Brille Covella had heard the songs a hundred times, and today the heroes in them were inside these walls. She stood at the head of her tribe's painted wagons, bow slung across her back, watching the pale towers of the castle rise past the gate. The recruiting board was posted in the market square by noon. If she could not pass the checkpoint before the bell, the company would ride out without her, and she would spend another season selling pots. The guard at the third gate did not look up when she approached. He was an elf in blue and gold, gloves white as new paper, and he made a merchant ahead of her repack an entire crate before waving the man through. When Brille led her horse forward, he raised one gloved hand. "Artisans use the south gate," he said. "The south gate is a half day's ride." "Then you should have started earlier." Brille pointed back at the wagons. Painted panels of dancers and cattle glowed in the sun. Clay pots sat stacked on a woven carpet, roped down for the festival. "We were invited. The steward's seal is on the manifest." Caelthir Silvershield took the paper between two fingers, as if it might stain him. He read it without moving his head. "The seal is genuine. The bearer is not noble. This gate is not for you." "The bell hasn't rung yet." "It will." Brille's hand tightened on the reins. Behind her, her aunt hissed her name. She was the youngest driver in the caravan, and the tribe had trusted her with the lead wagon because she asked for it. If she turned around now, she would be the girl who turned around. She looked past the guard at the crowd inside the arch. A boy in a stained apron was hauling a barrel through unchecked. A woman with a basket of onions squeezed past a cart. Caelthir did not glance at either. Brille stepped closer and lowered her voice. "You stopped the wine merchant ahead of me for twenty minutes. You waved that onion woman through. You aren't sorting by south gate or north gate. You're sorting by who you feel like stopping." His pale eyes moved to her for the first time. "Careful." "I'll go around," she said. "But the steward will hear which gate turned back his festival wagons. And the name on the manifest." She tapped the paper where his signature would be required to refuse it. Caelthir held the paper a long moment. Then he stamped it and handed it back without a word. His jaw was tight. "Move," he said. "Quickly." Brille clicked her tongue and the horse walked. The wagons rolled after her under the arch. She did not look back, but she felt him watching, and she understood she had made an enemy before she had made a single friend inside the walls. The market bell was still ringing when she crossed into the square.

The market square swallowed Brille the moment she cleared the arch. Drums thumped from three directions. Vendors shouted over each other. She got her wagons parked along the west row and helped her aunt unroll the carpet, but her eyes kept drifting to the recruiting board across the square. She had won her way inside the walls. She still had no idea where the legendary company drank, slept, or signed on new hands, and the festival crowd would break apart by dusk. Brille climbed onto her wagon's step. She scanned faces. She asked the wine merchant to her left. He shrugged. She asked the woman selling ribbons. The woman laughed and said heroes did not shop for ribbons. The bell for the second hour rang. The square was already thinning at the edges. She was setting out the painted panels and clay pots when she noticed a stranger stopped at her table. He was not looking at the pots. He was looking at the largest panel, the one of the dancers, and his thumb moved along the rim of a pitcher as if testing the clay. A small green lizard sat on his shoulder. His coat was good cut, worn thin at the cuffs. A short sword hung at his hip next to a coil of rope. "Northern glaze," he said to the lizard. "Two weeks out from home, still not cracked. That's real work." He looked up at Brille. "You paint these?" "My aunt paints. I fire them." He nodded like the answer mattered. He set two coins on the table for the pitcher he had not asked the price of. Brille did not take them yet. "You've been on a road," she said. "You know the city." "Some of it." "I'm looking for a company. The one in the songs. Silver on black. They post at the recruiting board by noon and I missed the posting." His mouth moved, not quite a smile. He scratched the lizard's throat with one finger. "They don't post. That board is for caravan guards and rat catchers." Brille's stomach dropped. "Then where." "They take names at the back room of the inn under the east bridge. Tonight. After the second bell." He tapped his coins closer to her hand. "They'll ask what you can do. Don't say pottery." "I shoot." "Then say that." He lifted the pitcher, tucked it under his arm, and turned into the crowd. Over his shoulder he added, "Ask for Cassian at the door. That's me. I'll get you in the room. What happens after is yours." He was gone before she could answer. Brille sat down on the wagon step. The coins were still on the table. Her hands were shaking, and she did not know yet if it was luck or a trap. She had until the second bell to decide what she could do in a room full of people who killed things for a living.

