The Hunters' Guild hall smelled of ink and wet leather.Ethan stood in the doorway the next morning with his cap low and his scarf up, and let the noise wash over him. The main floor was a great timber room with a ceiling black from lamp smoke. Hundreds of people crowded it, shoving between long tables, shouting over each other, waving slips of paper. Job boards covered the walls from floor to rafters. Red tags for escort work. Yellow for monster cull. Black tags, high on the wall, that nobody touched.Between the yellow tags and the red, one notice stood out. It was printed on cream paper, bordered in black, with a silver key at the top. Ethan's eyes slid over it and snagged.BY ORDER OF THE WARDENS OF THE CROWN: ALL AWAKENERS AGED EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FIVE ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT FOR PROTECTIVE REVIEW. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL BE NOTED.A crowd of young hunters stood under it, laughing. Not one of them was reading it."Don't read the notices," Rhea murmured. She stood at his shoulder wit

Ethan let her take it.He kept walking. The little hand slid under his tunic hem, found the leather cord, and tugged. The purse came free so softly he'd have missed it entirely if he hadn't been counting her breath. Two seconds. Three. The pulse at his shoulder pulled back, easy and quiet.He turned and caught her by the wrist."Hey!"She was small. That was his first thought. A thin girl in a patched green scarf, with a long dark braid and a smear of soot across her nose. Her wrist was all bone in his hand. She twisted like a cat, kicked his shin, and found out that his leg was a lot harder than it looked."Let go! I wasn't doing anything!""You're holding my purse.""It's mine!""It has a hole in the corner," Ethan said. "I patched it with brown thread. That's my thread."She stared at it. Then at him. Her brown eyes narrowed into slits.[Mira Quill. Human. Level 11. True attitude: Desperate. Defiant. Hidden skill: Hush (Uncommon). Silences her own footfalls within ten meters.]Hush

He had perhaps five seconds before someone shouted, and he used them badly.Ethan rolled over and shook Hal Dunning by the shoulder. "Get up. Quietly. Wake Wrenna.""Eh?" Hal blinked. "What is it?""Something's out there.""Something?""Eleven somethings. Don't shout. Get behind the cart."Hal looked at him for a long moment. Then, to Ethan's surprise, the old porter just nodded, rolled onto his knees, and began shuffling toward the cook's cart. A man who had carried loads for twenty years knew when to trust his gut. Wrenna was already awake, glaring at nothing, and she followed.The window opened. He let his eyes slide across the dark, and the pulses came into focus, each one wrapped in gold.[Ember Hound. Level 10. Vitality: 90. Attack: scorching bite. Weakness: sudden cooling. A doused hide cracks. Understanding: 8%.]Cooling. He glanced at the cook's cart. Two barrels of drinking water, lashed to the tailboard.Then Selka, at the edge of the firelight, lifted her head."Hargo," sh

Six days later, the Ashen Road brought them back to Greywatch with their boots in tatters.They came through the gate at dusk, caked in grey, and the town closed around them like a hand. Ethan's shoulders ached in a dull, deep way he'd begun to find comforting. The northern outposts had been a string of timber huts on bare rock. Soldiers who stared at the supplies as if they were bread from heaven. Nothing else had come out of the ash. Bram had walked at the head of the column the whole way and not once spoken to Ethan.That was the worst part. Ethan would have preferred a hand on his collar."Pay day," Hargo announced, striding into the Yard behind the Guild hall with his axe over his shoulder and his chest out. "Line up, porters. Hunters to the left."A Guild clerk sat at a trestle table with a ledger and a locked iron box. He counted silver into five stacks and handed Hargo the largest one with a respectful bow. Hargo weighed it in his hand and smiled."One hundred and twenty," he

They spread the pages across the lid of a feed barrel under the lantern, weighing the corners down with horseshoes.There were thirty-one sheets, creased and smudged, in at least three different hands. Some were printed forms. Others were scrawled lists, torn from a bound book. Mira stood on one side of the barrel with her arms crossed so tight that her knuckles had gone white. Rhea stood on the other, reading with her lips pressed into a flat line.Ethan read over her shoulder."Nineteen," Rhea said, finally, without looking up. "I count nineteen awakeners. Over three years.""I counted twenty-one," said Mira. "But two are crossed out.""Died?""They don't say."Rhea moved her finger down the column.It was a Warden register, neatly ruled, with six headings across the top. Name. Affinity. Age. Review date. Disposition. Authority. Each row was a life, written in the same tidy hand. Joss Marren. Wind. 18. Spring, year 41. Transferred. Tamsin Rook. Stone. 19. Summer, year 41. Transferre