The lane narrowed the further they walked, the noise of the market square fading into the ordinary hum of a town going about its business — a woman beating dust from a rug in an upstairs window, two boys chasing something small and quick between the buildings, the low murmur of conversation drifting from an open tavern door despite the hour.
"The guild should be just ahead," Corvin said, nodding toward a modest stone building at the lane's end, its door marked with a faded green sigil — a leaf wrapped around a closed hand, the old symbol for healing kept quiet rather than advertised. "If Fen Aldric keeps records worth trusting, they'll be there."
Zelene kept her hood forward, though the lane was quiet enough that it hardly seemed necessary. "What exactly are we hoping to find?"
"A name, ideally," Corvin said. "Or a pattern. Illness that heals too quickly to be natural. Wounds that shouldn't have survived, surviving anyway. If Verdant's here—" He caught himself. "If Umbral's here, and hiding the way the note suggested, there may still be traces of what they've touched, even if they've been careful to hide the rest."
They were perhaps a dozen paces from the guild door when a voice cut across the lane, easy and unhurried, the kind of voice that clearly expected to be listened to.
"You're new."
Zelene turned. A young man leaned against the corner of the building opposite, arms loosely crossed, coppery hair catching what thin sunlight made it down between the rooftops. He wasn't dressed like a laborer or a farmer — his coat was well-cut, a shade too fine for the modesty of the street around him — and his eyes moved over her with the unhurried thoroughness of someone who did this often enough to have perfected it.
"Observant," Zelene said, not quite stopping.
"It's a small town. New faces don't exactly blend in." He pushed off the wall, closing the distance with an ease that suggested he'd already decided the conversation was happening whether she wanted it to or not. "Especially not faces like yours. Though I'll admit, the hood's doing its best to ruin the view."
Beside her, Corvin went very still.
It wasn't dramatic — nothing a stranger would have noticed — but Zelene felt it anyway, the particular quality of his silence, sharp and sudden, like something had caught his attention and refused to let go of it.
"I don't believe we've been introduced," Zelene said, mostly to steer the conversation somewhere less personal.
"Silas." He offered a small, theatrical bow, entirely too pleased with himself. "Silas Marchetti. And you are—?"
"Lynn," Zelene said smoothly, the name settling into place exactly the way Corvin had asked it to.
"Lynn," Silas repeated, testing the shape of it like he was deciding whether to believe her. "Suits you. Though I have a feeling there's more to the name than you're letting on."
"There usually is, with names," Zelene said. "I wouldn't read too much into it."
He grinned, unbothered by the deflection, the particular grin of a man who'd been turned away by prettier refusals than hers and had never once let it slow him down. "Fair enough. So — Lynn. What brings you to a town most people only pass through on the way to somewhere better?"
"Business," Corvin said, before Zelene could answer, his voice even, giving nothing away.
Silas's eyes flicked to him for the first time, taking his measure with the same quick, assessing thoroughness he'd given Zelene — though something in his expression shifted slightly, some fraction of a second where the easy charm faltered, just barely, replaced by something sharper.
"And you'd be—?"
"Corvin."
"Corvin." Silas said the name slowly, as if turning it over for a hidden meaning the way he had with Lynn. "You two traveling alone?"
"With friends," Corvin said. "Nearby."
"Sensible," Silas said. "Town like this, it's good to keep people close." He looked back to Zelene, the charm sliding smoothly back into place. "Though if you ever find yourself without company, I know this place better than most. Happy to show you around. Strictly professional, of course."
"I doubt that," Zelene said dryly.
"You wound me." He pressed a hand to his chest as if she'd struck something vital. "Truly. Devastating."
Corvin, watching this entire exchange with careful, measured patience, finally spoke again. "You said you know this town well."
"Better than anyone, probably." Silas said it lightly, but there was a note of genuine pride underneath, quickly smoothed over. "Grew up here. Never left. Some of us just aren't built for bigger places."
"Then perhaps you can help us," Corvin said. "We're looking into the healers' guild. Records, specifically. Unusual cases."
Something flickered behind Silas's eyes — brief, controlled, gone almost before it registered. "Unusual how?"
"We're not entirely sure yet," Corvin said. "That's rather the trouble with unusual things."
Silas studied him a moment longer, the charm dimming just slightly at the edges, replaced by something more careful, more considering. Zelene watched the two of them size each other up in a silence that had gone strange and taut without either of them raising their voice.
"Well," Silas said finally, straightening, the smile sliding back into place like a door pulled shut. "Can't say I'm much help there. I steer clear of the guild myself. Healers ask too many questions for my taste."
"I imagine they do," Corvin said evenly.
"It was lovely meeting you, Lynn." Silas caught her hand before she could think to pull it back, pressing the barest ghost of a kiss to her knuckles with a flourish that felt entirely rehearsed. "Fen Aldric's small. I have a feeling our paths cross again."
And then he was gone, slipping down a side alley with the particular ease of someone who'd spent years practicing how to disappear from a conversation before it could turn into a problem.
Zelene exhaled, pulling her hand back. "Well. That was something."
Corvin didn't answer right away. He was still watching the alley where Silas had vanished, his jaw tight, something working behind his eyes that he clearly hadn't decided whether to say aloud.
"Corvin?"
"It's nothing," he said, a beat too quickly to be convincing.
"That's the second time you've said that to me this week," Zelene said. "And it wasn't nothing the first time either."
He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he might actually tell her. Then his jaw tightened further, some decision settling behind his eyes, and he only shook his head.
"I'd rather not say something I can't yet prove," he said quietly. "Not until I'm certain."
Zelene studied him a long moment, remembering exactly how this conversation had gone the last time — in a narrow stone tunnel, with a boy who hadn't yet known his own name meant something.
"All right," she said slowly.
Behind them, the lane carried on as though nothing at all had happened — a healer's guild waiting patiently at its end, a market still murmuring somewhere past the rooftops, and somewhere in the winding streets of Fen Aldric, a young man with copper hair and a stolen smile, walking away from two strangers he had every reason, now, to remember.