One week after I reached Marchgate, pale light slipped around the shutters and laid a narrow bar across the floor. I woke with my teeth clenched and the blanket twisted around my legs, having lost the argument with sleep several times during the night.
Seven mornings had passed without anything confirming what happened to Sera, Bram, or the child. The search hadn’t been one ride. Teams returned at odd hours for fresh horses, rope, food, and replacements, then went east again. Each sweep widened through the outer fields and farms, then the woodline and roads beyond Brookhaven, while a collapse-trained rider worked the safe edge. The last team had gone out again the previous afternoon and hadn’t returned before I slept. Whenever footsteps climbed the stairs, some foolish part of me expected them to stop outside my door with news that could be held in one hand. Each time, they continued.
There had been sleep, though rarely a full stretch of it. Tormund had put the bones back where they belonged and mended what the draught had left torn. The chapel would check his work today. Tomas charged me for every meal and never carried one upstairs. Townspeople offered condolences I had no shape for. I thanked them when I remembered.
My right hand rested in its support. The fingers opened and closed, though hard gripping still made them tremble. The leg held cleanly. What remained was the deep, sour fatigue the Flood had left behind.
I stood. The room stayed level. Good enough for breakfast.
Downstairs, the Scarred Flagon had already begun its morning argument with the world. Cups struck tables. A chair scraped with such force that it suggested either poor manners or a dramatic confession. Someone laughed, and someone else told him to choke on it. The inn was loud, warm, and slightly dangerous before breakfast, which made it more reassuring than rooms that pretended nobody ever spilled wine.
I dressed and took longer than pride preferred. The dark linen shirt was new. Tomas had sent a boy out with my coppers on the second day, the one I arrived in having been cut off me, and it resisted every attempt to fasten it neatly, so I accepted a crooked collar. Duskfang went at my side. The rest of my gear remained close and orderly. I’d paid for comfort, and comfort had apparently decided to become a permanent resident before I did.
At the top of the stairs, the first step looked at me with the confidence of an enemy who had already won once. I took it anyway.
Below, Tomas stood behind the bar with his iron-shod stick hooked against one leg. He was listening to a kitchen girl explain something with both hands while a stocky dwarf in a flour-dusted apron waited beside a crate. Tomas watched their hands instead of their faces. That was how he hunted lies, onions, or whatever crime had been committed against the inn's breakfast.
“Those aren't the onions I ordered,” he said.
The dwarf spread his palms. “They're onions.”
“They've been stored beside lamp oil.” Tomas nudged the crate with his stick. “They taste of a fire that never happened. Send them back.”
“The cart's gone.”
“Then find the driver before he reaches the next street.”
The dwarf muttered into his beard. The kitchen girl took the crate away, and he followed with the resigned pace of a man who had discovered that arguing with Tomas was less profitable than surrendering.
Only then did Tomas look toward the stairs.
He took a shallow bowl from beneath the bar and set it before me at a corner table, clear of the traffic. Eggs sat over toasted bread, with peppered roots and smoked meat beside them. Steam rose from bitter tea. My stomach abandoned all dignity at once.
“Breakfast,” Tomas said.
“You brought this up?”
“Eat.”
He set the butter down on his way past and returned to the bar, where a wet cloak had started a border dispute between two residents.
The eggs were hot, the toast buttered, and he’d put me out of traffic without asking what sleep had done. Something under my ribs unclenched a notch.
I ate slowly. The breakfast was excellent, which felt almost rude under the circumstances. Marchgate hadn't solved anything for me. It’d kept putting food in front of me, changing dressings, and leaving room for a person who didn't know how to ask for it. I preferred demands. They were easier to answer.
When the bowl was empty, I placed three copper coins beside it. Tomas pushed them back without slowing.
“Paid through today.”
I pocketed them.
“The Sword Chapel expects you at ninth bell,” he said. “Their healer came asking here during supper, and I’d rather not give her the habit.”
I pocketed Tomas’s rejected coins and pushed myself upright.
“The Sword Chapel,” he said.
“You make it sound compulsory.”
“Only if you want them to stop sending healers into my breakfast.”
He held the door. I joined the morning traffic.
The chapel stood beyond the smithies, its pale stone marked by crossed blades. Inside, a woman with a bandaged forehead slept on a bench. A boy carried a basin past me. Near the altar, a young healer had both hands beneath a gate laborer’s shoulder.
“Lift your arm.”
He tried. The elbow stalled level with his chest.
