By noon, everyone we passed was going the other way.
Families walked behind handcarts piled with bedding and tools. An old man led a goat on a string. Two brothers carried a door between them with their grandmother sitting on it, her hands folded over a bundle in her lap.
The younger brother complained that they should have taken the table.
“The table had woodworm,” the grandmother said.
“It would still have carried you.”
“And collapsed outside the capital. Think.”
Aoi smiled as they passed.
I did not.
I was occupied with my left boot, which had begun a sustained campaign against my heel.
“Stop,” she said.
“I am capable of continuing.”
“Yes. You’re demonstrating it in a very peculiar walk.”
She made me sit on a milestone.
Removing the boot proved worse than wearing it.
A small piece of skin had attached itself to the sock.
I looked away.
“You felt this starting an hour ago.”
“I anticipated an adjustment period.”
“You were the thing being adjusted.”
She found cloth in her pack and wrapped my heel with brisk, irritating competence.
Traffic moved around us.
A little girl paused beside a cart to watch.
“Is he hurt?”
“Only a little,” Aoi said.
“He looks cross.”
“That predates the injury.”
The girl nodded as though this clarified a great deal.
I put the boot back on.
It hurt less.
I thanked Aoi.
Quietly.
I had no wish to encourage the audience.
The good road ended before the afternoon did.
Beyond the last maintained ditch, the stones became patches beneath the dirt. Fields stood half planted. In one, a plough lay on its side with weeds growing through the harness.
A wayside shrine had been stripped of anything metal.
Someone had left flowers in a cracked cup.
The road itself remained full.
At first I looked at the refugees as a problem of movement: numbers, loads, probable destinations. A city receiving more hungry people than it could feed. Roads slowing under carts. Families choosing what could be carried.
Then a boy passed us with another boy asleep on his back.
He could not have been more than ten.
The younger child’s feet bounced against his hips. One shoe was missing.
The older boy kept walking.
I watched them until the bend took them out of sight.
Aoi said nothing.
For once, I was grateful not to be asked what I thought.
We stopped at a stream beside a family with three children and a grandmother who had arranged herself on a rolled blanket with the air of a woman disappointed by the quality of the available seating.
The father began gathering their things when he saw us.
“Do you mind if we sit?” Aoi asked.
He glanced at our packs.
At my coat.
At the wrapped shape of the crown beneath its straps.
“No, my lady.”
“Aoi.”
He did not use it.
His name was Teren. His wife was Sella. The grandmother was called Mother by everyone, including her son-in-law.
Aoi took out our bread.
I knew how much remained.
She broke it anyway.
The middle child watched with the effortful indifference of someone trying very hard not to ask.
I found the cheese.
Aoi took it from me without comment.
Teren did not reach for either.
“We would appreciate assistance finishing it,” I said. “The cheese is not improving in the heat.”
Mother held out her hand.
“Then cut it thinner. It’ll go further.”
Aoi laughed.
Teren’s mouth moved despite himself.
They came from Fen Hollow, three days farther east.
“What happened?” I asked.
Teren looked toward the children.
The oldest immediately became interested in a stone.
“Things coming down from the woods.”
“Bandits?”
“Those too. Mostly grenn.”
The word meant nothing to me.
Aoi’s expression suggested it meant enough to her.
“We used to lose sheep,” Teren said. “A lamb now and then. The patrol would come through, hunt one, hang the carcass beyond the fields.”
“And the patrol stopped.”
“Last autumn.”
Sella divided a piece of bread between the younger children.
“We kept lamps along the road,” she said. “Took turns at the watch.”
“What changed?”
“Oil costs money. Traders need a road they can use.”
Teren rubbed a split in his thumbnail.
“Our neighbor’s boy went to fetch his father from the lower field.”
He stopped.
The stream moved over the stones beside us.
“Before dark,” he added. “Still light enough to see the far hedge.”
I had no question worth asking after that.
Aoi asked about the road.
Teren answered gratefully. A broken bridge. A fallen beech. A house with a roof still sound enough to sleep beneath.
Then Sella asked where we were going.
“Dunbarrow,” Aoi said.
“And afterward?”
“The marches, perhaps,” I said.
Mother stopped chewing.
“Why?”
There were answers I could have given.
Land the crown had ceased effectively governing. A need for protection. A place where an outsider might acquire importance without first receiving permission.
Across from me sat the people whose misfortune made those answers possible.
