Prince Nera Mossveil found the first snare at dawn, sprung and empty, with tufts of spotted hide caught in the wire. He was a short fairy, shorter than the wire post, and he had to kneel to lift the hide free. The tuft belonged to one of his sacred herd. The herd had scattered weeks ago, and every fawn still loose in the outer woods was a thread pulled from his crown. He left the crown at the hall whenever he tracked. He had left it there again this morning, on the stone bench in the throne room where the carved wings watched an empty seat. Without the herd, the crown was only metal. Without the crown seated on the living bloodline, the forest around the castle would begin to fail. Nera had until the herd was whole again, or he had nothing. He followed the snare line north and found three more traps. One held a small winged fawn, alive, its foreleg twisted in wire. Nera cut the wire with his belt knife. The fawn kicked, then went still under his hand. He carried it half a mile to a hollow and hid it in the brush. Poachers had done this. Poachers who knew what a sky fawn's hide was worth at market. If he chased them alone, they would move the traps and kill the rest. He went back to the hall and rode for the cottage at the edge of the royal grounds. Gareth Thornfield answered the door in shirtsleeves. The old huntsman was half-elf, half-ogre, green-skinned, gray-haired, and retired three winters. "Poachers in the outer woods," Nera said. "Snare wire. Sky fawn hide in the teeth." "How many traps." "Four found. More set." Gareth looked past him at the trees. "Gryphon's in the mews. I'll need an hour." He paused. "You'll need another set of eyes on the ground. Bristle Thornwick keeps a shack two ridges east. He hates poachers more than he hates me." They rode for Bristle by noon. The old tracker met them at his door with a crossbow already strung, cap pulled low over green eyes. He listened to Nera's count of the snares, spat once, and shouldered a pack. By dusk the three of them had cut every snare on the north line and driven the poachers off a ridge. Gareth's gryphon flushed two men from a blind and pinned a third against a creek bed. The man talked. He named a buyer in the southern market and a camp three days out where the rest of his crew held what they had already taken. Nera bound his hands and thought of the hollow where he had hidden the wounded fawn. He had cleared the north woods. He had lost three days of tracking the scattered herd, and now he knew the poachers already had some of them alive in a cage he had never seen.

Nera left the bound poacher with Gareth Thornfield at the cottage by first light. The old huntsman would ride the man to the castle guard. Bristle Thornwick had already gone east to scout the camp road. Nera meant to circle back through the hollow and check the wounded fawn before he followed. He took the fairy-blessed dagger from his belt bag and strapped it to his thigh. He rode a giant dragonfly this time, low over the ferns, faster than a horse in close trees. He was two ridges from the hollow when the dragonfly's wings shrilled and jerked him sideways. A crossbow bolt cracked through the leaves where his head had been. Nera rolled off the mount and hit moss. The dragonfly climbed and vanished. He heard boots. Two sets. Then a third, farther back. He understood then. The captured poacher had a buyer, and the buyer had sent men to close the mouth. They were tracking him now, not the herd. Nera crawled downhill through fern until the ground dropped into a creek cut. He drew the dagger. The blade caught light it should not have caught under the canopy. He pressed against the bank and listened. One man called low to another. They were spreading to flank the creek. He counted his choices. Run for the cottage and lead them to Gareth. Run for the hollow and lead them to the fawn. Neither. He waited until the nearest boots crossed above him, then came up under the man and drove the dagger through the back of his knee. The man dropped. Nera took the crossbow before the man could shout and shot the second hunter in the chest as he came around the bank. The third man ran. Nera whistled once, sharp. The dragonfly dropped through the branches. He was in the saddle before the runner cleared the ridge. He caught the third man in a clearing and put a bolt through his thigh. He bound both survivors with their own belts and dragged them to a game trail where Gareth would find them by nightfall. He searched their packs. He found a folded paper with his own description on it, written in a market clerk's hand, and a purse of southern coin. The buyer knew his face. The buyer had paid for it. Nera rode back toward Cedarview Cottage with the paper in his shirt. He had wanted three days to reach the poacher camp and cut the cage open. He did not have three days now. The buyer would send more men, and the next ones would not miss. If he stayed in his own woods, they would find him between here and the hollow, and the fawn hidden there would die with him. He turned the dragonfly south before he reached the cottage door, toward the market road, toward the man who had bought his name.

Nera turned the dragonfly south along the market road before noon. He kept it low over bracken to hide the wing-flash from the ridges. He meant to reach the market in two days, find the buyer, and end the price on his head before the next hunters found him. He did not look back at the cottage. He did not stop at the hollow. An hour past the second creek, he heard wings behind him that were not his mount's. He drew the crossbow and turned in the saddle. A fawn was flying after him. Small, spotted, one wing dragging in the wrong rhythm. A ragged snare wound crossed its chest. It was one of his herd. It had followed him out of the hollow. He cursed and slowed the dragonfly. The fawn dropped into the ferns behind him and bleated. Its cry carried far in the still air. He had heard that cry from three ridges away as a boy. Anything with teeth in these woods would hear it too. He swung down and gathered the fawn against his chest. It was lighter than a housecat. Blood had dried along its ribs and cracked open again from the flight. He tried to lift it onto the saddle. The dragonfly shied. Two riders and a wounded fawn were too much weight for the low, fast flying he needed. He could not outrun pursuit with the fawn on his lap. He could not leave it here to bleed and call every wolf in the south woods to his trail. He thought of Gareth Thornfield. The old huntsman was riding the poacher to the castle guard. His road ran west of Nera's. If Nera cut hard west now, he could meet that road by dusk. It would cost him a day. It would put him back on ground the buyer's men were already watching. He cut west anyway. He rode with the fawn wrapped in his cloak and one hand on the blessed dagger. He pushed the dragonfly harder than was safe. At dusk he came out on the cart track and saw Gareth ahead, the bound poacher walking on a lead rope. Gareth lifted a hand. Nera did not slow until he was close enough to speak low. He held out the fawn. "Take her to the castle stables. Tell the herdsman snare wound, three days old." Gareth looked at the fawn, then at Nera's face. "You're not coming." "No." Gareth took the bundle. He tucked the fawn inside his coat without a word and shifted the lead rope to his other hand. Nera watched them go until the track bent. One of the herd was safe. The buyer's men would know by morning that he had broken cover on the west road. He turned the dragonfly south again, alone now, and rode into the dark toward the market.

