a glowing bed of embers adorned with a few licks of dancing yellow flame. He saw no children. No druid. No sign of the wood-chopping daughter. The white-haired elf sat alone by the fire gazing at one of the dead overseer’s sketches.
“You moved the children,” LT said, leaning against a stall divider, hand on his hip, near the handle of his weapon.
“They in a safe place,” the elf responded, slowly folding the sketch before tucking it away.
“Already?” LT was skeptical. “We just got here.”
“Got here last night,” the elf replied. “Girls took the tads this morning.”
The deputy frowned, calculating the passage of time. “You drugged me,” he realized. Agitation boiled at the base of his brain forming tendrils that reached down through his arms toward his fists. “The druid”—his knuckles tingled and his fingers swelled—“at the church,” he recalled, nodding, his jaw tensing.
LT’s animal instincts coiled. He wanted to lash out. But his combat training knew better and his brain counselled calm. This was an elf—an elder elf. A potentially lethal elder elf. Better to make a friend here than an enemy.
“Where’d you take them?” he asked, discretely taking stock of his weapons, noting the barn’s layout, and quickly forming a tactical plan.
“They ain’t going to the Shadows,” the elf replied.
The statement was factual. Frank and informative. Delivered with elf-like efficiency in the tone that marked all elves as . . . well . . . dicks.
“Your decision, I presume.” LT suppressed his irritation and tactfully measured his tone.
“Their people.”
“Whose people?” LT’s brows pinched together.
“Theirs,” the elf lifted his chin to imply a direction. “From town.”
LT’s earlier grogginess had now fully dissipated. A lot had happened while he was unconscious. The children, his ticket into the Shadows and his shot at the governor, were gone. All he had left was this. And he wasn’t yet sure what this even was. Before he could adjust his plan to complete his mission, he needed to figure this out.
LT took a slow breath through his nose to reset. “Your name,” he said, as he moved around the fire to lean against a pillar across from his new . . . companion, “I don’t think I caught it.”
“Hunter,” the elf replied, without offering his hand.
It occurred to LT that the elf hadn’t asked him his name when they first spoke in the River Camp. Sneaky. He already knew it. How long had the elf had him under surveillance, he wondered? What else did this spy know about him?
“I thought that was a human thing—using your occupation as a name.” LT swallowed his misgivings, trying to manufacture a friendly connection. “Elves are supposed to have long names that get longer as you get older.”
“We do,” the spy replied, offering no more.
LT crossed his arms, aware of the need to manage his colours and establish his credibility with the stranger. “This,” he said, “is why folks round here ain’t inclined to be very friendly with y’all.” He allowed a breath of frustration to sneak through his lips, adding truthful colour to his aura. “Your tone ain’t exactly sociable.”
The hunter leaned back and regarded him. “You looking for answers? Or a date?”
Something in that moment struck a chord with LT. He wasn’t sure what it was. Not memory, exactly. More of an impression. Like a voice, or a smell, reaching deep into dark water, touching something familiar, just beyond the reach of light.
“Don’t get me wrong . . . Hunter. I don’t mean no disrespect,” LT said, uncrossing his arms and reestablishing his self-control. “I’m just tryna figure out where we stand, is all.”
Elves were rational—too rational—most of the time. This made them distant. Transactional. Hard to get a handle on. If he wanted to break through to this one, LT needed to find some common ground. “What is it you hunt?” he asked.
The elf paused to consider the question. It was an awkward pause, the kind that made most humans uneasy, the kind that could easily increase tension between strangers. But LT did not find it awkward because he had been trained by the Brotherhood of Broken Chains to expect it.
It was, by their definition, an elf pause—the moment in which elves took stock of a creature’s emotional state by reading the colours of their aura.
So when Hunter paused to consider LT’s question about what exactly he hunted, there was nothing awkward between them. The human posed the question. The elf took a beat to observe the colour of the human’s intent. Then he pulled a piece of paper from a rear pocket and reached out to offer it in answer.
LT tipped his head quizzically to the side then stepped forward to accept it. Carefully unfolding the paper sheet, his heart skipped a beat. It was a wanted poster from Eastbranch—adorned with a sketch, his true name, and some recent aliases. Beneath were formal charges, carefully itemized, including one violation of the Fugitive Slave Ordinance.
“You’re a bounty hunter,” LT said aloud, processing Hunter’s point while scanning the page. “I’ve seen this one,” he said, turning the poster to face the elf. “Doesn’t look anything like me.”
“Never does.” Hunter shrugged.
