There was a stillness about Enfri's home. The chickens bobbed around their coop, but kept silent. The pigs weren't making a sound, and the cow kept a wary eye on the strangers' horses. Even the winds were absent. The air settled upon the land like an oppressive blanket.

The rattling of Haythe's cart seemed a clamor as it came to a stop in front of Enfri's home. Haythe offered his hand to help Enfri down, but she failed to notice. Her eyes wouldn't leave her front door, which stood slightly ajar.

"Enfri?"

Haythe saying her name startled her back to herself. Enfri shook her head clear and accepted the hand he offered. She was so distracted by the prospect of strangers inside her house that she hardly registered the way Haythe took her by the waist and set her on the ground.

He seemed to catch on to her anxiety. "Would you like me to come in with you?"

Enfri nodded without thinking.

Why? she wondered. This isn't anything new. Folk come by for remedies or a treatment sometimes. Why should I be nervous now?

Enfri made herself approach the door. Her breathing was all she could hear in the unnatural quiet. One foot in front of the other.

Through the cracked doorway, Enfri could only see darkness. The hearth had been burning down to embers when she left with Haythe the night before, but wouldn't her visitors have built a fire if they had come to find her gone? Perhaps they were only recently arrived.

She looked to the black horses. The grass around the hitching post was nibbled down to the roots. No, they had been there several hours. Before the dawn. Riders in the night upon dark steeds. Enfri swallowed and felt that her throat had gone as dry as the dunes.

Through the door, she saw motion. A shadow moved within the darkness. The door was pushed the rest of the way open, and the shadow stepped out into the light and resolved into the figure of a man.

At least, Enfri assumed it was a man. When her eyes went to his face, she felt cold and feared he was some monster arrived from the desert.

He was slender, though his bare arms with milky pale skin bore prominent muscles. He was clad in black. His torso was armored in hardened leather studded with rivets of iron. The cloak on his back seemed to be sewn from the night sky, and upon his head he wore a cowl that made Enfri stop short and draw in a sharp breath. The cowl bore the visage of a black wolf, a hunter's pelt worn as a mask. The stranger's jaw was all that Enfri could see of his face.

The last thing Enfri noticed— foolishly so, she would later decide— were the blades he carried. Two curved swords were strapped to either of his hips, and a number of knives were carried about his person. He had daggers on his thighs, calves, chest, and waist. A quiver of arrows was carried on his back alongside an unstrung horn bow.

Enfri couldn't see any eyes through the wolf's head cowl he wore. Behind the mask's eyes, she could make out nothing but empty, black pools. Though she couldn't see them, she could feel his eyes taking her and Haythe in. Enfri knew she was being weighed and measured, but what he thought of them was a mystery. The man gave no outward reaction. Calm and stoic as a stone.

"Dashar," came a woman's voice from within. "Don't be such a boor. You're barring the healer's own door to her."

The man, this Dashar, didn't respond with any words of his own. He did, however, step aside from the entryway and bow his head to Enfri.

Not knowing what else to do, Enfri bobbed a curtsy in return. Well, as best she could with her back the way it was.

Dashar held the door open for her. As he did, there wasn't the slightest change in the set of his jaw.

Eerie. Not only did he wear the pelt of a wolf, but he moved like one as well. Fluid, graceful, and utterly confident. Enfri instinctively knew him for what he was. Predator. Killer. She imagined that she could smell the metallic tang of blood surrounding him.

Enfri walked past him into her home, feeling Dashar's eyes on her. Haythe held her arm pressed against him. His grip was tight and protective.

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness within her home. The cold hearth gave no light, and only the scant sunlight coming in through the shuttered windows allowed her to see anything at all. Enfri could only just make out the shape of two others.

There was a man sitting upon Enfri's dinner table. His shoulders heaved as he drew deep breaths. The other was presumably the woman who had spoken to Dashar. She stood next to the man on the table, her posture one of a goodwife inspecting fruit in a merchant's wagon.