Nera flew south through the night and half the next morning. The dragonfly's wings buzzed low over the reeds where the market road ran beside the river. He meant to catch the road before the buyer's men could close on it. He was too late. From a rise above the water he saw them: four riders on the track ahead, moving slow, watching the sky. The detour west had cost him his lead. If he stayed on the road they would take him between them within the hour. He put the dragonfly down in a stand of alders and thought. He could not outfly four archers over open ground. He could not fight four in the road. He needed them off their horses and split apart. He needed them to walk past him without knowing he was there. Half a mile down the bank stood a ferry house, its timber walls grey with river damp and a shingled porch out over the dock. Farmers used it to cross their carts at market week. Nera had passed it twice as a boy. He tied the dragonfly deep in the alders and walked down to the house on foot, the blessed dagger flat against his ribs under his shirt. The ferryman's laundry hung on a line behind the porch. Nera took a patched robe from the rope and a wide straw hat from a peg by the door. He pulled the robe over his clothes. The hem dragged in the mud. The hat hid his face to the mouth. He bent his back and made himself shorter still. A fairy prince walked in. A stooped beggar walked out toward the road. He sat on a stump at the ferry landing where the road bent down to the water. He kept his hands inside the sleeves. The dagger lay along his forearm. When the four riders came around the bend they slowed and looked him over. One asked if he had seen a small man on a dragonfly pass east. Nera pointed a shaking hand back up the road and mumbled about wings over the reeds an hour past. Three of the riders kicked their horses and went. The fourth swung down to search the ferry house. Nera waited until the man's back was to him at the door. He crossed the boards without sound and put the dagger under the man's jaw before he could turn. He asked for the buyer's name. He asked where in the market the buyer kept his rooms. The man told him both. Nera bound him with the ferryman's rope and rolled him under the porch. He stripped off the robe and the hat and left them folded on the step. Three riders were chasing a lie east. One was gagged under the boards. The road south was open again, and now Nera knew the name of the man he was riding to kill.

Nera reached the southern market by dusk of the next day. He landed the dragonfly in a grove a mile north of the walls and walked the rest on foot. From a low ridge he studied the gates. Two men in plain coats watched the road. Their eyes lifted every time a rider passed. He knew that shape of watching. They were waiting for a short fairy on a green-winged mount. His ears alone would give him away at ten paces. The robe and hat trick would not work twice; the buyer's men had heard about the ferry house by now. He sat in the grove until dark and counted what he had. A blessed dagger. A dragonfly hidden in the trees. A face that no crowd in a human market would forget. He needed a second pair of hands, and he needed someone whose face did not sing fairy at first glance. He knew one man within a day's flight. He flew north through the night and found Gareth Thornfield at the edge of the castle grounds, feeding the gryphon strips of meat off a board. The half-elf, half-ogre looked up once and kept working. Nera told him the buyer's name, the market, and the watchers at the gate. He asked for help. Gareth set the board down. "Fawn's healing," Gareth said. "Stable boy has her. I can ride tonight." "They know my face. Not yours." "Good." They flew south together at first light, Gareth on a borrowed horse below, Nera high on the dragonfly and out of sight of the road. By afternoon they lay again on the ridge above the market. Nera pointed out the two men at the gate and a third he had spotted at the well. Gareth counted them under his breath and nodded once. He would walk in alone. A retired huntsman looking for wine and a bed drew no second glance in a border town. He would find the buyer's rooms, mark the doors, mark the guards, and come back before sundown to tell Nera the shape of the inside. Gareth pulled off his sword belt and left it with Nera. He took a small purse and a walking stick. He crossed the last stretch of open ground at an easy pace and passed the two watchers without a look. One of them glanced at his ears, saw the ogre in his jaw, and turned back to the road. Nera lay in the grass with the blessed dagger across his knee and watched the gate swallow his friend. The market road was closed to him. It was open to Gareth. That was enough for tonight. Tomorrow he would know which door the buyer slept behind, and which window he would come through.

Gareth came back through the gate at dusk with a jug under one arm and a slower walk than he had left with. He passed the watchers without a glance and cut into the trees a mile north. Nera met him in the grove where the dragonfly rested under a low branch. Gareth set the jug down and drew a square in the dirt with his stick. "Second floor. Corner rooms above the wine shop. Two doors. One to the hall, one to a back stair." He tapped each mark. "Four guards. Two at the hall door. Two at the stair." "When do they change?" Gareth's stick stopped. "Couldn't tell. Watched three hours. Saw one swap at the stair. None at the hall. Pattern's not clean." Nera stared at the square in the dirt. Four guards was manageable if he came through the window between shifts. Four guards was a coffin if fresh men climbed the stair while he was inside. He needed the schedule and he did not have days to sit and learn it. If he waited, the buyer would move, or more hunters would come north. He told Gareth to go back at first light and buy wine from the shop under the rooms. Sit through the morning. Count every boot on the stair. Mark the hour of each change on a slip of paper. Gareth nodded once and lay down against a root to sleep. Nera did not sleep. He turned the square in his head until the shape of it steadied. Gareth walked back into the market at dawn and did not come out until the bell for the noon meal. He returned at dusk with the jug refilled and a folded scrap in his fist. He spread it on the dirt beside the square. Four tally marks, four times written beside them. The stair guards changed on the second hour of every watch. The hall guards changed on the fourth. There was a gap of a slow count of thirty between the old pair leaving and the new pair climbing. It happened four times in a day. The next fell an hour before dawn. "Third watch," Gareth said. "Hour before light. Back stair empties first." Nera folded the scrap into his belt. He had the hour. He had the window. The buyer slept behind the corner room and would wake to a blessed blade at his throat before the new guards reached the landing. He drew the dagger, checked the edge, and slid it home. Gareth put the jug aside and picked up his sword belt from the grass. "Before dawn," Nera said. "We go over the back roof. You hold the stair. I take the room." "Good," Gareth said.

