Sixty-eight missing recorded today. Sixty-eight travelers, merchants, fathers and sons, wives and daughters. One is, truly, humbling enough. When I wrote down the tenth poor soul—recording the wishes and witnesses amid their tears and unanswered questions—then I had truly crossed to another plane.

  Not grief, precisely. Not numbness either. Rather, a cold kind of clarity. As though some quiet, unseen order was tallying through me.

  I washed the nib twice. The ink still ran dark.

  And the ink ran from dawn until dusk. Matters of loss take time, I have learned. One must be courtly—measured—lest the dissonance be mistaken for disdain.

  Proof of person is also laborious. Not all deckhands possess written proof they exist—unless one travels to the Old World to ask them. Hardly a trivial task at the moment. Then one must seek witnesses, sift through personal belongings, check work permits and stamped ledgers—any scrap to prove that, yes, indeed, my loved one had a soul. I held them. And I loved them.

  Adalbert van Aarden. The master Chronicler. The budding historian. And now, the recorder of loss.

  I loathed my self-appointed title. Yet I kept it, like a worn coat—ill-fitting, familiar, not easily shed.

  The Council did not scold me. Brenda did not send letters. But their silence was unmistakable. Requests thinned. Favours turned to ash. Eyes turned elsewhere.

  Little work comes to those who fall from favour. I have tasted this before. The bitterness does not fade.

  Counting the lost and the dead does, at least, help me live. Silver in my pouch, burning with the need to be spent. Yet, alas, not much to buy—and even less to afford.

  My frame had lessened since the Closing. The healthy gut I once carried had receded. Rationed barley and offal leave little to the imagination, and even less to the appetite.

  Hm. Linda.

  It had been a while. The kind of while that drags its heels and forgets to leave a note. My new work gave no reason to visit—no tavern tales, no scribbled rumors to chase, just names and numbers and pages that stained the hands. I had nothing worth bringing. And I dreaded what the city had done to her little palace of ale and song.

  But.

  Satiating the soul would fill me more than food. And Linda, well—Linda was always a pleasant mouthful. Sharp-tongued, honey-voiced, and never half as drunk as she let on. If her fire still burned behind that bar, it might be the only hearth in Hasholm that hadn't gone out.

  I began a brisk walk from the tallydesk near the western bridge toward my goal. There was little left to see along the way. Fires were fewer. Chimney smoke thinned like excuses. The bells now rang only for remembrance and curfew—not for gatherings, not for psalms. The rhythm of the city had grown hesitant, like a man rising from illness who no longer trusts his feet.

  The few who still walked the streets did so with heads down, coats too thin, and eyes that had forgotten what shopfronts used to offer. Unseemly or saddening—there was no third type.

  A clutch of street urchins broke from the shadows, chasing each other between crates and shuttered stalls. One called out—a shrill, confident note—and waved. His smile was a chaotic ruin of teeth and charm. I waved back, solemnly, as if to answer a royal summons. I had no food, no coin left to spare—but I gave him the dignity of a return gesture. Promises of relief, some other day.

  So be it.

  I was now also Adalbert the storyteller. A fine and honorable title. Not penned by council nor stipend, but bestowed upon me by the city’s youngest and greatest. And they, at least, still believed in endings worth hearing.

  East Marrow Street was a sad sight. It had once been rowdy in all the good ways—dancing and song spilling into the cobbles, political theses declaimed to anyone with the patience or pride to argue back, and a certain glow when the dusk-light struck the windows just right. A street that disagreed with itself, loudly, and laughed as it did.

  Now: no merry fiddles, no grievances shouted to the rooftops. Just a hush that didn’t come from peace, but from surrender. A quiet that had run out of things to protest.

  At least Linda’s still burned an inviting light. That was something. A small defiance, flickering behind old glass.

  I opened the door. The bell rang—bright, unchanged, defiant. And I was greeted by an empty hall.

  No patrons. No Ronja. Not even a pair of drunken patrolmen slumped in the corner, arguing over saints and mothers.

  The emptiness sat heavy in the air, like a coat draped over the shoulders before the fabric has learned your shape. I hovered on the threshold, half-turned, ready to let the door swing shut behind me.

  Then she appeared—rounding the backroom curtain with a cloth in one hand and suspicion in her eyes.

  Linda. Dear Linda.

  Her frown told me exactly what she saw: a problem. A nosy beggar. A guardsman off his leash. A tax collector with dried ink on his hands.

