There was no sign of the sharp grin Junilla had worn earlier. Instead, her mouth twisted. “Remember when I had the grand idea to keep you in the dark about how our harvest festival works?”

  “What?” Runa flicked her eyes to Junilla, then back to the shadowy figure. “There’s someone—”

  “Yes, and you have the look of someone about to go bash them around the head. You keep that hidden, don’t you? You’re so quiet and steady, I forgot you must have seen things like this in your old life. Now hush and enjoy the show.”

  The show?

  The shadowy figure raised their arms. Junilla put her head on one side.

  “The shadows are new, though,” she mused. “I’m guessing your wizard friends had something to do with that?”

  “I have no idea,” Runa growled out through gritted teeth. “Junilla, are you sure—”

  Junilla made an exasperated sound. “Look closer, Runa. Whose faces were missing from the fields today?”

  Runa looked closer. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair or Tam or Errant all day. There was no way Tam would be under the cloak of night, but… “We’ve finished the harvest. And Tam said that you always have bread baked from the last grain of the season, so they might be up at the mill, preparing to grind it.”

  “One of them, at least.” Junilla tightened her grip on Runa’s arm, as though even as Runa was beginning to understand, she still might go and skewer the not-so-stranger on the off-chance. “And they told you the story behind that? The reason people here celebrate with the first loaf of harvest?”

  Runa shook her head. “Something to do with the Deathless harv—oh.”

  Junilla clucked in sympathy at the sudden understanding currently smacking Runa upside the head. “Two hundred years ago, the worst of the Deathless burned the fields all across these lands, starving out new recruits for their armies. So, now, we save the harvest and bar the lich from the door. We feed our people, and fill the store-houses for winter. And apparently,” she added, sarcasm dripping from her lips, “we forget that some people come from worlds where if you see a big scary thing dressed as a lich, you swing a sword at it.”

  “Huh.” Runa’s shoulders relaxed. She dropped her hand from Bloodburster’s hilt—when had she raised it there?

  She shivered.

  “No skewering our millers just because we all forgot what you were before you came here and wanted to give you a scare, hmm?” Junilla asked.

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  “Well, when you put it that way.” Runa rubbed her hand, trying not to think about how easily it had moved to unsheathe Bloodburster.

  It wasn’t who she was before she arrived in Pothollow that worried her.

  It was who she might be next.

  “There’s no way that’s Tam under that cloak,” she said out loud.

  “There are two Millers in the village,” Junilla reminded her. “One of them was even born with the name.”

  “But—”

  The figure raised its head and let loose an ear-splitting cackle of laughter. The figure was tall, like Errant, and gangly, like Errant—and apparently Errant liked to dress up and play lich for the holidays.

  “Huh,” Runa said, for a lack of anything else to say.

  “So no grabbing that sword of yours, hmm?”

  Runa’s spine tingled. “It’s not my sword,” she said. “I’m just… looking after it.”

  “Hmm.” Junilla narrowed her eyes at her. “And you can stop waving that thing around, too. Tonight is about saving the harvest, not burning it.”

  “What?”

  Runa followed Junilla’s severe look to her other hand, which was gripping the lightstick. Heat pulsed along the shaft, and the prongs at the end were almost hidden by a throbbing blob of fire.

  She swore and dropped it, then swore again as the fire-blob swung down towards the shorn stalks of wheat. The lightstick bounced skywards again as she kicked it away from the dry grass, and she hooked one arm around it, catching it in the crook of her elbow with her shirt between her skin and the metal rod.

  The bubble of heat sputtered out.

  “I didn’t even know it was lit.” Runa stared at the lightstick, but it stayed dark. Carefully, she wrapped cloth around her hand and settled the stick back at her waist.

  “You don’t usually seem to have that trouble with it.”

  “I don’t usually have my neighbors dressing up like the restless undead for kicks,” Runa grumbled, stung. No, she didn’t normally have trouble with it. She knew the lightstick’s limitations, and she stuck to them before things started blowing up.

  “How does someone get their hands on a trinket like that?” Junilla was using her friendly-barkeep, nothing-to-be-suspicious-of-here voice, and for once in her life, Runa suspected she ought to be suspicious. “Have you talked to Severine about it?”

  “It isn’t a sword. And it isn’t cursed. It’s—” She looked down at the lightstick. “It’s useful.”

  Junilla rubbed her chin. “You adventurers and your strange magical gear. Useful to who?”

  “I’m not an adventurer,” Runa said without thinking.

  It was true, though. She wasn’t an adventurer.

  She wasn’t a guide anymore, either.

  But she wasn’t an idiot. She knew what Junilla was getting at. It was the same thing that had worried Severine so much she’d disappeared without a word.

  She knew who she was. But the more magical things you kept around, the more you risked them deciding you were someone else.

  She’d just never thought of the lightstick as being that sort of magical thing. It had been with her for years, and never bothered her.

  Unlike some swords she could mention.

  “I’m a baker,” she said, firmly. “And from what I’ve heard, I’ve got a job to do tonight.”

  Junilla’s eyes crinkled at the edges. “So you do.”

  “And the only thing I’m setting fire to tonight is wood for my oven.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Junilla tapped her chin. “Though… it would add some drama to the evening. You holding that flaming stick over your head as the lich lord chases the villagers up the hill. I don’t know, there’s just something about it.”

  “You think the evening needs more drama?” Runa nodded over to where Errant was loudly haunting the edge of the field.

  “Within reason.”

  “Nothing set on fire that isn’t meant to be.”

  “Exactly!” Junilla grinned as the town bells rang out. “Here we go.”