The vomit came up sour and yellow, mostly bile with flecks of yesterday's stale bread. Cadarn Vex didn't bother moving from where he'd collapsed in the mud outside the tavern. The rain would wash it away eventually. Everything washed away eventually.
Except the screaming.
Even drunk—especially drunk—he could still hear them. The boys with their guts spilling onto blood-soaked tables, begging for mothers who weren't coming. The sound a man makes when you saw through his leg bone. The wet, rhythmic choking of a punctured lung drowning in its own blood.
Twenty years. Twenty years of drinking, and the screaming never got quieter.
"Doctor Vex?"
The voice cut through the rain like a scalpel through skin—clean, precise, unwelcome. Cadarn didn't open his eyes. Maybe if he stayed still, whoever it was would mistake him for a corpse. Wouldn't be the first time.
"Doctor Cadarn Vex. I know you're conscious. Your breathing pattern changed when I spoke."
Observant bastard. Cadarn cracked one bloodshot eye open. The world tilted sideways, then slowly righted itself. Standing over him was a man shaped like a knife—thin, sharp, dressed in the dark gray traveling cloak of someone who didn't want to be remembered. Even through the alcoholic haze, Cadarn recognized the stance. Military. Probably officer class, from the way he held himself.
"Not a doctor anymore," Cadarn slurred, closing his eye again. "Haven't been for years. Piss off."
"I'm afraid I can't do that."
Of course he couldn't. They never could.
With a grunt that sent fresh waves of nausea through his gut, Cadarn pushed himself up to sitting. Mud squelched beneath him. His back screamed in protest—sleeping rough for the better part of a decade did that to a man's spine. He was forty-three years old and felt seventy.
"Let me guess," Cadarn said, wiping his mouth with the back of a trembling hand. "Someone important is dying. Someone rich. And you need a surgeon because the local barber-butchers can't tell their ass from their scalpel."
The thin man's expression didn't change. "No. I need you because twenty years ago, you delivered a child in the western tower of Ravenhill Keep. Midwinter. Secret birth. Mother died in labor."
Every drop of alcohol evaporated from Cadarn's blood in an instant.
His hand—still trembling, but for different reasons now—slowly lowered. The screaming in his head went quiet. In its place: a baby's cry, weak and mewling. Blood on white sheets. A woman's last breath rattling out while snowfall hushed the world outside.
No.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cadarn said. His voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else.
"Yes. You do."
The thin man crouched down, unbothered by the mud, bringing himself eye-level with Cadarn. Up close, he was younger than Cadarn first thought—maybe thirty. But his eyes were older. They had the look of someone who'd done things that cost pieces of his soul.
Cadarn knew that look. He saw it in the mirror on the rare occasions he could bear to look.
"Three weeks ago," the thin man said quietly, "King Aldric the Second died without legitimate issue. His three nephews are currently mobilizing armies to settle the succession. Seventeen thousand men have already died in the preliminary skirmishes. By spring, that number will be two hundred thousand."
"Not my problem."
"The primary claimant—Duke Theodric of Westhaven—bases his entire legitimacy on being the son of King Aldric's eldest sister. Born in Ravenhill Keep. Midwinter. Twenty years ago."
Cadarn's stomach clenched. Not from the alcohol this time.
"He's got documents," Cadarn said hoarsely. "Seals. Witnesses."
"He has forgeries, purchased testimonies, and dead witnesses." The thin man's voice was factual, clinical. "But he doesn't have the doctor who delivered him. The doctor who knows that the child born that night wasn't Duke Theodric at all."
Breathe. Just breathe.
"You're wrong," Cadarn managed. "The baby died. Stillborn. I was drunk, I barely remember—"
"The duchess's baby was stillborn. I know. That's why you helped them swap in another child. A peasant infant, born the same night in the village below. Healthy. Male. No one would ever know."
Cadarn's vision swam. Not from alcohol this time—from panic so pure it tasted like copper on his tongue.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"Captain Garrett Hale. Intelligence division, Northern Coalition." He paused. "Currently, the only thing standing between you and twelve different assassination attempts is my discretion."
"Northern Coalition." Cadarn's mind spun through the political landscape he'd spent twenty years trying to forget. "You back Prince Edric's claim. Second nephew. You want me to testify that Theodric is a fraud."
"Yes."
"And if I refuse?"
Garrett's expression didn't change. "Then I leave you here. And by morning, Duke Theodric's spymaster will have extracted your testimony with significantly less pleasant methods before hanging your corpse from a bridge as a message. Or the Crown Loyalists will poison your next drink to prevent you from testifying at all. Or the Westhaven assassins will simply burn this entire village to the ground to ensure no loose ends."
The rain drummed harder. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled.
"I'm a drunk," Cadarn said desperately. "A wreck. No one would believe me."
"Unfortunately for you, Doctor Vex, you kept records." Garrett reached into his cloak and pulled out a familiar leather journal—cracked, stained, the binding barely holding.
Cadarn's heart stopped.
His medical journal. The one he'd hidden in a lockbox, buried under the floorboards of an abandoned mill fifteen miles from here. The one where, in a moment of paranoid foresight two decades ago, he'd documented everything about that night.
Every. Single. Detail.