Nera left Gareth in the grove before midnight and moved down toward the market alone to set his own eyes on the wine shop roof. He wore the tattered robe over his gear and a wide straw hat pulled low, the same beggar shape that had fooled riders on the road days before. The dragonfly stayed tethered behind him in the trees. He crossed the outer stalls at the hour when the drunks slept and the guards blinked slow. He found a shuttered bakery across from the wine shop and folded himself into the gap between its wall and a stack of empty crates. The corner window above the shop showed one lamp. Two men stood at the mouth of the back stair. Nera counted their shifts against the scrap in his belt. The times matched. He settled to wait out the hour and watch the roofline for the climb he would make before dawn. A dog came around the crates. It was thin and market-bred, ribs showing under short fur. It stopped a pace from his boot and lifted its nose. Its ears went forward. Then it began to bark, sharp and steady, the kind of bark that did not stop. One of the stair guards turned his head. The other stepped off the step and started across the lane. Nera did not draw the blessed dagger. A dead dog in the street would bring more questions than a live one. He pulled a strip of dried meat from the pouch under the robe and held it flat on his palm. The dog kept barking. He pushed the meat closer, slow, and hooked one finger under its jaw as it lunged for the food. He clamped its mouth shut around the strip and lifted it against his chest under the robe. The barking cut to a muffled whine. He stroked its back once, hard, the way a farmer quiets a lamb. The guard reached the middle of the lane and stopped. He looked at the crates. He looked up at the window. Nera held the dog and did not breathe. A second dog answered from two streets over, then a third. The guard spat, waved a hand at the noise, and walked back to the stair. He said something to his partner. Both laughed short and settled again. Nera stayed against the wall until the dog in his arms went slack from the meat and the warmth. He set it down behind the crates and stepped it toward the bakery door with a nudge of his boot. It trotted off without looking back. His hands shook once and then stopped. The window lamp above the shop had not moved. The guards had not called up the stair. He was still hidden. The hour before dawn was still his. He fixed the straw hat lower on his brow and began to count down the watches to the climb.

Nera settled behind the crates and counted the watches toward dawn. Then he heard boots. Not the paired step of the stair guards, but a loose group moving down the lane from the market square. He risked one look past the crate edge. Six men in patrol coats, lanterns lit, working the alleys shutter by shutter. A pre-dawn sweep. His climb window opened in less than an hour, and the patrol would reach his gap before then. He could not stay. He could not cross the lane without passing under the wine shop window. He counted the patrol's pace against the shuttered doors. Two minutes per alley, maybe three. That put them at the bakery gap before the guard shift changed. Nera pulled a stub of chalk from his pouch and marked the crate with a short slash, the sign he and Gareth had set for trouble at the post. Gareth waited two roofs east with a coil of rope and a short bow. If Nera did not appear at the climb point, Gareth would read the mark on his own sweep and know to pull back. That was the plan they had made. It was not the plan Nera wanted. He needed the patrol turned. He looked down the lane the other way and saw a man slumped against a doorframe, uniform coat open, one boot untied. A sergeant's stripes on the sleeve, half torn. The face was flushed. A bottle sat by his knee. Nera had watched him stumble in an hour before and had marked him as street noise. Now the man was a tool. Nera slipped along the shopfronts under the eaves and crouched by the slumped man. He shook his shoulder. The man opened one eye. "Debts," Nera whispered. "Patrol's coming. They'll take the bottle and the coat both." The man's name was stitched crooked above the pocket. Denton. Denton blinked at him, slow. "Owe everyone," he said. "Not the patrol yet." "Then move," Nera said. He pressed two silver bits into the man's palm. "Go loud down the far lane. Sing. Fall over a stall. Draw them off ten minutes. That clears one debt tonight." Denton looked at the silver. He looked at his boot. He stood up on the second try, tucked the bottle under his arm, and walked toward the square with the deliberate steadiness of a man who knew how to be seen drunk. Halfway down he began to sing, off key and loud. A stall clattered. A dog answered. The patrol lanterns swung toward the noise and moved after him at a jog. The lane went quiet. Nera slid back to the crates and pressed his back to the wall. The stair guards had not turned. The window lamp had not moved. He set his hand on the dagger hilt and counted down to the climb.

Nera set his hand on the drainpipe and stopped. A cold wind cut down the lane that did not belong to a southern market at dawn. It smelled of frost and lake water. He looked up. Three figures stood at the mouth of the alley where no figures had been a breath before. Two heads on one body, pale as winter glass. Beside them, a fire fairy in red plate, and a love fairy with roses in her hair. The frost pair had come down out of the north on some errand of their own, and the other two had crossed his path by accident of road. "Prince," said the male head of the frost pair. "We know your face," said the female head. "From a paper in the wine shop," the male finished. Nera lowered his hand from the pipe. Behind the fire fairy, half a step back and quiet, stood a red-haired fairy in pink and mint. Atletha Duststone. His House Steward. She should have been at the castle. Her wings carried his colors along the lower edge. She met his eyes once and looked away. "You followed me," Nera said to her. "I rode with them," Atletha said. "They were faster." She nodded at the fire fairy. "Blazen Emberwing. His wife, Rosalind Emberheart. We crossed at the ford." One sentence each. She did not explain more. Nera's plan cracked open in his head. A dead buyer left the bounty standing. He had no lever to make the man call it off. He had been climbing toward a knife with no answer waiting at the top. Atletha stepped closer. "Who among the buyer's own people would want the bounty called off?" she said. "His creditors. The paper he owes. Kill the buyer and his notes come due to the guild. The guild eats the loss on you." She had thought about it on the road. She had come south to say it out loud. Blazen spoke next, short. "We settle debts in fire where I come from. Here you settle them in ink." Rosalind did not speak. Her hand rested near her hip, and a small flame lived in her palm, banked low. The frost twins watched the wine shop window. "Guards changed," the female said. "Thirty seconds," the male said. "Go now or wait an hour." Nera went. He climbed the pipe, crossed the tile, and dropped through the corner window feet first. The buyer was at his desk with a cup halfway to his mouth. Nera put the fairy-blessed dagger under his jaw and named the guild by the name Atletha had given him. He told the buyer to write a letter cancelling the price, sealed, addressed to the guild clerk, or he would leave the man's ledger open on the desk with a knife through the debt page and let the creditors read it at dawn. The buyer wrote the letter. Nera took it, took the seal, and went out through the roof. On the ground the fire fairy and his wife were already turning north. The frost twins were already gone. Atletha waited by the drainpipe with a spotted fawn cradled against her chest, one wing bandaged, alive. "From the stables," she said. "Gareth said it would not settle without you." Nera took the letter, the seal, and the fawn. The bounty was called. The herd was still scattered. He had one hand full of paper and one hand full of living thing, and a long ride north ahead.

