The second night thinned behind me by degrees. Stars vanished over the fields, then hedges and low ridges returned in gray pieces as Bracken carried me north. By dawn, I’d been riding for a day and a half with sleep stolen against tree trunks and one hand looped through his reins.
East Trail Junction appeared where three worn tracks met beside a leaning post and a stand of pines. A broken shelter crouched beneath them. Cart wheels had cut deep grooves through the mud.
The others were already there.
Jak stood beside the road with his crossbow on his back and two fingers pressed into a wheel rut. His mismatched leathers looked darker where the morning damp had touched them. He lifted his head at Bracken's approach, glanced past me along the northern track, then looked back.
Elowen waited beneath the shelter, one hand resting on the small sun disk at her throat. Her white-and-gold vestments were travel-stained and carefully mended at the cuffs. Silver-blond hair had escaped its ribbon on one side. After the empty miles, even that stubborn loose strand felt painfully familiar.
Isolde leaned against a post with her arms folded. Her dark leathers fitted so closely that concentration became an act of self-defense, especially where the open collar showed pale skin and the thin scar above it. Violet eyes found mine. One of her rings clicked against another as I drew Bracken to a halt.
No one spoke.
They’d made a shape without me while I was gone. That was probably sensible. It still made me want to say something clever before I discovered whether there was room in it.
I swung down. My knees objected after so many hours in the saddle, and Bracken tossed his head as if my dismount were an inconvenience arranged for him personally.
“He looks better fed than you,” Jak said.
“He has fewer opinions to swallow.”
Jak's mouth moved at one corner. It might’ve been the beginning of a smile. With Jak, that counted as a public celebration.
Elowen stepped forward and studied my face and hands. “Fever?”
“No.”
“Fresh wounds?”
“Only my dignity. The horse has been difficult.”
Bracken breathed warmly across my shoulder.
“He disagrees,” she said. “Tell us what you found.”
I tied his reins to the shelter rail and faced them. “Brookhaven is gone. Not damaged. Gone. The orchard still stands beyond the break, but there are no houses, no roads through the center, and no one waiting to be found. I walked the rim myself.”
The wind moved softly through the pines.
Elowen's fingers tightened around the strap of her satchel. “Tracks leaving the fields? Cellars? Buried shelters?”
“Nothing I could trust. The ground is still wrong around it, and there’s power below the break. More than the place could hold. I found no living explanation for any of it.”
She looked east. “If the raids have driven people from their homes, I decide when we stop for the wounded and displaced. A promising trail doesn’t outrank someone bleeding beside it.”
“Agreed.”
Jak crouched again and dragged his thumb through the mud. “What changed near the rim?”
“Birds went around it. Grass thinned before the edge. Water had found new channels through the stone.”
“Then I choose the ground,” he said. “If the land tells two stories, we stop before picking the prettier one.”
“Also agreed.”
Isolde hadn’t moved. She watched me without blinking. I remembered rough linen, forge smoke, and the pressure of her mouth after Ironfast. Eleven days hadn’t made the memory less specific.
“What did the power do?” she asked.
“Rose through the break. I saw no device and no keeper. Only the result.”
“And you brought nothing out?”
“Nothing that answers what happened.”
Her chin lifted. “That wasn’t my question.”
Heat touched my palm beneath the dark linen at my wrist. Astarra said nothing. I couldn’t tell whether Isolde had guessed at the omission or merely knew me too well not to go looking for one.
“No,” I said. “It wasn't.”
Isolde pushed away from the post. “Anything we find that behaves like the power beneath Brookhaven is mine to assess before curious hands reach it.”
“You decide what can be handled. If you say stop, we stop and hear why.”
“Almost sensible.”
“I've been practicing in secret.”
“Badly,” Jak said.
The word loosened the tightness behind my ribs. I remembered the workers at Marchgate hauling the gate brace into place and tried the unfinished refrain under my breath.
“Lift it high, lads, lift it clean, let the road know where we've been...”
“Gate,” Jak said. “Let the gate know.”
“The road has better manners.”
Elowen's loose strand stirred when she laughed. Isolde's expression sharpened into a smile I’d learned to distrust.