“I want to see what remains.”
“Then see it in daylight,” Mother said. “And be somewhere else by evening.”
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I tried to fill my bottle from the stream.
Aoi caught my wrist.
“Upstream.”
“The water is clear.”
She pointed.
Beyond the bend, a dead sheep had lodged against a fallen branch.
“Ah.”
“Boil it anyway.”
“I understand.”
“Clear water. Dead sheep. Remember them together.”
“I said I understand.”
“Yes. I’m enjoying the repetition.”
The second half of the afternoon involved instruction in pack straps, water, and why the shortest visible route was not always the shortest usable one.
By evening, I had acquired another blister and a considerable respect for the inventiveness of ordinary inconvenience.
We reached the abandoned house Teren had described.
The doorway was empty. Moss grew beneath the sill. Inside, a clay stove leaned slightly to one side, and a shelf still held three cups.
One had a little blue flower painted on it.
Aoi checked the chimney before lighting a fire.
I collected wood.
She rejected most of it.
“This is green.”
“It was lying on the ground.”
“It came off a living branch.”
“So proximity to the earth is not the deciding factor.”
“No.”
She kept two pieces.
I treated that as partial approval.
We cooked peas in the dented pot.
The result was warm, filling, and unlikely to provoke professional jealousy.
After supper, Aoi took a notebook from the inside of her jacket.
Its pages came from several sources. Different sizes, different colors, stitched together along one edge. Japanese writing crowded around local names copied in a less confident hand.
“Berden?” I asked.
She nodded.
“What do you intend to say when you find him?”
“I’ve had time to think about it.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“No.”
I waited.
She kept writing.
I accepted the refusal with what I considered considerable grace.
Outside, footsteps passed along the track. A child complained of cold. Someone told him they would stop soon.
The voices faded.
“What do you want out there?” Aoi asked.
“In the marches?”
“Yeah.”
“A place where being useful might purchase something more durable than a bed.”
She stopped writing.
“Such as?”
“Authority. A position that does not depend upon Corvane deciding I am tolerable.”
“Over the people who couldn’t leave.”
“That is an uncharitable phrasing.”
“Is it wrong?”
The stove clicked as it cooled.
I could have spoken about mutual benefit. Protection exchanged for legitimacy. Every government in existence began with somebody offering an arrangement that enough people found preferable to the alternatives.
All true.
None answered the problem in her voice.
“I do not intend to make them worse off.”
“Neither does the King, probably.”
I disliked that comparison enough to know I should keep it.
Aoi closed the notebook.
“I’m going to Dunbarrow,” she said. “I’m finding Berden’s transfer. After that, I’m deciding what comes next.”
“I agreed.”
“I know. I wanted to hear whether it still applied after you found somewhere interesting on a map.”
“It applies.”
She studied me.
Then she tucked the notebook away.
“I’ll take first watch.”
“You have done most of the work. You should sleep.”
“You don’t know what to listen for.”
“Then tell me.”
Her expression changed slightly.
She shifted toward the doorway.
“All right. Come here.”
I sat beside her.
Beyond the broken threshold, the grass moved in the dark.
For the next half hour, I listened.
We met the bandits the following afternoon.
Aoi had grown quieter as the road entered wooded country. Twice she led us around hollows rather than through them. On the third, raised voices reached us before we could choose a route.
Then a child cried out.
Aoi lowered her pack.
I caught her sleeve.
“Look first.”
Her eyes went to my hand.
I released it.
We moved between the trees.
Six men stood around a cart tipped against the bank.
An older man knelt beside its broken wheel. A woman held a little boy against her skirt. One of the six had the woman by the upper arm.
The man with the sword was shouting.
Another, thin and bareheaded, stood near the rear of the cart. He had better boots than the others and no visible weapon.
Twice, men glanced at him before moving.
Leader, probably.
I used Insight.
Level four.
Two concealed fields.
No helpful explanation of whether he was cowardly, vicious, or susceptible to a well-delivered warning.
I checked the swordsman.
Level six.
The pressure behind my eye returned.
That would have to suffice.
“I can get between them,” Aoi whispered.
“All six?”
“If they stay on one side of me.”
The woman had the little boy tucked against her side.
“The thin one,” I said. “I think they take their lead from him.”
“You think.”
“Yes.”
Aoi nodded once.
It was enough.
I unwrapped the crown.
She stared.
“Really?”
“They haven’t seen it before.”
“Don’t get close.”