  But then she saw me. Properly. And the sour frown cracked—just slightly, just enough.

  The warmth that rose in my chest at that brittle smile nearly undid me.

  “Adalbert,” she said, tone flat but carrying. “I see I’m graced with prominent guests tonight.”

  “And I,” I replied, stepping in, “am blessed with a hostess of renown, as always.”

  “I locked away the good wine, as you suggested. So don’t get any fanciful ideas.”

  “No need. I couldn’t afford it at any rate.”

  The smile crept slightly higher. I felt mine do the same—tired, but warm.

  “I’m sure I can find some swill that you can afford.”

  “No charity here, Linda. I pay in full.”

  “With what—letters to barons? The wills of priests with gout?”

  I opened my mouth to say what coin I’d earned the pleasure with—but the truth of it hung too heavy. The ink, the names, the sobs behind signatures. It caught somewhere between throat and pride.

  She saw it before I spoke. Her eyes softened, just barely. A knowing flicker, not quite pity. Not quite forgiveness. Just recognition.

  “Sit down, Adalbert. Let me give you something.”

  I obeyed, settling into the most wretched, creaking chair in the locale. The kind that protested your presence, as if it remembered better patrons. I placed my hands on the table and let the room speak to me.

  It was unusually still. Not abandoned—just hushed. More like a chapel than an ale-house. A place where noise had been put away for polishing.

  I had perhaps a minute to admire the quiet before the clatter of a bowl broke it. She placed it before me with the practiced grace of someone who never apologized for kindness. The spoon stood upright, firm and declarative. The broth was hers—thick with greens, flecked with herbs, a single bone resting like a relic atop the surface. Garnish, yes. But also proof of make.

  I had never seen such a lovely meal.

  In fairness, I had. I once dined with lords, drank from goblets chased with gold. But none of it—not the spice, not the roast, not the crystal glint of imported salt—had ever reached the height of this: the tenderness of companion.

  “Eat. I’ve already had my fill.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” I said, already lifting the spoon, “but I thank you with all my being, still.”

  “Silence and eat, you fool.”

  I obeyed gladly. A few mouthfuls in, and warmth bloomed where exhaustion had nested. The broth was thick with marrow and memory. I was halfway through licking the bone clean when she broke the moment.

  “I can sense your newest assignment has been more burden than fruit.”

  I set the spoon down, but didn’t lift my head. Let the damp mist from the bowl rise and cling to me like incense.

  “Yes,” I murmured. “It is somber writing. I could pen the most wretched plays about loss and sorrow, twist the stage with lamentation and grief—but they would never compare to the simple lines in my book.”

  I glanced toward her then.

  “Husband missing. Wife and child left.”

  Nothing more. Nothing less. Enough to break the spine of a world.

  “The list grows long, I’ve heard.” Linda said it with a sigh—like a ceremony for the lost. She knew the answer. But she would let me speak it.

  “It is long,” I said. “Longer than my recorded family tree. Longer than the stanzas in the Hemnian Dances. Longer than the steps I took to reach your door.”

  She didn’t smile at that. There was no humour left in these measurements.

  “Many are missing,” I continued. “We presume most are dead. At best—at the very best—they’re stranded in the Old World. Or scattered in nameless docks and river-villages with no means of contact.”

  The broth turned thick in my throat. What had moments ago warmed now threatened to choke.

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  “And my work,” I said, quieter now, “is to make sure the wills are written. That the lost are certified as unpaid, unseen, unresolved.”

  “I disobey this when I can. I ask, I dig, I beg them for proof. A shoe, a tool, anything engraved. Any drunken fool who can muster two syllables to tell me this human lived.”

  “But it is often forfeit,” I added, voice low. “People who travel leave little behind.”

  “I would not trust anyone but you,” she said, “to bring some honour into such a cruel profession.”

  “Ah, my honour is long lost. I left it with my lofty works.”

  I felt the wetness on my face. It was not the mist.

  A flat hand struck the desk—firm, final. My spoon jumped on the wood like a startled note.

  “Adalbert,” she said, voice stern, “the Hasholm Chronicler would not sully his own name in such a manner.”

  Then she moved. Dress swaying, sleeves lifting, arms rising in the well-practiced art of theatre.

  “The Master Writer! The Orator of Grenzland!” she declared to the empty room.

  And then, with a sidelong glance, her tone dipped, teasing, familiar.

  “And the troubadour of the small? Fables for the little folk, the lost and the weary?”

  She stepped closer. Took my hand.