“Aldara sent us east to find out what’s driving the raids,” Elowen said. “We share the work, and each of us keeps authority over the part we understand.”
Jak checked the road. Isolde checked me. I was probably flattering myself about the second one.
“Then let's go before I become less sensible,” I said.
I took Bracken's reins and stepped onto the eastern track with them.
Bracken settled into the work with a long-suffering shake of his head, as if eastern roads had been my idea and therefore my fault. Jak moved ahead on foot, crossbow riding between his shoulders, while Elowen kept to the gelding’s left and Isolde took the higher side of the track.
Marchgate fell behind us by degrees. The road climbed through scrub and young birch, its pale stones showing wherever spring rain had stripped the soil away. Beyond the trees, the old quarry opened in a broad gray wound, terraces cut into the hillside and half swallowed by grass. A broken crane leaned over the lowest shelf, its wooden arm pointing at the blank sky. No workers came to claim it. Only a pair of ravens used the beam as a perch.
Jak stopped where the trail divided around a patch of standing water. He crouched and touched two fingers to the ground. The mud held several old cart tracks, but the deeper marks sank toward the left branch, where the slope looked smoother.
“Right,” he said.
“The left looks kinder,” I said.
“It is. That’s the trouble.” He pointed with one dirty finger. “Water ran across it, then somebody dragged a cart through before it dried. The wheels slid toward the hollow. We take the stony side, even if it costs us a little climbing.”
He started up the right-hand track without waiting to see whether we agreed. I liked that about him. Jak never made a speech when a boot print would do.
Bracken picked his way after him, and I kept one hand low on the reins. The rise tightened beneath us. Loose stones rolled from the edge of the path and clicked down among thorn bushes. Above, the quarry face showed old tool marks in long, disciplined rows. Someone had cut that stone patiently, one block after another, until the hill became useful. I wondered what they’d meant to build with it, and why they’d stopped with half the work still waiting.
At the next bend Elowen called a halt. She’d been carrying the medical supplies in a small bundle beneath one arm, her white and gold vestments gathered clear of the dust. When I reached for it, she turned away before my fingers closed.
“No.”
“I was only going to help.”
“You’re already holding the reins.”
“Bracken is holding the reins. I’m supervising.”
Her small shoulders squared. “The bandages stay with me. The paste stays with me. If someone falls, I won’t be searching through your pack while you explain that you packed by instinct.”
“My instincts are admired in several counties.”
“Name one.”
“I’m still gathering evidence.”
She checked the knot on the bundle and tucked it closer beneath her arm. The arrangement was already neat, with the things she might need placed where her hand could find them without rummaging. She’d prepared for the road as if I might arrive late, or not arrive at all. That was sensible. It also pressed somewhere beneath my ribs that I preferred to call irritation.
“Leave the rest,” she said. “You don’t need to prove you can carry a whole camp.”
“I can carry more than a whole camp.”
Isolde had stopped beside my pack. Her thumb passed over the silver clasp at her wrist as she studied the bulging leather.
“Your bow is underneath the axe.”
“It’s safe.”
“It’s damaged.”
“That’s why it’s underneath the axe. The axe is sturdier.”
She drew the shortbow free and held it up by the grip. “You’ve put hard weight on the damaged thing and tied the arrows where they can bend against it.”
I took the bow from her and looked at the cramped bundle. She was right. The arrows had shifted, and one fletching had caught against the bow’s wrapping.
“I was testing whether the pack could survive adversity.”
“The pack has passed. Your judgment hasn’t.”
The rings on her fingers gave one dry tick when she handed it back. I moved the bow above the axe and freed the arrows, working in silence while her violet eyes remained on me. Under her stare, an ordinary knot became a public examination.
“There,” I said. “A triumph of fieldcraft.”
“A postponement of failure.”
Jak glanced back from the rise. “The path gives out ahead.”
We found it a few yards farther on. Spring water had eaten a shallow rut across the trail, leaving a strip of slick clay between two shelves of stone. Bracken tested it with one hoof and snorted. I dismounted before he could decide for all of us.