Brille sat on the wagon step until her hands stopped shaking. The painted panels behind her caught the low sun. The pots her aunt had glazed sat in a bright row on the carpet. If she walked into the inn under the east bridge dressed like this, in a smock stained with clay, the recruiters would see a potter and wave her off before she opened her mouth. Cassian could get her through the door. He could not make them look twice. She realized she was still holding the coins Cassian had paid for the pottery with. A gold piece and a bronze… not even enough to pay for the pottery he walked off with. Then she realized there was something weird about the bronze coin. It was one she’d never seen before. The face had a strange symbol and the reverse, 3 words in a language she did not know. She sighed, probably worthless. She added the gold piece to her coin purse. Now she had 2 gold pieces of the realm and a handful of small change, plus one weird coin she probably couldn’t spend. She had earned the other gold from a merchant that morning who bought the horse pitcher outright. She weighed it in her palm and thought about her aunt, who would ask where it went. She told her aunt she needed thread and left before her aunt could answer. The clothing shop two rows over had a striped awning and a sign in curling letters. Inside it smelled of cedar and warm wool. Cloaks hung along one wall. Boots stood in a line under the window. The proprietor looked up from folding a shirt and took in her smock in one glance. "I need to not look like this," Brille said. "By the second bell." The proprietor set the shirt down. "Hunting clothes or city clothes?" "Something a shooter would wear. Nothing fancy. Nothing new-looking." He pulled a dark green coat off a peg, then plain brown trousers, then a soft leather cap. He named a price. She named half. He shaved a quarter off and pointed her behind a curtain. She changed fast. The coat fit at the shoulders. The trousers were loose at the waist, and he handed a belt over the curtain without being asked. When she stepped out, he looked at her the way the stranger with the lizard had looked at the pitcher. "Leave the smock," he said. "I'll hold it till morning for two coppers." She paid the gold and took back the change in small coin. She kept her bow case under her arm. In the shop's polished window she saw a stranger looking back, road-worn and quiet. Not a potter. Not yet a fighter. Something a recruiter might let finish a sentence. Outside, the second bell started to ring. She counted the strikes and moved toward the east side of the city with her head down, coat collar up. She did not go back to the wagons. Her aunt would see the clothes and know the gold was gone, and there would be no explaining it until she came back with something to show. When the last bell died, Brille was standing across from the inn under the bridge, dressed for a room she had not yet earned the right to enter. She also had doubts that Cassian would come through. If he underpaid and gave her worthless coins, could she trust him here? She didn’t know but she mustered her courage. She crossed the street and knocked.

The door opened before her knuckles left the wood. A tall man filled the frame, green-skinned at the jaw, ears tipped like an elf's, shoulders too narrow for the strength she felt when his hand caught the door. He looked her over once and did not move. "Bow case, quiet face, wrong hour, wrong place," he said. He smiled without warmth. "Name?" "Brille Covella. Cassian said he'd get me in." "Cassian says a lot." The bouncer stepped aside anyway. "Second floor. Don't touch the knives on the table. She throws them at people who touch the knives on the table." Inside, the inn smelled of hot bread and pipe smoke. Music came from a back room. Brille climbed the stairs. At the top a woman sat on the edge of a table, red hair loose, a W-shaped scar on one cheek, four throwing knives lined up beside her hip. Cassian leaned against the wall behind her with the lizard on his shoulder. He nodded at Brille once. Nothing more. "You're the potter," the woman said. Her accent lilted. Her eyes did not. "Cassian says you shoot. Show me." She tossed an apple straight up. Brille's hands went cold. She was in a strange room, in strange clothes, with a stranger's knives an arm's length away. She had shot rabbits at forty paces since she was ten. She had never drawn a bow with anyone watching who mattered. The apple hit the boards and rolled. Brille had not moved. The woman tilted her head. "That's a no, then." "That was a warning," Brille said. "Throw it again." A beat. Then the redhead's mouth twitched. She scooped the apple up and threw it, harder this time, toward the rafters at the far end of the room. Brille had her bow out of the case before she thought about it. She nocked, drew, and released in one motion, the way her uncle had drilled her at dusk between wagons. The arrow pinned the apple to a beam. Cassian's lizard flicked its tongue. Cassian did not look surprised. The redhead walked to the beam, worked the arrow free, and came back with the apple still on the shaft. She held it up to the lamp. "Through the core," she said. "Under pressure. Fine." She pulled the apple off and set it on the table beside her knives. "You're on the list. We ride at dawn for the Coldwater road. You'll be tested proper on the way. Fail then and we leave you at the first inn." "I won't fail." "They all say that." She flicked a small iron token across the table. Brille caught it. "Show it at the south stable at first light. Don't be late. Don't tell your kin where you're going." Brille closed her fist around the token. Her aunt would wake to an empty wagon step and a missing gold piece. That was tomorrow's problem.