"You forget yourself, Maya," the man on the table huffed. He had the voice of an older man. "The oldwife needs a light. Hop to it."

The woman made a vexed sound, and a second later there was a spark within the hearth that blossomed into a crackling fire. Enfri nearly jumped out of her skin.

The woman was three paces from the hearth but somehow managed to get the fire going. Magic? Or perhaps it was just a thrown match Enfri had failed to notice. Yes, a match. That was what she would choose to believe.

The woman's face was revealed by the firelight. She was stunning, with pale skin like Dashar's, dark hair pulled back into a long tail that hung to her waist, full lips that were red as wine, and a dainty nose like a doll's. Her eyes, though. They were almost closed, as if she were drifting off to sleep. Only a glimmer of the fire's reflection showed that she had them somewhat open at all. Her head was tilted slightly back so that she could peer at Enfri and Haythe from beneath her long eyelashes.

It was a callous look she gave them. Enfri wondered why she had thought the young woman at all beautiful. Those lips were curled into a cruel frown, and the tilt of her head was prideful and arrogant. Enfri took an immediate disliking to her.

She was also younger than Enfri expected, perhaps Haythe's age, and she wore studded leather much like Dashar's. However, instead of a wolf cowl she wore a shawl of raven feathers around her shoulders. She also didn't have nearly as many weapons. Only a single sword, long and sinuous, was at her side.

The older man that sat on the table had gray in his hair and his neatly trimmed beard. His prominent jaw hadn't seen a razor in a week by the look of him, and what wasn't covered in growing whiskers was festooned with pockmarks and scars. He looked like a sheet of worn leather.

The man kept his eyes lidded as well, but he seemed to do so more out of discomfort than his lady companion's boredom. His studded leather armor was torn down his left side, and he held a hand to the rend. His torso was slick with blood.

Well, that explains it, Enfri thought. People like this wouldn't come by for tea and gossip. They need a sky woman.

Enfri pulled away from Haythe and went to the man. Her fingers touched gently upon the torn armor. "A fresh wound," she said, then bent to sniff it. "Rot hasn't set in, but it needs to be cleaned."

"Forgive me," he said. "I meant no offense. It's a rare thing to see a sky woman so young."

Enfri looked up at his face. He had called her "oldwife", hadn't he? She was so used to it that she hadn't noticed.

"No, Goodman," Enfri said in a quiet voice. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I was away."

"Doubtless seeing to those in more need than I," the man said with a chuckle. "This is just a scratch. I've had worse."

Enfri wrinkled her nose. She had just gotten a better look at the wound. "Much worse than this, and you'd be visiting an undertaker, not a sky woman. What happened?"

The young woman with the feathered shawl scoffed. "That doesn't concern you."

"Maya," the man growled. He turned towards Enfri. "You'll have to forgive my niece. She's beside herself with worry."

Maya scoffed again. Her attention then landed on Haythe. Her dark lips parted into a hungry smile, and she glided to his side with a sway in her hips. "And who is this?"

Haythe fumbled with his voice as he gave her his name.

"A fine name, Haythe." The name left her tongue as if she savored the taste of it. Maya ran her fingers down his arm and traced over the palm of his hand. "Strong. Hands calloused from use. Not the eyes of a soldier. Hmm. A blacksmith, yes?"

"Y-yes, m'lady," Haythe stammered. "An apprentice."

Enfri felt her face heat up. She shook with embarassment as Maya draped herself against Haythe's back and whispered something inaudible into his ear. As she did, her barely open eyes never left Enfri.

"Maya," the man warned. "You and Dashar stand watch outside. The sky woman needs space to work, and it's getting crowded in here."

Enfri turned away from the spectacle that this Maya person was making of herself and poor Haythe. She began undoing the buckles of the man's armor. If she was going to clean the wound and stitch him back together, she'd need better access to the injury.

