Dear Owen,
It’s been a while.
I’m on long-term deployment. Surprised? Yeah, so was I. But you know how the Ministry can be. The state knows best, right? (I actually scoffed writing that. I figured the Ministry goon redacting this might appreciate the sarcasm, so I left it in. You're welcome.)
I never thought they’d pull me for something like this. I mean, I was just a scribe. Quiet duty, low clearance, lots of paperwork, and long hours. But I guess when you tick enough boxes and stay just under the radar, they start wondering what else they can do with you.
Funny the things you remember when your life gets rewritten. Lately, I’ve been thinking about that op we pulled in the Cleavendale badlands. You remember. Two Paddlewickians had been captured. A husband and wife. He didn’t make it. She got taken across the border. That bandit group must’ve thought Cleavendale would keep them safe, especially tucked inside that neutral zone. No man’s land. No laws. Just moss and mud and ancient ruins. They didn’t know how far our tracking crystals work or that the ministry was alerted the second they’d killed our man.
We didn’t know all this at the time, but I heard later that King Roderick leaned on Queen Carmella hard. Said he didn’t care about her bandit problem, just that two of our own had been taken within her kingdom and it was on her to fix it. Carmella is not one to be pushed around, but I heard she was not unsympathetic. The problem was that while the neutral zone was technically in Cleavendale, they couldn’t access it without Plumpudding's permission, as per their treaty. That if he wanted to her to move troops through it, she needed their clearance, and we all know the people of Plumpudding move slow as molasses.
Still, Carmella’s clever. She’d said that as far as she knew, Paddlewick had no such treaty with Plumpudding. So she granted us temporary passage through her lands so that we could handle it ourselves. No war. No delay. Just our soldiers passing through someone else’s backyard.
But she warned him, "If you do this, your soldiers are on their own."
Candy paused mid-sentence, quill hovering over the page. The ink bled faintly into the parchment, an impatient little blot. She exhaled, set the quill down, and leaned back in her chair. The room was quiet, save for the soft ticking of the regulator bell above the hearth and the occasional rustle of wind tugging at the shutters. Candlelight flickered, casting long shadows across the table, and for a moment, she wasn’t in Paddlewick at all. She was back in Petalik, the Paddlewick border town, back marching over that border, back on that grim little mission.
The night had smelled like moss and rust. Damp earth. The kind of cold that settled in behind your ribs and stayed there. Cameron, because she had been Cameron, then, had crouched behind a half-fallen ruin wall, shoulder pressed to Owen’s, both of them shivering in their oilcloth gear. Around them, the borderlands slouched in moonless darkness, ancient trees reaching crooked arms overhead like they were trying to blot out the stars.
They waited in silence. Far ahead, the bandit camp flickered with the erratic glow of cookfires and swaying lanterns. Too much noise. Too much ease. They thought they were safe.
"Two on the west ridge," Owen had murmured.
Cameron nodded. "I'll take left."
They moved like breath, on conditioned instinct. One step, two... then sudden violence. A gasp. A gurgle. A body dropping to the forest floor.
Further out, Marcus's squad was already moving through the underbrush, clearing the eastern perimeter. From the shallow ridge, Cameron spotted the cages. Rough wood, iron hinges. Figures inside, huddled and motionless. Women. Boys. One with a Plumpudding crest sewn crookedly into the shoulder of her torn gown.
Cameron swallowed hard. By the time the alarm finally went up: a short, panicked cry and the sound of breaking metal, half the guards were down. The rest scrambled for weapons or ran. Most didn’t make it far.
Then the firebombs started. A tent erupted in flame. Someone screamed. Cameron ducked behind a barrel, loading his crossbow with trembling hands. The light painted everything orange and sharp. Shouts mingled with the clash of swords.
When the smoke cleared, the last of the bandits were corralled near the main structure, an old, half-sunken temple repurposed into a shack. That’s when he came out. The leader. Cameron could still see him, tall and bald. That awful scar curling up past his eye like a second mouth.
He dragged the Paddlewickian woman with him. She stumbled, barefoot, arms bound in front. Her tunic was little more than a shred.
"Nobody move!" he barked.
They formed a ring, inching closer. Cameron raised a hand. "Let her go."
"You come one step closer, and she dies."
His knife pressed to her neck. She winced but didn’t cry out.
Owen stepped forward slowly. "You kill her and you die. She's the only thing keeping you alive in this moment. You can’t win this. Drop the weapon. You’ll get a trial. Carmella’s court is fair."
He laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "You think I care about trials? Now get the hells away from me!!"
Owen had looked at the woman. We had her full bio from the ministry. 'Canely, it's going to be ok. You're not going anywhere." She couldn't nod or answer, but the look in her eyes and her posture change said she knew. She believed him.
For a breath, the world stilled. No birds. No wind. Just the glint of moonlight on steel and the soft intake of the woman’s breath.
The man peeked from behind the woman to yell a retort, "Oh yes she is -"
Then Owen moved. The knife flashed through the air, clean over Canely’s shoulder, right into the man’s eye socket. One sound, wet and final. He collapsed.
The woman stood trembling... then she looked at Owen, eyes wide but not terrified. Just... relieved. She sagged forward as if someone had finally taken a weight off her shoulders.
Cameron had stepped in, catching her before she hit the ground. "You’re safe now."
And she was. Somehow, against the odds, she was. They’d helped the hostages back out of the neutral zone. Katie Stichwell, the Captain of Cleavendale's guards, was there with a troop of soldiers and healers to help the wounded and return the lost back where they belonged.
In the end, what Candy remembered most wasn’t the chaos. Not the firebombs. Not the shouting or even the shock of death settling into the dirt. It was her, the woman. Canely.
She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t begged. The moment Owen told her she was safe, she believed it. Even with the blade brushing her throat, even half-naked and bruised. That woman had trusted them. Trusted Paddlewick. Trusted the creed they were trained into: protect, retrieve, restore.
Candy shifted in her seat, the weight of that faith still heavy. Back then, it had felt righteous. Even clean. They were soldiers. They saved people. No one questioned their roles. Now? She was a wife. A woman. Her weapons confiscated, her permissions revoked, and her autonomy dictated by marriage vows and skirt lengths. She was no longer the protector, but rather the protected.
Still, inside where memory lived, she was Cameron. Still, someone who’d moved through shadow and storm for a stranger, who’d carried the bleeding across borders just to say: You’re safe now.
A knock sounded faintly down the hall. Marcus, probably checking the fire. Candy snapped out of her memory. She picked up her quill and finished her writings. The parchment before her waited. She dipped her quill. And wrote on.
When the ink dried, she set the quill aside and folded the parchment with care. The envelope waited, pre-addressed in the old script of Cameron Alistair. She slipped the letter inside, pressed the wax seal, and held it for a breath before adding it to the Ministry's outgoing box by the door.
One more ghost, mailed into motion.