Brille left the wagon step before the sky turned gray. The token sat cold in her palm. She kept to the alleys, bow case slung low, boots quiet on the cobbles. The south gate stood two streets ahead, and past it the stable where the company would ride out. She had walked this route in daylight a dozen times. In the dark it felt narrower. She rounded the last corner and stopped. A guard stood under the gate lamp, white hair, blue coat, gloved hands folded at his back. Caelthir Silvershield. The elf who had tried to turn her wagons away her first day in the city. The one she had cornered with a threat about the steward. He was not walking a patrol. He was waiting. He saw her before she could step back. His head turned like a cat's. "Potter." His voice carried across the empty street. "Wrong gate for your trade. The market lies north." Brille kept her hands loose. "I'm walking." "At this hour. In shooter's leathers." He came off the wall one slow step at a time. "Show me what's in the case." "You've no cause." "I have every cause. A merchant girl slinks toward the stables before bell. I detain. I question. I write it up." He almost smiled. "The steward reads what I write." Her stomach dropped. He meant to hold her past dawn. The company would ride without her. The token would be worth nothing. She heard boots behind her before he did. Cassian stepped out of the alley mouth, lizard on the shoulder, one hand tucked casual into a vest pocket. His clothes had road dust on them. His eyes did not. "Officer." Cassian's tone was almost bored. "You're off your post. The third gate east is unmanned. I walked past it just now. Anyone could stroll through." Caelthir's jaw tightened. "My post is where I stand." "Your post is the third gate." Cassian drew a folded paper halfway from the pocket and let him see the wax on it. "I could ask the steward which he prefers. A guard at the merchant checkpoint, or a guard playing games at the south wall." The elf's eyes moved between them. He was calculating what one more complaint would cost the seat he wanted to empty. "Go," he said. He did not look at Brille. "Walk. Quickly." Brille walked. She did not run. She heard Cassian fall in beside her, humming something with no tune. "You didn't have to," she said, when the gate was behind them. "I did. He'd have held you an hour." Cassian glanced sideways. "You owe me a second time now. I'll collect on the road." The stable lamps showed ahead. Horses stamped in the yard. The red-haired woman stood counting saddlebags, and she looked up as Brille came into the light, and nodded once. Brille had made the ride. The debt to Cassian had just doubled.

They made camp where the road bent past a shallow creek. Brille helped unsaddle the horses and watched the treeline while she worked. Something had been pacing them since noon. She had caught it twice: a shape too low for a deer, too heavy for a wolf, sliding between trunks whenever the wind moved the branches. No one else had said a word. She caught whiffs of a rare clay smell in the breeze as well, if that smell was what she thought it was, it could mean real trouble. She was the newest. She had to be sure before she spoke. Siobhan Brightscar crouched by the fire ring, striking flint. The red-haired woman with the W-shaped scar had recruited Brille at the inn under the east bridge, and had not spoken to her since the ride began. Brille went to her anyway. "Something's tracking us," Brille said. "West side. Low to the ground. Big." Siobhan did not look up. "How long?" "Since the last stream crossing." "Then you've got until dark to name it." She struck a spark into the tinder. Her green eyes lifted. "Guess wrong and we waste arrows. Guess right and we sleep. Go." Brille took her bow and moved upwind along the treeline. Cassian fell in behind her without asking, lizard riding their shoulder, one hand on the knife at his belt. She did not send him away. She owed him twice already. A third debt could wait. "Track first," Cassian said. "Shoot second." "I know." She found the print at the base of a birch. Four toes, claws forward, wider than her spread hand. A tuft of green-and-black striped fur clung to the bark above it, at the height of her chest. She pulled the fur free and rolled it between her fingers, sniffed it. Coarse. Recent. Weller’s rust clay. Her blood ran cold. Rhyme Threebloods came up on her other side, quiet for a man his size. The bouncer from the inn had ridden out with them, sword slung across his back. He looked at the print and the fur and his jovial face went flat. "Clayhorn," he said. "Old scars, fresh hunger. A horn like a spear and a hide arrows can't finish." He glanced at her. "You saw it first. Well done, lass." "Clayhorns are arrow proof…" "No, they Slow it. If you get the eye… that’s the only soft part worth the shot. Small targets on a moving beast twice your size.” Brille went back to camp with the tuft of fur in her fist. Siobhan took it, sniffed it, and stood. "Clayhorn prowler," Brille said. "West treeline. One, I think. Big." Siobhan nodded once, the same nod she had given at the stable. She turned to the others and started giving orders: fire built higher, horses moved to the creek side, watches doubled. Cassian pulled a coil of wire from his pack. Rhyme drew his blade and tested the edge with his thumb. "Brille, you’re on the first watch with me," Siobhan said to Brille. "You spotted it. You help me kill it." Brille strung her bow. The camp was no longer sleeping tonight. But she had earned a place at the fire, and the woman with the scar had said her name like it belonged there.