“No magic,” Isolde said.
“I hadn’t planned any.”
“You look offended.”
“I look handsome in difficult conditions.”
“You look muddy.”
I gathered flat stones from the bank and set them into the worst of the gap. Jak brought two fallen branches from the brush, and Elowen held Bracken’s reins while I wedged the wood against the soft edge. Isolde tested each piece with her boot, rejecting one and pointing to firmer ground for another. Nobody took the work from me. Nobody left me to do it alone.
When the crossing held, Jak stepped aside and nodded toward the trail above. “You found the weakness. Take us to the next bend.”
It wasn’t an order, and it wasn’t surrender. I mounted, gathered the reins, and guided Bracken onto the stones while the others followed behind me up the first rise beyond the quarry road.
The trail climbed through scrub and then eased onto a long shoulder of land where the wind had bent the thorn trees into one another. By the time the sun slid behind the western hills, the road had narrowed to two pale wheel tracks between grass and low, stubborn branches. The gray afternoon had softened into gold. Dust clung to Bracken’s fetlocks, and my knees had acquired the particular stiffness of a man who had been sitting a horse too long while pretending he wasn’t tired.
Jak chose the hollow beyond the thorns, where the ground rose on three sides and a spring-fed pool lay within easy reach. He touched two fingers to the soil, studied the flattened grass, then pointed toward a gap between the trees.
“There’s room for the horses. No standing water under the roots.”
“You’ve found us a palace,” I said.
“It’s uglier than the road.”
“That’s the best feature so far.”
Elowen dismounted and began loosening the straps around her pack before her boots had properly settled. She’d tied her silver-blond hair back for the road, though the wind had worked several strands loose. Her vestments were dusty at the hem, and she looked less like a temple figure than a young woman who had spent the day being jostled by a saddle and refusing to complain about it.
“The road was passable,” she said.
Jak gave the trail a long look. “Passable isn’t the same as sensible.”
“You took us through a thorn thicket.”
“The road crossed soft ground.”
“So did the thicket.”
“The thicket didn’t swallow a wheel.”
They continued in that fashion while I led Bracken to the pool. It was a light argument, the sort that changed nothing except the temperature of the air between two people. I enjoyed it immediately. After so many weeks of graves, sealed rooms, and conversations where every word carried a blade, it was pleasant to hear Elowen object to a route as if the road itself had offended her personally.
“I agree with both of you,” I called. “Jak saved time, and Elowen is right that he made the road uglier.”
Jak looked at me over his shoulder. “You weren’t asked.”
“That has never stopped me before.”
Isolde sat near the place where the fire would go, one knee raised, her gloved hand resting over the silver clasp at her wrist. The last light caught the rings on her fingers. They gave a small, dry tick when she glanced from Jak to Elowen.
“You’ve improved,” she said. “Now you can offend both sides at once.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“No, you haven’t.”
That earned a laugh from Elowen, quick and unwilling. It warmed me more than the fire once Jak had coaxed it alive with tinder and thin twigs. We hung a blackened pot over the flames and softened the evening meal in it, adding water, salt, and whatever pieces of dried food had survived the road without turning to powder. It smelled plain and good. The first mouthful sat heavily in my stomach, then settled there like a hand on my shoulder.
A strip of green vegetable surfaced in the pot, faded from cooking. The sight carried me back to Sera Vance standing at a kitchen table with a knife in one hand and an expression of deep betrayal in the other because someone had brought her turnips instead of beans. She’d eaten them anyway. Sera always did the thing she objected to, provided she could object loudly first.
The memory passed before I could reach for it. I lowered my eyes to the bowl and blew on the steam.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Elowen said.
“The turnip has defeated me.”
“It’s a bean.”
“Then I’ve been defeated by a bean. The shame is worse.”
She scraped her spoon around the bottom of the bowl and went back to eating. Nobody asked what had changed in my voice. I was grateful enough to let the silence stand.
