The wagon track dipped between thorn hedges and climbed toward country I’d never seen. I kept Duskfang in my left hand as a walking staff and the splinted right against my ribs. The arrangement kept me moving. I had no interest in letting the road become the most difficult thing I survived that week.
Stop.
I did, because Astarra had developed an unfortunate talent for making a single word sound like an approaching blade.
The white flowers.
Hedge blossom crowded the ditch, small white stars among thorns. Bees worked them with the concentration of priests.
“They grow everywhere.”
Not where I was.
There was no mockery in it. Six centuries behind stone, and she’d stopped me for hedge blossom.
I looked again. Brookhaven had been full of the same flowers. Maren cut them back from the fence every spring and complained that roots possessed a criminal mind. I’d never considered them worth stopping for. Apparently freedom had lower standards than I did.
“They smell better when it rains,” I said.
Astarra offered no answer, but the quiet felt occupied.
Beyond the next rise an axe struck timber. A cart answered with the long complaint of an unoiled wheel. Then the land opened, and I stopped walking.
I’d been looking for a village. What was in front of me was a line.
It ran across the country from one fold of ground to the other, grey and level and made by hands, and it took me a while to understand I was looking at a wall, because I’d never seen a wall that didn’t end. Brookhaven had a fence. This went out to the left until the haze took it and out to the right until it met rising ground and climbed it, with towers standing up out of it at even intervals, the way fence posts stand, except each one was the size of Kade’s tavern.
There was a banner on every tower, all of them the same banner, all hanging the same way in the same wind, and something about that frightened me more than the wall did.
Smoke came up from behind it in a band. Not one chimney, or six. A haze the length of the whole thing, lying along the top of the stone and drifting east, and it took me another moment to work out that it was kitchens. Hundreds of them, all at once, because it was afternoon and people were going to eat.
“That’s a town,” I said.
Astarra said nothing, which I’d already learned to read.
I walked most of an hour and it kept getting bigger, which I hadn’t expected and didn’t enjoy.
Four days of stone had taught me not to trust open distance. Here were roofs, and laundry between upper windows, and bells: one inside the walls, then another farther off, then a third I couldn’t place at all.
Shadowmaw had carried me somewhere. That was all I knew.
The mountain behind me gave nothing back: one green ridge among many, with no mark to show where Brookhaven had fallen or how far the tunnels had run. I could’ve been east, west, or halfway beneath a map Kade once unfolded on the tavern table and immediately stained with beer.
“Walls,” I said. “I was beginning to think the road was decorative.”
My wagon track gave up its name a mile out and ran into something else.
The March Road came down out of the northwest in two ruts a wagon wide, packed pale and worn into a dish along the middle, with people on it in both directions as far as I could see. A grain train of six wagons, a boy asleep on the last. A family walking beside a handcart. Two riders in gold-cloaked half-plate going the other way at a trot, who looked at me for exactly as long as they needed to and then never again.
I’d spent four days believing I might be the only living thing left. It took about a hundred paces of that road to correct me, and I found that I resented it.
By the time the gate rose over me I could tell the ring of hammer on metal from the knock of carpentry from the sharper cries of people objecting to prices.
The gate was standing open and I stopped under it anyway.
Two leaves of banded oak, each wide enough to take a hay wagon, each tall enough that a man on another man’s shoulders couldn’t have reached the top band. They stood folded back into the stone, over iron plates let into the road and worn bright where they swung. Above me a chain as thick as my wrist ran up into the dark of the arch and didn’t move.
Brookhaven’s gate was a hurdle Perrin Ash’s father took down every spring to get the hay in.
I stood there working out how many men it’d take to close what was hanging over my head, and how long they’d need, and I got the answer wrong by about four hundred people, though I didn’t know that yet.
Porters worked around the wagons, and two boys carried kindling under the eye of an old dwarf with a hammer through his belt. Brookhaven saw dwarves twice a year and housed none. I stopped staring before I became the entertainment.
A worker beneath the gate shelter read arrivals aloud.
“South road, three wagons. Harl Fenner, grain. Pellin family, passage east. One mule lame, one driver drunk.”
“He isn’t drunk,” the driver called.
“Then he walks like a drunk.” The worker didn’t look up. “North road, two riders. Ashford levy returning. No disputes reported.”
People were counted here. Wagons were noticed. Even a mule’s bad leg entered the record. That seemed more miraculous than the walls.