“I had not planned to.”
“Keep not planning to.”
We stepped onto the road.
The swordsman saw us.
“What do you want?”
Aoi stood half a pace ahead of me.
Her feet settled. Her shoulders changed.
I had seen soldiers assume that posture behind shields.
She had no shield.
I tried not to make too much of the distinction.
“Release her,” I said.
The man holding the woman laughed.
The thin man did not.
I addressed him.
“You have a decision to make.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone offering you an opportunity to leave.”
His eyes moved to the crown.
Then Aoi.
Then the road behind us.
One of the others had already begun edging toward the trees.
Good.
“This cart,” I continued, “does not contain anything worth what happens if you remain beside it.”
The thin man swallowed.
I thought I had him.
Then the man holding the woman pulled her backward and put a knife beneath her jaw.
“Make your girl move,” he said. “See what happens.”
The hollow became painfully clear.
The knife.
The woman’s throat.
The child still clutching her skirt.
I had been watching the leader.
I had scarcely looked at the man who could kill her.
“Aoi,” I said quietly.
“I see him.”
The thin man began telling the knife-holder to wait.
He was ignored.
So much for the authority I had identified.
Aoi moved one hand behind her back.
Two fingers pointed down.
Stay.
Then she raised both palms.
“All right,” she said. “I’m here.”
Her voice was ordinary.
I had been trying to fill the hollow with a king.
She spoke as though there were only the man and the frightened woman between them.
“Nobody’s moving.”
“Throw away the sword.”
Aoi unbuckled it.
The blade landed in the mud.
The man looked down.
Only for a fraction of a second.
“Now him.”
“I am unarmed,” I said.
“Shut up.”
The knife pressed.
A bead of blood appeared.
My next line vanished.
Aoi stepped sideways.
The knife moved.
So did she.
Pale light flashed around her forearm. She struck the blade away and drove her shoulder into the man’s chest.
They hit the cart.
The swordsman charged.
“Aoi!”
“I know!”
Steel struck her raised arm.
The sound was like a stone hitting thick glass.
She stayed upright.
Blood ran over her fingers.
“Move them!”
For one terrible second, I stood there.
Then I moved.
I caught the little boy beneath the arms and lifted him toward the bank. He kicked and screamed. His mother stumbled after us.
The older man was still on the ground.
“Get up.”
“My ankle--”
I tried to haul him upright.
He was heavier than I expected.
Everything was heavier than I expected.
A club struck the cart beside my head.
I fell.
Mud filled my mouth.
For an instant, I saw only boots and the underside of the wagon. Turnips rolled from a split sack and bumped gently against my wrist.
“Solvane!”
I got my knees beneath me.
“I’m doing it.”
I was not, yet.
I put my shoulder under the old man’s arm.
The woman took his other side.
Together, we dragged him up the bank.
Below us, Aoi had both hands locked around the swordsman’s weapon arm. Her boots slid backward in the mud.
The thin man was shouting for everyone to stop.
Nobody did.
The fellow near the trees was still there.
Still deciding.
“You,” I said.
He froze.
“The road behind you is clear.”
He looked.
Then he ran.
The man with the club swore and followed.
Aoi turned her hip.
The sword fell.
Its owner made a breathless, dreadful noise and dropped to his knees.
Now the thin man ran too.
The knife-holder tried to crawl beneath the cart. Aoi caught his collar, pulled him out, and shoved him away from the family.
“Go.”
He went.
The last man had already disappeared.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then the little boy began to cry in earnest.
His mother knelt and held him.
Aoi stood beside the cart.
Blood dripped from her hand.
I opened my mouth.
She looked at me.
I closed it.
There was work to do.
The cut was shallow.
Aoi told me this three times while I tried to unfold a bandage with fingers that would not cooperate.
“Your skill stopped a sword.”
“Most of one.”
“What happens when it fails?”
“Then it’s my arm.”
She held it out.
“Bandage first.”
I pressed the cloth down.
She winced.
“Too hard?”
“No. Keep pressure on it.”
The woman’s throat had a narrow cut beneath the jaw. Her father’s ankle was swollen but not broken. The cart needed a replacement peg and enough hands to lift it upright.
Nobody had died.
This did not make the next hour feel like victory.
At one point, I went behind a tree and vomited.
When I returned, Aoi handed me water.
She did not mention it.
I drank.
“I got it wrong,” I said.