  “The city may seem big, Adalbert. But words travel—and children faster. You think I wouldn’t recognize the tales of some bearded old fool telling stories in the market square?”

  I allowed a tear to strike the broth. The others I mopped up, trying to distinguish what was grief and what was steam. “You have heard,” I sniffled—foolishly, perhaps—with a trace of pride.

  “Adalbert, you’ve always been known, you goat,” Linda said. “But it seems you’ve found a new audience.”

  “My most attentive yet. I have little else to give them.”

  Her sly smile returned, lips parting just enough to warn that another jab was inbound—when the doorbell shifted.

  Not rang, as much as shifted. A sound wrong in its weight. Awkward, metal dragged not struck. The bell jostled once, then stilled.

  Her grin vanished. Not replaced with the hardened look she wore for troublemakers or guardsmen, but something stranger—genuine surprise, not yet fear.

  I turned. My joints cracked like bad timber, the chair groaning beneath me as if to object.

  A figure stood in the doorway.

  Imposing. Robed. Far too tall for the frame. It sidestepped through the entrance with careful, practiced motion, folding itself in where the world did not welcome its size.

  A Blemmye.

  The awkward, wide-eyed stare of the giant searched the hall, half-concealed beneath its ragged robe. The gaze moved slow, deliberate, blinking less than it ought. One eye always seemed a fraction late to follow the other.

  Then both settled on me.

  “Adalbert?”

  I swallowed a stubborn shred of broth-soaked greenery and rose. The chair beneath me gave one last wheezing hurrah—wood, metal, and history protesting in concert.

  “You have found me.”

  The Blemmye held its stare a moment longer, then nodded—not low, surely not quick, but with the gravity of a fact accepted.

  It stepped further in, with the hesitant grace of a cow entering a crown ball, and closed the door behind it with surprising care. The bell rang again, this time softer. Like it understood.

  I stole a glance back at Linda—surprise somewhat lifted, now replaced by something more measured. Careful pause, like a barkeep gauging whether the next bottle would end the night in laughter or ruin.

  I turned my eyes back to the Blemmye. It now stood at its full height, close enough to brush the rafters. Another inch and it would start collecting dust from the ceiling beams.

  “I have heard that you write.”

  The voice was low—not in pitch, but in intention. A statement laid like a stone. It filled me with a strange blend of relief and bewilderment. So, then—not here to break me in twain. Likely.

  But why was it here?

  “I dabble here and there, yes.”

  Linda struck me in the ribs with the back of her hand. It hurt more than I’d admit.

  “What writings interest you?”

  It stepped closer now, into the warming light of the hearth, and the softer glow of the candle that held me and Linda together at the center of the room.

  And then—

  Oh.

  I remember you.

  “Lotte?”

  The name left my mouth before I had time to weigh it.

  Lotte. The butcher’s assistant. The Blemmie who lifted three pigs at a time and laughed like it was sport. Never spoke a word, except, the happy, long growls he made when the children played with him. And, who once stopped a trained cavalier’s blade with nothing but his open hand and a single, still look.

  Linda turned to me then, brows drawn—half alarmed, half unbelieving.

  But I knew that frame. I knew that quiet. I knew the steadiness behind the strangeness.

  “Ah, you do remember me.” There it was—that smile. Not made by lips, but carried all the same. “I remember you too.” The voice was deeper than I expected—slow, deliberate—but not strange.

  I raised a hand in greeting. It came from impulse, an etiquette from the soul . But it felt right. Familiar. Something older than roles or shapes.

  Then Lotte—the Lotte—returned the gesture. The same ease of motion. The same careful grace I’d seen with cleavers, carcasses, and children in tow.

  It was like shaking hands with a river—steady, immense, unmoved by haste. The strength in him hadn’t changed. Only the world’s eyes had.

  For the first time, I saw what had been in front of me for years. And I had only just begun to understand who I’d always known.

  “Would you like something to warm you up with, Lotte?” Linda emerged into the conversation with the warmth of someone welcoming you home. “I’ve a broth going. And other spirits—meant to stir both throat and soul.”

  Lotte smiled like a child brought gifts on his birthing day. “I have never had wine before. I have heard it said that it is a drink unlike any other.”

  “I’ve something I think you’d like,” Linda said, and offered a courtly bow—a gesture she used rarely, but sincerely. Then she turned, vanishing past the edge of the firelight.

  And there we were. Just the two of us.

  “If you find a chair solid enough to bear you,” I said, gesturing loosely, “then I implore you to sit.”