Nera pocketed the sealed letter and buttoned the fawn against his chest under his coat. The buyer would be found by his guards inside the hour. When that happened, the market gates would drop and every road out would close. Atletha stood at his elbow, waiting for the word. He gave it. "South wall. Now." They moved through the wine shop's back lane at a walk, not a run. A run drew eyes. Atletha kept her wings folded flat against her back to hide his colors. The fawn shifted once and went still against his ribs. At the corner, Nera stopped. Two watchmen stood at the mouth of the lane, half-turned, talking. He counted their belts. Long knives. No horns yet. He pulled Atletha into a doorway and thought. The south wall gate would be the first sealed once the buyer was found. The drain under the east wall carried market runoff to the creek. He had marked it in his head three days ago and moved on. Now he needed it. They cut east through a butcher's yard and a narrow between two storehouses. The drain sat behind a slat fence, wide enough for a short fairy on his belly. Atletha went first with the letter. Nera followed with the fawn. The stone scraped his shoulders. Water ran cold at his wrists. Behind them, back at the market center, a horn finally sounded. Then a second. Then the low grind of the gate chains. He came out onto the bank of an iced creek that ran pale between broken stone. The frost pair stood at the far edge already, waiting. The male head looked at the horn sound and then at Nera. "Faster," he said. "They will sweep the banks," she said. Beside them sat a hound of ice and feathered wing, ears forward, watching the market wall. In her free hand the female twin turned one of their paired snowflake knives, thumb on the flat of the blade. "You waited," Nera said. "We owed you a crossing," the male said. "You climbed the pipe when we said thirty seconds," the female said. The hound stepped down onto the ice and the ice held. The twins followed. Nera and Atletha crossed after them, boots sliding on the pale surface, the fawn quiet under his coat. Halfway over, three small ice hares broke from a snowdrift on the far bank and bolted north. The twins did not look at them. Nera did. They were living. The winter here made living things. On the far side, the market horns were still calling behind the wall. The gates had shut on an empty prince. Nera had the letter, the seal, and the fawn, and a frozen creek between him and any rider who wanted to follow. The bounty was called. The road north was open. The rest of the herd was still waiting to be found.

Nera cleared the far bank with the fawn still warm against his ribs. Behind them, hooves drummed the frozen creek's near side. The riders had reached the water. Ice would not hold horses, but it would hold a man on foot, and a man on foot would follow. Nera looked north. His woods lay days from here. Atletha's breath came short. The twins were already moving up the slope. He had crossed the creek and traded one problem for a worse one. No mount. No cover. Open snow between him and any road home. "They will dismount," the male twin said. "They will send two across," said the female. "We counted six horses," he said. "Four will ride the bank looking for a bridge." Nera weighed it. Two on foot he could handle. Four fresh horses circling ahead he could not. He needed distance he could not make on his own legs. The hound lifted its head and turned uphill. A shape came down through the pines on the ridge above them. White cloak. White wings folded tight. Angel Frostborne stopped ten paces off and looked at the creek, then at Nera. "You are the prince with the herd," he said. It was not a question. "I need to be gone from this bank," Nera said. Angel's eyes went to the fawn under his coat. "The manor is an hour's climb," Angel said. "The riders will not follow onto the ridge. My hound knows the path." Nera did not know him. He knew the twins had reached safety through him once. That would have to be enough. They climbed. Angel set the pace and did not look back. The ice hound broke trail through knee-deep snow. Halfway up the ridge, two pale shapes came down out of the rocks and fell in beside the hound. Ice monkeys, quick on the crust, chattering low. "Mine," Angel said, before Nera could ask. "They watch the lower slope." Behind and below, a horn sounded once on the creek bank. Then nothing. The riders had turned back for the bridge. The manor rose from the ridge like two frozen peaks joined at the base. Angel opened a side door built into the ice itself. Inside was cold, dry, and quiet. Glacienne Frostwhisper stood in the hall with a staff of pale crystal. She looked at Nera, at the fawn, at Atletha, at the twins. "He crossed the creek with them," she said. "He needs a mount and a map north," Angel said. She nodded once. "By morning." Nera set the fawn down on a folded cloth by the hearth. The pursuit was cut. He had a roof, a promise of a horse, and a night to plan the road back to his scattered herd. He had also walked into a house whose price he did not yet know.