"Might I ask who you are?" Enfri asked, then let an edge of bitterness creep into her voice. "If it's any of my concern, that is."

The man gave her the ghost of a smile. "Of course. My family and I... we're hunters."

The silent one and the trollop were unsettling, but at least this one knew how to behave properly. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Goodman Hunter. My name is Enfri."

"Please, no formalities, girl," he said. "I am called Gain. Dashar is my son. My boy's a touch odd, but a fine man. You'll have to forgive his shyness. My niece... Maya, I believe I asked you to step outside."

Enfri chanced a glance in her direction. Maya had her arm snaked around Haythe's waist and held him trapped against her. For his part, the dope looked torn between being ecstatic or terrified by her attention.

"Might I keep this one, Uncle?"

"Your father gave us a task, girl," Gain scolded as he pulled his armor off. "I have not the strength nor the will to disobey my brother." He opened his eyes to look at his niece. "Do you?"

Maya's lip twisted into a sneer.

Enfri stifled a gasp. Gain's eyes, they were blue— the most strikingly pure blue she had ever seen— but that was the least of it. The pupils were vertical slits like those of a cat or a viper.

Eyes of a beast.

That was why Maya kept her eyes all but closed, and why Dashar wore that cowl. They had beast eyes, too.

Enfri's hands went still, and she felt her mouth hanging open. She snapped her jaw shut before anyone could notice her gawking.

"Maya," said a fourth person, "you disgrace yourself."

I'm a fool, Enfri thought. Four horses. Of course there's another one.

The new voice came from someone sitting in Grandmother's rocking chair. It was another girl, as pale and beautiful as Maya. They were similar enough in appearance that they might have been sisters, but where Maya had a face that was soft and smooth, this new girl was hard. Her cheekbones seemed sharp enough to cut glass, and her jawline was broad and strong like Gain's. The girl wore her hair free. It draped over her shoulders like a curtain of fine, black silk.

Just as the others in this family of hunters, her arms were bare to the shoulders. The muscles were toned and defined. She was broad at the shoulder and built like a tiger. Enfri would have wagered that she was as strong as Haythe.

The true difference between her and Maya lay in her expression. Maya was a stormcloud on the horizon, a coming tempest that promised cruel fury. The new girl was inscrutable. It would have been easy to mistake her expression for being unconcerned, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Behind her blue and beast-like eyes, there was cold and precise calculation.

Enfri felt the hairs on her arm begin to stand on end, as if lightning was about to strike.

Gain caught Maya's eye. He nodded sharply towards the door. "Go, Maya. Leave the lad. Not you, Jin. You stay and observe."

Maya pulled away from Haythe. She gave the second girl, Jin, a scornful glare, then turned on her heels and walked out through the door. It slammed shut behind her.

Gain sighed. "I often forget which sister is the elder, Jin."

"It was a mistake to bring her."

"It was not my decision. Nor is it yours." He cocked his head in Enfri's direction. "This is not the place to discuss it."

Jin closed her eyes and gave a single nod. "As you say, Uncle." She turned her frightening eyes to Enfri. "Please forgive our rudeness, Sky Woman. I presumed too much in your absence."

Enfri noticed for the first time that Jin held one of Grandmother's notebooks in her hands. It must have been the shock of seeing eyes like theirs on human faces that caused her to miss that detail.

"None of us are educated in the healing arts," Jin explained. "When we came to where we were told we could hire a sky woman and found her gone, I thought to learn what I needed to know from these journals." She turned and replaced the notebook to its proper place on the shelf. "I was unequal to the task. These notes are extensive and well-organized, but I don't possess the basis to understand them. Did you write these?"

There was something almost hypnotic about Jin's voice. Her words came at a steady beat, the mark of an education rarely heard of in Sandharbor. It was soft and dark in timbre, requiring Enfri to focus on her and what she said, and it had the sound of someone who was accustomed to being listened to. Her voice didn't demand attention so much as expect it.