“I have to admit. It was a little hurtful seeing this the first time. Only twenty for turning me in alive. Ten for dead. I was expecting more.” LT grinned at his own joke. “So which one are you after, bounty hunter? Are you turning me in for the ten? Or are you looking for the twenty?”
“Slave Act violators?” Hunter replied. “Those are tens.”
LT tensed, holding his grin steady. His eyes locked warily on the elf. “And here I thought we were starting to get along,” he retorted, alert for any sudden movement.
But the elf remained calm. His hands stayed quiet; his fingers, relaxed. LT could feel the enormity of his presence filling the barn but nothing in his demeanour suggested hostility. LT replayed the elf’s words in his mind trying to reconcile the contradictions. “Those are tens.” It seemed a threat. But elves rarely uttered threats.
“Fightin won’t change nothin,” Hunter said, undoubtedly reading LT’s colours, responding to his unspoken intentions.
LT relaxed, crossed his arms, and lifted his chin. “There it is again,” he said, making an effort to manage his colours. “Why you gotta be disrespectful like that?”
The elf seemed puzzled. “We both know it.”
“That’s a fact,” LT agreed. “But why you gotta say it?”
Hunter shrugged. “Ain’t a secret.”
“But it’s embarrassing.”
“It’s . . . a fact.”
“Agreed. It’s a fact. But stating facts that make people feel less ain’t no way to make friends.”
Hunter raised an eyebrow.
“You have advantages,” LT admitted. “You don’t stop to eat. You don’t stop to sleep. You live . . . God knows how long. Forever, practically.”
Hunter said nothing.
“We lose more than half of every day we live to eating and sleeping. And we live a fraction as long as y’all do. Individually, every one of you is better at just about everything than every one of us—including combat—”
“You know a lot about elves.”
“I tr”—LT stopped himself—“I hear things.”
Hunter’s eyes glinted, but his face remained stoic. LT recognized the look. It was an elven smile.
“Six,” the bounty hunter stated.
“Six what?”
“Never challenge an elf alone. That’s your sixth commandment,” he said. “Or is it the fifth?”
LT took a deep breath. Finally, a connection. “You know a lot about the Brotherhood,” he said.
The elf took his measure. LT could feel him scanning his aura.
“The fresco in the mess hall. On the wall leading to the barracks,” the elf said.
LT’s brows twitched. “That’s you.” He searched the bounty hunter’s face for clues, wishing he had paid more attention to the artwork he had been walking past daily for years.
“And that’s you,” Hunter pointed at the wanted poster in his hand. “And”—he said, pulling a second piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and handing it to his bounty—“so’s this.”
LT unfolded the damp and sticky document. “Is this blood?” he asked, holding his wet fingers out toward the firelight to examine them.
“Took it off the overseer’s body.”
LT examined the bloodstained poster. It was identical to the first. His stomach twisted. “He was going to turn me in.”
“Soon as you got to the Shadows.”
Now what? LT wondered. The two sat in silence, pondering their new situations, watching the fire dwindle to embers.
“What was your plan?” Hunter asked. “Infiltrate the Shadows? Assassinate the governor?”
LT took a breath, uncertain about how much he should reveal. “Well . . . you know what they say,” he replied, falling back on Brotherhood protocol.
Hunter sagged, flashing him a dubious glance. “No,” he said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “Just . . . no.”
“I don’t know you.”
Hunter shook his head even harder. “You think this . . . little . . . test is gonna make a difference?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know you.” The elf’s hesitation was raising LT’s hackles. “Elves have reputations,” he said. “You’re sneaky.”
The elder elf was clearly annoyed with him.
“Look,” LT appealed to his rationalism. “Half a cup of tea ago you as much as told me you were a founding member of the Brotherhood. If that’s true, why would you mind this?”
He sighed. “I was there in the beginning,” Hunter replied, his head no longer shaking. “This . . . secret society stuff . . . it came later.”
“So?”
Hunter shrugged. “So . . . it’s . . . weird.”
“Oh, come on. Easy peasy. I’ll start.” He cleared his throat. “If one of us is in chains” LT said holding his hand out, palm up, inviting Hunter to complete the pass phrase.
Hunter said nothing.
“You want to know what I planned to do at the Shadows,” LT reminded him. “Just finish the pass phrase. If one of us is in chains . . . ”
Hunter took a slow breath through his nose and looked him in the eye. “ . . . none of us are free,” he replied.
“There,” LT said, raising his hand with a flourish. “Easy peasy.”
“The Shadows.” Hunter’s deadly serious tone put their business back on the table with thump. “What was the plan?”
“Mind if I sit?”
Hunter gestured to stump across the fire.
