Chapter 146: OLD BONES
The next morning, Aiden went looking for Corwin.
The forager had given him enough to start. Corwin had been the last holder of the Foggy Marshland. He had gone toward the low water more often than anyone sensible would and said there was something there worth finding. Then one day he went down and never came back.
Not long after, the registry was already claiming the ground had been empty for decades.
Aiden wanted to investigate after speaking to the forager. Then the takers arrived, Percival's bounty followed, and Nyx started pushing toward her evolution.
Corwin could wait through all of that.
One advantage of investigating the dead. Very flexible schedules.
Cinder stayed at camp. Her fire was still recovering from the capture crew, and Aiden wasn't leaving the shelter unguarded while men were being paid to steal his beasts.
She gave him a hard look when he left with Nyx and Miasma, then settled beside the shelter.
Nyx took the lead once the fog thickened while Miasma picked the firmer banks.
The channels split around low ridges and drowned roots, and after a few turns Aiden could no longer see the route behind them.
He followed the forager's warnings. He avoided every green pool without insects and stayed well clear of the channel where something had nearly dragged him under.
Nyx kept leading them east without approaching the worst water.
The reeds thinned as they went. Black peat replaced the softer mud near camp, and the standing water became almost perfectly still. The air smelled sweet with rot and sharp with minerals.
Miasma slowed near a strip of dark ground, so Aiden activated Perception.
Green Vesperian motes hung over the wet ground. He had seen the same particles around marrowfern and the other things Miasma ate, but there were far more here.
They rose directly from the soil and gathered around roots that looked dead. Miasma inspected the ground, then continued.
"Of course you like it. The place smells like a corpse left in a mineral bath."
Miasma gave him one patient look and kept walking.
"Strong argument."
Nyx was waiting ahead, reduced by the fog to two pale eyes. Aiden closed Perception and followed.
A low patch of dry ground broke the water a few minutes later.
Miasma stopped at its base instead of following Nyx up. Aiden climbed after Nyx and found a boot near the top. The leather had gone black, and the trouser cloth above it had mostly rotted away.
Bone showed beneath strips of dark fabric.
A few steps farther up, the rest of the body lay partly sunk into the peat.
The bog had preserved part of a coat, a leather belt, and one arm folded across the chest. A swollen book was trapped beneath that arm.
The forager had said Corwin went toward the low water and never returned. That didn't prove this was him.
Aiden freed the book without disturbing the bones. Its oilskin cover had cracked at the edges, and half the pages had fused together, but several near the front still opened.
A blurred name remained inside the cover.
Corwin.
"Well. That's unpleasantly efficient."
He checked the first readable pages and found ordinary territory work: weather, water levels, watch times, birds, damaged banks, and repairs needed before heavy rain.
The entries were exactly what a working holder would keep.
Most of the middle pages were ruined. One short entry had survived near the worst of the water damage.
The surviving entry was different from the rest.
The fog moved again today with no wind. The eastern path was gone by noon, though I used it this morning. Three marsh beasts watched me from the same bank and left together when I approached.
I don't know what's doing it. I don't think the fen is doing this by itself. I reported it to the Association office. They won't put it in the record. So I am putting it in mine.
Corwin hadn't found the beast itself. He'd found signs that made him suspect something was controlling the fen.
The changing paths. The fog moving without wind. Different beasts behaving as if they were watching the same ground.
Aiden had seen enough strange things since taking the claim to believe Corwin hadn't imagined it.
That still didn't tell him what lived here, where it was, or whether Corwin had ever found it.
But it gave the dead holder's search a direction.
The rest of the notebook still mattered for a simpler reason. Corwin had recorded weather, repairs, water levels, and animals across years of work.
The Association file claimed nobody had properly held this claim in decades.
Corwin's own records proved otherwise.
This was not the object Corwin had left with the forager's mother before he disappeared. She still had that. Corwin had carried this notebook into the fen himself.
Aiden wrapped the notebook in a dry cloth and put it inside his coat. Corwin had written the warning because the Association refused to record it. Leaving the only copy beside his body would finish the job for them.
"I'll return it if you object."
The bones remained quiet.
"Good. Previous holders are easier than clerks."
Nyx's pale eyes curved.
Aiden started to stand when the rise moved.
The peat rose slightly under both boots, disturbed the water around the edge, then settled. Nyx jumped down from the rise. Miasma was already several steps farther back.
Aiden stayed still, but nothing followed.
He activated Perception again. Green Vesperian motes still filled the peat, with no new concentration that explained the movement.
After waiting for a second movement that never came, Aiden stepped off the rise. Miasma joined him on the firmer peat and kept watching the place where the ground had moved.
"Agreed."
Aiden marked the rise on his territory map using the nearest channel split and the long strip of black peat they had crossed earlier. The inner maps were unreliable, but Nyx could bring him back to the area if he needed it.
Corwin hadn't written anything about the ground moving.
Whatever had caused the tremor was a separate problem until Aiden had a reason to think otherwise.
Apparently the fen likes collecting problems.
"We're going home."
Nyx led them back through the fog.
Cinder was waiting beside the shelter. She checked all three of them as soon as they reached camp, then sniffed the bulge under Aiden's coat.
"I found Corwin."
Her fire rose.
"Not alive."
That made the flames climb higher. Aiden rubbed the side of her neck.
"I'll explain."
Cinder followed him to the workbench. Aiden set Corwin's notebook beside his territory map.