Fear not this transient night, for that it too shall pass. My fright comes from the terror of the vacuous dark, for it is eternal, and ever hungry.

  -Unattributed

  I was eleven when I first caught sight of the ones they call the Watchers. There had been awful storms that year, more snow at the tail end of winter than we’d ever seen, the floods that destroyed the soil. With stagnant pools about, I ran between the puddles as I worked in the fields those days. The first five minutes of splashing are always fun, no matter how bad the mosquitos started to be as the snows melted and winter turned soggy. Now, all I remember about it really were the terrible few hours after the splashing, tramping through sprinkling rain that never stopped, chores needing to get done despite the rain.

  One day, while out exercising the ponies, leading them to tramp a muddy circle in front of the barn while they wore their huge woolen covers. The light shined orange most of the day when it wasn’t stuck with gray. I looked up from the circle, eyes trailing along the stripped paint of the white wooden fence, when I noticed a man standing there, looking at me. My heart jumped up into my chest, and I almost screamed, thinking the elven man standing there in all black clothing, features almost as pale as the buzzing water making pools everything, was some kind of spirit come to stalk me.

  The man raised a white-gloved hand, beckoning me over to see him. The elves are beautiful people, but the man’s smile was too wide, his eyes too still as he nodded his head, which put a shiver in me. I came as I was bid; every mother in town or outside taught their daughters not to be slow about hopping to the task given you by your betters. I didn’t even know I was bringing Linda along behind me as I walked, the pony whining as I pulled her along.

  He looked won with that pearly smile, stretched so wide you could see the gaps behind his molars. Even now, I can’t remember what he asked me, I can only remember me nodding or shaking my head in answer. He raised a gloved hand, pointing to the barn, and I took his other and showed him around inside the barn. His fingers were cold in his gloves, not a chill that came from the rain and damp, something so cold that it pushed an ache into my hand.

  With the sun hidden behind the dark clouds overhead, the barn was almost night even with lanterns lit. He pointed out spots in the barn and I dutifully took him around. I took him to the hayloft where the barn was darkest. Even in the deepest of the black, I could see him as plain as in the light, his still eyes almost glowing in the gloom.

  He needed to uncurl my fingers from his own when he led me back into the drizzle. The man grabbed the reins of Linda’s lead as he walked down the muddy path leading away from the house, out into the flooding dirt roads that cut through the lord’s domain. I watched the dark road, the wan orange light in the sky growing darker and darker as time passed. My mother found me some time later, the light gone from the sky, me shaking from the drenching rain.

  I saw the man one more time after that. Just two weeks later, those out in the fields were called to the main street of the lord’s manor, told to line up on the road. I watched as that same man all in black led a parade of eight horses, the beasts tied to and pulling a cage lousy with men. They laid against the splintered wood of their cage, naked, eyes staring off into nothing, some weeping and shying away from our captured audience. I recognized Donnar Ripple, a man who could catch any fish you like from the river ten minutes within you asking for it. The man stared at the sky, mouth hung open and allowing the rain to fall in, looking as if he might be trying to drown himself.

  I learned from the whispers of the adults around me that the man in black was called a Watcher, those that patrol the lands of the Gallean Kingdom looking for dissidents. Where they tread, people dragged away in chains followed. The man carted away fourteen people that day, back to the city so that the higher nobles could sort them. No one ever found out what happened to any of them. The day the Watcher left our little scrape of nowhere, the rains stopped, the floodwaters receded.

  A man hovers in the air in front of my ship, black cloth swathing almost every inch of him, his elven skin pallid and washed of color. I hardly notice the light of mana pooling in his gloved hand as my eyes lock onto the words I see floating over his head.

  Imperial Watcher Jat Kevillis

  “Stop the ship,” I command Galea, already moving. Jor’Mari and Jess are at the back, both looking up from their respective chairs as the atmosphere inside the ship changes.

  Jor’Mari’s hand snaps up, catching the rectangular key to the ship that I throw to him. He looks at me, puzzled.

  “There is an Imperial Watcher outside the ship,” I tell him. His eyes widen at the words, and he is up and out of his seat in an instant. “Get your papers,” I tell Dovik and Jess, already heading toward the vault. The crown on my head, the talismans around my neck, and all my other magical items go into the vault one by one, the ring of storage the last to follow once I have removed my papers from inside. The vault door clatters closed, the entire door vanishing.

  I almost jump out of my skin when I turn back to the front of the ship, seeing the Watcher floating just outside now, his too still eyes staring like he can see us moving inside, a slight grin on his face. Dovik stands in front, oblivious to the man, flipping through a mess of papers, trying to find the ones I made him prepare before we left.

  “I am officially giving the ship to you,” I tell Jor’Mari. “It’s yours.”

  “Good idea,” he says, tucking the key away into a pocket in his robe.

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  “What’s a Watcher?” Jess asks, her eyes locked onto the man floating just outside the ship.

  “They are the eyes of the emperor,” Jor’Mari explains. “They are sent out into the empire to discover threats to the high throne, to pull out dissidents by their hairs and shutter them away in the cells of the dark tower.”

  I don’t have time to absorb that information or to come to grips with the fact that I thought they were an organization belonging only to Gale just a few minutes ago. “Ready?” I ask Jor’Mari. He nods.

  “Give me a moment,” Dovik says, shuffling through his papers. “I wasn’t expecting to be stopped as soon as we crossed the border.”

  “Neither was I.”

  The man outside the ship curls his fingers, tapping on the metal frame of the ship. It would be unwise to wait longer. Silently, I send a command to Galea to rotate the door toward him and open it. Cold air slips inside the ship in a blast of wind as the door opens. The Watcher peers at the rectangle of shadow from his side before confidently stepping through, black boots clapping down onto the platform.