Brille took the west edge of the camp with Siobhan at her shoulder. The fire was up high behind them, throwing long shadows into the trees. The watch post was a low log by the creek, meant for looking, not fighting. Brille scanned the treeline and tried to slow her breath. The wind shifted, cool against the back of her neck. That was wrong. The breeze had been in her face all evening. "It circled us," Siobhan said, low. Her Celtic lilt made the words soft, but her hand was already on a throwing knife. "Downwind now. Smart brute." Brille turned. Nothing but trunks and dark between them. No cover between her and the trees except the log at her knees. She nocked an arrow. Her hands were steady. That surprised her. A branch cracked. Then the clayhorn came out of the brush at a full run. It was bigger than the tracks had promised. Green-and-black stripes down a thick furred body, a single horn lowered like a spear, old arrow shafts bristling from its shoulders. It came straight for the log. Straight for her. "Eye," Siobhan said, calm as a market price. "Only the eye." Brille drew. Twenty paces. Fifteen. The horn dropped lower. She could see the wet shine of the near eye, yellow, fixed on her. She held her draw one breath longer than she wanted to. Then she loosed. The arrow went in clean. The clayhorn screamed and its front legs folded. Its body kept coming. The horn plowed into the log and shattered it, and the whole weight of the beast slammed past her hip and into the creek bank. Water sprayed up cold across her face. Brille went down on one knee. Her bow was still in her hand. Siobhan was already moving. Two throwing knives in the good eye, one after the other, quick as counting. The clayhorn shuddered in the mud and went still. For a long moment there was only the creek and Brille's own breathing. Then Siobhan crouched by the head and pulled her knives free. She wiped them on the striped fur. "Clean shot," Siobhan said. She looked up. The freckles across her nose caught the firelight. "First try. In the dark. With it coming." "I had to wait," Brille said. Her voice sounded far away. "You did. Most don't." Siobhan stood and put a hand briefly on Brille's shoulder. It was warm and it was gone. "Skin it in the morning. The hide's worth carrying. You earned the cloak off its back." Rhyme was already coming down from the camp with a lantern, Cassian a step behind, lizard steady on his shoulder. Brille stayed on her knee by the ruined log and looked at the thing she had killed. She was still the newest. But she had put the shot where the shot had to go, and Siobhan had said so out loud, in front of the others.

