Even the Mort bitch, ﬂawed as she was, carried a tiny hint of that glamour. The Fetch recognized this nobility it was the aura of William Tear, the magnetism that had convinced nearly two thousand people to follow him across an ocean into a vast unknown. A few Tears had been hanged as traitors over the years, but even under the noose, they never lost the subtle air of nobility that seemed to distinguish the family. Tear blood was easy to track, for certain qualities always presented eventually: integrity, intellectualism and iron resolve. He kept his eye on the Tear bloodline, almost idly, trying to convince himself that it might matter. He took a petty enjoyment in tormenting the worst of the Raleighs.

Only the Fetch and his people knew, only they remembered. No one in the Tearling could even see Tear’s better world any longer, let alone muster the courage to dig for it. For three long centuries, the Fetch had watched William Tear’s dream sink further and further into the mire. The Raleighs alternated between indifference and predation, and the nobles fought for each scrap while the people starved. Even before the vast evil of the shipment, the Tear had always been like a wayward child, needing constant care. The Tearling, for starters, where dozens of children disappeared every month under a state seal of approval. Every few years a child would disappear unfortunate, but there were greater evils to contend with. He had ignored the presence of Row Finn in the Fairwitch for many years because the man was contained.

The tearling