Aunt Bieja stood before the burning fireplace, the cook pot's lid in her hand as she stirred its contents. She looked up as Magiere closed the door.

"I wondered when all of you would return," Bieja said with annoyance. "Already added water twice to keep the stew going. Where are the others?"

Magiere decided to say as little as possible. She'd wanted only to see a friendly face not marred by the hidden past that surged toward her.

"They're still at the keep," she answered. 'They'll be along shortly. I just stopped to let you know… I'm on my way to see Mother."

Bieja closed the pot, and her expression softened. "I wondered if you were going or not. I haven't been there myself in a long while."

Her aunt's words surprised Magiere. Tending those who'd passed on was at least a yearly ritual for the people here. Still, it was best that Bieja had moved on, as had Magiere… until this return.

Bieja paused a moment. "So, did you find anything at the keep?"

"A little," Magiere lied. "We'll leave that for later. I don't want to keep everyone waiting too long, so I'd better go."

"Take your time, dear," Bieja answered, wiping her hands with the old rag she'd used for a hot pad.

Magiere stepped out into the night once again.

The graveyard was a ways off into the trees but not so far it couldn't be seen. This was the usual way, as if the dead should still have a home among the living. The lantern that had glimmered within the plot on the first night they arrived was gone. Magiere was forced to call upon her night sight, letting her dhampir nature trickle through her flesh enough for her vision to open wide. It seemed a whole lifetime since she'd last been here, and she stepped slowly through the trees, uncertain of the way.

Village graveyards in Droevinka were little more than a series of spaces in the woods kept reasonably free of low growth. Tree branches were thinner here, letting in the night sky, but the moon wasn't high enough for much light. She made out a few markers sprouting from the earth here and there, with evening mist a vaporous carpet between them.

Some were made of planks and posts. A few newer ones were stone. Recent lapsed taxes and missing overlords may have afforded the coin for such. It was ironic that the changing fortunes of the living were marked by remembrances for the departed.

But it wasn't her own memories she hunted among the dead. She came for those of her mother… or at least as seen through her killer's eyes.

Magiere stopped short.

She could neither continue nor flee but only remember the skull she'd so recently held in her hands. In Bela, she'd envisioned a girl's last moment by walking in a Noble Dead's footsteps with a scrap of the girl's dress in her hand. She'd lived inside Welstiel's moment as he tore open the girl's throat without even feeding.

Magiere would have to walk every passage and room of the keep, over each of its stones if need be, to find where her mother had died. But a scrap of clothing wouldn't remain for her carry now. Not after all these years in the ground. She would need bones.

"Forgive me," she whispered, and drew her falchion. "I have to know… to see if it was him, Mother."

There wasn't time to find a spade without drawing attention, so the blade would have to do. She stepped forward, searching for anything that sparked memory of this place- of her mother's marker. Sweat built beneath her grip around the sword's hilt.

The spring before she'd left home, Magiere had gone with Aunt Bieja to a woodwright's shop in a neighboring village of the zupanesta. Her aunt paid for a new marker, the old one having weathered to where it no longer stood up in the earth. The two of them lost half a day's fieldwork in the journey.

Magiere stopped again, looking about.

She remembered that the marker was on the south side of a large fir. She crouched near the base of the nearest tree. There was no marker she recognized by make or the name upon it.

Her dread for her task withered beneath a rising fear. Where was the marker… her mother's grave? She stood up to look back, wondering if she'd come too far. The markers in this present clearing were older, so Magelia's grave should be near.

Magiere heard softly shifting branches nearby, perhaps from a breeze high above that had penetrated down into the woods. She gazed ahead along her original path, but saw nothing besides the thickened forest. This was the last graveyard clearing. She backtracked, anxiety quickening her step.

In the previous clearing were a few smaller stone markers. Nothing appeared familiar to her. She heard the breeze again, nearer this time, and it whistled sharply in her ears.

Magiere's instincts surged, and she ducked around a tree. Along shape whizzed past her and cracked against the trunk, and she heard bark tear away under the impact.

A shadowed figure appeared around the tree's far side. Magiere stepped out and away. Starlight was enough for her to make out the disfigured side of his face.

Adryan held a long staff, overly thick at its upper end. He shifted its weight with both hands, slowly swinging the end back and forth through the air like an inverted pendulum.

"Looking for your mother again," he said softly.

It was not a question. Anger stirred dhampir hunger in Magiere's stomach, and her vision sharpened further. Rather than open rage, Adryan's expression was a mix of anguish and anxious hope. He mirrored her movements as she sidestepped farther into the open, tilting the staff from side to side.

"What have you done?" she asked, glancing about. "Where's my mother's grave… where's the marker?"

The barest wrinkle appeared on his brow, but it was enough to see he didn't understand what she'd asked.

"You're the last of it," he said. "Magelia was mine, and he took her. When he left, that should have been the last reminder. And then you came, little thing, crawling out of a thieving noble's bed."

The staff's end leveled as Adryan turned his whole body to power his swing. Magiere dipped her blade to catch it.

A dull clang sounded on impact as her sword was slammed away and the staff struck her side. Magiere went down hard, stumbling over a stone marker in her fall. Pain spread through her side.

It was only a staff, and Adryan was only a villager without skill at arms.

When she looked up at him, she was just a child beneath the high branches of the graveyard. All she saw was his scarred face leering at her from the trees on the last day she'd ever found her mother's house.

"I'll send you to her," Adryan said, nodding his head as his cheeks glistened with tears. "And I'll never have to look on you again."

He swung the staff at her, and Magiere shrank away as she'd done so long ago beside her mother's grave. It glanced off the stone marker with a crack.

Magiere rolled back and chopped down with her falchion upon the staff, hoping to break it. A louder metal clang sounded, and the sudden stop of the blade jarred her wrist. She took her eyes from Adryan just long enough to glance at the staff.

Bound to it with nails and straps were thick iron strips longer than her forearm. They formed a sheath around the staff's upper end, creating a crude great mace. Magiere kicked out at his shin.

His foot slid on the wet sod, and he dropped to one knee. Before she could scramble away, he pushed up from the ground and lifted the iron-shod staff. Twisting his body, he brought it round at her again, like a scythe in a wheat field. Magiere leaped back out of its reach toward the next tree.

"Pin her down!" Adryan screamed in frustration.

His words confused Magiere for only an instant, but even that was too long.

Another twinge shot through Magiere's injured side as someone grabbed her wrist from behind and jerked her sword arm back around the tree trunk. Her wrist was held tightly out of sight as a hand clawed at her fingers, trying to take her weapon.