“This is my third season paying off debts working for the Shadows,” LT began. “The first two years, we did the loop: Eastbranch to the Shadows, south to Snowfall, then back.”
Hunter nodded, listening.
“My goal was to gain their trust and eventually get hired permanent. So I could get inside. This year was complicated . . . because of the warrant . . . but I thought I had them fooled. I was pretty sure I was getting inside.”
“What’s in the Shadows that’s worth risking your life for?” Hunter asked. “A woman?”
LT shook his head. “A goliath.”
Hunter responded with a single slow nod. “An old rumor,” he said. “Ain’t never been nothing to it.”
“I know,” said LT. “Brotherhood said the same thing. But last year,” he leaned in, elbows on his knees, “when I was working on the coffle train, one of the permanent mercs told me they had one . . . for Incorporation Day. Injured though. Couldn’t fight yet. But they were trying to heal him.”
“So you risked your neck to . . . what,” Hunter probed, “to rescue a goliath?”
“No,” LT fluttered his eyebrows. “To get evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Evidence they were keeping non-humans in bondage.”
Hunter squinted, appearing confused. “Because?”
“Because if they have non-human slaves,” LT paused for dramatic effect, “they’re violating the ceasefire.” He spread his hands, palms up, grinning.
The elf considered the human’s story for a few minutes. LT got the impression that he was holding something back, but the elf moved on.
“Tell me about the warrant,” he said.
LT felt his grin vanish. “That was bad luck,” he said. “Me and a few of the Brothers cut a guy down from a wheel outside of Eastbranch last year. Lost one of our guys in the process.” His guts twisted at the memory. “They must’ve got something out of him before he bled out, though, because a few weeks later the rest of us were all on wanted posters.”
“That didn’t concern you?”
“Losing one of our guys?” LT was insulted. “Of cour—”
“Being on a poster?” Hunter interrupted. “Didn’t make you think twice about signing up for another season?”
“Naw,” LT waved off any concerns. “Poster didn’t look nothing like me. I just grew a beard. Cut this scar into my eyebrow”—he pointed at his forehead—”and got myself a new tattoo.” He pulled up a sleeve to show off Les Chateaux’s flag.
The elf stopped to take a long look at him. He seemed to be reassessing him, looking past the scar, through the beard. “You think that’s enough,” he said, eventually.
“I do.”
“Hmmmm,” Hunter replied, considering his disclosures.
LT knew his aura was being scanned again. But he was telling the truth. He was hiding nothing about this.
“You hungry?” Hunter asked, signaling an end to the interrogation.
“Hang on a second.” LT had questions of his own. “Why are you helping the Shadows?”
“We ain’t.”
LT scoffed. “You just said you were a bounty hunter. You showed me my own damn wanted poster.”
“I am a bounty hunter. But I ain’t helping the Shadows.”
“Then why were you tracking me?”
Now it was Hunter’s turn. LT could feel him weighing how much to reveal.
“A few years ago the Shadows started listing crimes on their wanted posters,” he offered.
“Yeah. So?”
“So we keep an eye out for Slave Act violators. We find them, fake their deaths, then we help them escape to the free lands.”
LT smiled. His eyes glinted. “So you were looking for me?”
“Yep.”
LT laughed. “Meaning you knew every-damn-thing I just told you.”
“By the time we found you,” Hunter replied, admitting nothing, “you were wearing a uniform. After that, we hadda figure out why.”
“So you believe me now.”
Hunter cocked his head. “Everything you’ve said so far checks out.”
“You people,” LT grinned weakly, shaking his head slowly. “And you wonder why humans got trust issues.”
“Humans get hungry.” Hunter ignored the comment. “Been a long time since you et.”
“I’m starving,” LT admitted.
“Well, eat something. We need to get out of here before first light.”
“Where are we going?”
“We gotta deal with your bounty issue.”
“Why?”
“Options,” Hunter said bluntly. “The overseer hadn’t told nobody nothing yet. Might could be useful to have a deputy on our side.”
“Our side?” LT was bewildered. “Whose side?”
“Our side. The town’s side.”
“You’re keeping the kids?” LT’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. Then he whistled softly. “That’s . . . risky.”
“Ain’t likely to work neither,” Hunter admitted.
“Meaning you got a back up plan.”
“Meaning I gotta get these folks some help.”
“Well.” LT sighed. “My plans have changed. I ain’t getting into the Shadows now. Might as well count me in.”
“Figured as much,” said Hunter. “You being a brother and all.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“First thing I need to do,” Hunter looked at him without a hint of pity. “is smack you with a shovel.”