Mister Williamson,

Thank you for a bit of comedy in all this bleakness. It is truly heartwarming to see you think that you and I are peers. I know it’s difficult to remember this when I’m whooping it up onstage, but I am a wizard and a scholar. You cart geeks around this state and put them on display for money. If it wasn’t for people like me and Thorn, this show would be nothing but a farce, and your Confederacy would have crumpled like a house of cards within a year.

I don’t know what missions you’ve helped Thorn with in the past, but the danger here is far greater than anything you’ve seen before. Do you know who we’re hunting? Prince Remus’s apprentice. That Prince Remus, the man every wizard in the country damns under his breath. You’ve heard the rumors about him, I’m certain: Prince Remus is a rogue homunculus seeking revenge against the practices that created him; Prince Remus is a voodoo zombie with ten men’s brains sewn into his head; Prince Remus stole the pants off the Devil while he was bathing and only gave them back in exchange for infernal luck. I had the luxury of tracking his escapades while serving in Fort Sumner, and I have a more frightening theory: Prince Remus is a creature of raw chaos. It is the only explanation as to how several experienced wizards failed to stop him; he’s not the sort of beast that can be hunted. The concept of being caught or beaten by a respectable, orderly wizard simply doesn’t apply to him.

At first it seemed like his apprentice hadn’t inherited that same ability, but nine days ago, all of my scrying tools started losing focus. The damned monocle will only show me different views of the same stormy sea. Anything the listening horn tells me is warped by some horrible cracked belching, like a toad’s call pulled inside out. Prince Remus knows we’re here, I’m certain. I don’t know where he is or how he’s found us, but he’s trying to hide the apprentice. Cleburne was the last fool to walk into one of his traps knowingly, and they had to bury him in a closed casket.

But go ahead. Send your people to Henshaw. Tell them what you see fit. Wizardry is a practice of order; perhaps the chaos of the common folk will force something to give. Or maybe you’ll find one of them trapped in a briar patch, unable to move without thorns gouging into their chest, each vine growing by the minute until there’s nothing left to see of them. I don’t care; I’m busy. And stop complaining about my boots. Maybe if I had my own horse instead of a half-blind draft mare, I’d actually need my spurs.