  No chairs met the challenge. But he found a table near the wall—old oak, scarred and sturdy—and leaned against it with the poise of someone who knew how to carry his weight.

  “Please,” I continued, smoothing my cuffs with unconscious ceremony. “Tell me what you need. You have my undivided attention.”

  He looked around the room, slow and deliberate, as though measuring its shape not by width or height but by what lingered within it.

  “I have been looking for you,” he said. “You are not easy to find. Do you not write at home?”

  The question struck with a quiet accuracy, taking me back to the western bridge, to the tallydesk and its ruinous arithmetic.

  “I’ve been preoccupied with other arenas of work,” I answered. “It has taken me around the city.”

  He nodded at this—not quite politeness, but with the focused patience of someone filing every word like a stone in a wall.

  “I understand,” he said. “You always seemed to be on the move.”

  I paused. Searched for the gentlest phrasing.

  “So you remember my visits?”

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “I would say so.”

  “Well, I hope I left a good impression.”

  “Yes. And no.”

  I shifted in my chair, uncertain if I’d earned the sting. Lotte, too, adjusted his posture—an echo of my discomfort, or perhaps something older rising to the surface.

  “It is why I am here, Adalbert.”

  His smile thinned. The kind of smile that carries a message too large for one breath.

  “I wondered,” he said, voice dipping low, “if you would help me write.”

  I admit—my soul left its chair. Left my body. Drifted ahead to some imagined history, etched in solemn ink and bound in bleached hide: The Words of Lotte, The Blemmyan Sagas, As Told to the Chronicler of Hasholm. I saw it all.

  And just in time, I returned—to hear the words that mattered.

  “You see,” he said, slow and heavy, “I remember you. But I also do not.”

  His voice did not tremble. It resonated. Like an instrument strung across centuries.

  “My past is a blur. A veil. Like I walked through eons with my eyes closed, using nothing but touch to see my way through.”

  I did not speak.

  “I have spoken to other Blemmye,” he continued. “Many feel the same. Some have no real memory left. Only the present. And the future.”

  Lotte leaned in—not threateningly, but close enough that I felt his gravity. His breath smelled faintly of dust and ash and something I couldn’t name.

  “I remember,” he said, “that you write. Even when I did not know what writing was.”

  He exhaled. The room did not move.

  “I want you to help me see my past.”

  I stood.

  “Lotte. You are bestowing me a great honour—and the immense weight of burden. I shall bear both with all the certainty I can muster!”

  My feet carried me, untethered. From the fire, to the bar, back to the chair. Then up again, hands gesturing, voice rising.

  “I’ve read the missionary reports of the interior—volume to volume! Lofty works, full of scorn. I should find a more feeling form. Have you read my work? I’ve been lauded—lauded—for my closeness to subject in every piece I’ve penned! It would suit your memoirs, I’m certain! In my youth, I even wrote a play about the Blemmye—a comedy, warm-hearted, critically misunderstood but—"

  “Adalbert.”

  Linda had returned. A dusty bottle in one hand. A stare in the other that could have cut glass.

  If eyes could kill, Linda would have been the deadliest being in the room. Even Lotte might have bowed to her fury.

  I landed again. A man drawn back to earth by silence.

  Lotte had not moved. His expression floated somewhere between transfixed and utterly bewildered. Like someone watching a weather system unfold indoors.

  I coughed, gently. Bowed the head, just enough to earn back a sliver of dignity.

  “I am sorry, Lotte. Truly. This is—this is—my most spectacular assignment in many years. It is hard to contain the excitement. Especially in times such as these.”

  “It is alright. I can understand the weight of the task.”

  Linda placed a glass by his side, the base heavy on the wood. The cork gave a tired groan as she drew it from the bottle. Dark red flowed into the glass—practiced, unhurried, a motion older than manners.

  “The weight is great,” Lotte continued, watching the pour. “For me as well. I sense the memory is as important as the future. For all of us.”

  He did not raise his voice, yet the words rang heavy all the same.

  “I want to know where I came from. Maybe then, we will know where we are headed.”

  He lifted the glass. Studied it closely, as if he were studying a sacred pebble, worn smooth by time. He sniffed. Sipped. Smiled.

  “Ah. You were right, Adalbert. There is something special about wine.”

  “I agree,” I said, confused, “but I don’t recall telling you.”

  “No. But you told Butcher Jens some years ago. It stuck with me.”

  I paused. Stared.

  “It is a wonder,” He said, “what one remembers.”