The soldier checking arrivals stood just inside the arch. Sandy hair showed beneath a worn helm. His armor had been repaired so often that the original metal was difficult to identify, and he rubbed an old scar near his wrist whenever the line paused.
He stopped the next wagon, looked beneath its canvas, checked the driver’s face, and waved it through.
“Name.”
“Edrin.”
“From where?”
“Brookhaven.” I shifted Duskfang against the stone. His gaze found the dark blade and returned to me. “What town is this?”
“Marchgate. Ashward Gate.”
I knew Marchgate from traders and Kade’s stories. Knowing the name returned one point to a map that had otherwise gone blank. It didn’t tell me what the mountain had done with the miles between.
The gate clerk’s voice faltered over the next arrival. The soldier’s thumb stopped on his scar.
“What happened?”
“Brookhaven is gone. The ground opened beneath it. When I fell, people were running along the garden track toward the fields. I couldn’t see whether they reached solid ground.”
His attention sharpened. “You last saw them above the collapse?”
“Above me and moving outward.”
“They may have cleared it.”
“They may have. I don’t know.”
I needed someone who could turn uncertainty into horses, ropes, lanterns, and people who knew the roads. The soldier looked like the first link in that chain, not the last.
“Dain,” the gate clerk called, “do you want the eastbound carter held?”
“No. He’ll miss the light. Let him through.”
So: Dain.
He pointed along the road inside the wall. “Follow the bells to the watch post with the red pennant. Ask for Aldara. Tell her exactly what you told me.”
“She can send a search?”
“She can decide.” He glanced toward a bench beneath the shelter. “Sit while I find someone to take you.”
The bench made a persuasive argument. I ignored it.
“Find them quickly.”
Dain sent a watchman ahead and another beside me with my pack. I objected once. The watchman said nothing and kept the pack, which was an efficient way to win.
Marchgate went up the slope away from the gate in terraces, and the March Road went up with it, straight, wide enough for two wagons to pass without either driver having to say anything about it. I’d never stood on a street a wagon could turn around in.
It was full. That was the thing I couldn’t stop looking at. Not busy the way Brookhaven’s market was busy on a Tenthday, which meant forty people and a dog. Full, continuously, in both directions, with side streets feeding more of it in and taking more of it away, and it went on doing that the entire time I walked, and it was still doing it when we turned off.
Every hundred paces or so there were soldiers in gold cloaks who weren’t looking at anything in particular, which was how I understood that they lived here.
A woman argued with a drover over a short-counted sack of flour. Children ran around a handcart stacked with firewood. Smiths worked with their doors open, throwing orange light onto the road even in the afternoon. Nobody paused because Brookhaven had fallen. They had bread to buy and harness to mend.
For one breath, their indifference felt obscene. Then a girl came out of a bakery carrying six loaves against her chest, laughing while someone inside demanded she return the seventh. Life had survived somewhere. I could resent it later.
The watch post stood beside a yard I first took for a market square, until I saw that everything in it belonged to one purpose. Saddled horses waited three deep along one wall. Men and women carried arrows and water and folded blankets between a stable and a severe grey house, and past them, through an arch, there was another yard, and in that one perhaps sixty people in half-plate were standing in ranks being counted by somebody I couldn’t see.
Nobody shouted anywhere in it. Orders moved anyway.
“Captain,” the watchman called. “The gate sent him.”
A woman turned from a horse.
She wore half-plate beneath a golden cloak, the metal dulled by use. Iron-gray hair was cropped close, and a pale scar crossed one side of her jaw. Her hand rested near her sword without touching it. She looked first at the watchman, then at me.
“Where’s Dain?”
“At the eastern gate.”
“Then he judged this urgent.”
“He judged me difficult.”
Her expression didn’t volunteer an opinion. “Report.”
“I need riders sent east before dark.”
“That’s a request. Give me the reason.”
The yard continued behind her. A groom tightened a girth. Two porters rolled a barrel toward the kitchens. Someone in the stable cursed when a bucket overturned. Marchgate didn’t need silence to listen.
“Brookhaven is gone,” I said. “The ground opened beneath the town. The market went first, then the mill road and western road. Every street I could see followed. I don’t know how many got out. My mother didn’t.”
Aldara gave that last sentence the same stillness as the rest. I was grateful. Sympathy would’ve taken time I didn’t have.