"Where did you—"
"Doesn't matter. What matters is that this exists." Garrett stood, tucking the journal back into his cloak. "Which means you're not a irrelevant drunk anymore, Doctor. You're a witness. The most valuable, most dangerous witness in three kingdoms."
Cadarn tried to speak. Nothing came out.
"You have two choices," Garrett continued. "Come with me willingly to the Northern Coalition. Testify to what you know under our protection. Help end this war before it devours the entire realm."
"And the second choice?"
Garrett looked down at him. In the rain and darkness, his face was almost sympathetic. Almost.
"Run. Hide. Pray that you die of liver failure before someone else finds you."
For a long moment, the only sound was rain beating against mud, against flesh, against the entire rotting world.
Cadarn thought about running. He'd gotten good at running. Twenty years of practice.
But he was so, so tired.
"If I testify," Cadarn said slowly, "Theodric loses his claim. Fifty thousand men who've already pledged to him—what happens to them?"
"They bend the knee to Edric. Or they die."
"And what about the boy? The peasant child who became Duke Theodric. Does he know what he is?"
"No. He genuinely believes he's the rightful heir."
"So I'm not just delegitimizing a duke. I'm destroying a man's entire identity. Everything he believes about himself."
Garrett said nothing.
Cadarn laughed—a broken, hollow sound. "You know what's funny? I became a doctor to save lives. Spent fifteen years saving boys on battlefields, putting them back together so they could go die somewhere else. And now you want me to condemn thousands more to death by telling the truth."
"Yes."
At least he was honest.
Cadarn looked down at his hands. They were shaking worse now. Scars crisscrossed his palms—old cuts from slipped scalpels, rope burns from field surgery. These hands had pulled men back from death's door dozens of times.
And for what?
"I need a drink," Cadarn muttered.
"No. You don't."
"I need—" His voice cracked. "I need to not be sober for this."
Garrett crouched again, and this time his voice was softer. Not kind—kindness was a luxury neither of them could afford—but human.
"Doctor Vex. Cadarn. Listen to me. This is happening whether you participate or not. If you refuse, they'll forge your testimony. Use your journal. Find someone to impersonate you. The war comes either way."
"Then why do you need me?"
"Because," Garrett said quietly, "testimony from a live witness is more believable than a convenient document. Because Prince Edric actually wants to minimize bloodshed, and real proof might make the other claimants stand down without total war. Because..." He paused. "Because someone should tell the truth. Just once. In all this goddamn lying."
Cadarn closed his eyes.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw her. The duchess. Pale as snow, bleeding out while her stillborn son cooled on the sheets beside her. She'd looked up at him with dying eyes and whispered: Please. Save my family. The kingdom needs an heir. Please.
He'd been younger then. Idealistic enough to think he was helping. That some lies were noble.
Twenty years later, hundreds of thousands of lives hung on that lie.
"If I do this," Cadarn said, opening his eyes, "and it starts a war anyway—if my testimony just makes things worse—I'm done. You understand? I won't carry more dead on my conscience."
"Fair enough."
"And I want protection. Real protection. Not just for me. For... for anyone they might use as leverage."
"You have no family, Doctor Vex. Our intelligence is thorough."
"I know. But I had a student once. Before I..." He swallowed. "Before I fell apart. If anyone remembers I trained her, they might—"
"Give me a name. I'll have her secured."
Cadarn nodded slowly. Then, with a groan that came from somewhere deep in his soul, he leveraged himself to his feet. The world tilted violently. Garrett caught his arm, steadying him.
Standing hurt. Everything hurt.
But he was standing.
"Alright, Captain," Cadarn said, voice rough as grave dirt. "I'll be your witness. I'll tell your truth. And when this all goes to hell—and it will go to hell—you remember I warned you."
Garrett's thin smile held no warmth. "Duly noted."
"One more thing."
"Yes?"
Cadarn looked at the tavern behind him, at the mud beneath his boots, at twenty years of running.
"I really do need that drink."
To his credit, Garrett only hesitated for a moment before pulling out a silver flask from his coat. "One. Then we ride. We've already stayed too long."
The whiskey burned going down—good burn, expensive burn. The kind Cadarn hadn't tasted in years. It hit his empty stomach like liquid fire and for just a moment, the screaming in his head went quiet.
Just a moment.
"Where are we going?" Cadarn asked, handing back the flask.
"North. To the fortress at Greymarch. Prince Edric is gathering his council there."
"How far?"
"Six days hard ride. Three if you can stay in the saddle."
Cadarn almost laughed. "I can barely stay upright."
"Then you'll learn fast. Because Duke Theodric's hunters are two days behind me, and they're not coming to ask nicely."
Ice flooded Cadarn's veins. "Two days? You've been sitting on this for—"
"I've been finding you for two weeks. You're surprisingly good at disappearing for a drunk."
"Practice."
"Well, the practice is over." Garrett gestured toward the tree line where two horses waited in the shadows. "From here on out, Doctor Vex, you're the most important man in three kingdoms. Whether you like it or not."
As they walked toward the horses, Cadarn cast one last look back at the tavern. At the mud where he'd woken most mornings for the past three months. At the simple, miserable life he'd built from the wreckage of who he used to be.
It wasn't much.
But it was quiet.
And now, the screaming was coming back.