Jin turned her eyes on Enfri. Being under her intense gaze was like being plunged into cold water and set on fire at once.

Enfri remembered that Jin had asked her a question. She looked down at her hands and was shocked to find a bottle of antiseptic salve in her hands. What in the world was it that she meant to do with that?

"They belonged to my grandmother," Enfri said. "She's dead."

"My condolences," Jin said. She approached and stood in front of Enfri, an air of expectation in her stance.

Winds and storms, Enfri thought in horror. Patient! I have a patient. She had to try twice before she found her voice. "Haythe? Could you fetch the lantern over the hearth. The one with the mirrors. Would you mind using it to give me better light?"

Haythe let out a breath that he might have been holding since Maya started pushing her bosom against him. He seemed grateful for being given something to do now that he was free of that blustering tart.

Jin's proximity was distracting. Something about her made Enfri uneasy.

Something? More like everything. She's terrifying.

Enfri dabbed antiseptic over the wound in Gain's side. Once Haythe arrived with the lantern, she got a better look at what she was dealing with.

The wound was jagged. The flesh hadn't been sliced or torn, it was savaged. Enfri hissed.

"What could do this to a man?" she asked.

"Scale lion," Gain said. "We were making camp in the desert when a pride of them came upon us."

"A pride?" Haythe blurted. "It takes a hunting party to fell just one."

Gain nodded to Haythe. "Right you are, lad. Even then, you can expect that not every hunter will be coming home. They drove us off, and we managed to escape the desert just before dawn."

Enfri fished a different bottle out of her basket. It was a powerful painkiller. Essenroot with a touch of nightshade and poppy oil. Dangerous if misused, but very powerful. She'd need to drip a small amount of it into the wound to deaden the nerve endings.

Gain put a hand gently on her wrist. "Not that, Sky Woman."

"Don't be foolish," she replied. "This will..."

"...hurt no less than I'm used to. Nothing that makes a man numb. Your oath on it."

Enfri set the painkiller down. She shot Gain a dubious frown. "Very well, but I don't like it. The cleaning will be excruciating, and screams give me a headache."

The grin that appeared on his face was wide enough to show off his teeth. Winds, but Enfri was grateful that they were regular human teeth. She had half-expected fangs.

"Do as you must," Gain said. He held up a single finger. "Without the painkiller."

Enfri first drenched the wound to sluice away the blood. She then poured alcohol over it to kill off any infection beginning to set in. She braced for Gain's cries of pain, but the man merely winced.

He clamped his teeth together. Sweat appeared on his brow. He was obviously in pain, but he made no sound.

The wound clean, Enfri told him that the worst was coming. She would need to cut with a scalpel and clear away the dead, ragged flesh surrounding the wound.

Gain nodded. He stared straight ahead, and she could see that he was afraid. "A favor, Enfri. Talk to me. It helps if I can focus on something else."

"Talk about what?"

"Anything. Your last patient, perhaps?"

She would gladly accommodate such a simple request. By Haythe's leave, Enfri told Gain about the iron fever. She spoke of how she treated the sickness and about Goodman Smith's recovery. As she spoke, she cut. Her scalpel sliced through the tattered flesh. Blood ran over her fingers, and she had to occasionally stop her story to ask Jin to pour some water over the area.

Enfri came to the end of her tale. She left out the part about Goodman Smith's fevered ravings.

The king's dark hounds, she thought. His assassins. They call themselves hunters, but I doubt those swords are meant for animals.

Enfri finished her bloody work. She picked up a bone needle and a spool of catgut thread. "I need you to be as still as you can be. The hardest part is over, but if I fumble this, you won't heal right."

Gain asked her to continue. He turned his attention to Haythe, whose face was blanched white throughout the ordeal. "That horse the two of you rode up on. A Gaulatian?"

Haythe blinked. "What? Oh. Yes, sir."

