Free Messenger’s Legacy by Peter V. Brett

the poor boy.’
    ‘I seen him, too.’ The three of them turned to see the speaker. She was perhaps sixteen summers, still a girl by Milnese terms, but a woman grown out in the hamlets. She was familiar, but Ragen couldn’t place her.
    ‘What do you mean, child?’ Heath asked. ‘Seen whom?’
    ‘Briar Damaj,’ the girl said.
    ‘Ay, Tami!’ a voice called. Ragen looked up at her family and realized why she looked familiar. Masen Bales still had a gap in his teeth where Ragen had knocked one out.
    ‘Seen him watching me sometimes,’ Tami said, ‘from across the yard in the hogroot patch.’
    Masen stormed over. ‘Ay, girl. What the Core you think you’re doin’, interrupting the Tender when he’s with someone?’
    ‘A moment please, Masen,’ Heath said. ‘Tami was telling us she’s seen Briar Damaj.’
    ‘Night!’ Masen cried. Tami wilted at the glare he threw her. ‘Don’t you go spouting that Mudboy nonsense again, girl.’
    ‘You saw him, too,’ Tami dared to argue.
    Masen shook his head. ‘Saw some boy trying to peek as you bent to milk the cow, but he ran off before I got a look at him. Coulda been any of a dozen
living
boys in this stinking town. Sure as the sun wasn’t some ripping ghost.’
    He looked back at the Tender apologetically. ‘Girl told all her friends about the ghost, and now half the kids in town are telling fire stories about having seen the Mudboy.’
    ‘What about the other time?’ Tami demanded of her father.
    Masen rolled his eyes. ‘Here’s where she goes completely peat-brained.’
    ‘Why is that?’ Heath asked.
    Tami looked at her feet. ‘Seen him from the window at night, sneaking a cup of milk from Maybell.’
    ‘Half-demon, he’d have to be,’ Masen said, ‘walking about in the naked night. Either you seen a ghost, or you seen nothing at all.’
    Heath coughed. ‘Yes, well. Thank you Tami. Good day to you, Masen.’ Masen grunted at the dismissal, grabbing Tami’s arm and turning to go.
    ‘Just one thing,’ Ragen asked, pulling them up short. ‘When you saw this boy, which direction were you facing?’
    ‘East,’ Tami said. ‘Towards the dump road.’
    Ragen nodded, producing a gold sun. The coins were common enough among Miln’s upper classes, but in a backwater hamlet like Bogton, half the folk had never even seen gold, and the other half hadn’t been allowed to touch. Perhaps it would help as they fled the coming army.
    ‘For your assistance,’ Ragen said, handing Tami the coin. She and Masen stumbled away, staring at the coin, dumbstruck.



6
Cories
333 AR Autumn
    ‘T his would explain how he kept from being cored,’ Elissa said as they approached the Bogton Dump. She waved a hand in front of her nose. ‘Demons can’t stand the reek.’
    While the Boggers were still gathered in the Holy House yard, Ragen and Elissa had asked the local children for tales of Mudboy, paying a silver star for each new one. Most of them were impossible nonsense, but two or three seemed plausible, and on further questioning, Ragen felt sure they had seen … something. Something that all credible accounts had coming from the direction of the town dump.
    ‘Reek doesn’t cover it by half,’ Ragen said, slapping a mosquito on the back of his neck. ‘Bog air reeks all by itself. This? This is a work of art. Swamp stink laced with rotting carcass and …’
    ‘Something I’d find in a baby’s nappy after a night of sick,’ Elissa said.
    Ragen heaved, but managed to swallow it back down. ‘All the more reason we find Briar and get as far from this place as possible. If he’s here at all, and this isn’t some tampweed tale.’
    ‘You don’t believe it?’ Elissa asked.
    ‘Heath is famous for drinking his own ale,’ Ragen said. ‘You can see it in the broken veins of his face. And it was Seventhday, no less.
No hangover like a Tender on Firstday morn
, as the saying goes.’
    ‘The girl swore she saw him,’ Elissa said.
    Ragen nodded. ‘Ay. But