By morning the clayhorn was skinned and the hide scraped clean. Brille worked the fat off it with a borrowed knife while the camp packed up around her. Siobhan had said she earned the cloak. That was one shot and one night. It was not a place in the company. She could still be sent back at the next town, thanked for her arrow and paid off in coin. Rhyme dropped down beside her with a coil of sinew. His half-orc tusks caught the light when he grinned. He was the bouncer who had let her into the inn under the east bridge, once she gave Cassian's name. She had barely spoken to him since. "Stitch it wide at the shoulders," he said. "Narrow at the hem, wind won't grab. Sew it tight, sleep light." He tossed her the sinew. "You want a hand?" "I want to do it myself." "Good answer." He sat anyway. He threaded a bone needle and started on the hood without asking. They worked in quiet. He hummed something with no tune. Cassian came by with two tin cups. The lizard rode his shoulder like it was pinned there. He set one cup by Brille's knee and kept the other. His clothes were dusty at the cuffs. He looked tired in a way she had not seen at the inn. "You owe me twice," he said. He said it plain, not cruel. "The room, and the gate." "I know." "I'm calling one in now." He crouched. His voice dropped. "Siobhan wants to leave you at the next posting station. Fresh recruit, one kill, no history. Standard practice. I told her not yet." Brille's hands stopped on the hide. "Why tell her anything." "Because I want you on the road past Coldwater and she listens to me on new blood." He sipped. "So here's the debt. When she asks you at the fire tonight what you want from this company, you don't say adventure. You don't say your tribe. You tell her one useful thing you can do that none of us can. Then you offer it before she asks for it." "That clears one debt?" "That clears one debt." He stood and walked off. Rhyme kept stitching. "Wise gecko-man," he murmured. "Speaks in prose, still throws." That night Siobhan sat down across the fire and asked exactly what Cassian had said she would. Brille set the folded hide across her lap. She said her tribe crossed the flooded stretch of the old cobbled road every spring. She knew where it washed out. She knew the fords. She could scout the wet miles ahead of the company and save them a day. Siobhan's green eyes held on her. Then she nodded once. "Scout tomorrow at first light," Siobhan said. "With me." Brille pulled the striped cloak around her shoulders. It fit.

Brille rode out with Siobhan at first light. The striped hide cloak sat heavy on her shoulders. She had said she knew these roads. Her tribe crossed the flooded stretch each spring. That was true. She had ridden in the wagons, not driven them. She had watched the elders read the water. She had never chosen a ford herself. The old road appeared through the mist. Dark cobblestones ran uneven under shallow water. Weeds grew from cracked seams. In places the stones dropped away into black pools. Siobhan reined up beside her. "You lead," Siobhan said. "Company's an hour behind. Pick the crossing." Brille studied the water. Two paths split ahead. The left ran straight through a wide flat pond. The right curved higher along a ridge of broken stones. Her memory said left. The wagons always went left. But the water looked deeper now than she remembered, and the season was wrong. Spring floods came from the north hills. This was late runoff from somewhere else. She pointed left. Siobhan waited. Brille kept her hand up. Then she saw it. A dead branch spun slow in the flat water. A sinkhole pulled it under. She dropped her hand. "Right," she said. "The left washed out. Cobbles gave way under it." Siobhan looked at the branch, then at her. "How do you know?" "Water's turning where it shouldn't. Stone's gone under." They took the ridge path. The horses picked careful steps. Halfway across, a shape rose from behind a pile of fallen stones. Big as an orc, scaled orange and red, a mane of stiff red spines. He held an axe as long as Brille was tall. Two others crouched behind him with clubs. Muggers working the old road. "Toll," the big one said. His voice was slow. "Coin. Both." Siobhan's hand went to her belt knives. Brille kept her bow across her lap. She counted the men. Three. She counted the ridge. Narrow. The big one blocked the only dry line. "We've no coin," Brille said. "Coin," he said again. He lifted the axe. Brille slid down from the saddle. She stepped to the edge of the ridge and pointed at the flat pond below. "See that branch? Spinning?" The big one squinted. His two men leaned to look. Siobhan's knife left her hand before Brille finished pointing. One mugger dropped. Brille's arrow took the second in the throat. The big one roared and swung. His foot came down on a loose stone. The stone slid. He went sideways off the ridge into the sinkhole. The water swallowed him and his axe. Siobhan pulled her knife from the dead man's chest. She wiped it clean. "Left would have killed the wagons," she said. "You saw it." "I saw it." "Ride back. Bring them up the ridge." Brille turned her horse. The cloak settled on her shoulders. She had not lied. Not today.