“How long ago?”
“Four days.”
“From the first break to the last movement?”
“Minutes. Maybe less.”
“How did you get here?”
Dust returned to my mouth. For an instant the yard became falling timber, open earth, and my mother vanishing behind the roofline.
“I fell with the town.”
Aldara waited.
“I woke in old chambers beneath it. There was a nest of spiders. Some had legs longer than my arm. Some vanished and came back wherever they pleased. They moved together, like the web itself was telling them where to go.”
“What controlled them?”
“A queen. Wagon-sized, with enough smaller ones around her to fill the cavern.”
Her gaze passed once over the state of my clothes and returned to my face. “You escaped the nest.”
“My sword broke. She drove me through the web until I couldn’t stay on my feet. I had a hand axe left.” I could still feel the haft caught under my palm and the Flood waiting behind it. “I killed her with that.”
For the first time, Aldara’s composure broke.
“You killed what?”
“The queen. Unless there’s a more respectful name for a spider with a court.”
A groom approached behind her with a saddle over one shoulder, slowed, and chose a longer route around us.
“People have disappeared out that way for years,” Aldara said. “Hunters. Woodcutters. Travelers taking the old quarry road. We found webbing once. Never where it came from.”
I looked toward the eastern wall. Roofs hid the ridge. “Then maybe it won’t take anyone else.”
“Maybe.” Her voice had returned to command, but not quite to its earlier shape. “You’ll give me every detail later. First: the people you believe may have escaped.”
“After the queen died, I found a narrow route upward. It opened near the wagon track outside your gate. Nobody else used it. I couldn’t find it again from this side.”
“That isn’t why you want riders.”
“No. Before I fell, Sera Vance was driving people along the garden track toward the fields. Bram Cobb had a child in his arms farther out. They were above me and still moving. Then dust and a falling roof hid them. I didn’t see them reach safe ground. I didn’t see them fall.”
Aldara nodded once. “Surface flight toward the outer fields. Your underground route is separate.”
“Yes.”
My shoulders loosened. I’d spent four days with memory breaking into pieces whenever I touched it. Aldara wasn’t asking me to make the pieces kinder. She only wanted their edges to match.
“Which side of town?”
“The garden track ran east toward the outer fields. Bram was near the cart path. Sera was behind him with more people. The common and western road were already going down.”
Aldara looked to the watchman. “Daylight?”
“Enough to reach the outskirts and work back before dusk.”
“Send for Dain,” Aldara said. “Tell him to leave the gate to his second and come here.”
The watchman ran. Aldara took a splinter from the firewood stack and drew the eastern road in the yard dust. I corrected the split oak, the farm track, and the place where Brookhaven’s outer fields should begin. Before we finished, Dain appeared beneath the arch, still wearing his gate cloak.
“The runner said Brookhaven fell,” he said.
“Which road reaches its fields without crossing the town center?” Aldara asked.
“Old quarry road to the split oak, then the farm track west of the common.”
“Prepare four mounted searchers. Two carry rope and lanterns. They check the garden track, outer fields, woodline, farms, and every road away from town. Nobody enters the collapse. They return with what they find, not what they hope.”
“If they find people?”
“Bring them back if it can be done without losing the search party.”
Dain left at a run.
My hands stayed empty at my sides while Marchgate saddled horses for Brookhaven.
Four horses came from the stable. Riders checked rope, lanterns, water, and one another’s straps. Aldara didn’t hurry them; she made them ready. When the gates opened, afternoon light caught on buckles and spearheads. The riders passed through at a hard walk and broke into speed beyond the wall.
I watched until the last cloak vanished among the houses.
“Marchgate will look,” Aldara said. “I can’t promise what they’ll find.”
“You sent them.”
“I did.” She pointed toward the road climbing past the yard. “Now the Sword Chapel. Brother Tormund has been summoned.”
The command found me with nothing left to argue against.
“Fine,” I said. “But if he asks what happened, I’m telling him the road was unkind.”
The Sword Chapel stood above a row of smithies, built from gray blocks fitted too closely for weeds. Carved swords crossed above the entrance with their points turned inward around a sunburst. The place smelled of lamp oil, clean cloth, and old incense.
