The clerk closed the shutters.
Aoi waited until he had fastened the bar.
“When?” she asked again.
The man turned.
He had ink on two fingers and a piece of straw caught in his sleeve. Somewhere behind him, a kettle began making a thin, insistent noise.
“When did we last hear from Rook’s Watch?” he said. “Four days ago. When did the relief leave? It didn’t. Those are different questions.”
“Why didn’t it leave?”
“Because there isn’t one.”
He took the kettle off the fire.
Aoi stood very still.
I set down the cookpot before its handle could remove another layer of skin from my hand.
“The transfer notice names a soldier,” I said. “Berden. Did he arrive there?”
The clerk looked at me properly for the first time.
Then at the crown-shaped bundle on my pack.
“You two together?”
“Provisionally,” Aoi said.
“A robust arrangement,” I added.
He did not smile.
“Berden passed through. Six weeks ago. Whether he reached the watch, you’d need to ask at the watch.”
“Can we hire horses?”
“No.”
“Because there are none?”
“Because the ones I’ve got belong to people with better chances of bringing them back.”
Aoi put both hands on the counter.
For a moment I thought she might say something unwise.
Instead she asked, “Who’s going east?”
The clerk studied her.
Then he looked toward the yard.
“Wagon at first light. Salt, lamp oil, bandages. Mistress Dain’s going back to her son. Carters have refused it twice, so she’s taking the team herself.”
“We’ll go with her.”
“You haven’t asked what she wants.”
“I’ll ask.”
She went outside.
The clerk watched the door close behind her.
“Friend of the soldier?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell her not to expect a happy reunion.”
“Do you know something about Berden?”
“I know where he was sent.”
He put two cups on the counter.
The water smelled faintly of mint.
I took one.
“The gatepost,” I said.
His hand stopped above the second cup.
“What about it?”
“The marks.”
“Grenn. Young one came into the yard three nights ago. Took a dog.”
“Through the gate?”
“Over it.”
I looked toward the ceiling, estimating the height of the posts I had passed.
The clerk noticed.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s usually the next bit.”
Mistress Dain was a short woman with a long face and the entirely accurate impression that everyone around her had become an obstacle.
By the time I reached the stable, she had offered Aoi passage in exchange for protection, rejected two alternative routes, and informed a stable boy that if he intended to stand there holding a harness, he might at least attach it to something.
She looked at me.
“What does he do?”
“Talks,” Aoi said.
“Does he lift?”
“When circumstances become unreasonable,” I answered.
Mistress Dain considered my coat, my hands, and the bandage visible above my boot.
“Sit at the back. If a wheel starts smoking, tell me before it catches.”
A position of responsibility.
My career in government was proceeding rapidly.
We slept in the relay loft among sacks that smelled of onions.
Below us, the clerk and Mistress Dain argued over oil.
“There were supposed to be twelve jars.”
“There are seven.”
“The watch paid for twelve.”
“The watch requested twelve. There’s a distinction.”
I heard something heavy strike the counter.
Aoi lay facing the rafters.
Her notebook rested open on her chest.
“Sleep,” I said.
“I am.”
“An innovative method.”
She closed the notebook.
After a while, she said, “He might not be there.”
“Berden?”
“He might have been moved again.”
“Yes.”
“Or be dead.”
“Yes.”
The answer sounded unpleasant in the dark.
She turned onto her side.
“Do you ever say the useful lie?”
“Frequently. We had an arrangement.”
“I know.”
I lay awake after her breathing steadied.
Below us, the argument ended without producing five additional jars of oil.
We left before sunrise.
Mistress Dain drove two broad, shaggy beasts she called oxen, though their horns curved forward and their shoulders rose higher than any cattle I had seen at home. One wore a bell that she muffled with cloth before we entered the woods.
I sat at the rear beside seven jars of oil, a barrel of salt, and a sack of dried beans that kept trying to occupy my seat.
Aoi walked near the team.
The morning was cold enough to show her breath.
Beyond Dunbarrow, the road narrowed into a corridor between trees. Fields appeared occasionally through gaps in the branches, their furrows disappearing beneath pale grass. We passed a house with its shutters open and washing still hanging under the eaves.
Mistress Dain did not stop.
“People left in a hurry?” I asked.
“People left.”
The distinction seemed important to her.
I did not pursue it.
At a stream crossing, she handed us breakfast: flat cakes wrapped around onion and a strip of something salty.
I had eaten half before learning what the meat was.
The remainder proceeded without inquiry.
Aoi checked the marks on the road while the team drank.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Anything fresh.”
“That is broad.”
“Then help narrow it.”
I crouched beside her.
Mud. Hoofprints. The narrow parallel lines left by our wheels.
And, beside them, an impression like four fingers driven into the earth.
Aoi touched the edge.
It had not filled with water.
She stood.
“Dain.”
The woman was already gathering the reins.
“I see it.”
Neither explained.
I climbed onto the wagon with gratifying speed.
We continued without the bell.
I saw the grenn before I understood that I was seeing an animal.
At first it was a patch of grey between two trees.
Then the patch unfolded.
Too high at the shoulder. Too low at the hips. Long forelimbs bent around a body that seemed to have been pulled tight over its bones. Its head was broad and almost flat, with small ears laid close against the skull.
