"Are you hurt? I'm Charles Arlen, captain of the Fangs Mercenary Company. How's your foot?"
He was already pulling Todd upright as he spoke. Todd let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He had learned, during his years in the castle, how to conduct himself around people who mattered.
"Thank you, Mr. Arlen. I wouldn't be alive if not for you and your companions."
"Don't mention it. What I'd really like to know is how you ended up out here."
Todd quickly sorted out the names of his rescuers. The mage was Boniface Villet. The woman with the flame-red hair — tall, in close-fitting clothes, her skin roughened by the outdoors but striking enough despite it — was Jocelyn Sunny, the company's ranged support. The man with the twin hand-axes was Colin Borge, a vicious close-quarters fighter. The other two hadn't come along: a thief who specialized in intelligence work, named Darren Keita, and a strategist type who was more thinker than fighter, a traveling bard called Devin Gale. Those two were back at camp, a few miles off.
Jocelyn had already dressed Todd's wound. The wolf had bitten his foot, though it had been trying to drag him rather than kill him, so the damage was less than it could have been. He told them what had happened. As far as he understood it, the Lich had tried to have him silenced — he had no idea that Evan had meant him no harm, and that his luck had run the wrong way entirely.
The group exchanged looks. Colin said: "Trying to clean up loose ends — that's cold. Someone should teach that Nicolai Ashton a lesson."
Boniface frowned. "Is this the same Nicolai Ashton who attacked those Prime Church cathedrals? If so, this won't be simple."
"He was wounded. He's already completed the transformation — he's a Lich now."
"A Lich. The Prime Church forbids them outright." Boniface's expression turned speculative. "Interesting. What level was he before the transformation?"
"Ninth-level death mage." Todd wasn't entirely certain.
"A ninth-level death mage attempting the ritual — the success rate is very low. He must have been badly enough damaged that he had no other choice. A Lich made that way isn't as dangerous as a fully prepared one." He looked at the captain. "Ashton has a castle. Should we take a look? If it's workable, we put him down. The Soul Vessel's location would be the question — but even if we can't find it, we've collected the Prime Church's reward and cleared out of this territory before he comes back. Not our problem after that."
The idea landed visibly on everyone. A castle meant wealth. The matter of resurrection was only relevant if the Lich could track them down afterward, and that was an unlikely problem to have. The Prime Church reward was also not nothing, and eliminating a Lich would go a long way toward smoothing over whatever difficulties they currently had with Count Rein.
Charles considered it. Todd watched him with barely concealed eagerness, and the three standing members of the company had the same bright look in their eyes.
"Back to camp first," Charles said. "We plan this properly."
At camp, six of them worked through the details. Todd provided everything he knew about Nicolai Ashton — every piece of it useless, because the soul inside the castle was no longer Nicolai Ashton and none of their planning accounted for what Evan actually was.
Devin Gale reviewed the plan when it was done and found no obvious gaps. "Captain, our target is a Lich and the goal is the castle's wealth. The plan we have is built on Todd's information about Ashton's weaknesses — but Todd is a servant with no magical knowledge. There are almost certainly holes in it. I suggest we take a few days to watch the castle quietly before we move. Fill in what we don't know."
Charles nodded. "Sound. Ashton is a serious practitioner, regardless of his condition. Caution costs us nothing. Darren — you take the first watch."
"Understood. Though I'll point out he's just a ninth-level mage, and Boniface is tenth. Do we really need to be this careful?"
"He's a Lich," Boniface said evenly. "Not a ninth-level mage. The transformation changes the baseline."
Charles sighed. "If we hadn't backed the wrong lord, we wouldn't be out here at all."
No one had an answer to that. After a silence, Boniface said: "The path ahead is dark. Earl Eward's failure didn't cost him much, but it cost us everything — we're wanted by Count Rein, hiding in a stretch of forest that most people avoid because of the magical beasts. That thing Darren's been looking for is still out there somewhere. But if we kill Ashton and deliver the news to the Holy Capital Yidu, the blood feud with the count becomes irrelevant. The Church's protection is worth more than the count's grudge."
The others' eyes lit up at that. Todd's showed something different — simple hatred, directed at the Lich who had tried to have him killed.
Meanwhile, on the flat ground between the trees, a figure moved through the sparse and twisted growth around the castle. Darren Keita had a skill that fell somewhere between magic and craft: by drawing water vapor into his hands and feet, he could press himself to surfaces, and his outline grew thin to the point of near-invisibility in still light. It wasn't true invisibility, but in the grey half-light of the forest's edge it was close enough.
Evan, for all his preparation, hadn't thought to post a watch. He had the spells for it — Wraith Eye could provide early warning — but casting it required sustained attention and magical energy, and he had spent his days on other things. The castle's main gate was shut and barred, which kept Darren out for now; all he could do was settle behind a tree and watch.
The castle stood silent. Not a light, not a movement, not a sound beyond the wind through the misshapen trees. Within three miles in every direction, nothing lived that didn't belong to the forest's edge. Darren stayed watchful despite the emptiness — it was the emptiness itself that made him careful. No skeletal patrols, no spell-traces on the perimeter. Had Ashton already run?
The thought worried him without resolving. He held his position.
At dusk, a thread of smoke rose from inside the walls.
Darren straightened. Someone was in there. He exhaled without noticing he'd been holding it, and failed to account for the fact that Liches don't eat.
Inside the castle, Evan had simply noticed it was evening and felt something that resembled hunger — a strange experience for a Lich, possibly some echo of the body's old habits. He went to the kitchen, found bread, cured meat, and eggs, and burned most of it. He was the son of a wealthy family who had spent his life in a hospital bed; cooking had not been part of the experience. He salvaged what he could and ate with a grim expression, inwardly conceding that dismissing the servants may have been premature.
Darren retreated and reported. The company decided to watch for a full eight days, and they were thorough about it. By the end they knew every approach to the walls, the blind angles on the roof, and — with Todd's help — the interior layout in rough detail.
On the eighth night, Darren decided to go in.
The wall was high, the main gate barred against anything short of a ram. He found his angle carefully — the gargoyles on the roof were not decorations, and their sensing range was something he had spent three days mapping — and went up a section of wall in a dead spot between two of them, hands and feet pressed flat against the stone, drawing just enough water-vapor to hold. Then a roll into the arrow-slit tower, down the stairs into shadow, and still.
A gargoyle flew over. It circled the top of the tower twice, found nothing at the highest point, and returned to its post. Gargoyles had no real intelligence — only instinct, only range. As long as you didn't cross the line, they didn't react. Darren had spent eight days learning exactly where the line was.
He worked his way down to the tower's base, eased the door open, and found a suit of armor standing in the corridor.
His knife was already in motion before his brain had finished processing it.