The fawn had stopped shivering. Nera knelt by the hearth and pressed two fingers to its throat. The pulse was there, but slow. Its coat was damp from snow that had melted against his ribs during the climb. Cold had worked into the small body while he ran, and the ride north was still two days off. If he waited for morning and the promised mount, he would be carrying a dead animal out the door. Atletha crouched beside him. She did not touch the fawn. "It needs heat from inside," she said. "Warm milk. Not fire." She looked up at the hall. "This house is ice. There will be no milk here." Glacienne Frostwhisper watched from the doorway and did not offer any. Her staff tapped once on the floor. "I keep no herd," she said. "I keep no nursing beasts. What I have is snow and salt." She turned and walked out. Nera understood the terms. The mount and the map by morning. Nothing more. Rosalind Emberheart stepped in from the side hall where she had been speaking with Angel Frostborne. She looked at the fawn, then at Nera. "Love camp keeps goats," she said. "Two ridges south. My people will not turn a fairy from the door." She unslung a small satchel and pulled out a folded cloth bundle. Inside were two winged kittens, pale orange, curled around a warm stone. "Heart-born. They hold body heat. Put them against its ribs while someone rides." Nera set the kittens against the fawn's flank. The animal's breathing eased within a minute. It was a stay, not a cure. He looked at Atletha. "You ride," he said. "Rosalind's mark will get you through the camp gate. Bring back milk and a warming pouch before dawn." Atletha stood. She did not argue. She pulled her cloak tight and took the token Rosalind handed her, a small stitched heart on a cord. Nera drew the fairy-blessed dagger from his belt and held it out hilt first. "For the road. Riders are still on the low ground." Atletha took it without a word and slid it into her belt. Rosalind said, "My scout will meet her at the second ridge. She will not ride alone past that point." Then Rosalind walked back to the side hall and closed the door behind her. Atletha left through the ice door Angel had opened for them earlier. Nera stayed by the hearth with his hand on the fawn's ribs and the two kittens pressed to its side. The pulse steadied. It steadied more. By the time the hall clock struck the next hour, the fawn lifted its head and took water from his palm. He had kept it alive. He had also sent his steward into the dark with his blade, and put a debt to a fire-born queen on his account before he had paid the one he already owed this house.

The fawn slept against the kittens by the hearth. Nera counted the hours until dawn and knew the mount and map were not yet his. Glacienne had promised them, but she had also walked out without a word about payment. Angel Frostborne stood in the doorway with his arms folded, watching the ice at the windows. Nera stood up from the hearth. He could not ride out on a debt he had not settled. He crossed the hall to where Angel waited. "Name the price," Nera said. "For the mount. For the map. For the roof over the fawn tonight." Angel did not turn from the window. "Glacienne is not the one you owe. I am. Her house obeys the seat, and the seat is mine again once I take it back." He faced Nera. "I want a written pledge. Your crown will not treat with the advisor who removed me. Not for trade. Not for passage. Not for a cup of water." Nera felt the weight of it settle. A prince's word on paper was a leash. But the herd was scattered, and the forest was thinning while he stood here bargaining. He thought of the fawn's slow pulse under his hand. He thought of the ones still lost. "Ink and paper," he said. "Now." Angel brought both from a side table. Nera wrote it short. He would not receive, host, or trade with the advisor who unseated Angel Frostborne, for as long as Angel pressed his claim. He signed it with his field mark, not the crown seal he had left at the hall. Angel read the page, folded it once, and put it inside his coat. Then he tapped the wall twice. A back door opened. A gray riding beast stood saddled in the yard, breath steaming. A rolled map lay across the horn. Rosalind stepped in from the side hall as Nera pulled his cloak on. "My scout is back," she said. "Atletha reached the goats. Milk before dawn." She paused. "Blazen sent word from his camp. Fire fairies rode the low road tonight. Two dragons in the air over the ridge. They are not hunting you. They are hunting me." Her mouth set. "But they will cross your track before you reach the herd." Nera took the map and swung up. The fawn would ride in a sling at his chest once Atletha returned with the milk. He had the mount. He had the road. He had signed away a piece of his court to get both, and now fire riders moved between him and the scattered herd. He touched the beast's neck and turned it toward the yard gate. One debt paid. A harder road ahead.

Nera sat the gray beast at the yard gate and watched the road. The mount was his. The map was folded at his knee. The fawn lay in a basket by the hearth inside, warmed by the winged kittens, but its breath was thinning. Without milk it would not last the first day of riding. He counted his choices and found two. Wait for Atletha and lose ground to the fire riders. Leave now and lose the fawn. Rosalind came out into the yard with her arms wrapped against the cold. The hem of her dress moved with a small orange light she did not hide. "Scout signals a rider on the low path," she said. "One horse. Coming fast." "Yours?" Nera asked. "Mine went east. This one is not mine." He swung down and drew the blade at his hip. Then he heard the pattern of the hooves and knew them. He had watched Atletha ride out on that horse three nights back. He walked to the gate and pulled the bar. Atletha rode into the yard at a hard trot and stopped short. She was bound across the chest with a sling, and the sling held a bundle that was not a milk skin. A small face showed in the folds. Dark hair. Eyes shut. A hand no bigger than a walnut curled against her collar. Behind her, tied to the saddle, hung two clay jars stoppered with wax. The milk. She had brought both. Nera did not speak. He stepped to the horse and lifted the jars free first, because the fawn needed them and his hands knew what to do before the rest of him did. He set them by the step. Then he came back and looked up at her. "He was born at the camp two nights ago," Atletha said. "I did not know until my water broke on the road in. Rosalind's people held me through it. I rode as soon as I could sit the saddle." She looked down at him. Her wing underveils caught the lantern and showed his colors clean along the lower edge. "He is yours. I did not want you to hear it from a scout." Nera lifted his arms. She passed the child down. The weight settled against his chest and the child did not wake. He carried the boy to the step, sat, and pressed his forehead to the small warm skull. Inside, Rosalind was already at the hearth with one of the jars, tipping milk into a cloth for the fawn. The kittens circled her hands. Glacienne stood in the doorway and watched without speaking. Nera lifted his head and looked at the map at the gate and the mount past it, and at the woman who had ridden through birth and cold to bring him a son and a fawn's life in the same sling. The road north had not gotten shorter. It had gotten heavier, and it had gotten his.

