Lawrence held a hand to the red-soaked bandage over his eye. He was lucky to be alive, so he found it easy to ignore most of the pain. There were many advantages to being what he was, as he was always quick to remind himself.

  Lawrence put one foot in front of the other, scaling the sparsely grassed hill with effort. He glanced over his shoulder once or twice to make sure the witch wasn't following him. She wouldn't be able to use any illusions that could work on him, at least not for a little longer. His window of escape was narrow, but manageable even with his injuries. He just needed to bounce back faster than she did from their scuffle.

  The scriptomancer reached the top and lowered himself to rest and collect his thoughts before leaving. He checked his things. Then, he checked himself. This involved removing an item almost everyone who looked at him knew he possessed. They just didn't know the arrangement he had with it.

  On Mekkendor, virtually all magic came from somewhere in the sky. Either it is granted by the suns, harnessed from a moon, or wielded by a shard of one of those same moons. As a scriptomancer, Lawrence employed the latter, but as time went on, he felt more and more like the moon-witches he hunted. He didn't wield his magic, any more than Hadley had wielded him.

  Lawrence’s moon-shard hummed a note only he could hear, and the written words of a dead language glowed along its rocky surfaces. Like most moon-shards, its texture and appearance was like limestone, although Lawrence’s had curves and points that made a semi-decent fit for his hand. When Larry held it, it was like holding the key to a hole on his forehead. This little thing was what made Lawrence a scriptomancer, but it was also what made him any different from the gibbering wreck of a woman he'd just narrowly avoided. Lawrence wished there was something like this moon-shard for her.

  Lawrence surveyed the land ahead: the Gri'zin Desert. A stretch of unfriendly but manageable sand and rock, far easier to navigate than the Thirsting Wastes. He could see slave cabins and farms dotting the more fertile areas near the Fade. If that Derek man had any sense, which he clearly did not, he would have learned Ecliptican Common and moved to the principalities long ago. There were better scriptomancers, the language wasn't hard to learn, and he'd be a lot closer to whatever governor he had to put up with.

  The Gri'zin also acted like a border, of sorts, between the state of Vuartina Lawrence was departing, and the state of Album he was approaching. He could see the mountains in the far distance from this height, green with trees. This side was black, but on the other side the mountain range was black streaked with white marble. His destination was no longer Album, however. That was where Liilia was heading, and he doubted she would be pleased to see him again. Especially not the part of her that came out when her moon wasn't in the sky. Let her handle the Albumite court without him. They would find him if he was needed for that project to imprison the Fade. And if they didn’t, Lawrence would find them, once he knew Liilia was abroad once more and he wouldn’t run into her.

  Lawrence closed his good eye, and listened with his moon-shard held to his forehead. A scriptomancer observing him would be utterly lost as to what he was doing. A moon-witch observing him would've been unable to tell him from one of her fellows, but she might be a bit confused as to where his moon was in the sky.

  Hunting Euffie had been one of the rare internal conflicts Lawrence experienced since finding this moon-shard. Usually it made everything so simple. He hunted moon-witches because they were powerful prey, he was skilled enough to pull it off, and people paid good money for it. So simple. The issue came because Euffie, unlike every witch he'd hunted before, was also a slave. Just like Lawrence had once been. Not powerful prey, either. Powerless. Weak. Scared. He was relieved she'd gotten away. At the end, after Hadley was dead, Lawrence had planned to kill Derek and let Euffie go wherever she wanted. He needed to find her again and make things right.

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  Lawrence's thoughts didn't drift often, but they did now as he considered the Fade to his south. Liilia, or whoever she became when her moon wasn't in the sky, had impaled the Fadewraith with lunoplasm. Again. The thing had still been coming apart at the seams from last time, held together by hastily assimilated flesh and bone and mist. Its burning desire to kill Liilia had boiled over its resourcefulness and patience. Probably had something to do with who its servant had once been; disembodied intelligence was like that.

  The Fade would probably need a new servant after something like that. Lawrence knew how Fadewraiths were made. The Fade would need someone who died by their own hand, and could therefore get a surrender stain. If Lawrence’s guess as to who that next Fadewraith would be was correct, he had his next goal figured out after finding Euffie. Liilia had been a very useful person to learn more about the Fade from.

  Still holding the moon-shard in one hand, Lawrence retrieved another precious item from his purse: a glowing blue ring. He had successfully concealed it from Liilia during their time together. It was pointing souhwest, the direction of Herepo, the southernmost Ecliptican state, nearest to Adalaant. Lawrence knew the kind of engrams infused in the gem; he'd used them once or twice himself. This gem was damaged, though, so its ability to house the spell was compromised if it got too close to its partner stone. Lawrence recognized the symptoms, however, and knew that if the gentle blue beam started acting like a compass in an iron mine, he was close. He hoped it did that out in a rural area, with a short list of people to sort through, but if it was in a city, he'd manage. Lawrence was nothing if not patient. It was what made him such a good hunter. Besides, with this moon-shard, he had far more time on his hands than most people.

  Lawrence opened his good eye again and held the moon-shard close to his face. Carefully, he wrote a delicate, tiny spell a few inches from his nose, as close as he could get without cutting his skin. A blue symbol appeared, and gravitated toward his damaged eye. It settled. Then, it sank through the bandage. Lawrence exhaled deeply, relaxing on one knee as the magic started its work. You could do a lot with a moon-shard, if you had time to let the magic play out.

  A few deep breaths later, Lawrence's eye felt much better. It still needed the bandage, but its progress was accelerated and the pain was better managed.

  Lawrence rose to his feet, sealed the ring in his bag, and headed west down the hill, his boots gradually transitioning from the crunch of dry dirt to the shift of sand. To his left, the Fade was remarkably still. He did not know what that meant, or if it meant anything, but with a mind shaped like his, it was hard not to notice. Lawrence was confident he was one of the few people who could stare the Fadewraith down.

  Before he quieted his mind to give it a rest while his legs worked, Lawrence's last thoughts were of Liilia, and how he empathized with her horrible affliction. How glad he was to have found this moon-shard before he became something like her.

  ***

  Something like Liilia tore open the tent flap as if it were a gift wrapping. It raised vibrant, glowing pink eyes in the direction of the seething Fade. Inside those mists, her worst enemy writhed and seethed, thinking of nothing except her next chance to hurt Liilia.

  She could see the bitch now, her form solidifying as it walked toward her from the mists. That evil little man from earlier, the one with the moon-shard and the mutations, didn’t matter to Liilia anymore. All that mattered now was tearing Kriisti as limb from limb before she ducked back inside her hiding hole. Her stomach was already distended from a previous encounter, and her eye was black. Not the skin around it; Liilia took the eye itself out, and the Fade was still only partway through regenerating it in that soupy black ichor. Kriisti was far from fully repaired, but she was still coming after Liilia like she was running out of time.

  This late in the morning, Hepa wasn’t in the sky yet. Liilia’s mind was no longer under control. Her magic was finite, limited to whatever she’d stored before the moon set. But that would be plenty to rip her cruel, arrogant wife to shreds again.

  “Hello again, Liily,” the Fadewraith said through her shattered teeth and lopsided face. An axe formed in her hand just in time to make a heavy clang in the dirt beside her.

  In reply, there was a twin sizzling in the air as lunoplasm coalesced in both hands of the woman who looked like Liilia.

  “Goodbye again, Kriisti,” she said through her laughter.