Brille rode back down the ridge and brought the wagons up the right ford. The company crossed without a wheel lost. Siobhan gave her a nod and rode ahead to scout the next bend. Brille reined in beside the dead muggers laid out on the stones. She had killed one of them. She owed him a look, at least. She knelt by the big man's second, the one her arrow had taken through the throat. His belt purse was fat. She cut the strings. Coins spilled onto the wet cobbles. Silver from the realm. Copper bits. Stamped rounds she didn't know. And under them, heavier than the rest, a worn bronze disc. She picked it up. Her hand knew the weight before her eyes did. She dug in her own pocket and drew out the bronze coin Cassian had given her for pottery. She laid them side by side on her palm. Same size. Same strange symbol cut deep in the face. Same three words in a language she could not read. The mugger's coin had fresh notches along the rim. Hers had two. She sat back on her heels. The water moved over the stones. A fallen sign lay in the weeds past the ford, vines grown through its planks, old letters half-eaten. She had ridden past a hundred such markers this week. None of them meant anything. This coin meant something. Cassian had paid her with it. A dead mugger carried its twin. That was not a coincidence a person could ride past. She closed her fist. She thought about what she knew. Cassian got her through the gate. Cassian got her into the recruiter's room. Cassian arrived at the south gate with a steward's letter already written. Cassian collected debts he had built himself. She did not know what the coin meant. She did not know if it marked a paymaster, a crew, a warning, or a claim. She knew only that the man who had put it in her hand was tied to the men who had tried to kill Siobhan on the ridge. Hoofbeats came back down the road. Siobhan drew up. "You coming?" Brille stood. She kept both coins in her fist. She thought about handing them up. She thought about what Siobhan would do with a scout who accused a company member on the strength of a bronze disc and a feeling. Siobhan had kept her because she was useful. Useful was not the same as trusted. "Coming," Brille said. She dropped the mugger's purse into her saddlebag and swung up. She would ride beside Cassian tonight. She would watch his hands, his lizard, his easy smile. She would learn what the coin bought before she spent what she knew. The road ran on toward Darkspire. Brille rode into the company with a secret of her own now, and a name at the center of it.

They rode until dusk. Brille kept her horse three lengths behind Cassian's and watched the way his lizard cocked its head at every sound in the trees. The lizard heard what its owner pretended not to. Twice she caught Cassian glance back down the road, not at her, past her. Something was following them again. At the next rest, she slid off and walked to Siobhan. "We're being trailed. Not a beast this time. Men." Siobhan didn't look up from her girth strap. "How many?" "I don't know yet. Give me an hour before we make camp. Let me ride the back trail." Siobhan's green eyes moved to Cassian, then back. "One hour. Bring me a number." Brille turned her horse and cut into the pines above the cobblestones. The old road ran below her, dark stones patched with newer ones, a thin stream cutting down the middle where the drainage had failed. She tied off and climbed a rise where she could see two bends at once. She strung her bow and waited. They came inside the hour. Six on foot, spaced wide, moving quiet. Then a seventh behind them, and he was not quiet, because he did not have to be. He was taller than any orc, scaled orange and red, a crest of spines down his skull. He carried an axe the size of a wagon wheel. Grok Ironjaw. She had heard the name at the inn under the east bridge, spoken like a joke that stopped being funny. She counted again. Seven. She marked the lead scout's belt. A purse fat with coin. The same type of purse the dead man on the ridge had carried. She backed off the rise, mounted, and rode hard. She found Siobhan at the picket line with Rhyme beside her, tall and lean, one hand already on his blade hilt. "Seven," Brille said. "Six scouts and Grok Ironjaw behind them. An hour out." Rhyme whistled low. "Seven come creeping, and one comes tall. Best we don't camp here at all." Siobhan was already moving. "Break the fire. Wagons up. We push to the stone culvert and hold the narrow." She caught Brille's sleeve. "You saw them first. That's the second time. Don't lose the habit." They moved before full dark. Brille rode drag and watched the road behind. The company reached the culvert and set the wagons across it. When the muggers came at moonrise they came into arrows and Rhyme's blade and Siobhan's knives in a killing lane no wider than a door. Four fell on the stones. Two ran. Grok did not come into the lane. He stood at the edge of the torchlight, watched his men die, and walked back into the trees. Maybe Grok was not as dumb as tales had told. His legend was one of raw power and no tact. Tonight laid the myth a lie, it was calculated. Either Grok was smarter than he was known to be, or someone was using him as a puppet. Brille lowered her bow. She had bought the camp. She had also shown Grok her face, and Cassian was still riding with them.