Nera sat on the step with his son against his chest and looked at the gray mount at the gate. He could not tie a newborn to the saddle and hold a dying fawn at the same time. One would slip. One would freeze. The map at his knee said three hard days north. The child in his arms said hours, not days. He had traded for a mount and a road, and neither answered this. Rosalind came out with the milk cloth. "The fawn drank a little. Not enough. It needs a proper nurse, and it needs one before you clear the ridge." She looked at the child. "You cannot carry both at that pace. Choose." "I am not choosing," Nera said. He stood. "Find me a fairy who works with animals. Send now." Glacienne spoke from the doorway. "There is one. He rides the low woods for hurt creatures. My scout can reach him before dawn if I send the dragonfly." She did not wait for thanks. She stepped inside and wrote a short line on a strip and tied it to the insect's leg herself. The wings cut the air and were gone over the roof. The rider came in before the sky changed. He walked into the yard with his wings folded flat and his hat pulled low. He did not look at the prince first. He went straight to the basket by the hearth and put a hand on the fawn's ribs. "Late," he said. "But not too late. I can hold it." He looked up. "I will take it to the woven house down the creek. The animal fairies keep it. Warm floor. Milk on hand. Two nurses." He paused. "I lost one like this in winter. I do not lose them anymore if I get there." Nera knelt by the basket. The winged kittens lifted off the fawn's flank and drifted to Atletha's shoulder. He touched the spotted throat and felt the pulse, thin but steady. "It is from the sacred herd," he said. "If it lives, it goes back to the herd. Not to any hall. Not to any market." The cowboy nodded once. "My word." He lifted the basket against his chest, bound it with a strap, and walked to his horse without another sentence. The fawn's small wing showed once above the rim and folded down. Nera watched the rider clear the gate. Then he turned to Atletha. She was already tying the sling higher on her ribs so the child would ride against her heart on the road. "North," she said. "Together." He fixed the jars to his saddle, took the map, and mounted. The fawn was alive and going the other way. His son was warm against Atletha's chest. The road was still three days, and the fire riders were still coming, but the load in his arms had become one load, and it was one he could ride with.

Nera rode with Atletha at his flank and the child bound to her chest. The gray mount kept a steady walk, not the hard pace the map wanted. He watched the sling with every stride. The son was quiet, but quiet was not the same as safe. By the second hour the child had cried twice for milk, and Atletha had slowed each time to feed him from the jar. The road north was three days at a gallop. At this pace it was six. The fire riders would not wait six. He drew up at a bend where the trees thinned. "We cannot ride this road with him. He will not last the cold nights, and I cannot push the mount without shaking him loose." Atletha did not argue. "Then we do not ride this road." She pointed her chin down a side track that dropped toward the creek. "The animal fairies keep a house down there. Their leader took the fawn to it. It has a warm floor and nurses. A child could sleep there while we ride on." "You would leave him." "I would leave him alive." She held his eyes. "I can ride hard behind you if my hands are free. He cannot ride hard at all." They turned down the track. The woven house sat in a clearing, leaves grown into its roof and paw prints painted on the door. The cowboy fairy was in the yard already, sleeves rolled, wings folded flat against his back. Two frost-furred monkeys sat on the low wall watching them, and a blue-marked butterfly the size of a hound rested on a stump near the door. Dusty came to the mount before Nera dismounted. "The fawn is drinking," he said. "Standing by dusk if the cold holds off." He looked at the sling. "You brought another one." "My son," Nera said. "I need him held here until I come back. Fed. Warm. Not shown to anyone who asks." He swung down. Rosalind had ridden up behind them at some point; she stood at the gate with her arms crossed, saying nothing. Her presence was the guarantee. No fire rider would burn a house she stood beside. Dusty put his hand under the sling and took the weight. "My word on him same as the fawn. He goes back to you. Not to any hall." He turned for the door. Atletha unbound the sling from her ribs and passed the cloth over without watching her hands shake. Nera mounted again. The saddle felt lighter and worse. Atletha swung up on the second mount Dusty led from the shed, a lean thing bred for distance. She gathered the reins the way a rider gathers them when nothing is holding her back. "North," she said. He nodded, and they rode. The child was behind them now, safe on a warm floor, and the herd was still ahead, and the road had shortened to what two hard riders could cross.

They rode north until the trees opened onto a stretch of frost-bitten meadow, and Nera pulled up short. Prints crossed the grass in three directions. Split hooves. Fawn-sized. Fresh enough that the frost had not yet reclaimed them. He swung down and read the ground. Four fawns, maybe five, scattered from a single point by something that had come through hard. They had not stayed together. That was the problem. He could track one and lose the rest, or ride wide and gather none. Without a call the animals knew, they would bolt from any rider before he closed the gap. Atletha dismounted beside him. She watched him read the prints and did not speak until he stood. "You need a lure," she said. "Something they remember." He nodded. The herd master's horn was three days behind him at the hall. The scent-cloths were with Bristle. He had ridden out with a map and a mount and nothing that smelled like home to a young animal. He looked back down the track they had come up. The animal fairies' woven house sat two hours behind them, warm floor and paw prints on the door, his son inside it and the wounded fawn drinking milk on its feet. That fawn had walked with the herd. It carried the herd's smell in its coat. "We go back," Nera said. "An hour lost. Not more." They rode. Dusty met them at the gate with his wings folded tight and his hand on the latch before Nera spoke. Nera told him what he needed. A cloth rubbed against the healing fawn's neck and flank. Something that would carry to the scattered ones on the wind and pull them in. Dusty did not argue the cost to his patient. He went inside and came back with a folded square of undyed linen, warm from the animal, and a second cloth soaked in the milk the fawn had been drinking. "Hang the linen upwind," he said. "Wet the second on your glove. They will come to the hand that smells like the jar." He held the cloths out. "Bring my fawn's kin back. He will want them when he stands." Nera took the cloths and tucked them into his coat against his skin to keep the scent live. He mounted. Atletha was already up. They rode back to the meadow at a hard trot, and he hung the linen from a low branch upwind of the prints and waited with the wet cloth on his glove. The first fawn came out of the brush within the quarter hour, ears forward, nose working. A second followed at its flank. Nera did not move his hand. He had a lure now. The scattered ones would come to him. The rest of the road north had shape again.