After the meal, we divided the ordinary work. Jak checked the horses’ tethers and rubbed down their legs. Elowen cleaned the pot, folded the remaining rations into the pack, and made me move the bandages away from the cooking things because apparently I’d arranged them with the judgment of a drunkard. Isolde gathered fallen branches, returning with an armful that seemed too large for the time she’d been gone. I rolled out the bedroll and discovered that four months of use hadn’t made it any less thin.
“You’re staring at it,” Isolde said.
“I’m remembering when it was new.”
“That must be a short memory.”
“Cruelty beside a fire. Elowen, mark the date.”
“I’m not keeping a record of your complaints.”
“Then the age will forget me.”
When the others began settling near the fire, Isolde rose and nodded toward the horses. “Come check the knots.”
It was a practical request. I followed her because it was practical, and because the space beside her had acquired a pull I preferred not to name. The horses stood quietly beneath the thorn branches, tails flicking at flies. Beyond them, the campfire shone between the trunks in broken pieces.
Isolde tested Bracken’s tether, then reached for my wrist. Her fingers closed around it with no suddenness, giving me every chance to move away. I didn’t. The warmth of her hand traveled through the thin fabric at my cuff, and she kept hold of me after the knot had been judged sound.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Pretending a question is a joke.”
I looked at her. Her violet eyes held the last of the sunset, and the scar above her collarbone showed pale against her skin. I wanted an answer that would leave the evening untouched. Instead I gave her the truth in a smaller shape.
“Coming back felt stranger than leaving.”
Her thumb moved once over my pulse. “You expected it to feel familiar.”
“I expected everyone to know where to stand.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m standing beside a horse, being interrogated by a woman who invited me here.”
“You followed willingly.”
“That’s the troubling part.”
She stepped closer. The scent of leather and cold air replaced the meal on my tongue. Her hand remained around my wrist while my free hand settled against her side, careful over the fitted leather. She didn’t retreat. For a moment neither of us said anything. Her shoulder brushed mine, and the contact was so familiar that my body accepted it before my mind could invent a reason.
Maybe she was only easing my discomfort. It was a convenient explanation, which made it suspicious. I kept it anyway.
Isolde lifted her chin a fraction. “We should go back.”
“Yes.”
Neither of us moved at once. Then she released me, and I let my hand fall. The absence of her touch felt louder than it deserved to.
Jak had chosen the first watch. Isolde took the middle one, Elowen the hour before dawn, and I claimed the last stretch before morning. Nobody argued. Jak checked the fire one final time, Elowen tucked her sun disk beneath her vestments, and Isolde settled with her back against a root, close enough that her boot nearly touched my bedroll.
I lay down beneath the thinning gold of evening. The horses shifted softly beyond the thorns. Around me, the party breathed, moved, and slept in its separate ways. For one hour, nobody asked me to explain anything.
The following morning, I woke with one cheek cold and my hand closed around a fold of blanket. The fire had fallen to gray crumbs. Beyond the thorn hedge, Bracken gave a low, offended grunt, as if sunrise had been arranged without consulting him.
“You’re alive,” Jak said from somewhere near the dying fire.
“A poor beginning to the day. I was hoping for nobility.”
“You snore like a man with a title.”
Elowen emerged from beneath her bedroll with her silver-blond hair loose around her face. She touched two fingers to the sun disk at her throat, then began gathering the camp cups. Isolde had already risen. She stood beyond the thorns, one boot braced on a stone while she watched the western clouds thin over the hills. The morning light caught her violet eyes and the rings on her fingers, but not quite the expression she wore when she looked back at me.
I decided not to ask whether she’d slept. The answer, whatever it was, would make my own sleep sound less defensible.
We left the windbreak before the day warmed. I watered Bracken at a narrow spring, then swung into the saddle and followed Jak east. The trail climbed gradually out of the low ground, changing from wheel ruts between thorn bushes to a long raised strip of packed earth. On either side, spring water shone in shallow channels among reeds and pale new grass. Farther off, the land folded into wooded ridges, each one grayer than the last beneath the clouded sky.
By midmorning, we’d put a good stretch of country behind us. The windbreak was no longer a place I could picture without effort. That pleased me more than it should have. A road was easier to trust once it’d carried us away from something.
