Found:
These last days have been... interesting.
My endevours have paid off. The wife, Rosalin, was willing to listen. It didn't take much to turn her against the husband she so despises. Indeed, word has already gotten around town that the man was faking the symptoms of his "curse" and that she has since thrown him out of their shared abode.
Meanwhile, Scanie's rumours of treasure and marked trees have turned more than enough heads around Bree to neatly divert attention from foolish superstitions. The girl is certainly wily and talented with her tongue. I must find a way to thank her for her aid.
Then, the hanger-on Harold came to find me with a message from the Bard. He wished to see me as a matter of urgency.
Given the distant and strained nature of our relationship over the last few weeks, I didn't know what to expect, but it was certainly not that.
Millie has spoken of a burns patient several times now. A man in the care of Elias that she had helped to treat. None of us pressed her for details. Why would we? But, it seems, that the Bard did just that and it was just this thing that he wished to speak of.
I tried to deny it at first. It couldn't be true. I'd been there, after all. I'd followed the trail, found the corpse, decapitated it, dragged it free, built the pyre with my own two hands and watched him burn. I'd spent months in mourning. I had suffered his loss and my own impotence in preventing it. I had cried and screamed and died inside. I hadn't done all that on a case of mistaken identity. It had to be him. The odds of another man of similar height, build and clothing dying within days, and half a mile from the fallen horse that I had bought, were just too high.
But the one I found had neither face or eyes. I couldn't identify him with absolute accuracy.
However, Millie's description as given to Ry, the same name, and the sketches she had done of the man...
After getting into quite a heated argument with a rock, and breaking my knuckles in the process, I went to see Elias. He lied. He lied to my face repeatedly. He knew. That weasly little scarecrow knew and said nothing. He even tried to double down on his lies and then turn it back on me when I refused to tell him how I knew.
He told me more than he thinks, though.
I am left with a choice. Walk away, forget about him and it, move on with my life and hope to never cross paths with the man again. Or find him myself.
The latter, of course, would not be easy. I have all the tracking skills of a dead frog and he is what he is. Luckily, he is not the only one of his kind that I know, and the other... well, he wishes to think of me as a daughter. Time to act like one, then, and ask dear daddy to train me. Who better to teach me to track a Ranger than another Ranger?
It'll take time, of course. A lot of time. As quick a study as I usually am, as devoted as I am to learning when something catches my interest, one does not go from no skill to mastery overnight. I am a patient woman. I will learn.
But even should my anger fade, even should my interest wane, I am at least owed answers.