"Fine animals, Gaulatian horses. You don't find many of them here in the west."

"He came to us from the crown's gift," Haythe said with a touch of pride. "My pa fought in the war."

"Which?" Gain asked with a chuckle. "There've been so many."

Haythe thought about it. "I... don't know. Pa doesn't talk about it, and I was still a toddler."

Gain hummed in understanding. "One of the bad ones, then. When the flag of Althandor arrives at a nation's borders, they usually send out the ambassadors. They posture and plead, and inevitably bend the knee."

Enfri felt her heart grow heavy. Not every nation gave up so readily. "It was the war with Teularon, Haythe."

He looked at her with surprise. "How... Oh."

"Are we missing something?" Jin asked.

Enfri kept silent and focused on stitching Gain's wound. Haythe watched her, then answered the question.

"My pa and Enfri's were both in Sandharbor's levy to the army," he said softly. "They served a lord called the Merovech."

"Hierarch Ambrose Merovech," Gain said with a nod. "What happened to your fathers?"

Haythe kept his eyes on the floor. "Mine came back. Hers didn't."

Enfri's vision started to go blurry, and she blinked to clear her eyes of moisture. She didn't cherish reminders that she had been denied something.

Despite herself, Enfri was getting angry again. You remember my father but ignored Mother and Grandmother. Every one of you. How is that fair?

"Not every soldier returns," Gain said. His tone matched the grimness of his words.

"Oh, but her pa was amazing," Haythe said with barely contained excitement. "Everyone in the village talks about him. He was a hero."

"Haythe..." Enfri whispered.

"Teularon was the second war Yora fought in. He was at the Siege of Drok Moran. He was with the last attack. They say that Yora was the one who made it to the gates and burned them down for Althandor's army. If the crown's gift he won was any larger, it would've come with a title."

"Haythe!"

Enfri swallowed. She hadn't intended to shout. The others were all looking at her, Gain and Haythe surprised and Jin considering. That girl and her unnatural, wind-cursed, horrible eyes.

"Haythe," Enfri repeated in a tiny voice, "I'm almost done. Could you shine the light a bit closer?"

"Sure," he said pleasantly. He acted as if he was unaware of the distress he'd caused her. His head really was full of hammers.

Enfri returned to her sewing. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, and she was aware of Gain and Jin staring at her.

"You said the blacksmith suffered from iron fever," Jin said.

A change of subject. Wonderful. Enfri hummed an affirmative.

"The Nadia mines?"

Enfri slipped with her needle and jabbed Gain in the gut. He grunted but didn't complain.

How would Jin know about that? Not from Grandmother's notebooks. Enfri had taken that volume with her to the Smith home.

"That's right," Haythe answered. "While pa was asleep, I went out to the forge and checked on our iron from Nadia. Not all of it is bad, but I counted over a hundred tainted blocks."

Gain and Jin exchanged a glance. The older hunter then focused his attention on Haythe. "I think we'd like to take a look at that ore, lad."

"Why?" Haythe asked. "It's poison. Pa would've died were it not for Enfri."

"It's why we're here," Jin explained. "My father learned of a tainted vein in Nadia. He commissioned us to retrieve as much of it as we could, so that it could be disposed of properly."

"We'll compensate your father fairly, of course," Gain added. "But that ore needs to be kept away from honest folk."

Haythe looked perplexed. "Is that a job for hunters?"

"When swift riders are needed, yes." Gain replied.

Enfri tied off the last stitch in the hunter's side. She cut it from her spool with the scalpel and set her needle aside. "Finished. I'd advise against riding if I thought it would stop you."

Gain moved his hand to feel at the stitching, but Enfri swatted his hand away.

"None of that. Your flesh will be tender for days. I'll give you a salve. Spread it over the wound every dawn and sunset, put a fresh bandage over it before every meal, and for the blessing of the winds, try not to exert yourself. If you tear the stitches, you could bleed out."

