It was something to do, a place to go, that was all. If all she found when they arrived there were the buried bones of Mohserran and the other two Kin, then they would return to the cabin and the woods. She was not putting them in danger. After everything that had happened, she would never do that.

7

7

It took him some time to decide what had been missing from the final glamour. It took him a little while longer to see if he could find it in the Fold. Now he knows, and he has spent a long time luring the creature to him. Putting in the groundwork. Gaining trust. The Kin knows what he is, and who he is, and that, it seems, might be a help.

The pombero has heard of Ascent, and it has become its greatest passion.

“She’s eaten from you again,” Mallian says.

“A while ago, but the wound still hurts.” He turns his leg this way and that, revealing the dried gash on his thigh. It is an indentation, an ugly scoop of missing flesh. “This is the third time, and it’s taken longer to heal than before.”

“Maybe our great and wise fairy isn’t so great and wise.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps you, her victims, will rot away and die after all.”

The pombero makes a sound somewhere between a purr and a groan. He is a small creature, more man than Kin, his mixed heritage giving him the appearance of a short, stocky human, but with the mind of something other. Mallian first saw him on his twelfth long night in the Fold, stalking along the river close to where he was trapped against the ground by Grace’s glamour. He was only a shadow then, one of many that Mallian had seen and was still trying to put a name to, a face, a history.

He dislikes and looks down upon humans, but he hates mongrels. They are a taint on the purity of the Kin. But just as he spends time talking with the human Vince—and is even starting to enjoy some of their conversations—he has to hold his hatred deep in order to achieve his aims.

“You really think she’d have made such a mistake?” the pombero asks.

“What’s your name, creature?”

The man looks troubled. Mallian has asked three times before, and each time the pombero has scampered away and remained absent for many days. There’s power in a name, Mallian thinks. He knows that. Not as stupid as his human face seems, perhaps.

This time he does not run away.

“I don’t seek to own you,” Mallian says, lying. “Only to know you.”

“My name’s...” The small man looks away, frowning.

“I’m your friend. I’m not here to eat you.”

“Markus.”

“Markus. Very human.”

“As was I, until she brought me here.”

“You were never fully human.”