Two fawns stood at the edge of the brush with the wet cloth between them and Nera's glove. A third came out behind them, then a fourth. Four fawns in the meadow, none of them his to keep unless he could get a hand on them without spooking the group. He kept his arm low. He did not step forward. The scent was doing the work. His job now was to hold still until the animals crossed the last stretch of grass on their own. Atletha stayed back by the horses. She had unwrapped her cloak and laid it flat on the ground beside the linen. Nera had told her what he wanted. Once the fawns were close enough, she would move behind them at a slow walk and close the gap they had come through. Not driving them. Just standing in the gap. He needed every one of them inside the ring the scent had drawn. He had one lure and one try. The smallest fawn came in first. It nosed the wet cloth. Nera let it lick the milk from the leather. He set his other hand on its shoulder and it flinched but did not run. The second pressed in behind it, jealous of the jar smell. He kept his voice out of his throat. The third fawn hung back at ten paces, ears twitching at every shift of wind. Atletha stepped. One pace, then another. The third fawn's head came up. Nera saw the muscle bunch in its haunches and knew the shape of a bolt before it happened. If that one broke, the others would follow. He did the only thing left. He pulled the linen off the branch and dropped it in the grass between his boots. The scent flooded low. The third fawn's nose dropped with it. All four heads came down to the ground where the cloth lay, and Nera crouched slow among them with the wet glove out. Atletha closed the last of the gap behind them and stood there, cloak spread wide at her sides. The fawns fed on the smell and did not lift their heads. He got a lead rope on the smallest. Then the next. The last two he tied nose to tail behind the first pair, the way a herd master ropes a green string. None of them fought the line. The milk cloth stayed in his glove and he let each of them work at it in turn while he knotted the leads. When he stood up, four fawns stood with him. "We have them," Atletha said. Nera counted the leads in his hand and counted again. Four recovered. The rest of the sacred herd was still scattered north, and he had no more scent cloths left in his coat. He mounted with the string tied to his saddle horn and turned the horse toward the road. The lure was spent. Whatever came next, he would need a different way to call them in.

Nera rode with the string of four fawns behind him and knew within a mile that the pace was wrong. The fawns trotted where he needed them to run. The lead ropes pulled tight and slack, tight and slack, and the horse fought the drag at every rise. Atletha rode a length behind, watching the treeline south. When she turned in the saddle a second time without speaking, he already knew what she had seen. "Smoke," she said. "Two riders at least. Closer than an hour." He pulled the horse up and looked at the fawns. Four small heads, four short legs. Fire riders on grown mounts would run them down before the next stand of trees. He could cut the ropes and scatter them again and save himself. He had sworn he would not. The herd bound the crown to the forest, and the forest was already thinning at its edges. Losing these four meant losing more than four. He pulled the map from his coat and found the creek line. The animal fairies' warm house sat a half day south down the water. Too far for him. Not too far for a rider who knew the creek and moved fast on the ground. He looked at Atletha and did not have to ask. She had already loosened her reins. "Take them to Dusty," he said. He cut the string from his saddle horn and pressed the four leads into her glove. "Tell him the same oath as before. Returned to the herd if they live. Not kept. Not sold." Atletha wound the ropes around her wrist once and tied them off clean. "He will hold them," she said. "I will ride back to you by the north bend." She did not say the child's name. She did not ask about the smoke. She turned the horse and started the fawns down the slope at a walk that would not panic them, and once the brush closed behind her the sound of small hooves went with her. Nera sat alone on the ridge with an empty saddle horn and a lighter horse. He could hear his own breathing now. The dragonfly he had ridden south was long gone; this mount was Angel's gift, bred for distance. He turned it north and touched its flank and the horse answered. Four fawns were saved. The rest of the herd was still ahead, scattered through country the fire riders were already crossing. He rode. Behind him the smoke thickened above the trees where he had stood a minute before. Ahead, the ground opened toward the next valley, and somewhere in it the older fawns were running from something he had not yet seen.

Nera crested the ridge and saw the older fawns below him in the valley grass. Six of them, running north along a dry watercourse, heads high and legs stiff with fear. He had no scent cloths left. The linen was gone, the milk jars empty a day behind him. If he charged down at them they would scatter into the trees and he would not gather them again before the fire riders crossed the valley. He pulled the horse up behind a stand of pine and got down to think. He heard the wingbeat before he saw it. A small mount came in low over the ridge, striped and pale, with a rider braced low against its neck. Goggles up on his forehead, one hand on the reins, the other on a satchel that clinked as he landed. Nera knew the animal fairies used couriers on the winged foals. He had not expected one to find him here. "Dusty sent me," the rider said. He swung down and did not waste breath on his own name past the first word. "Tempo Flux. He said you'd run out of lures before you ran out of fawns." Nera stared. "How did he know." "He counted the cloths he gave you." Tempo unbuckled the satchel and pulled out a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Inside were fresh linen strips, damp and heavy, and a small stoppered jar. "Milk from the healing fawn. He rubbed the cloths this morning. He said the older ones will come to the smell same as the young if you stay downwind and low." He paused. "He said hurry. Riders are close." Behind Tempo, two more shapes came over the ridge on foot, silent as cold. The frost twins, one head watching south, the other watching the fawns in the grass. "We will hold the tree line," the sister said. "If the riders come before you finish," the brother said, "we slow them." The body did not move until both heads had spoken. Then it moved together, down the slope toward the south edge of the valley. Nera took the cloths and went down on his belly through the grass. He tied one strip to a low branch upwind, dropped a second in the dry watercourse, and crouched with the jar open in his hand. The lead fawn lifted her head. She turned. She came, slow at first, then the others behind her, six small bodies drawn on a line of scent through the grass. He caught the first by the neck and she did not fight him. He roped her, then the next, then the next, working fast with his hands shaking from the pace. Six ropes on his saddle horn. Six fawns standing close to his horse, breathing hard, alive. Smoke rose to the south where the twins had gone. Tempo was already back in the air, circling once and turning for the creek. Nera mounted and rode north with the herd tight behind him, gathered, moving as one.