Gain nodded and put a linen wrap around the wound. He gave her a smile. "As you command, Sky Woman. It shall be done."

He stood and began gingerly putting his armor back on. Jin assisted him with the buckles. "If I can steal your escort, Sky Woman, I'd like young Haythe to take us to his father's forge. We have to get that poison away from where it can cause harm."

"Of course," Enfri said. "Thank you for the ride home, Haythe. Take care of your father."

"I will. Err... You take care, too. I'll worry about you out here on your own. Especially if the scale lions are getting bolder."

Jin finished with her uncle's armor. "You needn't worry. I saw scalethorn growing from here to the desert's edge."

"They hate the smell of it," Enfri said. "They don't bother me. I've never seen a living scale lion in all my life."

"Fortunate," Gain said ruefully. "Wish I could say the same. Jin, we should make haste. Take care of things and catch up. Lad, please lead the way."

Haythe nodded to the hunter. He paused to bid Enfri one last farewell before following Gain through the door.

In the brief moment before the door swung closed again, Enfri noticed Maya and silent Dashar standing together several paces up the path to Sandharbor. The young woman was speaking in hushed and urgent whispers to Dashar. She seemed agitated by something. For his part, the wolf-cowled man seemed to be giving her as much notice as a buzzing fly.

She's probably moaning over being sent away for being a trollop. She best keep her hands to herself when she's riding next to Haythe.

Enfri couldn't help but feel a small thrill. Soon, she might be able to start calling herself a Goodwife Smith. The notion was a welcome one.

She shivered. Foolish of her to start daydreaming when there was a beast-eyed creature lurking next to her. Enfri held her breath and made herself meet Jin's unsettling blue gaze.

"You have our thanks, Sky Woman," Jin said, then reached for her belt.

Enfri almost panicked. She imagined Jin was about to pull her sword from its scabbard.

Her fears were unfounded. Jin's hand went into a pouch hanging from a belt loop and came back out with two gold marks held in her fingers. "Will this suffice?" she asked.

Enfri reached forward and nervously plucked one of the coins out of her hand. "More than enough. Thank you."

Jin cocked her head inquisitively. Unless Enfri was imagining things, it looked like there was something resembling a smile on the girl's lips. Well, a slightly less neutral expression, at least. Jin placed the second coin on the table, making it clear that she meant for Enfri to have it.

"May we meet again," Jin said.

Not blustering likely, if I have any say.

Jin was about to turn to leave but hesitated. Her eyes focused on Enfri's face. The pupils of her eyes contracted into barely visible slits. Enfri had seen a cat's eyes do that right before it pounced.

She reached for Enfri's face and hooked a finger around a lock of golden hair that had fallen free of her shawl. Enfri nearly fainted.

"Unusual," Jin said softly. Her hand dropped back to her side, and she made for the door without another word.

Once the door closed behind her and the sound of hooves faded into the distance, Enfri let out the breath she was holding.

"Winds," she said to herself. Her legs about gave out on her before she made it to the rocking chair. She felt a blush appear alongside a good measure of indignation.

Unusual, indeed. You're one to talk, Snake Eyes.

Enfri looked at the gold mark Jin had given her. With its twin on the table and the bag of coins from Goodwife Smith, Enfri thought that she had become rich overnight. Perhaps she ought to start fashioning a horde that could make Deebee's scales turn green with envy.

Deebee should know that her dream was proven true, Enfri thought. The dragon might be comforted that the eyes of beasts were accounted for and about to leave the area around Sandharbor for good.

Enfri had a sleepless night and two patients wearing down her fatigue. Not to mention the frightening visitors, that Jin girl foremost among them. An ache ran up and down Enfri's spine, and her stomach growled for breakfast. The animals needed to be seen to, and the garden needed tending. So much to do, but leaving the rocking chair seemed impossible.

Perhaps a short nap before beginning her chores for the day. Enfri closed her eyes.