  “Good evening,” he says, looking around the interior of the ship. “This is quite the vehicle you have. Who owns it?” The man needs to turn his head as his eyes only look straight forward. When they fall on me, I feel like they lay me bare, more even than my own eyes do to others.

  “That would be me, sir,” Jor’Mari says, stepping forward, rolling the key to the ship between his fingers. “My name is Jor’Mari, of the Mari dutchy. You’ve heard of my father, Duke Cla’Mari. I am returning home after some time away, and I am bringing a few of my companions along with me.”

  “Yes,” the Watcher nods. “I have had excellent relations with Duke Cla’Mari in the past, you carry his bearing.”

  The Watcher holds out his hand toward Jor’Mari, insistent, without needing to utter a word. Jor’Mari steps forward, laying a folded bundle of papers in the Watcher’s hand, along with a medallion imprinted with the symbol of his house. Watcher Jat Kevillis scans the papers for barely an instant before returning them to Jor’Mari. “In order, as I would expect. Do your companions have the proper paperwork as well?”

  He turns to Jess, and I see a shiver run up through her as the man’s gaze falls on her. She hesitantly hands him a few folded pieces of paper, pieces of paper I just about had to drag her by the hand to make her actually attain. The Watcher scans through the leaves of paper, smiling to Jess as he hands them back. “A pilgrim. I can’t say that I have had the pleasure of meeting many, but I will take the honor now.”

  “Of course,” Jess says, taking the papers back.

  Finally, the Watcher turns his eyes on Dovik and I, the two humans inside the ship. He approaches me, almost seeming to glide toward me as I cast my eyes down at the floor, the folds of paper in my hand trembling as I clench them too tightly. Dovik steps between us, flamboyantly waving his papers in front of him and offering the Watcher a bow.

  “Quite a thing to be meeting one of the eyes of the emperor so soon after entering the empire. Tell me, sir, if you will, what brings you to the border?” Dovik asks.

  The Watcher does not care to hide his disdain as he plucks the papers from Dovik’s offering hand. He snaps them open, taking in the contents in an instant. “A professional, from the Guild of Willian. It is an offense to lie on these kinds of forms. A lie to me is as good as a lie to the emperor himself.”

  “I take offense at that, sir.” Jor’Mari steps forward, up next to Dovik. “You impugn my companions in front of me.”

  “Little affront meant,” the Watcher says to Jor’Mari. “I am merely attempting to be thorough, that is my commission.” His eyes turn back to Dovik as he folds the papers in his hand into a tight bundle. “You carry the cast of a Willian, I will take you at your word, today.” He hands back the papers. “I am here at the border, doing as I am always bid to do, searching for the enemies of the throne. Mark carefully that you never cast yourself in such a role.”

  The force of the man pushes Dovik aside as he steps toward me as surely as any hand would. I feel a tremble run up through my arm as I hold my own papers out toward him, not daring to look up to meet his eye. The gloved hand of the Watcher slips the papers easily from my fingers, snapping them open. “You must be a citizen of the Empire,” he says before he even reads the first line.

  “Yes, sir. Of Gale.”

  “Quite a ways distant. Do you…Ah, here it is. A Writ of Movement, signed properly by a Lord Timmian. How long have you been gone from your lands, girl?”

  “Just over six months,” I say.

  “That is some time. Will you family have managed to get on without you?”

  “My father will have seen to our commitments. He always has.”

  “Good. This is a paper certifying your enrollment into the Adventurer's League, is that correct?” He holds up one of the papers, showing it to me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This was signed and issued in Grim, not Gale.” He takes another step forward, standing just a few inches away now. “Why?”

  “I was unable to meet the requirements while I was in Gale,” I say.

  “The requirements are merely that one has the minimum requisite power to begin vanquishing monsters. You say that you did not meet such a base stands, yet you stand before me now as a rank two magician if my eyes do not deceive.” I look up at him, and in his glassy eyes I catch the specter of something I never expected to see someone else looking at, the shadowed ghost of a window, like the ones that my eye provides to me. I read backward in the reflection of his eye my name; he looks directly at my status window. “I have heard outlandish things, but a girl advancing that quickly with such meager origins, never.”

  The Watcher tucks the papers into his black coat. “I will be arranging you, girl. Your companions may go on.”

  “Hold on one minute,” Jor’Mari says, stepping between us. “For what reason?”

  “Because I find her suspicious,” the Watcher snaps at him, forcing Jor’Mari back a step. “I require no further reasons.”

  Jor’Mari’s fist shakes at his side, and I think for a moment that he will strike the Watcher. He relaxes with an exhale. “We will not be abandoning her to you.”

  “Then you may come as well,” the Watcher says, indicating the West. “Drelldin Keep is a few miles to the west. Navigate us there.”

  Jor’Mari looks about the ship, being as inconspicuous as he can when he looks my way. I give the slightest of nods in return to his questioning eyes. He pulls his shoulders back, marching to the throne in the center of the platform, and taking a seat. Mentally, I command Galea to turn our ship, taking the heading the Watcher gave.

  I stand at the edge of the ship, trying to contemplate how my luck could be so terrible. The ship sails through the air on a straight course for the keep, and down below I begin to see smoke climbing from the wreckage of what once had been a village. So high in the sky, the blackened squares of buildings and homes stand out int he light of day, a charred mar upon the otherwise green landscape.

  “What happened there,” Jess asks of no one in particular, staring down at the ruins that had once been the entire world to the people who lived inside it.

  “That, Miss Keller, is what I intend to discover,” Watcher Kevillis answers.

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