Nera rode north with the six fawns in a tight string behind him. The smoke from the twins' stand was thinning at his back. He knew what that meant. Two heads could not hold a line forever against fire riders, and the wind was already carrying the herd's scent north along the watercourse. If the riders broke through and cut the trail, they would run the fawns down before dusk. He needed the trail hidden, and he had nothing to hide it with. He reined in where the dry watercourse widened into stone. A shape stood at the edge of the flat rock, waiting. Silver hair pinned high, wings pale as glass, a fairy in violet and white with vines wound at her ankles. He had not seen her before, but he knew the sign of a court envoy when he saw one. She spoke first. "Luminara Starwhisper. The steward sent word to the council office that you were riding north with what remained of the herd. I came to meet you on the road." "The riders are an hour behind," Nera said. "Less. I cannot mask the trail." "I can." She lifted a small pouch from her belt. "Star-dust across running stone breaks a scent line for half a day. It is council work, not a favor. The forest is failing in the east groves. The council wants the herd home as much as you do." She looked at the fawns, then at him. "Ride the watercourse north until the stone ends. I will walk it behind you and lay the dust. When the riders reach the flat, they will find nothing to follow." Nera hesitated one breath. He had learned to count debts. This one was already paid on the council's side, and the twins would not last the hour. He nodded. "Do it." He put his horse into the watercourse and the fawns followed, hooves clicking on wet stone. Behind him Luminara knelt and worked the pouch open, tracing a line of pale dust along the rock. He did not look back again. He heard the wingbeat of a courier overhead once, striped and low, Tempo Flux turning south toward the smoke to find the twins. That was as much help as he could ask for and more than he had earned. At the head of the watercourse the stone gave out into moss. Luminara caught up on foot, dust pouch empty, wings folded tight. "The trail is broken behind us," she said. "They will cast for it and lose an afternoon. Use the afternoon." Nera counted the fawns again. Six, breathing, roped, alive. He turned the horse north toward the higher country where the rest of the scattered herd had run. The riders were still coming. But the trail behind him was dead stone and pale dust, and for the first time in three days he was ahead of them.

Nera pushed the fawns up through the moss into a stand of low pine. Luminara kept pace on foot beside his stirrup. The half-day she had bought was already spending itself, and the country ahead opened into bare slope where nothing would hide a string of six fawns from the sky. He had heard the sound twice in the last hour and pretended he had not. Now he heard it again, closer, a dry beat like sailcloth snapped against wind. Two dragons, working the northern line for the fire tribe's queen, sweeping wide. Luminara stopped. She turned her face up through the pine crowns and listened. "Fire scouts on the wing. A pair. They will cross this slope in a quarter hour." "There is no cover past the trees," Nera said. "If they see the fawns from above, we lose them all." "I did not come alone." She lifted two fingers to her mouth and gave a short, flat whistle. A striped courier dropped through the branches and landed on a low bough, goggles pushed up, wings still. Tempo Flux. Behind the courier, on a heavier wing beat, came an older fairy in purple and gold that Nera had only seen in the council hall. Aldric Moonwhisper set down on the moss and did not bow. "The office sent me when the envoy sent word. We have one working left in the pouch for cloud cover. One casting. It will hold an hour over a mile of ground." Nera looked at the six fawns roped behind his horse and at the open slope. An hour and a mile was the slope and the ridge beyond it. "Cast it." Aldric knelt and opened a small leather pouch. He poured grey powder into his palm and spoke three words Nera did not catch. The powder lifted straight up through the pines as if pulled on a line. Above the crowns it spread, thickened, and became low grey cloud that moved with them as Nera put the horse forward onto the open ground. Tempo Flux flew ahead at treetop height as a spotter, one hand on the hilt of a small blade at the belt, the other signing back the line of the dragons' sweep. Luminara walked at the tail of the string. Aldric held the casting, eyes closed, moving at a fast walk beside the horse. The dragons crossed twice above them. Nera heard the wingbeats pass directly overhead, once, then again farther east. Neither turned. The cloud held. At the ridge line the ground broke down into thick spruce and the sky closed in on its own. Aldric let the working go and sat down hard on a stone, breathing through his teeth. "Done. They will quarter this slope for another hour and find nothing." Nera counted the fawns. Six. He turned north into the spruce. The sky was no longer his enemy for the afternoon, and the herd he had not yet found was one ridge closer.

Nera pushed the fawns deeper into the spruce and let the horse pick its own line. The needles were thick underfoot and the light dropped to green. Aldric walked with a hand on the horse's flank to keep his feet. Luminara paced at the rear, watching the trail behind them. The dragons were gone, but the wood was not empty. Nera had smelled the mark on a pine bole a quarter mile back. A cat had scored the bark chest-high and rubbed scent into the cut. It was hunting, and it had their line now. He stopped the string in a small clear place between three fallen trunks. The fawns bunched at his knee, breathing hard through their noses. Six of them. Too many to carry, too slow to outrun a cat in cover. "There is a lynx on our scent," Nera said. "It has been pacing us for a half hour. In this brush it will take one from the tail and be gone before we turn." Luminara set her palm on the nearest fawn's back. "I have star-dust for stone, not for living scent. I cannot blank them." Aldric shook his head before Nera asked. "The pouch is empty. One working was all I carried." Nera swung down. He had one thing left that a predator would read before it read the fawns. He opened the saddlebag and took out the last two scent cloths Tempo Flux had brought from the animal fairies' house, the linen still damp with milk and the healing fawn's coat oil. He had used them as a lure. He would use them now as a lie. He tied the milk-soaked cloth to a low branch at the edge of the clearing, upwind. Then he took the dry scent cloth, wrapped it around a stone, and threw it hard through the brush along the slope, away from the line he meant to travel. He drew the fairy-blessed dagger and cut a shallow line across his own forearm. He pressed the cut to a third strip of cloth and staked it beside the milk cloth. Fawn scent, milk, and fresh blood, all in one place, none of it moving. "Walk the fawns straight north on the moss," he told Luminara. "No talking. I will catch you at the next ridge." He waited behind a trunk with the dagger out. The lynx came fast and low, drawn by blood over milk, and went for the staked cloth without checking the wind. Nera did not fight it. He let it take the bait, watched it seize the rag and bolt with it back down the slope toward the thrown stone. He counted to twenty and followed the fawns north on the moss, wiping his arm on his sleeve. The trail he left now was one man walking. The cat was carrying his old scent the other way. He caught Luminara at the ridge with all six fawns still on the rope, and turned them toward the valley where the older herd had gone to ground.