She sat on an overturned sack while I finished tying the bandage.
“Which part?”
A fair question.
An unpleasantly large one.
“I thought the leader’s fear would settle the others.”
“You frightened the man with the knife too.”
“Yes.”
“That was the problem.”
I looked toward the woman.
She was washing mud from her son’s face with the corner of her skirt.
“I nearly got her killed.”
Aoi followed my gaze.
“Yes.”
I waited.
No reassurance arrived.
Then she said, “When it went wrong, you moved them. You didn’t stand there trying to make the speech work.”
“Not immediately.”
“No. Not immediately.”
She flexed her fingers.
“Next time, we plan for the man who doesn’t do what you expect.”
I nodded.
Something warm stirred beneath my ribs.
At first I thought I was going to be sick again.
Then blue light opened before me.
**LEVEL INCREASE**
**Level:** 2
**Mana capacity increased.**
**Physical attributes improved.**
I stared.
My arms ached. My knees were scraped. There was mud drying inside my collar.
Yet the next breath went deeper.
A small tension in my shoulders loosened. Not enough to make me strong. Enough that I could feel the difference between what I had been a moment ago and what I was now.
“Aoi.”
She glanced at the panel.
“Your first.”
“Second.”
“First increase. Don’t be annoying while I’m happy for you.”
“You’re happy.”
“A little. Try not to ruin it.”
I looked back at the number.
Two.
“How?”
“Training. Using your ability when it matters. Taking part in danger you actually have to work to survive.”
“I did very little fighting.”
“You helped move three people while somebody was trying to hit you with a club.”
“That qualifies?”
“Apparently.”
“And arguments?”
She snorted.
“If arguments counted, my instructor would have made me invincible.”
“So danger is required.”
“For the fast increases. Training still works. They told us it was growth, not a reward. You can get stronger making a terrible decision.”
That was a useful clarification.
An inconvenient one, given the circumstances.
“You don’t get to manufacture the same easy little victory forever,” she added. “The recruits tried. Mostly they got bruised.”
I could readily imagine.
The number remained where it was.
All my life, improvement had been something other people measured after the fact. Marks on paper. Rankings. The director admitting, reluctantly, that the scene worked better my way.
This was different.
I could feel it.
Then Aoi’s injured hand shifted on her knee.
The pleasure did not vanish.
It acquired company.
I dismissed the panel.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For the bandage instructions?”
“For staying there.”
She looked at me for a moment.
Then she glanced away.
“Yes,” she said. “Well. Somebody had to.”
We repaired the cart well enough to move.
The family was bound west, naturally. We helped them as far as the next open stretch of road, where the father could sit without the wheel threatening to leave its axle.
Before they went, the woman pressed a small carved token into Aoi’s hand.
Aoi tried to refuse.
The woman closed her fingers around it.
After that, she accepted.
When the cart had disappeared, Aoi examined the carving.
A bird. One wing larger than the other.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
She put it inside her jacket beside the notebook.
We turned east.
For a while, there was no one else on the road.
I appreciated the absence of witnesses.
At a stony bend, Aoi’s foot slipped.
Only slightly.
She recovered at once.
I stopped.
“Give me the pot.”
“What?”
“The cookpot. And one of the blankets.”
“You can barely carry your own pack.”
“I have recently received an independent assessment suggesting improvement.”
She looked at me.
Then she unfastened the pot.
It was heavier than its size justified.
I took the blanket too.
We reached Dunbarrow in the evening.
Three wagons stood in the hitching yard. A mule drank from a trough. Light showed beneath the relay house shutters, and somebody inside was arguing about missing oats.
Aoi went straight to the duty board.
I followed more slowly.
Personnel transfers had been pinned beneath the transport notices. She traced the names with a finger.
Stopped.
“Berden.”
For the first time all afternoon, her voice lifted.
Beneath his name was a destination.
**Rook’s Watch. Eastern March.**
Below that, in newer ink:
**Relief overdue.**
Aoi turned toward the clerk’s window.
I remained beside the board for a moment, adjusting the cookpot against my shoulder.
Beyond the stable, the east road narrowed between the trees.
The far gatepost bore four long grooves.
Fresh wood showed inside them.
I reached for Insight before remembering what it could not do.
Nothing answered.
Inside the relay house, Aoi asked when anybody had last heard from Rook’s Watch.
The argument about oats stopped.
The clerk looked past her, toward the darkening road.
Then he reached for the shutters.