“Again. Slower.”
Gold light gathered under her palms. It didn’t blaze. It threaded inward, following whatever damage her fingers had found. The laborer hissed as his shoulder shifted, then lifted his arm past his head and stared at it.
“No beams today,” she said.
“The gate captain won’t like that.”
“He can dislike it with both shoulders working.”
The laborer reached for his coat.
“Other arm,” she said.
He worked the sleeve over the restored shoulder first.
“You knew I’d do that.”
“Everyone does. Lift it again.”
He obeyed. The arm rose cleanly, though his mouth tightened near the top.
“No overhead hauling today. Test it at dawn. If it swells, come back.”
He grumbled, but he listened. She fitted a sling loose enough to discourage him without taking the joint out of use, then wrote three lines for his captain and made him repeat them before she let him leave.
She reached for a cloth. I saw the breath she hid in the motion. Four patients waited. The power had come out of her, not the room.
Only then did I take in the rest of her: silver-blond hair escaping its ribbon to brush one pointed ear, green eyes, a small, fine-boned frame under white-and-gold vestments. The cloth drew close at her waist when she turned. I looked a heartbeat too long.
Those green eyes found me.
“Edrin Hale.”
“I was hoping to arrive mysteriously.”
“Tormund keeps notes.” She pointed to the table. “Sit.”
I sat and offered my right hand. She loosened the support without disturbing the alignment, then pressed along each mended bone.
“Close.”
I made a fist.
“Harder.”
I shifted my thumb for leverage. One of her fingers pinned it where it belonged.
“That’s a different test.”
“It was going to be a better result.”
“It was going to be a false one.”
I closed the hand properly. The fingers shook before the grip reached full strength.
“That’s the limit,” she said.
“I had a more flattering limit in mind.”
“Keep it in mind. Don’t put a sword in it.”
She tested the wrist, then wrapped the hand again with narrow splints and clean cord. No gold this time. Tormund’s mending had held. What I lacked couldn’t be forced into existence twice.
“Ordinary use is fine,” she said. “No striking, hard gripping, or catching your weight. Three more days.”
“You rehearsed that.”
“Tormund wrote it.”
She tapped my right knee. “Walk to the door and back.”
I did. The leg bent, took my weight, and returned it without pain. The weakness sat everywhere else.
“The puncture?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Good. That part’s done.” She counted my pulse. “This isn’t.”
“What am I doing wrong?”
“Sleeping badly. Eating less than you think. Recovering from something I can’t identify.”
A brown-haired acolyte steadied a basin at the next table while an old woman held her shaking hand above it.
“Aldus, level,” the healer said.
He adjusted it at once. His kind face seemed to slide out of memory whenever I looked away.
The cloth over my left palm had shifted. Aldus’s gaze caught on the clean-edged mark there, then returned to his basin.
“Fresh bandages and salve,” the healer said. “Two silver. Today’s examination is covered by the chapel fund Aldara authorized.”
I paid for the supplies. She handed me the bundle.
“Three days,” she said. “Midday.”
“I can remember three days.”
“Good. I’m Elowen.”
“Edrin.”
“I know.” She was already reaching for the next patient. “Three days.”
Outside, I opened and closed the supported hand once. The leg was healed. The rest of me had work left. Behind me, Elowen called the next patient before the chapel door swung shut.
The chapel door had barely closed behind me when a boy in the yard pointed toward the eastern road.
“Soldier’s looking for you.”
He ran off before I answered.
Pell Dunwick waited beneath the gatehouse awning. His chainmail bunched at one shoulder, and his hands kept finding new positions at his sides.
“Edrin.”
I stopped in front of him. “Tell me.”
“The search reached Brookhaven. They found no one.”
A wagon wheel struck the gate stones behind us. For a moment that was the only sound I understood.
“How bad?”
Pell took off his helmet. He turned it once in his hands before answering.
“You saw them return?” I asked.
“At dawn. The horses had mud to their bellies. One saddle came back tied across another.”
“That was the last rotation?”
“Yes. Six days of fresh horses and wider circles. This team made the final pass along the collapse.”
“And you asked them yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Did they argue about what they saw?”
“About how close to go. Not about Brookhaven.”
“There isn’t a town to walk through. The hill folded into itself. One end of the road stands above the old rooftops. The other end is under them. Your brook runs into a crack and doesn’t come back out.”
I’d watched it happen. Hearing the shape of it from a man who hadn’t loved any part of the place made it larger.