Jak rode ahead with his crossbow resting across his thighs. He slowed near a bend where old stones rose from the grass, each one rounded and green with age. They ran beside the trail for a while, then angled toward the marsh.
“Boundary,” he said.
Isolde reined in beside him. Her thumb passed once over the silver clasp at her wrist. “Route.”
“A route to where?”
“That’s what routes are for. Going somewhere.”
“Boundaries also go somewhere. Usually around the thing people don't want you walking into.”
Jak dismounted and touched two fingers to the earth beside the nearest stone. He studied the grass, the shallow wheel marks, and the clean strip where water had washed the soil away. His eyes narrowed against the open light. “The stones were set together. Not scattered. The ground rises under them. Someone wanted a line that stayed visible when the water came up.”
“Which means a causeway,” Isolde said. “Or the edge of an old holding.”
“You’re naming two different things.”
“I’m allowing the evidence to remain inconvenient.”
They’d found a contest they could enjoy without treating it as trivial. I understood the appeal. Neither of them liked yielding ground, and I suspected I was noticing because I disliked it too.
Elowen rode up behind us. Her vestments hung loose beneath the travel dust, and she kept one hand around the reins while the other held a small cup she’d rescued from camp.
“What happens if you’re wrong?” she asked.
Jak glanced back. “We take the lower track and lose time.”
“That’s not what I mean. If a wounded person follows the stones?”
Jak looked toward the marsh. “They reach the low ground faster.”
“And then?”
He didn’t answer at once.
Elowen pointed with the cup. “A twisted ankle, a fever, a cracked rib. The raised trail gives them firm footing and air moving across the marsh. The lower ground is shorter only for someone who can still choose where to place every step. If we bring back injured travelers, I need the route that keeps them upright, not the route that wins an argument.”
Her voice sharpened as she spoke. Dusty vestments and a tin camp cup changed nothing; she could name the cost, and people listened.
Isolde's chin lifted a fraction. “Then the stones may mark an older path built for carts and stretchers.”
“Maybe,” Elowen said. “We don't know that yet.”
“You’re becoming difficult.”
“I was difficult at the last camp. You were distracted.”
Jak gave a dry click of his tongue. It might’ve been approval. He turned his attention toward the open slopes, checking the ground ahead rather than the people behind him.
We followed the stones for another mile. The raised trail carried us above the wet ground, where frogs called from hidden pools and thin willow branches combed the wind. Then the old path split away from us and descended toward a broad patch of dark, harmless mud.
It ended there.
No fallen tree blocked it. No washout had torn the earth apart. The mud was shallow and firm under a walking boot, covered in a skin of clear water. Beyond it, the same line of stones continued for several paces, then stopped as neatly as if the country had forgotten the rest.
Jak crouched at the edge. His hand hovered over the mud without touching. “People used this.”
“People also abandon foolish ideas,” Isolde said.
“Not this many.”
“How many is many?”
“They pressed the grass flat.”
Elowen touched her sun disk again. Her gaze stayed on the wet patch. “Nothing beneath it that I can sense. No sickness. No dead presence. Just water and soil.”
That should’ve settled me. Instead, the clean harmlessness of the place made my skin prickle. A path ought to end for a reason a person could point at. Here, the reason had been politely removed.
Let them choose.
I kept my hand loose on Bracken's reins. “Jak sees a route. Isolde sees a boundary. Elowen sees the cost of making a sick man cross either one. I see four people delaying breakfast.”
“You’re not hungry,” Isolde said.
“I’m always hungry. It’s one of my more reliable virtues.”
Jak stood. “Raised trail is safer under weight.”
“And the wind is turning east,” Isolde said. “The lower ground will hold the cold longer.”
Elowen nodded once. “Then we take the raised trail. If someone needs help, we can carry them without sinking to the knee.”
I let the decision stand between them instead of reaching for it. Isolde turned her horse first. Jak followed after one last look at the vanished path. I urged Bracken onward, and Elowen came beside me, her cup tucked safely away.
Behind us, the old stones disappeared into the wet ground. Nothing moved there. Nothing called. Still, I looked back until the bend took it from sight.