A broad-shouldered priest waited beside a treatment table. White hair was cut in a soldier’s crop. Chain showed beneath his vestments, and a war mace hung at his belt. His hands looked made for the weapon until he began arranging small jars, folded linen, and a shallow silver bowl with precise care.
“Edrin Hale?”
“That depends on the bill.”
He considered that as though it might contain useful medical information.
“I’m Brother Tormund Ashe. Sit, please.”
I sat.
He unwrapped the crude support around my right hand and examined each finger. “The bones are displaced. They aren’t shattered. I’ll realign them before I mend them.”
“Is there a version where I sleep through that?”
“Not today.”
He placed my hand over the silver bowl and called an acolyte to hold my wrist.
“Breathe in.”
I did.
“Hold.”
He pulled the smallest finger straight.
The chapel flashed white around the edges. By the time it settled, Tormund had already moved to the next joint.
“Again,” he said.
I breathed. He finished.
Then he lifted the iron disk at his throat. Gold light kindled beneath his palm and entered my hand in a slow, heavy pulse. Bones shifted the last fraction into place. Swelling withdrew. The constant pressure that had lived from knuckles to wrist simply ended.
I opened my fingers.
They obeyed.
Not strongly. Not well enough for a sword. But they were my fingers again, which felt indecently close to a miracle for a man sitting beneath a carving of one.
Tormund watched the range of motion. “Again.”
I closed the hand and opened it.
“No striking, hard gripping, or catching your weight with it. Ordinary use is permitted. The support is protection, not treatment.”
He wrapped the hand lightly and moved to my right leg. The old dressing came away. The draught had sealed the puncture at the surface, but the calf remained swollen beneath it.
“The potion closed the skin,” Tormund said. “The muscle’s still torn.”
He placed one hand over the wound and the other against the back of my calf. His prayer was short. Gold ran between his fingers and sank deep. The swelling withdrew. Something tight and ragged eased all at once, and strength returned so suddenly that I looked down to make sure the leg was still mine.
The light faded. Tormund remained bent over the table for several breaths, sweat darkening the white at his collar. The acolyte brought him water without being asked.
“Stand,” he said after drinking.
I put both feet beneath me and rose.
The room stayed where it was. My leg held without bargaining. I took one step, then another.
“That’s vastly better medical evidence,” I said.
Tormund checked my pulse, then the color beneath my eyes. “The hand and leg are repaired. Your pulse is still too fast, and your color is poor.”
I flexed the repaired hand. It obeyed. The rest of me felt hollowed clean, as if the Flood had eaten every meal I hadn’t yet taken.
“What does that mean?”
“Your body has spent more than blood. Food, sleep, and time may answer it. More divine force today won’t.”
“And the mark?”
“Watch it.” He began cleaning the silver bowl. “Major restoration is one gold and five silver. The chapel kit is two silver if you want spare bandages, salve, and a clean hand wrap.”
The total was less than the two healing draughts I’d found below would have cost at a frontier shop, and considerably more pleasant than drinking anything brewed in a bottle beside a corpse.
I counted the coins into a wooden tray. Tormund checked the amount, entered it in a narrow ledger, and passed it to the acolyte.
“I’ll take the kit.”
Another two silver joined the tray. The acolyte wrapped the supplies in brown cloth and handed them to me.
Tormund put away the final jar. “The Scarred Flagon has been told to expect you. The innkeeper is named Tomas Greave. He keeps the best private room. Eat before you sleep.”
“Does he know I’m coming?”
“Yes.”
At the chapel door, I looked back. “The riders went to Brookhaven.”
“The commandant’s runner told us.”
“If they return while I’m asleep...”
“The inn will wake you.” Tormund folded the used cloth into a basin. “That’s the arrangement.”
For the first time since the ground opened, my body wasn’t the next emergency.
Evening had softened Marchgate by the time I left the chapel. Sunlight rested along the walls and flashed on wet cart rims. People headed home with baskets, tools, and children who had discovered that tired legs were somebody else’s responsibility.
I walked among them without Duskfang touching the ground.
That deserved more wonder than I gave it. My attention had already moved to food.
The Scarred Flagon stood where two busy streets narrowed toward the market, a rough-stone building with a patched roof and broad windows full of firelight. Its door had been repaired so many times that the wood looked assembled from several defeated doors.
A man waited outside beside a handcart stacked with split wood. He had close-cropped gray hair, a weathered face, and an iron-shod stick planted against his right side. His limp shaped the first step he took toward me, but not the balance afterward. A dark bar cloth hung through his belt.