“Could they see the common?”
“Part of the fountain. Nothing else they could name.”
“The garden track?”
“Searched from the last standing wall to the fields. They checked the cart path, both farms, the woodline, and the roads out.”
“Bram was near the cart path. Sera was behind him.”
“I know. Those names were in the orders.”
“Did the riders use them?”
“At every place the ground opened. They called until dark.”
That hurt differently. Somewhere in the wreck of Brookhaven, strangers had shouted Sera’s name into holes where my voice should’ve been.
“Tracks?”
“Nothing fresh they could follow. The collapse and the rain took too much of the ground.”
The answer left me staring past him at a teamster backing a cart away from the arch. The man swore at one horse by name. It shook its mane and ignored him.
“Where I came out?” I asked.
“They marked the root fissure above the wagon road. Only your tracks reached it. They didn’t enter.”
“Why not?”
“Because the passage was unstable, and because nobody you saw escaped underground. The riders searched the route they took on the surface.”
“I should’ve gone with them.”
“They left while Tormund was setting your hand.”
“I could’ve ridden.”
Pell looked at the support Elowen had just retied. “They’d have assigned someone to keep you on the horse.”
“How fortunate for everyone that I stayed in bed.”
He went still. I’d meant to strike the fact and hit him instead. The apology reached my teeth and stopped there.
“They needed every rider looking at the ground,” he said.
Correct. Sensible. I hated both words.
“The center?”
“Still moving. They worked the safe edge and stopped before dark.” Pell swallowed. “The ground opened under one horse near the road. They cut the harness and pulled the rider clear. After that, they wouldn’t put weight where the soil had cracked.”
“So the center’s still unsearched.”
“Buried. Not searched.”
Not the same thing. I grabbed the difference hard enough to make it one.
“No bodies they could identify,” Pell said. “No people. No trail.”
“No bodies.”
“No.”
The last time I’d seen Sera, she’d been dragging an old man toward the fields. Bram had still been moving with the child at his neck. The search had found neither of them. It hadn’t found what happened after I lost sight of them either.
“Were they good?” I asked.
“Two road scouts. One had worked collapses. The others knew the farms.”
“Then they did what they could.”
“Yes.”
“And you came to tell me.”
“Aldara ordered it.”
“You still came.”
“I’m sorry,” Pell said.
The gate opened for a farmer’s cart. Cold daylight entered under the arch with it.
I stepped out of the cart’s way. Pell returned to his post, and I walked back into Marchgate carrying exactly what he’d brought me.
No one found.
By the time I reached the Scarred Flagon, evening traffic filled the street. Workers went home. Carts found yards. Somewhere below my room, a fiddle attacked the same four notes until one of them surrendered.
I shut the door and waited.
For seven days Astarra had given me no warning, no remark, not even the pressure of attention. The mark warmed only after the latch caught.
“You went quiet whenever the chapel came near me.”
Priests look inward while they mend.
“You didn’t want to be what they found.”
No.
The answer came cleanly. That made it worse.
“Could a priest sense you?”
If they’d known where to look.
“Did the people who built that prison know the bond could carry you out?”
I don’t know what they built for. I knew only that the bond could carry me out.
“Were you certain it’d work?”
I knew it could.
“And if it killed me?”
You would’ve died. I would’ve remained.
“You left that out.”
You were already dying.
I let the answer sit between us and reached for Duskfang on the table. I took the hilt in my left hand and stood with one hip against the bedpost. The pact answered as a narrow current, nothing like the Flood. A dusk-colored line found the edge, held through one breath, and disappeared.
My knees shook. I put the sword down before the room had a chance to move.
Your body is still empty.
“I noticed. Did that little trick do it?”
No. The edge is yours whenever you can hold it. The Flood emptied you because you opened everything at once.
“So this costs nothing.”
It requires attention. Not payment.
The dark line hadn’t borrowed strength from tomorrow or fed some hidden tally. It’d simply answered. My fingers tightened around empty air before I caught them. Once my body recovered, I could call it again.
I wanted to.
“Can you open the Flood without me?”
No. I can offer it. You choose.
I glanced at the locked door. My shoulders stayed tight.
Below us, the fiddle found a fifth note and immediately regretted it.
“At the prison door, you told me you could lie.”
Yes.
“Have you?”
A pause. Small enough to miss if I’d wanted the answer badly.
Not in any word I’ve given you.
“That isn’t the same as no.”
No.
I sat on the bed. “What else can you do?”
