Yven sat on the edge of the sugarcane fields, sunlight warming the tops of her curved horns and shining in her cobalt hair. She watched all the people gathered around the boathouse, her aunts and uncles speaking to a golden guard, everyone staring at the ceiling inside. She couldn’t see Gauv’s body from here, but she could see the wooden beam sticking out of the roof, colored red by his blood, tufts of white fur held in its splinters. Yven strained to hear what they said inside, but all she heard was the muddy slog of the mules hooves as it walked its circle around the mill, turning the stones as her cousins fed sugarcane stalks into the crusher.

“How’s this holding up?” Someone tugged on the bandage on her arm.

“Ow!” Yven flinched away. “Mom, stop.”

An older anthral who appeared very much like Yven did – like Gauv had, before – sat down and stuck her thin legs out. From beneath torn pants woven from yellow grass, blue hooves swayed back and forth to some unheard rhythm. “Taskmaster says it was probably a starving sanguinate sick on tainted blood.”

“It wasn’t.” Yven shook her head, remembering the enormous red woman that had killed Gauv. “I don’t even think it was an anthral. It had scales! And it didn’t eat him. It just-“

“Calm down, calm down.” A white-furred hand patted Yven’s shoulder. When Yven flinched, her mother said, “Sorry. We know what happened. We’ve all seen him. Taskmaster’s going to compensate us fifty pearls for it.”

“Oh, god, mom.” Yven put her face in her hands and whimpered.

“What? I know it’s not a lot, but it was Gauv. He wasn’t worth that much.”

The golden guard – the island’s taskmaster – walked out of the boathouse with a half dozen lustrous-furred anthrals following him out. Yven heard him say, “Just get rid of the body however suits you. I’ll send someone to watch the place tonight, but consider leaving out a blood offering. If they come back hungry, they’ll just drink and leave.”

The gathered uncles and aunts nodded at each other like that was wise. Yven felt sick. She got up and disappeared into the sugarcane. She pushed between the stalks, pink cane flowers swinging in the air above her. Her mom didn’t bother to call after her. Nobody had asked her where her injuries had come from, just assuming it was from whoever killed Gauv. Yven had never been forthcoming about how her brother treated her before, and now that he was dead, there was no point.

*

“The Vermillion Beast,” Aetha told her huntmasters. “Call it that and describe it as that. Let no one describe it as a person, even if it appears as one. We are hunting an animal. It will flee or fight according to the rules of an animal. And it should be shown the respect of an honored beast, not something as lowly as a person.”

“Well enough, my queen.” Kan’al’oth flex his hand, the hunter instinct of a littorn carnivate visible in the movement of his claws. They walked through the hunting hall where the bones and heads of kills were displayed, weapons and traps hung on the walls. This was in the palace tower, and great windows let in such abundant light that sun-repulsed guards wore shrouds of black cloth beneath their golden helms as they patrolled the balconies outside. Kan said, “I will send a notice and written description throughout the city so that sightings can be reported. If we offer a reward of pearls for sightings, the peasants will start searching on our behalf.”

Aetha added, “And blood for any sanguinate servants or guards that see it or help capture it. As for the description, did not artists witness our battle? I would have portraits of it from any who can, that all can recognize it on sight.”

“Oh, they remember how it looks.” Quil’al’nex walked between Kan and Aetha, advancing to the front of the long room and pushing open the windows. “The vermillion hue you speak of is very present in their minds. It made an impression.”

“Don’t be cagey,” Kan chided, his expression gruff beneath his beard. “What are you hinting at?”

When Quil didn’t answer, Aetha followed him onto the balcony. On instinct, she looked first at the promenade, where a golden guard oversaw a workforce of peasants tiredly scrubbing blood from the marble. They’d been out there all day, and would remain until each stain was erased. She looked then to either side, where the foundations for Eiri’el’s commemorative arch had been completed and framing for the stonework had begun. It was only gradually that Aetha noticed, first one and then more strewn about the city, poles from which flew unadorned vermillion pennants.

“Do you see what I mean?” Quil said.

“Of course I do,” Aetha snapped at him. “And what am I to make of it?”

“I’m sure I cannot advise my queen on such social matters. I’m only a humble hunter, after all.”

Aetha growled at him, then eyed Kan, “Have someone else send out the notices of the hunt. I want you to hunt the Beast personally. Start in the dungeon. That’s where I saw it last. Quil and I will be busy in the city reminding these poor, mundane creatures who they should be cheering for.”

*

When Yven was tired of walking alone, she came back to the house to find the doors shut, the windows closed, the place seemingly deserted. The mule still walked its circle around the little mill, the blinders wrapping its head keeping it ignorant to the fact that it had been abandoned. Yven was just about to step out from among the sugarcane, about to call out after her family, when someone grabbed her arm and pulled her down.

“Quiet, Yven!” Her mother snapped. “You want us all to get sick?”

Crouching in the cane, looking out, Yven noticed the man coming along the road from the city. Just a normal person, very much like them, an anthral dressed in yellow. He had linen bags tossed over his shoulder, and as he came near he called out, “Ho, is anyone here? Anyone?” He waited in silence, pacing the little road near the mill. He watched the mule pacing. He shouted again, “You sell sugar, don’t you? Come on, I’ve brought pearls and tobacco for trade!”

One of Yven’s uncles shouted back from the house, “We don’t deal with anyone from the city! You’ve got the plague on you, like as not. Go on back how you came. No business for you here!”

“How are we to hold together as a people if we’re too afraid to face each other?” The man said, spreading his arms. “We’ll all go hungry if we can’t trade!”

Yven groaned and sat back, watching unhappily. Their farm was plague-free. The entirety of the Amaranth Isle had been free of the plagues ever since the first had crept up in the city generations back, one of the last healthy places in the Golden Reef. For this man to get here, he would’ve had to evade the golden guards on the bridge somehow. This happened sometimes. People get desperate. By the gray of the man’s umber fur, he was old, working well past his prime. Maybe the young people on his plantation were sick. All the more reason to stay away.

“Go on, fast now!” The uncle in the house shouted. “I’ll call the taskmaster on you! Sick the sanguinates on you!”

Grumbling, the stranger abruptly turned and grabbed their mule, pulling it free of the mill’s yoke.

Yven jumped to her feet, shouting, “Hey! Hey, leave that alone!” Her mother tried to stop her, but it was all pointless by then anyway. The stranger clambered onto the mule’s back and kicked its sides, turning it to the road. He rode away with their only mule, and nobody was close enough to stop him.