It did not roar.
That would have helped.
It watched the team.
The nearer ox stopped.
Mistress Dain said something softly to it.
Aoi drew the sword she had taken from the bandits.
“Stay on the wagon.”
I was already reaching for Insight.
Nothing.
No status. No level. No little warning suggesting how unqualified I was to be here.
The grenn lowered its head.
Aoi moved toward the oxen.
The animal moved with her.
It had not been looking at us.
It had been choosing where to go around her.
“Dain,” Aoi said. “Keep them forward.”
“They won’t--”
“Try.”
The grenn came out of the trees.
It was faster than anything that large ought to have been.
Aoi met it beside the left wheel.
Pale light struck across her arms.
The sound of the impact went through the wagon.
The team lurched. A jar broke somewhere beside me, and oil spread beneath my knees.
Aoi slid backward.
Her boots dug two lines in the road.
The grenn’s forelimbs reached around her guard.
One hooked the edge of the wagon.
Wood cracked.
I saw its claws close six inches from my hand.
I moved.
There was no dignity in it. I fell across the beans and struck my head against the salt barrel.
“Forward!” Aoi shouted.
Mistress Dain snapped the reins.
One ox obeyed.
The other tried to turn.
The wagon slewed sideways.
Aoi vanished below its edge.
For a moment, I could hear only the team’s breathing and the scrape of something hard along wood.
Then her voice came from beneath me.
“Solvane. The hitch.”
I looked.
A trace had pulled loose from its peg and tangled beneath the wheel. The team strained against it, hauling the wagon in two directions.
I had no idea what it was called.
Fortunately, she had pointed.
I reached down.
The leather was taut enough to take my fingers off.
“I can’t move it.”
“Cut it!”
The knife on my belt had been part of the provisions.
Until then, its most demanding use had been cheese.
I dragged it free.
The grenn struck again.
Aoi made a sound I had not heard from her before.
I put the blade to the trace.
Leather resisted.
I sawed.
The knife slipped and opened the side of my thumb.
I swore, changed my grip, and kept cutting.
The strap parted.
The wagon jumped.
I nearly went beneath the wheel.
Mistress Dain caught the back of my coat with one hand and hauled me against the boards.
“Hold on to something expensive,” she snapped. “You’ll be less inclined to let go.”
Aoi was still in the road.
The grenn had forced her down onto one knee.
Blood showed at the corner of her mouth.
“Aoi!”
“Keep moving!”
We were moving.
Away from her.
I could see that perfectly well, which made the order intolerable.
“Mistress Dain.”
“I can’t turn them.”
“Stop, then.”
“And have it take the team? She’ll be holding it while we all walk.”
A sound ahead.
A bell.
Not ours.
Three measured strikes.
Mistress Dain twisted in her seat.
“Here!”
Figures appeared between the trees. Men with spears. One carried a clay pot hanging from an iron hook.
The pot trailed smoke.
“Downwind!” a man shouted.
Aoi turned her head.
The grenn struck the gap.
Her light flickered.
I slid from the wagon.
Mistress Dain swore behind me.
I ran back five steps, perhaps six. Far enough to seize Aoi’s pack where she had thrown it down.
Not far enough to help her.
I could not have moved that creature if I had brought every argument I had ever won.
The spearmen spread across the road.
One thrust a smoking brand toward the grenn’s face.
It recoiled.
Aoi tried to stand.
Her leg failed.
The animal came forward again.
The second spearman drove his point into the soft skin beneath its jaw. Not deeply. Enough that it jerked away, snapping.
The smoke-pot swung.
A thick black cloud broke over its head.
The grenn retreated into the trees.
It did not flee far.
I could still see it.
Watching.
“Girl,” the first man said. “Move.”
Aoi could not.
I reached her with the second spearman.
Between us, we dragged her toward the wagon.
Her boots left shallow grooves in the dirt.
The grenn paced along the tree line.
Nobody lowered a weapon.
Only when the road bent and the wind carried the smoke behind us did I stop seeing it.
I continued looking for a long time afterward.
Rook’s Watch emerged above the trees near midday.
A square tower. A low stone wall repaired with timber. Smoke from several chimneys crowded inside a space that had not been built to contain a village.
Aoi lay on the wagon beside the beans.
I sat against the broken sideboard with her head resting on my folded coat.
Her eyes were open.
This was encouraging.
Her breathing was not.
“The smoke,” I said.
“Bitterroot,” answered the spearman walking beside us. “They hate it.”
“You might have mentioned its existence on the road.”
He looked up.
“You might have asked before taking the road.”
A reasonable answer.
I was becoming thoroughly tired of those.
The watch gate opened.
People gathered beyond it.
A little boy shouted, “Gran!”
Mistress Dain climbed down so quickly that I almost failed to recognize her.
Aoi caught my sleeve.
“Berden,” she whispered.
“Later.”
Her fingers tightened.
“Aoi.”
“Ask.”
A woman with a physician’s bag was already pushing toward us.
I looked at the spearman.
“Is there a soldier called Berden here?”
He stopped walking.
The expression on his face changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition, followed by something less welcome.
“I’m Berden,” he said.
Aoi closed her eyes.
For a moment, I could not tell whether that was relief.