The raised road climbed by degrees, its stones showing through the grass like old teeth. Bracken settled into the slope with a patient roll of his shoulders, and I let him choose the pace while the others spread along the track. Jak ranged ahead, always within view, touching two fingers to the earth whenever he found a patch of soft soil.
“What are you asking it?” I called.
He glanced back. “Whether it expects company.”
“And does it?”
“It doesn’t answer questions.”
“A sensible habit. Most answers cause trouble.”
Jak crouched beside a wheel rut and brushed loose grit from the edge. “Cart came through after the last rain. Empty on the way up. Heavy going down.”
“How can you tell?” Elowen asked.
“The rut is deeper on the descent side.”
“That could be the same cart.”
“It’s the same cart.”
He said it without looking pleased, which made the certainty more convincing. I watched him follow the marks with his eyes, taking in the torn grass, the direction of flattened seed heads, the places where a wheel had slipped and recovered. He seemed to read the country the way Elowen read a pulse, finding what had changed and refusing to pretend the rest was still.
Isolde rode ahead of us on the higher bend. The gray afternoon suited her, turning the dark leather of her armor almost blue where the light caught it. Her rings gave a dry tick as she lifted one hand. The wind pressed against my cheek, then shifted away from her fingers.
“We’ll have rain before evening,” she said.
“The sky is gray,” I answered. “That’s a bold prophecy.”
“The clouds are thinning over the western hills. The air is carrying moisture east, and the ridge is warm beneath us.”
“You could simply say you’re always right.”
“I could. You’d still need proof.”
Her violet eyes flicked toward me, quick and measuring. There was no softness in that glance, only the appetite of a scholar finding a difficult question. I’d learned not to confuse the two kinds of attention, though my body remained an unreliable instructor. The memory of her close enough to touch returned at precisely the wrong moment, and I concentrated on Bracken’s reins as if they’d personally offended me.
“What sort of answer are you expecting?” she asked.
“From the east?”
“From all this riding.”
That was less convenient. I could’ve offered something grand, a name, a hidden hand, a truth I could carry back like a trophy. Instead I watched a hawk balance above the far slope and said, “I want to find out how to keep people from being left with nothing after the cleverer people finish deciding what matters.”
Isolde studied me for a breath. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I have.”
“Then you’re expecting a person to be responsible for every wound you can’t prevent.”
“No. Just the ones I can reach.”
It sounded better aloud than it had in my head. That was usually a warning. I wanted them to laugh, not inspect the seams in me, and Jak chose that moment to point across the valley.
“There.”
A pale shape rose beyond the descending road, half-hidden by a fold in the hills. Three crooked pillars stood against the sky, joined at the top by a dark slab. From this distance they looked like a broken gate, or a giant kneeling with its back turned.
“Old watchtower,” I said.
“No,” Jak replied.
“A shrine.”
“No.”
Isolde’s gaze narrowed. “A bridge with the road gone beneath it.”
Jak gave a small click of his tongue. “Stone quarry. The pillars are cut faces. The slab is the remnant of a crane base.”
I sat taller in the saddle. “You’re both wrong. It’s obviously a monument to my growing reputation.”
“Your reputation has better legs,” Isolde said.
“That’s the kindest thing you’ve said all afternoon.”
“It wasn’t kindness.”
Jak checked the slope behind us, then the ridge ahead. “Quarry is farther than it looks. We’ll pass below it if the road holds.”
“You win,” I said. “I’m wounded.”
“You’re hungry.”
“That too.”
By the time the trail bent beneath the stone pillars, Elowen had dismounted. She led her horse through a narrow place where the road had crumbled toward the valley, then stopped beside a flat shelf of rock. Her sleeves were already rolled to matching heights. She opened the shared pack and arranged the contents by touch, setting aside food, clean cloth, and water where a tired hand could find them without searching.
“The rations stay together,” she said. “The bandages go on top. If we come upon displaced families, I don’t want to unpack half the load to reach them.”
“You’re assuming we’ll be carrying more than ourselves,” Jak said.
“I’m assuming the road won’t ask permission before making work.”