By dawn the company was moving again, wagons creaking down the old cobblestones. Brille rode point in her striped hide cloak, hood up, bow across her knees. Grok had walked away last night. That meant someone had told him to. She had until the next attack to find out who, or the next ambush would take Siobhan. She watched Cassian on the flank. He fed his lizard a scrap of dried meat and did not look at her. He had ridden with her from the gate. He had paid for her pottery in a bronze coin she had later pulled from a dead man's palm. If a hand was pulling Grok's strings, she needed to know if it was that one. She dropped back to Rhyme. "When we stop, hold Cassian at the wagon. I need his purse turned out." Rhyme's brows went up. "A heavy charge from a scout so young. What proof carries the weight of that tongue?" "A coin. Bronze. Foreign letters. Same as the muggers carried." Rhyme's smile went flat. He nodded once. They stopped at midday to water the horses. Rhyme called Cassian over on some excuse about a girth. Brille cut in behind and pulled the flap of his saddlebag. Cassian turned, quick, but Rhyme's hand was already on his shoulder. "Easy," Rhyme said. "The lady wants a look." Brille tipped the pouch into her palm. Silver. Copper. A folded paper. No bronze coin. She dug into the inner pocket. Empty. She checked his belt purse. Nothing but realm coin. Cassian watched her without anger. "You wanted to find me guilty. I'm sorry to disappoint." "You gave me one before," Brille said. "I did. I took it off a man I killed on the Coldwater road two months back. I thought it was a curiosity. I paid you with it because I was short." He met her eyes. "If I ran with Grok, would I ride at your flank with my back to your bow?" She held the look. His lizard flicked its tongue. She had wanted him to be the answer. He was not. That evening a rider caught them from behind, alone, waving a white strip. The company drew arrows. He reined in and threw down a sealed packet. "For the red-haired one. From the third gate." Siobhan broke the seal. She read it twice. Then she passed it to Brille. The hand was tight and clean. Caelthir Silvershield. Brille knew the name before she read it. Grok takes his orders from a man who buys council seats. I want that man ended. You are being herded toward him. The bronze coins are his mark. Ride to me at the third gate before you ride to Darkspire. I will name him. Brille lowered the letter. Her enemy at the south gate had just handed her the string. She did not yet know if the hand at the other end was worse.

Brille folded the letter into her belt and thought about the two men who had run from the culvert. They had seen the company's wagons, the ford Brille chose, the faces at the fire. If they reached their master, the next ambush would be built around every choice she had made. She could not ride to the third gate with that road open behind her. She found Siobhan at the picket line. "Two ran from the culvert. They're circling back. If they report, we lose the road." Siobhan did not look up from the girth. "Then don't let them report. Take Rhyme." "I'll take the cloak and go alone. Two horses on a back trail is two horses heard." Siobhan finally looked at her. "Then don't be heard." Brille cut south off the cobblestones and doubled back along a drover's track her tribe had used for years. The striped hide cloak swallowed her against the brush. She rode an hour, tied the horse in a stand of alder, and went the rest on foot. She found them at a creek, watering two lathered ponies. The smaller one she knew by the skull tattoo at his throat, Vince Malone, one of the runners from the culvert. The other was a lean man with a split lip. They were arguing about which of them would speak first to Grok. Brille went to one knee behind a fallen trunk and set an arrow. Wind on her left cheek. Forty paces. She breathed out and loosed. The lean man dropped without a sound. Vince spun, saw the shape in the striped cloak rising from the log, and ran for his pony. She had a second arrow nocked before his foot hit the stirrup. It took him under the arm. He fell across the saddle and slid down into the water. She walked down to the creek. Vince was still breathing. His hand scrabbled at his belt purse and came up with a bronze coin, the same weight, the same strange letters. He held it out to her like a bribe. "Who?" she said. "Who gave it to you?" "Big man," he wheezed. "Not Grok. The one Grok kneels to. Third gate. He waits at the third gate." His hand dropped. So did he. Brille stared at the coin in his palm. Caelthir's letter had named the third gate. Vince, dying, had named the third gate. Two enemies pointing at the same door. She took the coin and the purse. She dragged both bodies into the brush, cut the ponies loose, and rode back to the company by dusk. She gave Siobhan the purse and the coin. "They won't report. And the man Caelthir wants us to meet is the man Grok kneels to. The third gate is the trap, not the way out." Siobhan weighed the coin. "Then we don't go to the gate. We take the gate's road on our terms." Brille nodded. The string was in her hand now. She still did not know whose hand held the other end.