“Edrin Hale?”
“That depends who’s asking.”
“The man charging you for a room.”
“Then I’ve always been Edrin Hale.”
“Tomas Greave.” He opened the door. “Come inside before the street improves your manners.”
Warmth, pepper, onions, and voices met me at once. The tables bore scars from knives, spilled ale, and chairs previously used beyond their intended purpose. Two dwarves argued near the hearth over whether the eastern gate needed a new hinge or an entirely new gate. Three patrol riders ate with their cloaks steaming behind them. A woman counted bruises across her knuckles while her companion described a broken axle with the fury usually reserved for murder.
Nobody fell silent.
I’d spent days as the only living thing in every chamber. The Flagon’s complete lack of interest felt like hospitality.
Tomas led me to the bar. “Best private room, hot bath, supper, water, and clean linens. Seven silver and five copper for tonight.”
Hot bath. Clean linens. I’d forgotten that either could be purchased simply by asking.
I paid before he found a reason to offer the room to somebody cleaner. Tomas counted the coins, tested one silver piece against the counter, and put them in a locked drawer. He’d named seven silver and five copper. That was what he took.
He turned to a server carrying three cups. “Back room bath. One supper. No questions unless he asks one first.”
The server nodded and vanished through the kitchen passage.
“You tell everyone not to ask questions?” I said.
“Only people who want answers.”
He brought supper himself. The bowl was chipped along one side, stained dark at the rim, and shaped like something a mason might use for mortar. It was also full of thick stew, onions, pepper, roots, and meat cooked until it surrendered.
“That bowl has seen better days.”
“It holds stew,” Tomas said, and walked away.
One of them turned from the hearth. “The hinge is fine.”
“The post is rotten,” said the other.
“Nobody asked either of you,” Tomas said.
They resumed arguing with greater volume.
The first mouthful of stew nearly embarrassed me. Pepper opened behind my teeth. The meat came apart under the spoon. There were actual carrots in it, not a root pretending under poor light. My stomach abandoned restraint and demanded the bowl faster than dignity allowed.
Name it.
She’d ignored the chapel’s gold light and the priest. Stew finally earned her attention.
“Dinner.”
I know the function.
I took another bite, slower this time. “Beef, onions, pepper, carrots, and whatever Tomas refuses to name so nobody steals the recipe.”
Tomas passed with a water jar. His eyes settled on me for half a second.
“Prayer?” he asked.
“Criticism.”
“Keep it quiet. The stew is sensitive.”
Astarra withdrew into silence. I smiled into the bowl.
At the hearth, the gate argument expanded to include paint.
“A green hinge would show rust,” one of them insisted.
“A painted hinge is still attached to rotten wood.”
“Then paint the wood.”
“You can’t paint rot into timber.”
“Not with that attitude.”
The room laughed. Neither of them acknowledged it.
I scraped the last onion from the bowl while the argument found fresh victims.
Tomas returned when the bowl was empty. “Bath.”
I followed him through the rear passage before my stomach could argue for another serving. Steam blurred the lamps. A copper tub waited behind a screen with soap, a clean cloth, and more hot water than Brookhaven would’ve spent on one person outside a wedding.
“Bed is upstairs,” Tomas said. “Door locks from inside. Breakfast is included.”
I thanked him. The words came out seriously enough to surprise me. He inclined his head and left without asking what had happened beneath the mountain.
I stripped and put one foot into the tub. Heat closed around my ankle.
For four days, water had meant careful mouthfuls from a skin, cold drips gathered from stone, and the dark suspicion that the next chamber might offer none. This water steamed. There was so much of it that it climbed past my waist when I lowered myself in, then over my ribs, then up to my shoulders.
My whole body released at once.
A laugh broke out of me. I covered my face with both hands, not to stop it, but because I didn’t know what else to do with that much relief. The sound bounced off the screen and came back strange. I laughed again anyway.
I was warm. Not fevered. Not burning with power. Warm because someone had carried buckets up from a kitchen and I’d paid for the privilege of sinking into them.
I scrubbed dust from my hair, old blood from beneath my nails, and the sour reek of Shadowmaw from my skin. The water clouded around me. Soap stung my nose. Steam beaded on my face. Each ordinary sensation seemed extravagant.
