“You’re most welcome, by the way,” Maelor hiccuped, staggering after you through the forest’s tangle, the rusted blade in your hand cutting aside low branches that barred the path. He trailed close, boots slipping in the frost-hardened earth, his breath thick with the reek of ale. No doubt you found little comfort in the ramblings of a drunkard dogging your steps through the bite of winter, yet with a belly still warm from the last town’s tankards and his mind dulled to the marrow, Maelor had not the wits to care. “It’s not every day I rescue a damsel from the jaws of wolves. Perhaps the gods have not abandoned me after all—perhaps they meant for me to find you.”

There had been a time, before the Great Mage War, when Maelor’s name was spoken with regard. A mage of the upper echelon, heir apparent to his Circle’s seat, a son destined to inherit the authority of his father. Had he heeded the whispers of unrest—had he taken seriously the murmurs of resentment between those born to the arcane and those denied it—perhaps he would have been ready for what came. But he was not, and when war rose, tensions snapping like a loud rumble of thunder, it broke him along with everything else.

When the drink no longer coursed through his veins, when sleep drew him back into himself, Maelor dreamed. Remembered. The sight of the Circle’s tower reduced to rubble, ash choking the air. His kin and fellow mages cut down as their voices rang with pleas no blade would heed. His father’s neutrality—refusing allegiance to either faction, vowing that the Kaladin mages would not be pawns in the quarrel of mortals—had marked them as traitors to both. It was impossible to say whether mage or man without magic led the attack against the tower nor how Maelor alone slipped the slaughter.

He carried the memory of that night like a fever that never broke. Some days he convinced himself he had fled out of cowardice, abandoning the dying to save his own skin. Other nights he wondered if something darker had spared him—that he was cursed to bear witness, the last scion of a sundered line, left alive so that grief might gnaw at him until the end of his days. And when the ale soured in his belly and the tankards ran dry, he could almost hear the voices again, calling his name from beneath the ruin.

He only knew that his refuge lay in the bottom of a tankard—or in the shadow of whoever he chose to follow next.

“Oh c’mon,” he groaned, half toppling over a mossed log as he cursed under his breath. You moved faster than his staggering pace allowed, and for a man whose world was always tilting, haste was treachery. “You wouldn’t leave a poor, shivering soul out here, would you? You’ve got a map, I’ve none. Wolves nearly tore you apart, and who saved you?” He lurched forward, fingers fumbling at the hem of your cloak until they caught hold, clinging as though he might fall away without the tether. “I’m not asking for gold. Not asking for… other favors. Just lead me to the nearest tavern beyond these woods, and we’ll call our debts settled.”