Withhold. Answer exactly what you ask. Give you a true thing and let you mistake its shape.
“And the bond lets that through.”
The bond carries what we give it. It doesn’t make either of us honest.
“Why tell me?”
Because a useful lie requires trust.
The mark cooled against my wrist.
You haven’t given me enough.
The sharpness was almost a relief.
“What do you want from me?”
I told you beneath the mountain.
Victory.
“Over whom?”
The bond closed around the question like a fist.
Not yet.
The warped reflection in Duskfang’s edge showed the room, the bed, and one narrow man waiting for a demon to improve her answer.
She didn’t.
By the time I came downstairs, the fiddle had given way to voices, and the rain had stopped tapping at the shutters. A week of healing had narrowed my world to the inn, the healer's door, and the short walk between them.
The common room was busy without being cheerful. Watchmen had come in from the eastern road with mud on their boots and wet wool steaming near the hearth. Two mill hands argued over a length of split timber while a courier tried to eat around an elbow planted in the middle of the table. Nobody paid me more than a passing glance. Marchgate had no reason to stop its evening for me.
Tomas stood behind the bar, broad shoulders bent over a pot. His iron-shod stick leaned against the wall within reach. He watched the hands of the people nearest him, not their faces, and wiped an already clean patch of wood.
“Kitchen's still warm,” he said.
“I was upstairs making a heroic recovery.”
“From what?”
“The stairs.”
His expression didn't move. “They survived.”
“A narrow victory for both of us.”
He filled a brown, warped bowl from the pot and set it before me at a small table near the wall.
“Eat,” he said, and went back to the bar.
The stew tasted of onions, pepper, and something smoky that had no business coming from such an innocent pot. I ate slowly at first, then faster. Hunger had waited behind my ribs all week, patient as a creditor. The first hot mouthful reminded me that food could still be pleasure instead of medicine.
At the nearest table, a watchwoman with a copper braid shook four knucklebones in one hand. A dented tin mug waited near her elbow, beside the last honey cake on a chipped plate.
She caught me looking. “Four bones. Four throws. Put them all in the mug and the cake’s yours.”
“I was looking at the cake.”
“Then your motives are pure.”
The courier beside her moved his stew out of range. I took the bones.
The first dropped cleanly into the mug. The second clipped the rim and landed in the courier’s hood.
He found it there, held it up between two fingers, and looked at Tomas. “Is he allowed weapons?”
“Not anymore,” Tomas said.
The table laughed. I put the third bone in the mug, sent the fourth skittering beneath a chair, and bowed from where I sat.
“A stirring performance,” I said.
“You lost.” The watchwoman tore the honey cake in half and slid me the smaller piece. Its edge was black. “That earned the burnt part.”
I ate it with honey on my thumb and laughed when the courier checked his hood before every throw after mine.
My left wrist warmed beneath the table. The pact mark gave one slow pulse, dark heat pressing through, then settled. I kept my hand out of sight until it passed.
Tomas set down a water jug on his way past. I poured, and he was gone before I could thank him.
When I finished, Tomas held out his hand. I counted fifty-eight copper coins into his palm, eight for the meal and fifty for another night upstairs. The coins clicked together, bright and unremarkable.
“Room through tomorrow,” Tomas said.
“I’ll take it.”
I set my spoon aside and reached for the bundle I’d kept near the wall. The selected Shadowmaw valuables were wrapped separately from the rest. I had no wish to guess at their worth, and less wish to carry them through Marchgate while inviting strangers to notice my pockets.
“Tomorrow I'm going to Harlow's Trading Post,” I said. “I'll have these appraised by someone who knows what they're looking at.”
Tomas glanced at the bundle. “Harlow's is four streets and a bad corner.”
“I'll walk it slowly.”
“Keep the bundle covered.”
He glanced at the bundle. “There's a strongbox behind the bar. Two coppers a night, and I'd rather not have thieves learning my door.”
“I wasn't planning to parade it through the streets.”
“Good. I've trouble enough without it.”
Tomorrow. Harlow's Trading Post. A fair look and a fair price if the pieces proved worth selling, and then back to the inn. No road beyond Marchgate. No promise that coin could buy a way into buried ruins. One thing I could finish before the week did.
Upstairs, I laid the clean wrap and salve beside my clothes, then set the wrapped Shadowmaw bundle by the door. The cave crystal made a hard blue angle beneath one fold. By the morning bell, it’d be on Harlow’s counter.