She touched the sun disk at her throat and murmured a brief prayer over the waterskins. A faint warmth passed through the leather, and the sour taste of the spring water faded. Then she looked at me.
“Your food goes in this space.”
She shifted a bundle aside and made room beside the others, not at the edge, not in a place meant for something temporary.
“And your spare cloth stays with the medical things,” she added. “If I say it’s needed, you won’t argue while someone is bleeding.”
“I’d never argue.”
Elowen held my gaze.
“You argue while people are eating.”
“That’s different. Eating people should be allowed to defend themselves.”
Jak looked toward the pillars. Isolde’s rings ticked once. Elowen tucked my folded cloth beneath the bandages and closed the pack.
I gathered Bracken’s reins. The place she’d made for my things remained between theirs as we turned east again.
By the third morning, the camp had acquired the quiet order of something practiced. No one had vanished into the brush, stolen a horse, or woken with a knife at someone else’s throat. Jak had already fed the animals before I opened my eyes, and the small fire had collapsed into a bed of gray coals.
Elowen moved among us with her sleeves rolled to matching heights, pouring water into each cup and touching two fingers to her sun disk before she drank. The prayer was brief. Its warmth passed through my hands when I lifted the cup, and the water tasted clean enough to make me suspicious of it.
“Don’t look so betrayed,” Elowen said. “It’s still water.”
“I trusted its ugliness.”
“You trust very selectively.”
“That’s why I’m alive.”
Jak made a dry click with his tongue from beside the horses. “You’re alive because you’re difficult to swallow.”
Bracken shoved his pale nose into my shoulder while I tightened the reins. I scratched the place between his ears, and he leaned into it with the solemn gratitude of a creature who had never once paid for his own breakfast. My hands were stiff from sleep, but nothing hurt. That counted as a fine beginning.
Isolde stood beyond the fire, one hand resting near the silver clasp at her wrist. The overcast morning had left the world colorless, yet the rings on her fingers held a faint blue glimmer, as if they remembered a sky brighter than the one above us.
“The weather will hold,” she said.
Jak glanced upward. “You can tell that from clouds?”
“No. I can tell it from the wind beneath them.”
She raised her hand. The grass along the edge of camp bent eastward, though the branches overhead remained still. A moment later the air settled again. She’d spent the effort as casually as another person might inspect a buckle.
“How comforting,” I said. “The sky has received your permission.”
Her chin lifted a fraction. “It was waiting.”
That earned a low sound from Jak that might’ve been amusement if he’d been a kinder man. Elowen nested the cups together and packed them away.
We rode out beneath a pale ceiling, leaving the last shelter of the pillars behind. The track widened as it climbed, its ruts softened by old rain and crowded with fresh grass at the edges. Far below, the land folded into woods and wet hollows. Axes sounded from somewhere beyond the trees, steady as a heartbeat, while carts creaked along a lower branch of the trail.
For a while I kept Bracken behind Jak. He chose the firmer ground without announcing it, shifting left whenever a dark patch threatened to swallow a hoof. Once he dismounted, touched two fingers to the earth, and studied the dampness on them before pointing us toward a strip of pale gravel.
“That mud looks shallow,” I said.
“It isn’t.”
“You say that about all the best mud.”
“The best mud is the kind that keeps your horse standing.”
When the trail broadened across the ridge, Jak eased his pace instead of pulling ahead. Elowen came level with him, then checked each of us in turn.
“Water?” she asked.
“Recently,” I said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I drank to avoid the argument. Elowen accepted this as an answer and passed the waterskin to Isolde, who took it without looking away from the eastern hills.
The four of us settled into a shared pace. Isolde rode close on my left. When the trail narrowed around a stand of young birches, her sleeve brushed mine, a quick warmth through the cloth. She didn’t turn. I didn’t make a joke, which was either maturity or cowardice, and I had no intention of deciding which.
Beyond the ridge, the trail ran on through open country, broad enough for all four horses to keep together. I let Jak hold the pace, Elowen keep the water, and Isolde choose the weather. I eased Bracken half a step left until the four saddles formed a line.
We rode east, four abreast wherever the trail allowed it.