A chance arrangement of azhocks allowed Qown to see the tournament grounds from the farrier’s forge. Enough to see the Black Knight compete. Not unusual, but the fact that the Knight won contest after contest was—as demonstrated by the muttering and whispered complaining from other knights. Those complaints rode a strong undercurrent of awe.

Word of what had happened in Mereina had spread, where the Black Knight slew a demon on the tournament field. This had mixed with Janel’s now-legendary duel with Relos Var, itself often misreported. No one knew if this was a normal Black Knight or the Black Knight.

People had started to spread stories, grander with each retelling.

This Black Knight looked well on his way to taking the prize, when a great hue and cry rose from the nearby castle. Someone came running into view wearing the local Markreev’s colors. “Fire! Fire! There’s a fire at the mill!”

Chaos spread. Brother Qown tried to leap his way back across fires again, but too few existed. He did manage to spy a wagon, parked behind a guard azhock near the stands. People were loading boxes of weapons and armor earmarked for the local Markreev’s soldiers.

Brother Qown recognized Dango.

“What are you up to, Ninavis?” Brother Qown asked aloud, even though no one could hear.

The robbery finished swiftly. By the time the guards returned with the happy news that the mill was undamaged, the Markreev’s men had been robbed of their martial supplies. The Black Knight made a fast retreat before the tournament finished. And in an impressive display of obfuscation and distraction, his target rode into an azhock and vanished. Arasgon stepped out in his normal black and red. Then the black-skinned smith, whom Brother Qown had first seen in Mereina, started loudly complaining that he too had been robbed.

Everyone agreed it was the best tournament they’d seen in ages.

Brother Qown lost the thieves as they left town, since no one needed torches or lanterns in broad daylight. He saw a few he remembered from Ninavis’s party, but he didn’t see Dorna, and he didn’t see Ninavis herself.

Brother Qown might have thought Dango had joined another bandit clan, returning to a familiar life of crime, if not for Arasgon.

The second time he spotted someone who appeared to be the Black Knight, months later, the circumstances made his stomach turn. An “enterprising” baron had decided Marakori refugees fleeing onto her land could be used to harvest her crops. Whether she paid them was unclear, but Brother Qown suspected not.

She wouldn’t have needed whips to motivate them, if they were being paid.

The Black Knight sat astride a steed on the bridge to the baronial manor house after dark. In an echoing, demonic voice, the Black Knight warned if the baron didn’t release the Marakori by the next morning, he’d curse her lands with a disaster beyond imagining.