When I flexed my right hand beneath the surface, the fingers closed. When I stretched my leg, it answered without folding beneath me. Tormund’s work held. My heart beat steadily against the heat.
I leaned my head against the rim and let my eyes close.
“I’m alive.”
So am I.
Her answer passed through the bond without triumph. For a while I listened to the water move whenever I breathed.
“You got us through.”
You carried us.
“With your directions. Your power.” I opened my eyes. Lamplight trembled across the ceiling through the steam. “I’d have died behind that door without you.”
And I’d still be behind it without you.
“I know.” The words mattered more because of that, not less. “Thank you, Astarra.”
The bond went quiet.
You’re welcome, Edrin.
Neither of us added anything. I stayed in the tub until the water began to cool, holding the fact of her freedom beside the fact of my survival.
Fresh linen waited on a stool when I stepped out. The shirt was plain, the cloth a little coarse, and it smelled of soap and sun. I drew it over clean skin and stood still while it settled across my shoulders. I’d owned linen all my life. I’d never understood it as kindness.
Upstairs, the best room was small and square. The shutters closed properly. A lamp burned beside a pitcher of water. White sheets lay smooth over a real mattress, and a thick blanket had been folded at the foot.
I closed the door, turned the key, and rested my forehead against the wood. The bolt held when I tested it.
The mattress gave beneath me.
I sat on the edge for a moment just to feel it happen, then lay back and let it take my weight. The clean sheet was cool through the linen shirt. The pillow yielded around my head. I stretched my legs across the bed because there was room, pulled the blanket over myself, and grinned at the ceiling.
The mattress held me without asking anything of my bruises.
I rolled onto my back, then my stomach, testing the softness because I could. The mattress followed my shape instead of making me find some arrangement the stone would tolerate. I spread my arms. Nothing brushed my face. Nothing moved above me. There was only linen, cool air, and the deep give of the pillow.
At home, a clean bed had simply appeared every week. Maren hauled the water, worked soap through the sheets, fought them onto the line, and tucked them around the mattress. I’d noticed only when a corner came loose. A stranger in Marchgate had done the same labor, and now the faint smell of lavender seemed almost impossible.
I pressed my face into the pillow. Another laugh escaped into the cloth, quieter than the one in the bath but no less real.
I set the chapel bundle beside the washstand and placed Duskfang on the floor within reach. The blade drew the lamplight into its dusky surface. Clean, sharp, and far too fine for the hand that had found it.
The memories refused to arrive in order. Leaving home for water, with Maren waiting in the kitchen beside two empty buckets. Sera blocking my path days later and asking me to choose her. Lysa close enough to touch in the bathhouse. Kade carrying the sword he meant to grow old with. Brookhaven had held all of it. Four days ago, it’d fallen.
Now I lay in a stranger’s best room with a dead man’s training in my hands, a pact in my blood, and a small fortune hidden among my things. It was more money than Hale Cottage had been worth, if any cottage remained to sell.
Before the fall, I could have named a hundred things I wanted. A better sword. Boots that didn’t leak. A horse. A room in Marchgate for one reckless night, with money left to lie about afterward.
I had the sword. I had the room. My boots sat clean beside the wall.
I’d have traded all of it for my mother shouting from the bottom of the stairs.
The grin left. The warmth didn’t.
Below, a chair scraped. The pair were still arguing about the gate, though the words had blurred into cadence. Crockery clinked. A woman laughed until she coughed, then laughed again afterward. Outside, a horse gave one sleepy snort.
Marchgate didn’t sound like Brookhaven. There were too many wheels, too much iron, and no river audible through an open window. But people finished meals here. They quarreled over repairs. Someone would wake before dawn to light the bakery ovens, regardless of whether the search riders returned with names.
The search was already beyond the walls. Aldara had taken the facts I possessed and sent people who knew the roads. For tonight, refusing sleep wouldn’t make their horses faster.
I reached down and touched Duskfang’s hilt once. My fingers left it there.
You should sleep, Astarra said.
“Stay awake with me until I do.”
I’m here.
That was all I needed from her. I turned onto my side and drew the blanket to my chin. It smelled faintly of lavender and woodsmoke. The floor was nowhere near my back. The locked door stayed locked. Voices below became a warm, shapeless murmur.
I listened until I could no longer separate one life from another, then stopped trying.
Marchgate breathed beyond the shutters, and I slept.