His gaze lifts to mine. "Now I have both."
"I'm going to Duskmire. I want to assess it."
"I'll come."
"No."
"If there are corrupted specimens in the plots, I can identify them faster than any hunter you have."
"Your leg?—"
"Functions well enough for a village walk." I face him sternly. "You've been investigating around me. Let me be useful."
He thinks about it and then says, "within sight. Of me specifically."
"Agreed."
Duskmire in daylight is smaller than memory makes it. The main road is churned, three market stalls shuttered that weren't last month.
The villagers see Draekir first. A woman at the pump pulls her child against her hip. Two men at a fence post stop. The village elder, Harleck — gray-haired, steady — appears, neither retreating nor advancing.
Then they see me. Harleck comes down from the step. A second woman emerges from behind the pump house, worn expression easing when her eyes find mine. A boy of about twelve tugs his sister's sleeve.
"Elowen." Harleck's voice sounds like the way people use names when they're relieved to have one. "We heard you were — the forest?—"
"I'm fine. Mostly."
He glances at Draekir once, brief and unreadable, then back to me. "Dara's well. Fever broke the day after the medicine arrived."
I'm confused. I never made it out of the forest with the root. I never reached her.
"How?"
"Medicine arrived the morning after you disappeared. No one came to the door. It was just there. Feverroot, too, freshly cut from the same hollow. Whoever left it knew exactly what was needed."
"And you?" Harleck asks. "Truly."
"Healing," I inform him. "Slowly." He nods, and lets it rest there.
Draekir moves through the village without speaking. His hunters work ahead — documenting damage, checking soil. I watch a merchant track him from his window.
Near the north end, two hunters set a supply crate against a damaged storehouse wall. Then another. Then a third, stacked with grain sacks and sealed containers. No announcement. No exchange. A woman emerges, looks at what's been left, and turns toward Draekir's retreating back with an expression she doesn't know how to handle.
He's already moved on, posture closed, giving no indication the crates exist. I don't like the warmth that follows the sight of him helping people who fear him. I dislike even more that it feels instinctive. I ignore it, and crouch near the market stalls and press my fingers into the soil. Whoever did this has been working outward longer than I thought.
I'll tell him on the way back. For now I stay low, collect what I can, and keep my attention on what's under my hands. My body doesn't listen, and finds him anyway — across the square, one hand against the storehouse wall, reading everything withthe same thoroughness he reads everything. Not performing the assessment. Actually doing it.
I force myself to look back at the earth. The soil is a problem I can solve. The other thing — the one that settled somewhere in my chest when he didn't want to be thanked — that one I haven't found the edges of yet.
10
DRAEKIR
The cellar runs cold at all hours. That's the point of it. I had it built that way years ago. The smugglers are secured to the chairs. One is older, heavy through the jaw, a scar traveling from his ear to his mouth. The other is younger, trying to keep it together. Both were transporting sealed containers through the pass — wax-stamped, markings obscured under a layer of pine resin. Vuldren's patrol found them two hours ago. I told him to bring them here. Not the cells. Here.
I don't touch them. Instead, I pull a stool to the center of the room, and study the containers laid out to my left. Four sealed jars, contents dark and moving. Alongside them, a length of twine wound with small carved transit markers. Not from common routes. Each marker has codework carved into the back, old border cipher work I have not seen used openly in decades.
I let the silence do the first part. The younger one breaks before I need to do anything else.
